The Children of Men

The Children of Men by P. D. James is a scrupulously written novel, very English, with shades of Brideshead Revisited or Maugham.  This carries the novel along, hiding some of the weaker plot points, and the somewhat lame ending.  This novel, despite its subject matter, has a pleasant tone and texture.

Who Will Lead Us? The Story of Five Hasidic Dynasties in America

Who Will Lead Us? The Story of Five Hasidic Dynasties in America by Samuel C. Heilman was of surprising interest.  Heilman explores how Hasidic dynasties have handled the succession of the Rebbes, or holy leaders.

Like most liberal Jews, I consider the early days of Hasidism as far more interesting than their current dynastic, conservative descendants.  Second and Third generation Hasidism, and its forms today,  are more ridged, traditional, and reactionary; on this Heilman shines an interesting light.  The charisma and stature of the Rebbe is the binding influence of a Hasidic sect, and how succession plays out often makes or breaks the group’s cohesion.  The Rebbe is a marker of both progress and continuity.  Successful succession is key to this process.

Rather than being ossified, dynastic Hasidism is far more dynamic than I supposed.

Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up, by Koshin Paley Ellison

Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up, by Koshin Paley Ellison, is a deeply humane and compassionate book, and the title illustrates much of Ellison’s themes.  

We should slow down, because when we do, we are far more successfully able to understand the world around us, our place in it.  Ellison, as a Buddhist, takes know thyself to its apotheosis; we should always try to place a “space” between what we think and how we act or speak in given situations.  This way, we respond to events, rather than react.  

This leads to a greater sense of compassion, the urge to help people who intend to hurt us, for we see how we are all caught in this trap of living life on the surface of things; we are all in this together, and need to help each other out.

Finally, we wake up, we no longer sleepwalk through life, but live far more intentionally. We notice things about our daily life that give it greater meaning and flavor.  We are not just islands, but an integral part of the whole.

Attrition 101

Bloody Spring: Forty Days that Sealed the Confederacy's Fate, by Joseph Wheelan, is a history of Grant’s Overland Campaign in 1864.  Grant became the overall commander of the Union forces in 1864, and was finally a man who realized what a war of attrition could accomplish against Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.  The Union had an abundance of everything, whereas the Southern Insurrection was running on a tattered shoe string.   

Rather than fighting a single battle and retreating, win or lose, as all other Union generals had done before him, Grant continued to engage Lee not matter the cost.  Grant had the flexibility to replace his losses and absorb his mistakes while Lee could not.  Ultimately this is how the Union won the war.

Bloody Spring provides a shocking and riveting account of total war.

Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel

Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel, by Matti Friedman, tells the fascinating story of the first attempts by the Jewish community in Palestine, and the early State of Israel, to spy on its Arab neighbors.  

Israel used native Arab speaking Jews from the Middle East, men who were Arab in identity but Jewish in religion.  Friedman lays out the multiple layers of exile/identity/tribe of these early spies.  They were men of the Middle East: from Syria, Egypt, and Iraq.  In a state dominated by European Jews, these early spies navigated multiple and at times contradictory identities. 

This is the most fascinating thing about Friedman’s book.  Israel would become more and more a Middle Eastern nation after 1948.  More than half of all Israeli Jews now have ancestry from the Middle East. These men helped pave their way.

The Circle Falls Flat

I usually allow the premise of a book to speak for itself, accept it, and see how the author unfolds the action in his or her created world. 

But Dave Eggers The Circle has such a “now” premise, that it nearly impossible to take the premise uncritically and move on; if our social media/internet world has shown anything, it has not fostered control in the hands of a few.  Quite the contrary, it is shattering the world into hundreds of bickering communities.   No one has control.

The Circle envisions an age of complete mono-corporate hegemony over the inherently anarchic world of technology.  The premise is insanely wrong, and the book just falls flat at the first word.  It has other flaws, but this is the most outstanding.