THE DEMON OF UNREST by Erik Larson

Erik Larson has a knack for turning history into a page turner.  Here he tackles the events leading up to the Civil War, chronicling Lincoln’s early presidency and paying particular attention to Fort Sumter, which Lincoln misspelled as “Sumpter.”  The commander of the fort was Major Robert Anderson, a 55-year-old former slave owner from Kentucky who sympathized with the South but whose loyalty lay firmly with the Union Army.  Communication between the fort and Washington, D.C., was unreliable and scarce, so that Anderson and his men were totally in the dark as to if and when they would receive reinforcements or even vital provisions, as they were running out of food.  Meanwhile, the surrounding Confederates were bringing in tons of artillery, all in plain sight of Ft Sumter.  Costly mistakes were made both at the fort and at the White House, to the point that the fall of Ft Sumter was not only unsurprising but basically a forgone conclusion.   It also became increasingly apparent that the two sides did not understand one another at all, and neither side expected or wanted a protracted war.  The South was convinced that cotton was an all-important asset and that slave labor was a requirement for cultivating it, or at least that was their justification for slavery.  Anyone who still believes that the Civil War was caused by any issue other than slavery needs to read this book.

DEAD WAKE by Erik Larson

In typical Erik Larson fashion, two narratives dominate this book—that of the Lusitania and that of the submarine that destroyed it.  However, there are a whole lot of other intriguing stories, particularly the question of why the Lusitania did not have a naval escort and why it entered the U-boat-infested St. George’s Channel in the first place.  British intelligence knew of the danger and either wanted it torpedoed so that the U.S. would enter WWI or didn’t want the Germans to find out that the Brits were intercepting and decoding the German transmissions.  Neither excuse seems very noble, but then the U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson, was lovestruck at the time, and Winston Churchill was in France.  The weather and the tide schedule were also uncooperative, so that a whole confluence of bad luck doomed the ship, including a torpedo that was slightly off course.  The book also gives details about a number of passengers, but these backstories are not nearly as compelling as the survival stories.  A couple of women, presumed dead and brought on board rescue ships, rejoined the living.  Nonfiction is not really my thing, but Erik Larson rarely disappoints, and this book kept me engrossed all the way through.  Maybe I gained a little more in-depth knowledge—pun intended—about WWI-generation German submarines than I really needed, but I have to say that I found that more fascinating than the opulence of the Lusitania.

IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS by Erik Larson

After several other men have turned down the job, William Dodd abandons a life of academia to become U.S. ambassador to Germany in 1933.  This is a time in which Hitler is gaining more power and amassing a huge army in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles.  Despite the rising tensions, Dodd brings along his wife and two grown children to Berlin.  Dodd’s daughter, Martha, is quite the femme fatale and becomes cozy with an assortment of American writers, German Nazis, and one Russian who may have been a spy.  This book focuses largely on the writings of Martha and her father, both of whom at first downplay the potential for Hitler’s regime to survive and wreak havoc.  Roosevelt’s administration is even less concerned about the turmoil in Germany, and the metaphor about boiling a frog in warm water comes to mind:  the danger isn’t obvious until it’s too late to escape the consequences.  Eventually, Hitler’s ruthlessness and murder of Jews, rivals, and anyone who contradicts him become impossible for Dodd to ignore.  However, convincing the U.S. that Hitler intends to take over Europe is especially difficult, given that the State Department views Dodd’s appointment as a mistake.  His chief mission is to persuade Germany to repay their debt to the U.S. government, but Dodd knows they do not have the money.  Dodd is by no means heroic and even displays hints of racism and anti-Semitism. Nor does he have the personality or charisma to exert any influence on the German political situation, but probably no one else does, either.  He is, however, principled in his ultimate refusal to socialize with the Nazis, although the State Department argues that an ambassador’s job involves building a relationship with the government of the country to which he has been assigned.  Perhaps Dodd’s greatest achievement is his documentation of what he witnesses, both in his diary and in his correspondence.  He is, unfortunately, not a flashy protagonist, making the narrative rather dry, and we all know the horror of what eventually happens.  This may not be my favorite Erik Larson book, but, once again, he has turned a piece of history into a very readable, albeit terrifying, book.

BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS by Katherine Boo

Annawadi is a slum of around 10,000 people near the Mumbai airport.  The author, an investigative journalist, focuses on a few families, especially the children.  Abdul—age unknown—is not in school because he is supporting his very large family as a garbage broker.  Basically, he sorts and buys recyclable garbage from scavengers—also children—and sells the stuff to a recycling plant.  He is one of many savvy and enterprising boys who profit from the refuse around the airport. His world, however, is upended when an argument with a neighbor woman prompts her to set herself on fire.  Abdul’s father is dragged off to jail, and Abdul is thrown in with him when he goes to help his father.  The author tells this story in a clear-eyed fashion without melodrama, but she makes it clear that the woman committed suicide, and no crime was committed.  And this is not the only suicide in the book; rat poison seems to be the elixir of choice for offing oneself.  Some residents become addicted to sniffing the Indian version of Wite-Out, which is also used there to patch up wounds.  What really stands out about this book, however, is the degree of corruption that exists. Law enforcement is non-existent, because the police are acting solely based on who is paying them the most.  Even more astonishing is the fact that people living in the slum are also profiting by extorting money, and one woman and her daughter raise funds for a non-existent non-profit.  The poverty here lies in a thriving city of global financial importance with a population roughly the same as Florida’s.  I find it hard to imagine how the inequities will ever be erased.

HOW TO SAY BABYLON by Safiya Sinclair

This book definitely provided a learning experience, especially with regard to the origins and beliefs of Rastafari.  I did not previously know that the Rasta revered Haile Selassie, the former emperor of Ethiopia, who staved off Mussolini’s invasion and ruled the only African country never colonized.  In fact, the word Rastafari comes from Haile Selassie’s name prior to becoming emperor, which was Ras Tafari Makonnen.  I also did not know that Rastafari is very paternalistic, and women are definitely second-class citizens whose main function is to serve men.  The author grew up in a Rasta household in Jamaica where, fortunately, education was encouraged.  She, along with her brother and two sisters, were very bright and excelled in school, largely due to their mother’s love of books and learning.  Safiya’s father was a musician whose extreme distaste for all things foreign still did not prevent him from regularly performing covers of Bob Marley songs in the tourist hotels.  He, however, did not extend acceptance of non-Rasta influences to the rest of his family.  At one point, Safiya opted to forego an opportunity for a modeling contract in the U.S., because she feared her father’s ire if she cut her dreadlocks.  And well she should, because his temper tantrums were horrific.  Plus, the scoundrel shamelessly flaunted his girlfriends in front of his family.  I was very frustrated that Safiya continued to return to Jamaica following several trips to the U.S. where she went to college on scholarship and achieved recognition for her poetry.  Her need for her father’s approval, which seemed to be unattainable, made me think of a battered wife who finds it impossible to leave her tormentor.  As in many of those cases, Safiya also needed his financial support.  This bleak memoir was painful to read, not only because of what Safiya and her siblings went through, but also because their father never suffered any consequences for his actions.

DOCTOR DEALER by Mark Bowden

Larry Lavin was a smart and charming guy who came to be a massive cocaine dealer while attending the University of Pennsylvania.  After college he indulged in a hedonistic lifestyle, full of wild parties and trashed hotel rooms, but his kingpin status never seemed to interfere with his dental practice.  However, good help in the cocaine business was always hard to find, especially when the employees were dipping into the product a little too much.  Plus, the ineptitude of Larry’s guys who did not partake is almost unfathomable as is Larry’s trust in patently untrustworthy characters.  His long-suffering wife pleaded with him for years to get out of the drug business, to no avail.  There was always one more reason to stick it out a little longer.  This story is immersive in a weird way, but the writing is atrocious.  I get that this book was written in the 1980s, but “ahold” was not a word then, either.  At times, the breezy writing style is tolerable, but the level of detail is ridiculous.  The author describes what types of fish were in Larry’s home aquarium and the layout of homes Larry didn’t even buy.  Who cares?  And this unnecessary trivia makes me wonder about the accuracy of other minutiae, such as what Larry was wearing on any given day.  Spare me.

