The Ornament of the World (2002) By Maria Rosa Menocal

One of the jewels of Chicago is the Newberry Library on the near North Side.  It is a great archival library, housing many rare manucscipts.  It is considered one of the best genealogical resources in North America. Over the years I've taken several of the Newberry's continuing education seminars, including one this summer titled: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain.  The instructor was Sabahat Adil, a young woman from Morocco who is a Ph.D candidate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Chicago.  With three primary text books, and excerpts from several doctoral papers, the class was the ultimate geek fest. This isn't a complaint, but, the course consumed virtually all of my limited readings hours this summer, and then some.

The class covered 750 AD through 1492 AD.  While this time period was known elsewhere in Europe as the Middle Ages, it was clearly a Golden Era for the Iberian peninsula, arguably far outshining what came after it. The book ends in 1492, generally portrayed by western scholars as the beginning of a new Spanish imperial era, marked by Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of what would come to be known as the Americas.  Only footnoted in most western histories however is that 1492 was also the date of the decree ordering the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain, the kick-off of the post-conquest Inquisition.

The main text was The Ornament of the World by Maria Rosa Menocal.  The Ornament is a readable history of how Iberia morphed during post-Roman history from the Visigoths to numerous city states, to Islamic dominance with the prize of Toledo, to Christian consolidation in the north (Castile, Catalonia, Aragon, Navaree and Leon), then conquest of the south (Andalusia and Granada).  While a superficial glance of this history would point to the importance of religious distinctions, that was not the case. But it wasn't a religious nirvana either, merely an era of pure "power politics," with mixed religious and ethnic demographics and frequently changing alliances.  The book's subtitle refers to this as a "culture of tolerance," and I guess that depends on how one defines "tolerance." The reality had little to do with benevolence, and a lot to do with religion just not being very important in the power scheme of things ... at least until Ferdinand and Isabella messed things up.

While The Ornament of the World details the political history of this time period, a second text, The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture, detailed the cross-cultural magnificence of the era, through poetry, music, science, medicine and libraries that rivaled the height of Alexandria.  The multi-cultural influence on art and architecture remains unrivaled to this day.  The text is heavy.  At first the professor thought I meant that it was heavy because it was difficult to understand (and it is), but what I meant was the book's weight.  It's printed on 400 pages of tightly bound glossed paper to highlight the hundreds of illustrations inside, to beautiful effect.

The final text was a picture-less book titled Medieval Iberia, edited by Olivia Remie Constable.  It's a compilation of period readings translated from their original Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin.

If you are into linguistics, the class covered in great and interesting detail the challenge of nation building on a peninsula with multiple dialects of multiple languages. As for what we now know as Spanish, one must look toward King Alfonso X, credited with making it the language of record. Though not part of the class, I've hunted down an out-of-print biography of Alfonso X called The Learned King, by Joseph O'Callaghan.

Let me emphasize, this was a course I took because the subject interests me -- particularly after trips to Malaga, Madrid, Toledo and Seville -- but it certainly doesn't make me an expert. Feel free to comment or recommend further readings.

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb (2011) By Melanie Benjamin

Lavinia Warren Bump, a.k.a. “Vinnie” or, as she was better known, Mrs. Tom Thumb, started to write her autobiography several times, but never got around to completing it before her death in 1919.  Her attempts were always thwarted by a desire to leave out unpleasant details, and there had been a lot of unpleasant details.   Nearly a century later, author Melanie Benjamin picked up Vinnie’s notes, undertook some great research, and filled in those details.  The result is a fun novel titled The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb. 

Now before you dismiss the notion of this book, consider this:  we are talking about a real life person, who while little in stature, was huge in life.  She was a trusted colleague of P.T. Barnum, and dined with several Presidents, the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and even Queen Victoria.  Her tours, before and after her marriage to General Tom Thumb (perhaps one of the first living show business celebrities who could truly be considered world famous) spanned such historical times and settings as the Mississippi River towns of the Mark Twain era, the advent of the abolitionist movement and the full extent of the Civil War, entertaining for pre-General pre-President Ulysses Grant & his wife at their Galena home, being two of the earliest  passengers  on the transcontinental railroad, attempted stage coach robberies, and a World Tour that included London, Paris, Japan, Australia while it was still a backwater colony, Siam (Thailand), India and the Pyramids.   

