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KRESSEL'S 50 BOOKS READ IN 2015
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Music to a barely-published writer's ears!
JANUARY1.
by Simon Denyer (no photo)Finish date: January 8, 2015
Genre: Current events/recent history
Rating: A
Review: I read this book as part of the History Book Club’s India challenge: the four books of The Raj Quartet plus one. The Raj Quartet is historical fiction set at the end of British rule, so logically, the thing to read would be the history of independence and partition. I still plan to do that, but I was more interested in India today, so I read this book.
The author is a Western journalist who was stationed many years in India, so not only does he have expertise on his subject, he knows how to present it to Westerners like me who have very little background. Of course, I’d heard in the news that outsourcing was lifting India out of the Third World, and I’d seen the movie “Slumdog Millionaire,” which gave me some visuals of India before and after this tech revolution, but that was all rather superficial. As one of the interviewees in the book puts it, the belief that the economic boom would automatically catapult India into prosperity and democracy was “delusional.” Centuries of ethnic tensions and caste divisions don’t disappear that fast. Things are improving, but not necessarily for everybody.
The book gives a thorough picture of the best and worst of India. Corruption in government is rampant, as is crime. It opens with a chapter on a theme very familiar to readers of The Raj Quartet: gang rape. It also confirms all the dark themes portrayed “Slumdog Millionaire” – ethnically-motivated mob violence, child trafficking, and mobsters taking the lion’s share of profits in the real estate boom. Yet for all that, the author gives us reason to hope. India has quite a few grassroots activists who style themselves after Gandhi, most notably a young woman engaging on the longest hunger strike in history and a cadre of anti-corruption whistle blowers. The activists have not achieved as much success as they’ve hoped for, but they, along with the followers they’ve managed to amass, have made improvements.
In the course of the book, the author quotes John Kenneth Galbraith, who served as the U.S. ambassador to India for a while. Galbraith said, “Whatever you say about India, the opposite is also true.” That about sums up the picture I got from this book. Corruption is holding up India’s progress, yet in spots, some wonderful victories are being won.
Citation:
by
Paul Scott
Thanks for remembering my recommendation, Kressel. I thought that both books made a perfect pair. Freedom at Midnight was an excellent overview taking the 'great man' perspective on the events leading up to independence and partition, but Yasmin Khan's The Great Partition seemed the stronger book to me because it focused on the micro-history, the on-the-ground facts that illuminate how and why the 'great men' lost control of the situation and what that meant for ordinary individuals caught up in the madness.
by Larry Collins
by Yasmin Khan
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Larry CollinsI think you need to see the big picture first and then you can go into the weeds. But then again everybody makes their own choices (smile)
I agree completely, Bentley. That was the order in which I read the two and it really helped to have both perspectives but to get the big picture first.
Oh, boy. I wonder if I have the time for *two more* on India.
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2.
by Mark Obmascik (no photo)Finish date: January 13, 2015
Genre: Nature
Rating: A-
Review: For those of you who haven’t seen the charming movie adaptation of this equally charming book, the Big Year is a competition in which birders try to spot as many species of bird as they possibly can in the U.S. and Canada in one calendar year. Note that I use the term “birder,” as opposed to “bird-watcher.” In the movie, Steve Martin’s character bristles when his co-workers use the term “bird-watching,” but the book explains the difference. I am a birdwatcher. I own a field guide, and I use it to identify all the species that land on my deck. I let the birds come to me. A birder goes out to find the birds. And Big Year contestants will spend a fortune of money seeing birds wherever and however they can, whether by boat, by helicopter, or on a remote island of Alaska called Attu. These guys are all about the chase.
Because of that, the book reads like an adventure story. It follows the top three winners of Big Year 1998: Sandy Komito, the record-setting champion, (played by Owen Wilson and named Kenny Bostick in the movie); Al Levantin, a newly-retired former CEO, (played by Steve Martin and renamed Stu Preissler), and Greg Miller, a computer programmer who held down a job and yet still placed in the Big Year, which is an amazing accomplishment. (He’s played by Jack Black and was renamed Brad Harris.) Though Steve Martin and Jack Black have both played their share of obnoxious characters, they’re the likable ones in the movie, and Owen Wilson is the jerk. Though the real Sandy Komito is actually quite a bit older than Owen Wilson, the book presents him in the same (mostly) negative light.
