What I Am Reading - Command and Control

Command And Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

Eric Schlosser

Read it in Hardcover at an investment of 640 pages thick with it.

Browsing the book bin at Costco is dangerous, especially when you walk out the door with a 640 page tomb.  None the less this was excellent and consumed it greedily.

"They are out there, waiting, soulless and mechanical, sustained by our denial - and they work." - Schlosser

Command and Control looks at the events leading to the creation of the nuclear bomb, it's creation, how it works, initial use and testing, military and political leaders at the time of creation and their general attitudes towards the bomb, protocol for use, as well as the miss management of the stock pile; and technical advancements from a technological perspective as well as following these criteria to the near current world.  It's  thorough and engrossing to say the least.  All of which is spun through the story of the Damascus Arkansas non-nuclear accident that carriers the reader along as they learn about the most feared weapon on the planet.

There are several themes within Command and Control, but it's most prominent is the miss management of our nuclear stockpile throughout the decades.  It's a theme that is carried throughout the book and broadcast to the reader.  It's presented in such a fashion that as a reader, I am surprised a full thermonuclear detonation has not occurred on the many military instillations across the world, let alone on American soil.  Of primary interests to me was the detailed account of how to make the stockpile current, or if nothing else, safe and the resistance from our military leaders towards that effort.  The amount of money the government was spending to make new weapons of even deadlier caliber, in the name of deterrence, was staggering.  Especially compared to the price of updating the clearly unsafe stockpile we have had throughout the years right here in our backyard.  The list of accidents is long.

In addition, Schlosser identifies and outlines some very interesting world leaders and the part nuclear weapons played in politics.  One of the more interesting things for me in the book is to hear about the actions of our presidents and top brass, following World War Two and into the Cold War.  For instance, Kennedy, a notoriously anti-nuclear weapon president and fathered the famous 'Sword of Damocles' speech often said one thing while directly doing another.  A short time after giving said speech about the prolific destruction that a nuclear strategy guaranteed:

"Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us."

He met with top brass and officials about investigating and considered adopting a nuclear strategy that weighed a first strike option as the only option.  Command and Control is full of this sort of horrifying stuff and much much more.  To try and capture it all here wouldn't do it justice. 

I learned a lot and was highly charmed with every horrifying page, highly recommended, especially if you are a fan of history. 

What I Am Reading: The Devil in The White City

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

Erik Larson

Read it in very 'loved' paper back at 447 pages.

This was a referral from a friend, in which we do a book swap upon return.  It's working well.  She has good tastes and reads interesting things.  I have never read anything from Erik Larson, at all.

Erik Larson is a journalist and author, naturally.  His journalism career spans from his early work for The Bucks County Courier to currently contributing to Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal.  So far, as an author, Larson has published six books in total, The Naked Consumer: How our Private Lives Become Public, Lethal Passage: How the Travels of a Single Handgun Expose the Roots of America's Gun Crisis, A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, The Devil in the White City: Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, Thunderstruck; and most recently, In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin.  All, interesting titles.  Larson also currently resides here in Seattle, so I have some natural love.

The Devil in The White City is intrinsically a gripping tale, or should I say two tales.  The first is of the men attempting to create, the second about a man looking to destroy, all intertwined and told together. 

While Europe was shedding the last of its monarchy's and marching towards industrialization in the late 1900's, America was poised on the world stage to do great things with winning the bid for the 1893 World's Fair, or as it was formally called, World's Columbian Exposition.  The previous exposition had gone to Paris, an exposition that had changed expositions forever, so Chicago was  struggling with something that could top the Eifel tower and the other marvels that had transpired in Paris.  With great detail, Larson, identifies the key players that contributed to the creation of the Chicago exposition, their challenges both personally, ideologically, and from the immense project they were working on.  The time table was tight and scope of the World's Columbian Exposition immense.  What these men accomplished was incredible and the things that took place during the duration of the exposition magical.  But for all of their great accomplishments in the exposition a seedy dark side of the exposition was prying on the attendees.  This is also the story of Herman Webster Mudgett, also known as Dr. H.H. Holmes.  While men set out on a great endeavor to draw the nation, Holmes lured unnumbered victims to his seedy death house.  The Devil part of the White City.

Larson is highly successful here.  The amount of research completed by Mr. Larson to write this book is staggering and is all referenced in the back of the book.  As stated by Mr. Larson, pretty much everything that's quoted in the book comes from some source material painstakingly gathered.  Larson explains in the epilogue, that he likes to read the source material in its physical form, which meant he spent a lot of time at the congressional library and many other libraries across the country.  It's impressive.  

Highly recommended! 

What I Am Reading - Child of God

Child of God

Cormac McCarthy

Read it in small paper back at 208 pages.

September's selection went to Sam and another Cormac McCarthy book was selected.  This to be my third and I believe Sam's 4th or 5th McCarthy.  Despite the fact that no one in OLT book club can stand McCarthy's infuriating writing styles, the stories are just too gripping and dark. Child of God is no different.

Child of God opens with the main character, Lester Ballard, losing his home on the auction block.  With nowhere to go, Lester escapes to the mountains of Tennessee living a life of destitution.  Over time, Lester falls victim to more and more depravity, and such is the  focus of the book. 