SAY NOTHING by Patrick Radden Keefe

Before reading this book, I really knew very little about the decades-long violence in Northern Ireland.  I would characterize it as a long-running civil war between the majority Protestants who want to maintain British rule and the minority Catholics who want to de-couple from the Brits and reunify with the Republic of Ireland, whose population is mostly Catholic.  The bigotry against the Catholics that the author describes is astonishing and explains why the situation became so volatile, basically igniting another war fought over religious differences.  The author focuses primarily on two women—Jean McConville and Dolours Price.  Jean was a Protestant mother of ten whose deceased husband was Catholic.  The IRA abducted her in 1972, and she just disappeared.  Dolours Price and her sister, Marian, were IRA members who participated in the London car bombings in 1973.  These women’s stories are closely intertwined with that of Gerry Adams, an IRA member turned politician, who helped orchestrate a ceasefire in 1994 and a peace agreement in 1998.  The frustration of the IRA with the fact that so many people died for their cause without accomplishing anything dovetails with what’s happened in Afghanistan and previously in Vietnam, where all the bloodshed seems to have been all for naught.  The author sticks to a more or less sequential history here, which means that he has to juggle the lives of multiple characters simultaneously.  Since most of these names were unfamiliar to me, I had some difficulty keeping track of who was who, and my attention waned from time to time.  One character whose name I did know was Stephen Rea, who starred in the excellent movie The Crying Game, in which he played a conflicted IRA member.  I found it fascinating that he was married to Dolours Price, after she spent years in jail, and fathered two sons with her.  Two big questions remain pretty much unanswered:  Was Dolours Price remorseful, and why was Jean McConville abducted?  Then, of course, the overarching unanswered question about the conflict is, “What was the point?”

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON by David Grann

David Grann may not be my favorite non-fiction writer, but he does manage to unearth some little known but fascinating historical episodes, and he goes beyond just immersing himself in his subject matter.  He becomes an active participant.  Here he addresses a period in the 1920s when Osage tribe members in Oklahoma were being gunned down and poisoned by white men.  The Osage had shrewdly held on to the mineral rights for property that the U.S. government took from them, and oil leases made the Osage ridiculously wealthy.  In many cases, however, white men were appointed as “guardians” for Osage tribe members who were deemed incompetent for no particular reason.  Mollie Burkhart became reclusive in order to avoid the same fate as her mother and three sisters, all of whom perished during this time, including one sister who was shot in the back of the head.  Corruption was also rampant throughout law enforcement, until Hoover became the FBI director and hired former Texas Ranger Tom White to investigate the Osage murders.  White hired some trustworthy men to work undercover, as the Osage had lost all faith in achieving justice, especially through a U.S. government agency.  White does eventually get his man, but the author conducts a much later investigation of his own, based on archived documents and conversations with the grandchildren of other victims.  His discoveries are mind-blowing, bringing the number of murdered Osage tribe members well into the hundreds, with dozens of murderers going unpunished.  This book just reminded me that a portion of humanity will always be ruled by greed and will go to any lengths to attain the power and money they crave.  I applaud David Grann for bringing this sad piece of history to our attention, but sometimes this book dragged.  The photographs, however, were a welcome distraction.