Not only does the book give you much more back story about the three men, it includes the history of birding in North America and a fair bit about the birds themselves. As a bird-watcher now inspired to try to some birding, I was already interested in the subject, but even if you’re not wild about birds, there’s enough human story here to interest anybody. Sandy Komito and Al Levantin were both children of the Depression and were so determined to overcome the poverty of their childhoods that they became successful businessmen. (Both became bird lovers through the Boy Scouts.) Greg Miller was raised a Mennonite in the “Land of No,” so now he spends his life saying “yes” and “playing like a ten-year-old.” What that teaches me is that people end up driven by the thing they feel their upbringing lacked the most. I also learned lessons from the brief bio of Jean Jacques Audubon. He failed at every business he ever tried, but made his name by pursuing his favorite hobby: drawing birds. So ultimately, the book is about doing what you love with the utmost zeal. Ask yourself: if you could spend one year pursuing one goal, what would it be?
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The movie has the advantage of awesome pictures. My favorite part was the island of Attu, but it turns out, they filmed it in British Columbia.
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I'm doing a big year count, though it will be a small year for me. I've got 12 birds so far, and they're all pretty common. But if you would count all the breeds of dog you see in Manhattan this year, which one of us would win?
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Bird watching (I'm no birder either) is such fun. My favorite sight every year is my pair of Pileated Woodpeckers who always return. I live in a rural area so have a pretty large variety of birds. We need a bird topic!!!
A red-bellied woodpecker that landed on our deck on Jan 1, and that inspired my sons and me to do a "small year." But a common place for birding is Cape May in New Jersey in the spring time. That's a trip I think I can afford!
Wow, this book is going on my list, too. We get many birds visiting our yard and keep feeders in the winter until early spring when the black bears start to arrive! Another place I enjoy the birds is Hilton Head Island. I am definitely more in the bird-watching category.
3.
by Valerie Lawson (no photo)Finish date: January 17, 2015
Genre: Biography
Rating: A-
Review: I became interested in this book because of the biopic about Pamela Travers, “Saving Mr. Banks,” but what turned it into a must-read was finding out from other reviews that Travers was a devotee of Gurdjieff. I dabbled in the Gurdjieff method myself in college, and I had been profoundly affected by the adventure with Maia in Mary Poppins as a child, so I wondered: did P.L. Travers plant a seed in my soul that led me to her own spiritual path a decade later? Upon reading her biography, my conclusion is, “not directly,” but she was one quirky seeker of a woman, and I was one quirky seeker of a kid. It’s no wonder that her work spoke to me and that the yearning in each of us would lead us to some similar places. The difference is: she remained a devotee of the method until her death in her mid-nineties. To paraphrase another reviewer, just as Walt Disney over-sweetened the character of Mary Poppins and took away all her sharpness, “Saving Mr. Banks” left Pamela Travers her fussiness but took away her kooky, mystical side, which was a major part of her life. Not only was she a lifelong member of a Gurdjieff school, she lived near a Native American reservation for a time to learn their lessons, and spent her old age in the “New Age.”
Miss Travers said that women pass through three stages in their lives – nymph, mother, and crone – so the book is divided into three sections with those names. Her childhood in Australia falls under the “nymph” section, but more in keeping with the connotation of the word, it goes into her twenties and thirties with romantic encounters with both men and women. Thankfully, none of it is too graphic.
The “mother” section is about her relationship with her adopted son. An online search will lead you to interviews with him bad-mouthing her, but the book shows the affection they shared in his childhood. They had their rocky periods, but he was with her the day before she died, so the estrangement couldn’t have been that bad.
“Crone,” of course, has negative connotations of an old hag, but Travers didn’t see it that way. She felt that as a woman aged, she became wiser, culminating the lessons she learned from the first two stages and in a position to share with the next generation. Reading that made me feel more at peace with aging, like it could be something to look forward to. The apex of her “crone” stage came shortly after the movie made her famous and Radcliffe College invited her to be “writer in residence” for a semester. Young women visited and asked for her wisdom on writing, living, magic, and myth. She enjoyed the experience so much, she offered herself to other colleges afterward. Some of them accepted, but it was never as good as Radcliffe, where she was actually invited. She probably was as bristly and off-putting as the movie “Saving Mr. Banks” made her out to be.