Each chapter of the book begins with news clippings (Thomas Edison’s first lighted Christmas Tree for instance) that mark the year.  Better yet, with its in-depth and compelling personal history, combined with author Melanie Benjamin’s style of writing, it is an absolutely engaging book.  Great summer read.

Detroit City Is the Place to Be (2012) By Mark Binelli

Being originally from Gary, Indiana, there is nothing I enjoy more than a story about Detroit, it’s always nice to see a city that has actually fallen further.  Yet, the story of Detroit is really nothing more than an extended version of what has befallen Gary.  It, perhaps, fell further merely because it was larger, a matter of scale.

The similarities far outweigh the differences.  I’m old enough to remember Gary as economically vibrant, gritty mind you, but vibrant.   One either worked at U.S. Steel -- "the big mill" -- or one of the numerous smaller mills or their hundreds of supporting industries.  You not only worked in the city, you shopped on Broadway, went to games & concerts at Memorial Auditorium, and movies at The Palace.  In my family these memories go even deeper, we were second generation; my mother was also born in Gary. 

Her memories are stronger, if more distant, harking back to somewhat of a rivalry with the bigger city.  They would argue World War II never could have been won without the tanks built in Detroit; while in Indiana we would point out those tanks would not have been built without the steel made in Gary.   They had Diana Ross and the UAW, we had Michael Jackson and the USW.  It was a different era to be sure.

The heartbreak is there, though it is New Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen that captures it best with his music, the ballad My Hometown  in particular.  When I take the South Shore RR through (never to) Gary, or friends travel I-94 to Michigan (never to Detroit), it remains with you. It’s in our genetic make-up, the reason we always jump at the opportunity to see a rebirth that will, likely, never come.  Such were the thoughts when I picked up Detroit City Is the Place to Be by Mark Binelli, a native of the motor city.  Privately, deep down, we hope, against reality.

With a subtitle of The Afterlife of an American Metropolis, Binelli’s book promised something other than a recitation of ills.  But alas, it did not deliver.  At a precise 300 pages, it’s merely another assembly line rehash, chapters after chapter written for nothing more than their shock value.  I suppose that’s what sells, but I for one feel short-changed.  We don’t need another list, we are perfectly capable of writing one ourselves. 

Yet, buried within Mr. Binelli’s docudrama are snippets of answers to the “what’s next” question: urban pioneer stories that are far more interesting than the urban wasteland saga.  Sadly, one had to wade through yesterday’s news to find them.

Do I recommend this book?  Maybe, but please, check it out at the library, don’t buy it.  The profiteers have already picked Detroit clean.

FOLLOW-UP 6/19/2013:  Gary, Indiana

Anathem (2008) By Neal Stephenson

If you are looking for lite reading, move on.  If you are looking for a book where every paragraph will challenge you, pick up Neal Stephenson's Anathem, and don't even think you will only need to devote a week's time to the book.  At 932 pages -- not counting the glossary and supplements, including geometric diagrams -- this book took me nearly 3 months to read.  Was it worth it?  Yes.

Stephenson is the master of what is known as "speculative fiction."  I had previously read and reviewed (November 2011) his book Snow Crash, and loved it, even though it was initially a tough read.  Compared to Anathem, Snow Crash is a children's bedtime story.

Speculative fiction "is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as related static, motion, and virtual arts." [Wikipedia]

Anathem is not Flash Gordon, or even Star Trek ... it's more like Sir Arthur Clarke on LSD.

In Anathem, a future Earth that is recovering from several millennia of warfare, has settled down into an arrangement whereby the smartest people on the planet are selected to live in academic monasteries called “Maths” where they can postulate to their hearts content.  But, there’s a catch:  they are, for all practical purposes, employees of the general population known as "the Saeculars.” The plot, with intrigue to spare, and grossly oversimplified by me, is this:  the Saeculars put the Maths to work at figuring out how to fight off an invading species from another universe/dimension.

