book review

“This Is the Saddest Story . . . “

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Book cover for "The Invisible Front"The Invisible Front:  Love and Loss in an Era of Endless War by Yochi Dreazen, Crown Publishers, 2014.

If you’re a fan of early 20th-Century fiction (or if you’ve taken college-level literature classes), you probably recognized the title of this post as being the first line of Ford Maddox Ford’s novel The Good Soldier.  This book is indeed beyond sad:  the story of a military family, the father a two-star general, who lose two sons:  one to suicide and one to battle.  It caught my eye on the new books shelf at the library, and I checked it out thinking that I probably wouldn’t read much of it since it would be unbearable.   What pulled me along was the quality of the writing:  Dreazen is a well-respected military journalist, and he tells this story without any attempt to wring tears from his readers, which he doesn’t have to do anyway.  The story speaks for itself.  He is able to bring many voices into his narrative; people were astonishingly open with him.

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Life Lessons from a 21-Year-Old

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Cover of "Debt-Free U"Debt-Free U:  How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching Off My Parents by Zac Bissonnette, Portfolio/Penguin 2010.

Even if you have no kids going to college, or you’re not a kid planning to go to college, you should read this book.  (But you should also read it if you do fit into one of those categories.)

A couple of posts ago I wrote about Dinner:  the Playbook, and I said that book wasn’t valuable so much for the recipes or the specific information about planning meals as it was in promoting a general outlook that says:  “What can I do right now?”  A proactive approach.  Well, this is the same type of book, in that it contains principles that go far beyond making sound economic choices when it comes to college.

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The Start of Tabloid Politics

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Cover for "All the Truth Is Out"All the Truth Is Out:  The Week Politics Went Tabloid by Matt Bai, Alfred A Knopf, 2014.

Yet another NPR-publicized book.  If you’re of a certain age, the name “Gary Hart” conjures up one image, and one image only:  of the smiling, mop-haired man in a “Monkey Business Crew” t-shirt with the beautiful woman on his lap.  And that’s it.  When that one picture hit the papers it was all over for a man who at that point was virtually a shoo-in to be the Democratic nominee for President in 1987.  Nothing else mattered.  He pretty much disappeared from political life.

However much you (and I) may deplore adultery (and whatever may have ultimately happened between Hart and Donna Rice, there was no doubt that he had had numerous affairs during his long but troubled marriage), it is fair to point out that with this one incident the rules of engagement between the press and political candidates changed.

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A Great Take on Family Dinner

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Cover of Dinner, the PlaybookDinner:  The Playbook:  a 30-day plan for mastering The Art of the Family Meal by Jenny Rosenstrach, Ballantine Books, 2014.

I talk in chapter 8 of my book (read it here) that one of my “small things” goals is to plan dinner ahead of time; that, while I’m good at entertaining and planning party food, we often rather limp along through the week’s normal family meals.  (Although I am a killer breakfast maker, I must say.)  Jenny Rosenstrach’s previous book, Dinner:  A Love Story, is referenced there.  I ran across that book at the library, liked it, and have visited her blog of the same name several times, which is how I found out about her new book.  DALS is a lovely cookbook with many photographs of Jenny’s family; this book is more of a battle plan with recipes included.  I have to say that I find most of her recipes to be rather weird and her meals a little on the skimpy side:  spaghetti with shallots and Brussels sprouts?  really?  as the whole meal, not a side dish?

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Behind the Scenes at the Stock Exchanges

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Cover of "Flash Boys"

Flash Boys:  A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis, published by W. W. Norton, 2014.

I got interested in this book because of an NPR story.  (This type of thing happens frequently.)  It’s fascinating to find out what’s really going on with something, especially an entity as supposedly public as public stock markets.  Michael Lewis is known for writing about the story behind the story.  Most people probably know about him from The Blind Side, which you really should read even if you’re not interested in football.  He’s also written about baseball (Moneyball) and other aspects of the financial markets (Liar’s Poker and The Big Short).  I’ve read all these other books except for Moneyball (but I saw the movie).

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A Great Shot in the Arm

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Book cover for "A Shot of Faith to the Head" A Shot of Faith {To the Head}:  Be a Confident Believer in an Age of Cranky Atheists 

by Mitch Stokes, Ph.D., published by Thomas Nelson, 2012.