One thing Travers was always defensive about was the label “children’s writer.” She insisted her messages were for adults. Of course, the bulk of her readers probably are children, but I recently re-read parts of Mary Poppins Comes Back, specifically the birth of Annabel Banks, who explains the journey of her soul. I doubt I could have appreciated the depth of that message in my childhood, so perhaps Travers was right. When she went to a Jungian analyst, he told her that all she needed was to read her own books. Yes, they were full of fun and fancy, but they also drew on folklore and myth. Mary Poppins and her measuring tape that sized up the Banks kids’ characters sounded very like Gurdjieff getting his disciples to develop “true objectivity.” So difficult a person as Pamela Travers may have been, she had legitimate reason to be disappointed in Disney’s treatment of her work. His magic made her rich and famous, but her own vision was much deeper and more spiritual.
Citations:
and
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P.L. Travers
4.
by Biz Stone (no photo)Finish date: January 20, 2015
Genre: Business/Memoir/Self-Help
Rating: A
Review: Biz Stone is one of the founders of Twitter, and though parts of his account of its origin story contradict the account in Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal, he has such an engaging writing style and admirable message, I couldn’t help but conclude that whatever really happened, he did his best to stay above the fray. He comes across as a really likable guy.
More than just an origin story, the book is Biz Stone’s philosophy of life and business, a combination memoir and self-help book. On its face, some of his advice might seem cliché, but because he backs it up with personal examples, you can see practical ways of applying it to your own life. For example, he says, “Create your own opportunities.” Well, everyone says that, but most of us wait around for an unexpected tip to come out of nowhere. I’ve had a few show up in my life, so I’m always waiting for the next one, but Biz has a point: they don’t show up all that often. Aside from that, rarely are they tailor-made to your interests. Biz is a big believer in “following your passion.”
Here’s an example of an opportunity he created for himself. A child of divorce, money was always tight in his family, so in his college years, he had a part-time job packing boxes in a book publishing firm. He knew the firm was looking at designs for a new book cover, so one day when nobody was around, he turned on one of the computers, designed a cover, and added it to the pile of designs under consideration. When his was chosen, he was offered a full-time job, so he took it. Others might not be so bold as to quit college, but he felt the reason he was going to college was to qualify for a job like that, and now he’d landed it three years before graduation.
That brings me to the subject of taking risks. Biz is a big advocate of risk-taking, too, saying the usual, “If you want the big pay off, you have to take big risks.” The difference is: he actually explains how to do it intelligently. He gave the example of learning to do a back flip. When he was taught how to do it, he was shown the point in the execution where accidents are most likely to happen. So instead of just “envisioning yourself succeeding,” Biz suggests you also envision yourself failing. Embrace the worst-case scenario. If you’re willing to live with falling on your back, you’re ready to take the risk.
Personally, I’m not willing to risk much. But what I like is that Biz broke down the process for me. Face your fear: can you handle it or not? He’s got a similar approach to work. Does your job excite you? Is it challenging and creative? If not, but you’re not willing to live with the consequences of quitting either, then find something to do within your company to enjoy your job more. That advice has made me a more cheerful worker in these past few days.
So all in all, an excellent book. It’s light in tone, but it packs some big and important ideas from someone who’s really living them.
Citation:
by
Nick Bilton
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Yes I love this last one. I had not even heard of it until your review. Relegated to TBR ;)
Jesse wrote: "Yes I love this last one. I had not even heard of it until your review. Relegated to TBR ;)"If you read it, read Hatching Twitter also. I don't know whose side of the story is true, but it's good to see all sides.
by
Nick Bilton
Kressel wrote: "Jesse wrote: "Yes I love this last one. I had not even heard of it until your review. Relegated to TBR ;)"If you read it, read Hatching Twitter also. I don't know whose side of ..."
Good point. Cheers Kressel & thanks for the book suggestions.
5.
by
Sudhir VenkateshFinish date: January 24, 2015
Genre: Sociology/Memoir
Rating: A
Review: If you’ve read Freakonomics, then you’ve already been introduced to this amazing story. As a grad student in sociology, Sudhir Venkatesh naively walked into a Chicago public housing project with the aim of researching urban poverty. Armed with a survey, he proceeded to interview the first people he saw, who just happened to be young, crack-dealing gang members. Because he is a dark-skinned ethnic Indian, neither white nor African American, the gang members assumed he was a Mexican from a rival gang sent out to spy on them. They held him hostage in a stairwell for hours, interrogating him about what he knew about the rival gang, which, of course, was nothing. He kept insisting, truthfully, that he was a grad student who had come to do research. Eventually, their leader, J.T., showed up, and not only did he believe Sudhir, he liked the idea of having a publicist around, so he let him hang out with the gang for the next seven years. Probably no sociologist before or since has enjoyed such access to the underworld, and the result is this book as well as the body of academic work that has made Professor Venkatesh’s career.
