Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep

 

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep, is certainly a well written and engaging work, but only if you care for certain narrow concerns.  I care little for the generation of post-war writers who had problems writing, Lee, Salinger, or those who wanted to be left alone, their photographic legacy only a buck toothed portrait from their Cornell days (Pynchon).  Who cares?  Lee never wrote another book after Mockingbird because she did not have the power, stamina, and or creativity to do so.  The fact that she is somehow hailed for this shows that we often worship failure as much as success in our writers.  Why did she never write again, we whisper.  A mystery!

Cep shows that Lee had the material to write a far more complex non-fiction or novel about race in America.  She had gathered the materials, but failed to write the book.  Cep wrote the book while explaining why Lee did not write the book.  So why should we care about Harper Lee, or the others?  We should not.  We should allow those who wanted to hide and disappear remain in such a state.  That is what they wanted. 

American Guerrillas: From the French and Indian Wars to Iraq and Afghanistan—How Americans Fight Unconventional Wars

American Guerrillas: From the French and Indian Wars to Iraq and Afghanistan—How Americans Fight Unconventional Wars, by Thomas D. Mays, shows how important guerrilla warfare has been to America for much of our history.  The French and Indian War was primarily a guerrilla conflict fought on the frontier.  

For the next two hundred years, one of America’s key goals was to rid itself of Native Americans.  The European-Americans who settled in what would become the United States quickly adapted themselves to “Indian” style warfare, with devastating results for the tribes - and lessons to be applied elsewhere. For much of our history, irregular warfare has played a prominent role, even during conventional conflicts like World War II.  

As Mays illustrates, irregular warfare is the style of war of the twenty-first century.  A book like this is necessarily for scholars of this topic. 

The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World's Oldest Bible by Chanan Tigay

The documentary hypothesis of the bible’s creation and redaction claims that several different sources were combined together to create the book and stories we know today.  This has been a rock solid theory since the nineteenth century, and nearly all biblical scholars support its veracity.  Finding a manuscript of the bible from before this great merger of sources has been an ardent wish of many scholars – one that has been unfulfilled.

The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World's Oldest Bible, by Chanan Tigay, is just such a search.  Of course, there is no such “primal” bible, and it seems unlikely one will ever be found.  Tigay, however, presents a great story of the quest for just such a document.  If he did not find it we can’t fault him.  When the bible was stitched together, why would the redactors keep the scraps?

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know - I think

Whenever I read a Malcolm Gladwell book, I get excited and energized by what he writes, but after a few days, I forget much of what he wrote.  This is certainly the case of Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know.  I’m not sure why this happens.  Why do I read his books, and then forget them?  Why don’t I know what we should know about talking to people I don’t know?

Part of it is, I believe, that while Gladwell is the consummate storyteller,  he is relying on a discipline, the social sciences, which generally does not translate well as stories.  Gladwell always casts a wide net – even when his thesis is tight – so I get caught up in his stories, thrilled by them and their details, and then forget how they fit in the overall picture.  It happens with every book.  Don’t ask me what Tipping Point was about.  

Why We Need the Electoral College (we really don't)

Why We Need the Electoral College by Tara Ross presents a decidedly conservative view on the subject.  Ross does make some great points.  But overall, she presents arguments in favor of the Electoral College according to its rules.  Sometimes she claims how the EC is better than the popular vote, or other outside influences, but mainly her arguments are based on the inner structures and configuration of the EC, and her arguments are therefore circular.

She is a member of the Federalist Society, who adhere to a strict interpretation of the Constitution.  A strict interpretation of the constitution is an inherent contradiction, as all readings of a document are an interpretation.  Interpretations are always changing, as she points out; for many times the EC has changed with the times.  She also whitewashes the EC’s more dramatic failures, like the Election of 1876.  This is like painting a face on a baboon’s rear and calling the likeness a super-model.

Once upon a time Senators were not elected directly.  That was changed, and the Senate did not collapse.  My sense is that our republic can survive the retirement of the EC.  Only those who treat the Constitution as a religious document, like Ross, will lament its passing.

Hotel du Lac

 

Hotel du Lac, by Anita Brookner, is a meticulously well-written book.  Brookner has the ability, often found in writers of a certain kind, of slicing a moment down to its human mechanics.  She takes a facial expression, a few words, and makes the world move in slow motion as she parses out what all these motions and words we perform and speak represent.