Dr. Stokes has had a double career that prepared him beautifully to write about the ideas in this book.  In his earlier life he earned an M.S. in mechanical engineering and worked for an international firm where he earned five patents in gas turbine technology.  Pretty impressive.  But then he must have gotten bored or something, because he went off and earned an M.A. in religion at Yale and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Notre Dame.  He is now a college senior fellow in philosophy. So, whatever you may think about his views, you can’t say that he doesn’t have the background to write about them.

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The Novel with Everything

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Book cover for Gaudy Night Gaudy Night  by Dorothy Sayers, originally published in 1936 by Harper and Row, now available in many versions and formats.  A free e-book is available from fadedpage.com.

I quoted from this novel in last week’s book review and decided to go ahead and write about it this week. It’s a great read, with everything you could possibly want: romance, mystery, a sense of place and time, quirky, believable characters, and a central philosophical issue, which in this case concerns the position of women in the academic community and the larger question of how intellectual equality between the sexes affects marriage. As far as I’m concerned this is a much better novel than Jane Eyre, which deals with similar issues but which just goes on and on and on inside Jane’s head.If you’re not familiar with Dorothy Sayers and her novels involving Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, you really should read the two previous ones before reading this one. Strong Poison introduces Harriet to Lord Peter and to the readers. She’s accused of murder, and L.P. rescues and also falls in love with her. But getting these two to the altar isn’t going to be simple. It takes two more novels, Have His Carcase and Gaudy Night, before Harriet finally gives in to Peter. Then we see them married off in Busman’s Honeymoon, to complete the quartet.

These characters are so real to me (and, to a certain extent, to Jim) that when we visited England back in 2006 we felt that it was absolutely necessary to visit Oxford, since that is the setting for Gaudy Night. We punted on the river, ate lunch at the Mitre (where Harriet and Peter have a drink), and stood on Magdalen Bridge, where Harriet finally says yes to Peter. We weren’t all that interested in finding the Eagle and Child, the pub where the real Tolkien and Lewis had their get-togethers with the other Inklings, although we’re huge Tolkien and Lewis fans. Somehow fictional characters mean more to us than do authors.

I’m fond of saying that Gaudy Night is the greatest novel of the 20th century. You’ll have to read it to see if you agree with me or not. How’s that for a motivation?

A Book Dangerous to Preconceived Notions

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Cover of "The Triumph of Christianity"The Triumph of Christianity:  How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion by Rodney Stark,  HarperOne, 2011

Did it ever occur to you that the fall of Rome was a liberating event, not the cause of descent into barbarism, and that therefore the so-called “Dark Ages” are an invention of later historians?  That Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and subsequent support of the Church turned out to be a very mixed blessing?  That a belief in the God of the Bible encourages and supports science?  That the Crusades weren’t the horrible bloodletting that they’re usually made out to be?

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How It All Began

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Cover for "The Happiness Project"

The Happiness Project:  Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin, HarperCollins, 2009 (original hardback publication date; now available in several other formats)

It occurred to me that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do a formal review (well, as formal as these things ever are) of The Happiness Project, since that book kicked off my whole “Intentional Living” thing.  I give credit to the book in Intentional Happiness and also on the home page of this website, but here’s some further information.  Gretchen Rubin certainly doesn’t need my help in selling any more books, as she’s sold about a gazillion already, and I would like for everyone reading this to buy a copy of my book first, but then after that you should buy a copy of her book if you’re one of the half dozen people who hasn’t already done so.

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Eating Lean Is Pretty Mean

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Cover for "The Big FAT Surprise"

The Big FAT Surprise:  Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet by Nina Teicholz, Simon and Schuster, 2014.

Let me say that I hope Teicholz makes a ton of money from this book.  She deserves that, having spent the past nine years doing the research for the 337 pages of text plus 100+ pages of notes that comprise this book.  And the message is:  Whatever you think you know about what current research tells us constitutes healthy eating, you’re almost certainly wrong.  If you go back and actually look at the original data for the studies that have been so influential in our dietary thinking over the past few decades, as Teicholz has done, you’ll find that they don’t actually say what it’s been said that they say.

So, for example, take a look at the so-called “Mediterranean Diet,” beloved in song and story.  What does it consist of?  Lots of vegetables, lots of whole grains, fish, and the very occasional serving of red meat.  The fat of choice is olive oil, gallons of it.

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