Fortunately, the tone of the book is anything but academic. It is written in the first person narrative and is as much about Sudhir’s growth as it is life in the projects, so it reads like a novel, complete with peppery dialogue, suspenseful action, and a good dose of self-doubt from the protagonist/author. The contrast between naïve, educated Sudhir and streetwise J.T. and Ms. Bailey, matriarch of the building, illustrates the class divide in this country like nothing I’ve ever read. Sudhir, having grown up middle class, is appalled by the level of neglect in the projects. The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) doesn’t do basic repairs, and police and emergency medical services can’t be relied on to show up when called. Ms. Bailey is one of the leaders who steps in to fill in the gap, organizing food and clothing drives and advocating for the tenants when she can, but she’s not all charity. Sometimes they have to pay her a little something for her time and effort. J.T. presents similar moral contradictions. He portrays himself as a community activist, and shockingly, there’s some truth to his claim. Since a police presence would be bad for his business, he uses his underlings as a sort of police force to control petty crimes in the building. He can also be generous with his wealth, which he shares with Ms. Bailey toward her efforts. It’s illegal, and it’s unfair, but people do what they have to do to survive.
The book affected me more strongly than any book I’ve read in a while. I’ve been to Professor Venkatesh’s website, listened to all his interviews and his presentation on public housing. Perhaps one of these days, I’ll write him a personal letter. He’s everything I wish I could be: an academic whose work has actually done something to solve society’s problems. The book doesn’t shy away from anyone’s faults, including his own, but ultimately, by showing the good side of people, particularly the creative ways the tenants pool resources, he conveys a beautiful, humanitarian message.
Citation:
by
Steven D. Levitt and
Stephen Dubner
Kressel wrote: "5. by Sudhir VenkateshFinish date: January 24, 2015
Genr..."
This sounds like a book I would absolutely love. Thanks, Kressel!
6.
by
Katherine S. NewmanFinish date: January 31, 2015
Genre: Sociology
Rating: A-
Review: This book is a follow-up to No Shame in My Game, which was a sociological study of employees of “Burger Barn,” a fast food chain in Harlem. This book revisits that group of people five years later and describes their career paths, dividing them into three groups: high flyers, who landed middle class jobs; up but not out, people who have better jobs but who are still classified as poor; and low riders, people still at low wage jobs, or worse, who are unemployed.
As I learned in Gang Leader for a Day, there are two basic approaches to sociology. There’s the data-driven approach, which interprets census results, wage information, and the like, and there’s the ethnographic method, in which researchers embed themselves with the individuals they are studying and describe their lives in detail. This book combines both methods, and luckily, there is more ethnography than data. The stories of the people were absorbing; the data analysis was so dull, I could barely concentrate. I didn’t even bother with the appendices at the end.
The most inspirational parts of the book, unsurprisingly, came from the high flyers and their success stories. You can’t help but admire these people. But the research for the book took place in the early 2000’s, before the recession. The book argues that even the low riders benefitted from the economic boom years, but it left me wondering what happened to all these people when the bubble burst. One high flyer trajectory was to leave New York for a job in the car industry in Lansing, Michigan. That might have been a move upward in 2000, but what happened in 2008? I don’t think Katherine Newman has done a more recent follow-up study.
But even though the book is dated and dry in spots, it’s still worth reading. Newman doesn’t shy away from any of the hot button issues: racial discrimination, welfare v. workfare, and whether or not a college degree is worthwhile. Most of all, it’s a testament to the work ethic of a group of Americans often believed to lack it: the inner city poor.
Citations:
by
Katherine S. Newman
by
Sudhir Venkatesh
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FEBRUARY7.
by
James BowenFinish date: February 1, 2015
Genre: Memoir
Rating: B
Review: Just as cats are the stars of the most viral videos on the Internet, a cat turned this book into an international best seller. It helps that the author is an unconventional guy with a redemption story of his own. He's a street musician in London who went through a bout of drug addiction and homelessness before finding Bob the cat. The book is similar to The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, but since it's about a cat, not a flock of birds, there's a lot more purring and cuddling, which wins over more people. I, however, preferred Wild Parrots, which was more philosophical. Still, James' and Bob's story is sweet, and cat lovers are bound to enjoy it. It made me wish I had a cat purring at my feet as I read it!