JUST KIDS by Patti Smith

Patti Smith’s music was mostly not mainstream enough to appear on my radar, but this memoir garnered a lot of attention and accolades when it came out.  Her rags-to-riches story is amazing, as she traverses NYC in the 1970s, initially working in bookstores to pay the rent.  As a struggling artist and poet, alongside artist Robert Mapplethorpe, she namedrops Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Todd Rundgren and William S. Burroughs, to list a few.  Robert aspires to a higher social class, but sometimes Patti reaps the rewards of his endeavors.  She and Robert are lovers and then roommates after he acknowledges his homosexuality.  Patti then has other famous lovers, including Allen Lanier of Blue Oyster Cult and Sam Shepard.  As another reviewer noted, Mapplethorpe does not leap off the page as charismatically as he should, since his and Patti’s relationship is the thread that ties the entire book together.  When Robert gets low on funds, he takes to hustling, inspired to a degree by the movie Midnight Cowboy.  Finally, his photography earns him the attention he deserves, some of which derives from the controversial eroticism of his work.  Patti herself, on the other hand, has a spirit that drew me in and motivated me to listen to some of her music.  One of my favorite moments is when she cuts her hair in the style of Keith Richards’, to match her androgynous looks.  In fact, Allen Ginsberg buys her lunch at an automat, apparently because he thinks she is a man.  Unfortunately, the celebrity sightings and memorable anecdotes were not enough to carry this book for me.

THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE by Erik Larson

This book may not be as great as its main character, but it is still pretty great.  I am not a history buff, but Erik Larson always makes historical narratives enthralling by adding personal insight into the daily lives of people—Churchill in this case—whose impact on the world is immeasurable.  Here Larson covers a year of Churchill’s life and work, beginning with his appointment as Prime Minister in 1940.  The book is an intimate portrait of his family and his closest friends and advisers.  Much of the information comes from the diary of one of his secretaries, John Colville, who apparently comments on Churchill’s family at least as much as his own personal life.  Although this is Churchill’s story, the book also contains a decent amount of information about the inner workings and strategies of the Nazi government.  Hitler’s chief propagandist, Goebbels, makes the staggering assessment in his diary that “If he [Churchill] had come to power in 1933, we [the Germans] would not be where we are today.”  On the British side, much credit also goes to Lord Beaverbrook, who miraculously whips the disorganized British aircraft industry into shape.  Churchill’s oratory gifts are basically what keeps the country afloat, boosting morale even as German bombs are exploding all over England.  His words also target another audience—Roosevelt and the American people.  Desperate for help from the U.S., Churchill walks a fine line between depicting Britain as fighting a losing battle and being fine on its own.  Finally, Pearl Harbor changes everything.

ISAAC'S STORM by Erik Larson

Isaac Cline is the Isaac in the title of this terrific book about the Galveston hurricane of 1900.  His hubris makes him an anti-hero, but he is not half as bad as his superiors in the Weather Bureau in Washington.  It’s one thing to underestimate the impact of a storm, but to blatantly deny those who have first-hand information the ability to disseminate that information is criminally corrupt.  Isaac is foolhardy in his confidence that a hurricane can never hit Galveston and that his house can withstand any storm that nature might send its way.  Granted, there were no satellites in 1900, and meteorologists had scant information as to where a storm was at any given time, especially if the storm was currently over water.  Still, the assumptions they made were not only deadly, but they seemed to have no basis in reality whatsoever.  This book should serve as a warning to any leader that downplays Mother Nature’s power.  This story is gripping, especially as the author introduces us to various people in the town, as well as those who found themselves in transit via railway to Galveston as the storm hit.  Larson tells us of human losses in a very human way and leaves us with images that we are not likely to forget, such as a group of children strung together to an adult with clothesline, only to drown when the line gets caught in the myriad debris.  This book has lessons galore but also stories of survival under devastating and dangerous circumstances.  It also has a few surprises.  Who knew that some people died from snakebites? 

THE LIBRARY BOOK by Susan Orlean

I just wish that every book I read were written half as well as this one.   Susan Orlean has educated us here not only about the 1986 Los Angeles Central Library fire but about libraries in general and how their mission and repositories have changed over time.  The LA library houses vast collections of everything from maps to patent documents and serves as a haven for homeless people.  Orlean also weaves in the story of Harry Peak, a pathological liar who told friends that he had torched the library.  His claims alternated between confession and alibi, and authorities were never able to ascertain with certainty that the fire was the work of an arsonist; faulty wiring could have been the culprit.  Ironically, the fire itself got limited news coverage when it happened, because the news of another disaster—Chernobyl--overshadowed it.  The fire may be the central event in the book, but the true everyday heroes are the librarians and staff.  They answer questions that are as diverse as the people who ask them.  They ship gazillions of books to and from the branches and catalog all nature of materials.  I can’t begin to list all of the functions that the library performs that I had never before considered.  This book is truly an eye-opener that will cause me to look at my local branch librarians with a lot more appreciation.

THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST by Tom Wolfe

They say that if you can remember the 60s, then you weren’t really there.  I’m a bit younger than the people in this book, and I wasn’t in California in the 60s, where most of the action takes place.  The main character and leader of the pack is Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion.  I loved both of Kesey’s acclaimed novels, both of which were made into movies, and generally I like Tom Wolfe.  However, this is sort of a loose biography of Kesey’s LSD experimentation period, and I wasn’t that fond of it.  One of the main characters is actually the bus, named Furthur (intentionally misspelled), which makes a cross-country trip, helmed by Neal Cassady, the real-life Dean Moriarty from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, as well as a sojourn into Mexico, when Kesey is on the run from the authorities.  The phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” came along after this period, but in some ways it applies here as well.  Kesey has sort of a cult following that drinks LSD-laced Kool-Aid at one of their soirees, but so do some unsuspecting guests.  Of course, if you’re going to a Pranksters party and don’t expect LSD to be floating around, then you must have been totally out of touch and you wouldn’t have been at the party in the first place.  Apparently, Kesey was a very charismatic man, but his charm did not come through on the page for me.  I did find it fascinating how these great writers found each other:  Kesey, Wolfe, Larry McMurtry, and others.  Wolfe mentions Kerouac only in connection with Cassady, and although I didn’t love this book, Wolfe is a way better writer than Kerouac, in my opinion, and Wolfe steers clear of language that would make the book feel dated.

CLEOPATRA: A LIFE by Stacy Schiff

Cleopatra may have been colorful and engaging, but this book is not.  I appreciate that historical sources are slim to none, but I think that the biography of a woman who reigned over a flourishing Egypt and seduced both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony would be a little more lively.  Instead, I found this book to be crushingly dull.  The accounts of battles and murders just run together after a while, and it doesn’t help that the names are confusing and sometimes similar; I had particular difficulty with Arsinoe (Cleopatra’s sister) and Auletes (her father).  On the plus side, I learned a few things.  For example, Mauritania is now Algeria.  Also, the city of Alexandria in Cleopatra’s day was incredibly beautiful, cultured, and modern compared to Rome.  Cleopatra was very well educated, spoke nine or more languages, and charmed the Romans with her intellect more so than her questionable beauty.  Unless I dozed through that section, however, the author never mentions who the three triumvirs were.  (Actually, there was a first and second triumvirate, but I was mainly interested in the second, made up of Octavian, Mark Antony, and Lepidus.)  Since so little of Cleopatra’s life is documented, we can’t know if her missteps were inspired by love and loyalty or if she just miscalculated.  Certainly she was not a military strategist.  One particular episode in the book did not ring true to me.  The author claims that at one point Cleopatra wins over Mark Antony’s continued affection by crying and staging a hunger strike.  Really?  Since when have tears and histrionics ever swayed a man to a woman’s favor?

HIDDEN FIGURES by Margot Lee Shetterly

Virginia is a Southern state that fought integration to the point of closing schools after Brown v. Board of Education.  And yet, many talented African-Americans found work as scientists and engineers at Langley Research Center, which later became part of NASA, as early as the 1940s.  The federal government recruited black female mathematicians to work as human computers while there was a shortage of available men during WWII.  By now everyone knows about the movie that this book inspired, and I’m looking forward to seeing it.  The book addresses civil rights and segregated bathrooms and even a little civil disobedience regarding a cafeteria sign instructing black employees where to sit.  The author does a very thorough job here, recounting numerous events in the lives of several women, both inside and outside the workplace, but I had some difficulty keeping up with who was working in what department.  I found many of the personal stories fascinating, especially the achievement of Mary Jackson’s son as a soapbox derby participant, John Glenn’s faith in Katherine Johnson’s work, and Dorothy Vaughan’s willingness to work away from her husband and children for a year.  Also, I have a technical background, so that I know what double integrals and differential equations are, and I admire these women tremendously for their scientific accomplishments, as well as their courage and success as pioneers in breaking down gender and race barriers.  However, I found this book to be quite dry.  I am not a big non-fiction reader, although I have enjoyed works by Michael Lewis, Jon Krakauer, Erik Larson, Laura Hillenbrand, and Malcolm Gladwell.   The writing is very clear and informative, but this book does not read like a novel.  In fact, as one friend noted, it reads like a dissertation that has been reworked for publication.  Nonetheless, it is a story that needs to be told, and kudos to Ms. Shetterly for bringing these women’s lives to our attention. 

