On Genocide, Books & Films

 

The Elimination: A Survivor of the Khmer Rouge Confronts His Past and the Commandant of the Killing Fields by Rithy Panh is a hard-hitting look at the Cambodian genocide.  Pahn was a teenager when the Khmer Rouge took power, and is now a documentary filmmaker.  This powerful work examines his time in camps, his suffering, the death of nearly all of his family, and then after – as he dedicates his life to creating films about the genocide.  This book is a corollary to those films, but also stands brilliantly alone.

Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes

 

I cannot say I understood all, or even most of the concepts, and techniques discussed in Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes by Svante Pääbo.  But the great feature of this book is that the author (somehow) creates a coherent narrative even when the reader does not know very much about genetics.

In a wider sense, this book documents a revolution in our understanding of what it means to be homo sapiens.  Our deep past is shrouded in silence, revelated only in cave paintings, tools, and bones. Pääbo groundbreaking work is the Copernican Revolution in our understanding of our origins.  And like all great discoveries, it has generated a host of questions waiting for answers.

Latin Alive: The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages by Joseph B. Solodow

 

Latin Alive: The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages by Joseph B. Solodow, is a fascinating, if not a somewhat technical examination of Latin’s evolution.  The author takes us through classical Latin and its spoken counterpart in antiquity, then Vulgar Latin, Romance, and finally, the evolution of Romance into French, Italian and Spanish.  

Perhaps the most fascinating part of this work is at the end, when Solodow examines the first written versions of French, Italian, and Spanish.  The author helps us to see the modern language emerge from the matrix of Latin with great clarity. 

Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical

 

As many have noted, Anthony Bourdain’s Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical, probably reflects more of Bourdain’s worldview than Mary Mallon’s.  But his sympathy for her as a human being is so appealing we feel he knows her.  What I do know is that then reading this, his use of language on the page, brings a pang and makes me realize, once more, how much we lost when we lost Bourdain.

The Lost City of Z

 

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession, by David Grann, is interesting, entertaining, and well-written.  In and of itself, this story is really about the denial that Native Americans could form complex civilizations before the arrival of Columbus.  Indeed, the Aztecs, the Inca, and the Maja are not the only peoples who created advanced social and political structures. 

The Lost City of Z turns out to be the memory, both among early Spanish and Portuguese explorers/conquers, and Native Americans, of former Amazon towns and cities in the Amazon forest. It seems Grann could have spared himself a difficult trip if he had read Michael Heckenberger’s work before he set out for Brazil.

The Book for Inbetweeners

 

The Practical Tanya - Part One - The Book for Inbetweeners, by Chaim Miller, took me over three years to read.  Granted, I took breaks.  But this work certainly deserves a slow go and I probably should have taken six years. That said, you should either hire a teacher to teach you the Tanya, or read this book.  Miller is an excellent guide through this complex text.

In a wider sense, it is hard to believe that the Alter Rebbe wrote this work so he could teach more people his Torah, and not be interrupted by so many visitors.  This is the Alter Rebbe's introductory text!!  Our knowledge of Chassidus has certainly really atrophied. 

I Can't Get You Out of My Mind, by Marianne Apostolides

 

[Note: I know Marianne Apostolides.  First through her works, and email, and recently, in person.]

I Can't Get You Out of My Mind, by Marianne Apostolides takes the reader into some very deep (and sometimes swift) water.  This novel is an explanation and exploration of how we communicate and express love.  If you are familiar with her work, you will know that Apostolides throws everything into her writing, leaving nothing behind.  If she is going to explore love, then every avenue will be exhausted.  She will just as soon leave scorched earth behind in her quest.

In the process, the author examines love against and with AI, philosophy, art, and psychology, But the author is, as in many of her works, fascinated by the somatic experience.  How does love feel in the body?  What is loved as lived in flesh.

In the end, the reader will sense that they have been taken on a great voyage of discovery – although some of the ‘answers’ to the problem of love can never have adequate answers, and the author respects this.  Love is all around us, it binds us, it fills us with joy or hurts us, we live it, but it is a millennial-old mystery.  

Apostolides’ exploration of love both respects the past attempts to define love while forging ahead into the uncertain future.  She succeeds wildly. 

Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages

 

Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages by Gaston Dorren is a delightful and entertaining voyage through some of the world’s most interesting and influential languages. Dorren is not hung up on method or style; the work varies to a great degree, much to his credit and the book's quality.  He also destroys the notion that a lingua franca is used because it is easy - and somehow inevitable.  They are not; power, economics, and social hegemony create them.  A language does not have a destiny.

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

 

How much can a people, or people, suffer?  By reading Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor, you find out a great deal.  How could an event like the Battle of Stalingrad occur? Beevor will take you through it.  You realize, on reading this book, that Hitler and Stalin, may their names be blotted out, fought at Stalingrad not for any logical or strategic reason.  It was pure ego.  And just as when the Japanese lost the Battle of Midway, and thereby lost the war, so too did Germany lose the war when they lost Stalingrad.  More people would suffer and die, but the tide had turned away from Germany.