The book has multiple layers of linguistics, multiple layers of scientific theories, competing schools of philosophy and numerous denominations of theology, all tied together by an action-story.  All in all, fun stuff.   And though I’m sure a re-read will have me discovering many things I have surely missed this first time around, I can’t imagine working up the energy required to read this book again, at least until the next Centennial Apert.

Midnight's Children (1981) By Salman Rushdie

Coming to a theater near you!  Maybe, maybe not.  Late last year famed Indian film director Deepa Mehta released a movie adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s book Midnight’s Children, though you’d never know it by looking at the cinema listings in Chicago, home to a huge Desi diaspora (Indian and Pakistani) population.  Part of the reason the movie hasn’t opened here yet is because controversy seems to follow Rushdie (author of The Satanic Verses).  But perhaps a bigger reason it’s not playing in Chicago is the decline in the number of “art” theaters in the city, a sad commentary.  If this movie is even a fraction as entertaining as the book, it will be packing movie houses, if they ever get it distributed coherently. 

Click here for: Movie Trailer

The book Midnight’s Children is a historical epic masked as a fable; or perhaps a fable masked as a historical epic.  It tells the story of 1,000 children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947 – the time and date of India’s independence from British colonial rule.  Their life stories parallel that of their country’s modern history. 

Each of the children grows up to discover they have some magical power, though they don’t at first, realize why.  The main character in the fable is Saleem Sinai, whose magical power is telepathy.  He hears other peoples’ thoughts and has the ability to convene a teleconference of the other children during their dreams.

Saleem is born to wealthy parents … well actually, no.  Saleem is born at the same time as a rich kid.  The nurse at the hospital makes the life altering decision to switch babies while no one is looking – destining poor to be rich, and rich to be poor.  The two boys will meet again when Saleem accidently convenes the first Congress of “midnight’s children” in his dreams one night.  They will hold vastly different perceptions on everything, mirroring the rich/poor divide of India as a whole.

An excellent read, read it for the history, read it for the fable, and hopefully see the movie.

The Gift of Rain (2008) By Tan Twan Eng

The cover of The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng includes a review blurb calling it "Glorious," praise so over-the-top it nearly prevented me from buying the book.  If a book needs such intense marketing, I figured, there must be something terribly wrong with it.  Fortunately, I purchased the book anyway.  It now joins James Baldwin's Another Country and John Steinbeck's classic The Grapes of Wrath on the list of the best books I've ever read -- all the more amazing when one realizes it is Mr. Eng's first book.  Praise indeed.

One might categorize The Gift of Rain as a war narrative, though forcing it into that genre does not begin to explain its impact.  Yes, World War II underlies everything in this book, yet the individual relationships in the story are what make it “glorious.”

The tale Mr. Eng tells is set in Penang, a large island off the northwest coast of Malaysia, and covers the time period of 1939 through the end of World War II.  The story is told to a Japanese woman who has come to Penang some fifty years later in an attempt to find answers about a Japanese diplomat/soldier's final years.  His story is told to her over a period of weeks by a now elderly man named Philip Hutton. 

Hutton is a native of Malaysia, born to a British colonial industrialist and his Chinese immigrant wife. When he was a sixteen year old boy he met the woman’s friend, named Hayato Endo, known as Endo-san.  Hutton’s father had rented Endo-san a small island near the family mansion, not realizing he had been sent to Penang to begin exploring the Malay Peninsula in advance of the Japanese invasion of the country.

The younger Hutton soon becomes a pupil of Aikijutso, with Endo-san serving as his sensei, or tutor/mentor.  This is a subplot that plays a key role in the book, preparing him mentally and physically to be able to navigate the occupation.  The relationship between these two characters survives through a horrific backdrop of war, when little else does.

For an American, or even a Britain (Malaysia was a British colony before and again after the war), this is a version of the war we seldom read – Pearl Harbor is mentioned once, because it occurred the same day the Japanese invasion of Malaysia began, and the Americans are not mentioned again until the news of Hiroshima is announced over Radio-India.  Yet, if one is a war history buff, the Bridge over the River Kwai history is alluded to several times, as Malay prisoners of war, including Hutton’s brother, are sent as forced labor to construct a rail line to China; and there are heart wrenching reports on the Rape of Nanking and other atrocities on the Chinese mainland. 