THE ZOOKEEPER'S WIFE by Diane Ackerman

Amid all the horrors of WWII, heroes and heroines did rise to save as many Jews as they could.  In this case, the Zabinskis—Antonina and Jan—are Warsaw zookeepers who refuse to give up.  Serving as a waystation en route to more permanent refuges, they gladly provide temporary shelter to hundreds of Jews.  They manage to save not just people but also art, animals, and a massive, meticulously compiled insect collection.  The author culls Antonina’s diaries to deliver an in-depth history of the impact of the war on the residents and structures of Warsaw.  The residents include both the human and animal varieties, and both suffer upheaval and countless loss of life.  Almost everyone who lodges in the Zabinskis’ villa at one time or another survives the war, but the animals are not so fortunate.  Ackerman minces no words in her descriptions of the brutalities and senseless killings that Warsaw suffers at the hands of the Germans.  The animals steal the show in this novel, providing both occasional humor as well as heartbreaking poignancy, as the family chooses some unusual species as pets.  On the whole, the book is very readable and historically enlightening but a little distant as far as the humans are concerned.  Even the horrific scene where Antonina believes that her son has been shot is not as moving as I would expect it to be.  In other words, the author recounts events without speculating on the associated emotional responses.  I enjoy reading nonfiction books that read like novels, but this is not one of them.  It reads like history, and I am not a history buff.  That’s not to say that this isn’t a story that needs to be told.  It is, but the telling of it may be more vivid in the movie.

LOUISA: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF MRS. ADAMS by Louisa Thomas

We have two Louisa’s here, and they are both writers.  The author, Louisa Thomas, brings to life the wife of John Quincy Adams.  Louisa Adams wrote several autobiographies, despite her early reticence in composing letters to John Quincy, for fear that she had nothing to say and lacked the eloquence with which to say it.  Her confidence and self-esteem rose as she became vital to John Quincy’s political ambitions.  She compensated for his lack of social skills by ingratiating herself with influential people around the world, thanks to her charm and beauty.  Louisa’s health was always fragile, but she soldiered on, enduring enumerable miscarriages, long and harrowing journeys, and the demise of her father’s fortune and good name.  I’m not a big fan of biographies, but I couldn’t help but admire this woman’s spunk and savvy assessment of personalities that enabled her to make crucial decisions affecting her family.  Her keen observations of the people in power and her commentary on the political and social climate make for a sometimes absorbing read.  Unfortunately, she does not come across as a particularly happy person, but I think she had some very satisfying moments.  Certainly, her contributions to her husband’s successes were immeasurable, and she deserved more credit than she received.  As a woman who married into a very powerful and esteemed family, she struggled for acceptance and respect.  Her husband became an early abolitionist, but he may have stifled her relationship with the Grimké sisters, who were outspoken abolitionists and women’s rights advocates.  Louisa inhabited a man’s world but cemented her own place in this country’s history.

