2019 Reading Part II

LITERATURE 

Reading Virgil's The Aeneid as a follow-on to The Odyssey and as a prequel to my trip to Rome, I was fascinated by the differences between the Greek and Roman epic poems. Virgil tells the myth-narrative of the founding of Rome and its empire. The hero, Aeneas, defeated at Troy, leads the remaining Trojans on adventures throughout the Mediterranean to fulfill his god-given destiny to found Rome in Italy. Along the way he scorns beautiful Dido, visits his father in the underworld, and unleashes carnage in Italy. While this version has a decent introductory essay I highly recommend pairing your reading of this Western Civilization classic with the podcast Literature and History's four episodes on The Aeneid and BBC's In Our Time discussion. 

After Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny earlier in the year I started his two-part war novel The Winds of War (the second book is War and Remembrance which I'll get to in 2020). A rich story of a Navy family drawn into the unfolding events leading up to the American entry into WWII. Wouk, a Jew and Navy WWII veteran, displays his veneration for the American fighting man who stopped the Nazis from laying waste to Europe and exterminating her Jews. The novel finds the right balance of military and technical without bogging down the story. The Winds of War brings vibrant color to the drab details of history to make this incredibly important epoch of human history more accessible.

The final book of the four part Neapolitan Novels; The Story of the Lost Child is a brilliant and emotional conclusion to this story. Elena finishes narrating her and Lila's story revealing why, at the beginning of Book 1, Lila has disappeared. It's an incredibly powerful story about friendship, love, and cultural forces. Growing up in the poverty and crime of Naples forges the strength of Elena and Lila but also proves to be Lila's demise as she discovers forces greater than herself. Highly recommend the entire Ferrante quartet.  

    

    NON-FICTION/PUBLIC POLICY

 

Boston University Professor Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army Colonel who lost a son to the Iraq conflict, writes about America's militaristic tragedy and the structural and historical dynamics which continually pull the U.S. into endless conflict. Often acerbic, The New American Militarism does not spare the rod for either political party or the national security establishment. Even American Presidents who run campaigns promising prudent use of force find themselves swept along by the undercurrents of militant forces in the U.S. These forces bias foreign policy decisions towards war and like the siren's song, lulls Presidents into thinking that military action will help them achieve nuanced policy outcomes abroad.    

Ken Burns' 15+ hour epic documentary The Vietnam War is an incredibly even-handed and thorough look at the history of the U.S.'s involvement in the conflict. It flips back and forth between the tactical and the strategic, between the NVA, Viet Cong, and U.S. perspectives as well as the massive effect the war had on American society and culture. Incredibly fascinating and disheartening at the same time. Highly recommend this to anyone. I worked my way through this series during short 20-40 min sessions trying get a baby back to sleep and found that a better way to absorb the story.

Peter Zeihan is a prognosticator with data. In The Absent Superpower Zeihan makes the claim that for a variety of reasons, but chiefly because of energy independence, the U.S. will retreat from the world and reshape global politics and security; less international order, more Hobbsian all-against-all. There are two main reasons to read this book. First, most national security and political discussions fail to appreciate the monumental fortune and achievement hydraulic fracking and shale oil are for America. They change the calculus of every decision and will cause the U.S. to wash its hands with the Middle East and drain power from that region. Zeihan's discussion about shale oil is detailed and serious. Every American President since at least the OPEC Oil Embargo in 1973 has made U.S. energy independence a national priority. We've tried wind farms and solar, didn't want more nuclear power, and then because of capitalistic finance and technological development the U.S. found itself no longer needing to police the global commons or be enmeshed in the mess of the Middle East. The second reason to read the book it to follow Zeihan's predictions about where the world will go over the next few decades. I won't place too much weight on them but I've accepted his analysis and conclusions as definitely plausible.  

A wonderful tour through the technological revolution brought on by programmers including the causes and consequences of coders' sociology/anthropology. Coders traces women's contributions, how they got pushed out after establishing the field, and efforts to bring them back. Fascinating. The author also advances a speculative thesis that we ended up with many of the side-effects of technology like privacy loss and online harassment because the internet and its applications were built by a small minority of society. His coda is that we will have a safer, better, and more inclusive internet and technology once coders and programmers are adequate represented by marginalized group. 

MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY

This book was disappointing. To be clear, Jim Mattis, is an American treasure and we owe him our gratitude. Call Sign Chaos had the potential to be wonderful but it was bland and full of platitudes. I wasn't looking for him to dish on Trump or anything gossipy like that but he didn't share anything about what makes him tick or unique. Mattis came from Washington State and went to Central Washington University, not exactly the beaten path to becoming the Warrior Monk of the Marine Corps. There's something interesting there but it didn't come out in this book. Pass.

 

Samantha Power's memoir had everything that Mattis' book lacked; openness and vulnerability. While I don't share much of her political outlook I thought the book was fascinating and learned quite a bit. Power, a human rights/anti-genocide crusader, served on Obama's National Security Council and as the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. I have to admit that The Education Of An Idealist moved me slightly off of my usual cold-realist outlook. Immigrating from Ireland as a young girl, Power, shares her journey and most importantly lets us see her failures and screw-ups as well. What I appreciated about Power is that she's willing to put herself in harms way, too. There are many public figures willing to expose American troops to do danger but unwilling to bear any risk themselves. Not Power who did as much as anyone to expose the atrocities of the Bosnia/Serbia conflicts in the 1990s. 

RUNNING: MILES OF TRIALS

Amazing Racers is a poorly written and edited book but even still it's an important story about the best high school Cross Country program in the country in particular the girl's team. What makes this fascinating isn't necessarily the sport although I'm biased. It's the sustained domination of the Fayetteville-Manlius girl's team from 2006-2017 when they won 11 of 12 national titles at the Nike Cross Nationals. Unlike college sports where a school can recruit from around the country or world the high school draws whichever 1,500 teenagers that happen to live in the school district. From the 750 or so girls who attend FM, as it's known, coach Bill Aires, turns them into champions year after year after year. Reading the story it's clear there is no magic training plan, protein shakes, cross-training, or shortcut. Bill Aires' real magic is in getting a bunch of teenagers to go all-in on the idea of being great and doing the training to get there. It is not easy to get kids to consistently run 60, 70, 80+ miles a week for years to become the runners needed to be the best in the country. It's being done in upstate New York.