Late last year, Tan Twan Eng published his second book, The Garden of Evening Mists.  To say the least, it has been added to my summer reading list ... with great anticipation.

Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation (2007) By Eboo Patel

A few months ago, I read Acts of Faith by Eboo Patel but never got around to writing it up for my Book Blog.  Sadly, this delay has only served to make this post more relevant.  In the days since the bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the cause of terrorism against noncombatant civilians has once again entered our consciousness.  In the immediate afterward of that stunning week, the President phrased it correctly, despite his critics, when he underscored that perhaps the most important question we should be asking in the ensuing investigation is not how, but why.  Why do two young men, American citizens no less, resort to indiscriminate acts of terror.

It’s not a new question, Eboo Patel, an “all-American boy” from the suburbs of Chicago, with a family lineage deeply connected to the Muslim community of Mumbai, asked it in the years after 9/11.  His book Acts of Faith, written after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, examines the topic in a thought provoking series of essays. His mission wasn’t blame, it was prevention. And his conclusion is as strong as it is challenging. 

There is a lesson to be learned from these attacks, and it has been proven repeatedly by civil rights movements around the globe: hatred is learned -- be it racism, religious intolerance, classism between the haves and the have nots, or homophobia.   A child, any child, every child, is born without prejudice.  The prejudices he or she acquires in life are learned from someone, and usually learned without challenge. 

Perhaps it is an over simplification that prejudices are taught, but the consequence of not addressing this viewpoint is clear, painfully clear.  Patel notes, with a sincerity that does not belie the difficulty, that the antidote for such hated is not never-ending warfare, but countering the teaching of hatred with the teaching of tolerance and the acceptance, the joy of, diversity.

Acts of Faith challenges us all to fill this educational void. It is an easy answer for those of us who are advocates of multiculturalism; to borrow a word that defined my generation: imagine.   

Patel’s book was thought provoking, action inspiring, after 9/11.  It remains so in the days after the Boston Marathon.  Someone took it upon themselves to teach those boys hatred.  None of us made it our job to teach them tolerance.  We must address this oversight.

It's Fine By Me (Norwegian, 1992; English translation, 2011) By Per Petterson

There is much to be said for lazily browsing through a bookstore, chances are you’ll find a new author you were unaware of.  Such was the case when I stopped by Sandmeyer's in Chicago’s Printers Row on a wintery day recently and came across It’s Fine By Me, by Per Petterson.  It’s a jewel of a book, plain spoken to the point of being lyrical, and decidely not "purple prose."

First published in Norwegian in 1992, It’s Fine By Me was translated into English in 2011. I guess it fits into the “coming of age” genre, but believe me that is such an insufficient description.  It is, in fact, one of the best written books I’ve read in ages.

Set primarily in Oslo, it is the story of a teenage boy man named Audun Sletten.  He’s the son of an alcoholic; and he’s aspires to become a writer someday.  He’s very well read, and his reading list – Jack London and Ernest Hemingway -- will amaze you, as it clearly inspires him (and Petterson).

Yet, life has its detours.  Just shy of graduation, Audun will drop out of high school and go to work full time, one day a paperboy, the next a union printer.  As the book ends Audun has turned 18, he’s a young man whose adolescence has passed by almost without notice. 

The final chapter details the death of his father, who abandoned the family years earlier.  I doubt there is a son -- in any culture -- who will fail to recognize this near universal father/son dichotomy, a total disconnect between two people who logic says should be close; the funeral, a mourning of a relationship that could have been, more so than one that was. 

In The Garden of Beasts (2011) By Erik Larson

Post analysis is useful only if one learns and acts on it, thus the bar is set by Erik Larson’s book In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin.   The book is a biography of William Dodd, the American Ambassador to Germany during Adolph Hitler’s rise to power.  The lesson to be learned however, isn’t the obvious one.

Dodd was a relatively obscure University of Chicago professor when he was selected by President Franklin Roosevelt as Ambassador to Germany.  Well versed in German history, he was a curmudgeon, an academic, an independent thinker.  What he was not was a diplomat.