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT by Daniel James Brown

One thing I don’t like about non-fiction is that I often know the outcome.  Still, I loved the character portraits in this book, particularly that of its underdog main character, Joe Rantz.  Repeatedly thrown out of the house by his stepmother during the Depression, Joe had to live by his wits, as he struggled just to survive.  Finally, during his senior year of high school, his older brother invited him to come live with his family until graduation.  Joe’s athletic prowess caught the attention of University of Washington rowing coach Al Ulbrickson.  As one of many tall and muscular freshmen vying for a place on the rowing team, Joe had no experience whatsoever, but then neither did any of his competitors.  Constantly ridiculed for his impoverished wardrobe, Joe battled his insecurities and fear of abandonment while learning to rely on the other men in the boat.  The eight men on the team eventually forged a synergy that would serve them well when competing against the Ivy League schools in the East and their arch rival, the University of California Berkeley.  My favorite character in the book is George Pocock, the venerated boatbuilder who learned his trade in England, immigrated to North America, and eventually became the supplier of sculls to most of the top rowing teams in the country.  His gorgeous sculls were works of art, and his words of wisdom, for rowing and for life in general, appear at the beginning of every chapter.  Joe credited Pocock with helping him develop the mental attitude that turned around his rowing career.  Every good story needs some sort of adversity for the characters to overcome.  In this case, not only did Joe overcome the misfortune of his family circumstances, but the rowing team battled wind, rain, currents, frigid temperatures, and illness in a sport that looks almost effortless when the rowers are in “the swing.”  However, the author makes us feel how punishing the sport really is, especially when the coxswain asks for 10 big ones—10 mammoth strokes to try to catch up to and overtake an opponent.  These guys gave all they had and then reached deep into their souls to give some more.

LAST TRAIN TO PARADISE by Les Standiford

Henry Flagler, along with John D. Rockefeller, founded Standard Oil, and became a multi-millionaire.  According to him, he would have died a rich man if it hadn’t been for Florida.  As a recent transplant to the Sunshine State, I have to say that I’m glad he spent so much of his fortune here.  He dredged Miami Harbor to put that city on the map and connected it to the rest of the country with railroad tracks.  Long before Disney came to Orlando, Flagler built several resort hotels, making Florida a destination, even before air conditioning made the state inhabitable in the hot, sticky summers.  His claim to fame, though, and the subject of this book, is the building of a rail line connecting Key West to the mainland.  I know nothing about structural engineering, but I can still appreciate what a feat he and his men accomplished, proving the naysayers wrong and battling mosquitoes and hurricane after hurricane.  Weather forecasting was virtually non-existent in the early 1900s, and Flagler soon found that floating dormitories for his workers could become watery coffins.   He pushed on, though, adapting to the elements and rebuilding when wind and water destroyed months of work.  His plans to make Key West a shipping hub did not pan out, but the tourists came in droves, so that when a 1935 hurricane blew out sections of the Seven-Mile Bridge, the federal government stepped in to replace and repair.  I’m not a big history buff, but I can’t deny the monumental contributions that Flagler made to the state of Florida, and I have to wonder if native Floridians are familiar with his accomplishments.  Plus, he began the “railroad across the ocean” after he was well into his seventies, thus becoming one of the early geriatrics to make his home in Florida.  However, a retiree he was not, and I applaud his energy, his vision, his determination, and his audacity.

THE BIG SHORT by Michael Lewis

Leave it to Michael Lewis to explain the sub-prime mortgage meltdown in terms that we laymen can understand.  More importantly, he chronicles the steps that three financial entities took to gamble that a debacle was coming and therefore profit from it.  These guys all recognized that the so-called financial experts weren't.  The real culprits, though, seem to have been the ratings agencies, Moody and Standard & Poor, who were feeding the frenzy with ridiculous AAA ratings on financial products made up of mortgages obtained by consumers who couldn't possibly afford them.  As always, Michael Lewis has examples that will blow your mind.  So how did anyone profit from the collapse of the bond market?  They bought insurance against it, in the form of a product called a credit default swap.  And, you ask, who would sell insurance on risky mortgages?  AIG, of course!  The three profiteers are a 3-man group called Cornwall Capital whose only investors were themselves, plus 2 hedge funds.  There's actually one more guy, Greg Lippmann, a trader at Deutsche Bank, who also foresaw what was about to go down, and bought some credit default swaps also.  He persevered in wooing one of the hedge funds, whose principals kept asking, "How are you going to f--- me?"  In short, the credit default swap buyers were very nervous that this opportunity couldn't possibly be real but invested millions anyway.  They reaped many more millions in returns.