With such a short tale, I would rather not give any more information in the general review.

If you have not read McCarthy, do not let this be your first…although I can't think of one that should…

Onwards with spoilers below.

This is the second McCarthy pick for OLT book-club.  The first was Blood Meridian which got a pretty high average score of 7.6, so how did Child of God fair?  Well, we had eight people finish, a pretty healthy amount really, and the scoring is on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being a vomit rage and 10 as holy scripture:

Th3ee: 7

Dust: 6

Hylen: 3

G$$: 7

SS: 6

BoozyCoug: 6

Tech-man-Dave: 3

Shelly-the-don: 7

An average of 5.6, lower than expected, but high for a book with such a dark subject matter.

Favorite character went to the deranged Lester, which makes sense since most of the other characters are not fleshed out for the reader.  Some notable call-outs for sub characters in the Sheriff and a black-smith who tries to teach Lester a thing or two.  Lester's killings were among peoples favorite and least favorite moments.  While the people that scored it higher seemed to like the dark nature that engulfs and takes over Lester, many others just thought it was too much and too dark.  I can't blame them, feeding the alligators is hard, especially when you are of moral constitution and kicked out as many alligators in your head as possible.  The higher moral authority among us enjoyed the bits of the book where others were attempting to show empathy to dear Lester.  Universally though, we all seemed to abhor a moment in which a father is raping his daughter or Lester is fucking a corpse, so perhaps there is hope for all of us.

If any of the above paragraph was offensive, do not read this book.

What I Am Reading - The Ludwig Conspiracy

The Ludwig Conspiracy

Oliver Potzsch

Read it in Hardback at 464 pages, they smelled wonderful.

Despite how the pages smelled, Potzsch failed to truly captivate me with this pretty basic tale.  Ever read a Dan Brown book?  Good then you get the formula.  Instead of Robert Langdon professor we have Steven Lukas, antiquated book seller.  Add initial intrigue, mystery, a scary and formidable evil thug, and a plot that revolves around an interesting character and events of history and we are off to the Lost Symbol…wait, I mean the Ludwig Conspiracy.

The last Bavarian monarch was an interesting guy, and probably legitimately crazy.  In an era of industrialization and gun powder, Ludwig was building fairy tale castles in the Bavarian mountains and really doing his best not to get dragged into Prussian/Germany politics.  He was spending vast amounts of money on what his constituents believed to be a complete waste of money.  These things we know to be true.  At some point though the vassalages of power switched to the various more modern establishments and Ludwig was headed straight down the path of disposition.  It is never easy to dispose of royalty and the means in which it was done are still hazy to this day.  These hazy bits are the vehicle used to propel the story.

Mr. Lukas is sitting in his abandoned book shop enjoying a book when all hell breaks loose, through some hazy circumstances he finds himself in the possession of the plausible one true source, a diary, of the events directly leading up to the disposition and events that happened after Ludwig had been captured.  Of course there is more to the story, but you get the idea.  Lukas has to run about the country decoding the journal and advancing the plot to the next big discovery.  Along the way lays danger, intrigue, love, and everything else you would expect in a Dan Brown book.  Mr. Potzsch is capable but obviously looking to a well-established formula for some success.

While I am fascinated by Ludwig, the castles that he built in the era he built them, and the general state of affairs of Bavaria in the late 1900's; the story was forgettable and the puzzles that his characters face where not all that interesting to me.

Nice try Potzsch but I'll refrain from your future work until I see something more original come from your type writer.

What I Am Reading - Empire Falls

Empire Falls

Richard Russo

Read it in paperback at 483 pages.

My fourth Pulitzer of the year saw me reading Empire Falls by Richard Russo. 

Richard Russo attempts to convey, with great detail, the struggle of a floundering Maine town from the vantage point of its many citizens.  The town itself, as the title indicates, is named Empire Falls.  While previously a boom town textile power house, over time the textiles produced were off shored or simply moved elsewhere leaving the town down the straits of slow economic collapse.  Empire Falls exists in the shadow of the textile industry, its main street terminates at the site of the old factory and most of the buildings that line main were built in the same era as the mill itself.  Empire Falls tells the story of a small town in decline and the generational bond that exists from grandfather, to children, and then grandchildren.

For the point of this review, I will skip going into depth on the characters, motives, and general plots.  It really isn't important to the review, despite being rich and detailed.  They really are the fabric of the book and Russo does an excellent job with all of them.  Russo demonstrates some high talent character creation in this book.

When I first started reading this book I was unsure what it was about (which is how I have been jumping into almost all of the Pulitzers this year) and after a few chapters in I decided to look it up (on Goodreads) and see how it had done.  Surprise, my mother had read it to, and rated it pretty standard, a flat 3/5 on Goodreads deficient scale.  When I asked her why so low she couldn't really give me an answer, but then I got to the back of the book and I understood.  As vast and wonderful as the characters portrayed by Mr. Russo are, the ending was less than fulfilling.  In fact there really isn't an ending at all.  While the characters and their interactions fuel the plot, there isn't a lot of closure for you as a reader, despite the 483 page count listed in my edition.  I didn't need to end in any specific way but the end left me wondering why I had invested in the 483 pages to begin with.  This dramatically effects my rating of the book, and not for the better.