But, making an accurate assessment of the situation, and advising international diplomacy, were not Dodd’s deficiencies.  His problem was mastering the internal politics of the U.S. State Department, which could validate, or dismiss, his assessments.  Dodd was an outsider from day one within the State Department and although he recognized this as a problem, his failure to resolve it hampered his ability to shape history.

Dodd's personal reputation remains intact, his assessments were accurate, and that should after all be the measure of an Ambassador.  And he even succeeded in getting his assessments noticed by the White House by going around the State Department, with history to judge FDR’s inaction on them. 

Yet, clearly Dodd’s assessments went nowhere at the State Department.  Why? The author makes the case that the State Department’s old boy network (or more accurately, the rich old boy network) was to blame.   Historically there has been a blurring of lines between whether the top diplomatic corps is a social network of goodwill ambassadors or a legion of foreign policy experts.  Then, and to a certain extent now, the most important qualification for an embassy post is a strong resume as a political fundraiser or ally of the President.   The lesson to be learned is this:  In this politicized old boy environment, and in an ever complex world, how does one get one’s diplomatic cables noticed and acted on?

Erik Larson is best known for his mega-blockbuster The Devil in the White City. With In The Garden of Beasts he has again put his considerable story telling skills on full display as he overlays “the big picture” on what is at its base a family history.  It’s a good read, even if one is not into the policy aspects of the book.

Edward S. Curtis: Coming to Light (2001) By Anne Makepeace

It seems appropriate that Coming to Light, the biography of Edward S. Curtis, has been published in “coffee table format.”  Curtis was a photographer who dedicated three decades of his life to capturing for history the culture of Native American Indians in what was clearly a race against time.   The book, by historian Anne Makepeace, is a companion to her PBS documentary of the same name, published by the National Geographic Society.  “Coffee table format” is not normally a compliment in my lexicon, but in this case, Curtis’ photographs coupled with Makepeace’s text is proof that there are exceptions.

At the time of Curtis’ birth a few years after the Civil War, the Anglo-conquest of Native Americans was nearly complete with a just few monumental battles yet to take place:  the Little Big Horn, the Massacre at Wounded Knee, the surrender of Chief Joseph and the jailing of Geronimo.  With defeat at hand, the cultural fate of the vanquished was moving into its final stage, reservation life and forced assimilation.  If documentation of the Indian way of life was to occur, it would have to occur immediately. 

Into this need stepped Edward Curtis, a master of the relatively new technology of photography.  From 1900 to 1930 he made it his life’s work to photograph and document Indian cultures ranging from the Four Corners region to Nome, Alaska, along the way establishing himself as a self-educated ethnologist without peer, befriended and encouraged by President Theodore Roosevelt, and partially bankrolled by none other than J.P. Morgan.  His published work, the 20-volume The North American Indian, remains the classic of its genre.

The presentation of Indian culture by “the white man” has never been without controversy.  Early Anglo attempts ranged from the romanticism of James Fenimore Cooper in print and Albert Bierstadt on canvas (a print of his masterpiece Indian Encampment hangs in my home), to the “scalp” tales of those with a vesting interest in seeing the Indian subjugated -- settlers, gold rush pioneers and “Christian” missionaries.  Curtis’ work covers all of this territory.

His first photographs were often staged to show the majestic power, the serenity and the idyllic – his initial interest being in the “art” of photography.  But as he mastered his craft, he also mastered his topic, expanding his work to recording music, ceremony and spirituality.  He not only photographed The Sun Dance before it was outlawed, but was initiated into the priestly order that put on the Hopi Snake Dance.  In his final years, as Curtis retraced his earlier travels, he recorded the faces of the disillusioned, starved and scarred by reservation life.

Photographs could tell this story alone, but Makepeace’s biography adds a component that is of equal interest and let me emphasize it's a tale of adventure.  She tells of Curtis’ involvement in the glory days of photography, and as a pioneer in the motion picture industry.  If you aren’t impressed with Curtis' connections to T.R. and J.P., then maybe you’ll be impressed with his work for Cecil B. DeMille.