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by Mark Bittner (no photo)
8.
by William Deresiewicz (no photo)Finish date: February 3, 2015
Genre: Cultural criticism
Rating: A-
Review: As I’ve said in other reviews, every time I read a book about higher education, it stirs my emotions up to such an extent that I cannot help but write an intensely personal review. You’ve been warned. Here goes.
If you were raised in a middle class American family, then quite likely, the main goal not just of your education but of your entire childhood was “to get into a good college.” As the book so brilliantly puts it, “We’re not teaching to the test; we’re living to it.” A kid who gets into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stamford earns his parents an A in child-rearing. And even if your parents didn’t feel that way, as mine didn’t, if you were placed in a “gifted” class through elementary and high school, your very identity was tied up in your academic success. You had teachers to charm and impress and were surrounded by competitive peers. Getting accepted into the Ivy League meant the ultimate validation.
Aside from the high pressure, hoop-jumping mentality of the college admissions process, another of the author’s beefs is how cynical Western education has become. It’s not just that the majority of students are choosing career-oriented majors; it’s that the Big Questions of Life that the humanities are meant to address are given mere lip service. Anyone who actually takes these questions seriously is considered a joke. I know that only too well because I was that joke.
In high school, I was like Luna Lovegood, socially clueless and professing beliefs in things all my peers knew were ridiculous, namely Marxism and astrology. Yet I was sorted into Ravenclaw/the gifted track, so I was academically inclined. As the author would put it, I was a fool with a high IQ. Perhaps not much has changed.
I was rejected from Vassar, so I chose state university instead, a so-called “public ivy.” I knew from the first week that it was a terrible fit, but when I called home crying, my mother told me to stick it out. When I failed out two and a half years later, I was a spaced-out pothead having a nervous breakdown with religious overtones, eerily similar to Franny of Franny and Zooey. Someday, I may write a memoir about it. Perhaps, like the article that gave birth to this book, it may even go viral. I can’t be the only person whose college dream turned into a nightmare.
It’s no exaggeration to say that I’ve carried around the weight of my college failure for my entire life. It’s not just the academic failure; it’s the guilt for wasting my parents’ money and the shame of having dabbled in paths (and relationships) that are absolutely forbidden by the Torah. But this book has made me look at things differently. College, Prof. Deresiewicz argues, is really about building your soul, but as he says in another brilliant line: “It’s hard to build your soul when everyone around you is selling theirs.”
When I left college, my soul was in shatters. I sought to heal it in Torah Judaism. Most secularists consider religion the ultimate “sheepiness,” but Prof. Deresiewicz observes that his religious students are often better adjusted than all the other excellent sheep who’ve been made neurotic by over-testing and competition. So perhaps I, who failed out of college in spiritual crisis, might have done things right after all. I took the Big Questions to heart.
My very favorite part of the book is when Prof. Deresiewicz discusses Dorothea from Middlemarch. He’s an English professor, so the book has quite a few literary references, but Dorothea gets the most attention (or perhaps, as a George Eliot fan, she just naturally draws mine). In trying to live by the highest ideals, Dorothea chooses Casaubon. It’s a tragic mistake, and she pays dearly for it, but when she gets her second chance, she doesn’t sell out. She still chooses idealism over materialism, and because she’s older and wiser, her choice gives her a happily ever after. Dorothea, argues Prof. Deresiewicz, is an object lesson for college students. We have to live according to our ideals, fall flat on our faces, and rise back up again. Students who take time off in the middle of college, he says, are usually more mature, more dedicated to their studies, and more willing to ignore all the social B.S. That, too, is the way things went for me.
But even though so much of this book rang true to my experience, I didn’t agree with everything the author had to say. His biggest inconsistency was ragging on Teach for America as a form of academic slumming. In another part of the book, he makes a call for improving conditions for teachers so that talented students will be attracted away from the well-worn career paths of finance and law. So if some excellent sheep decide to share the benefits of their elite education, wouldn’t that make a start on correcting the educational inequality he decries so strongly throughout the book? It's like he's trying to inspire future teachers on one hand, and then smacking them for their arrogance with the other.
A more minor point I disagree with is his disparagement of “technocrats,” as though there's something wrong with problem-solving. He says that a focus on problem-solving treats the world as though it were a giant math test. Now, it may well be that the technocratic mindset is what formed our test-centered school system, but I prefer when politicians say, “This election is about solving problems,” as opposed to “This election is about values.” Give me a technocrat over an ideologue any day.
Finally, there’s the issue of “return on investment” in college education. He understands that people think about this more and more as the cost of higher ed rises. He quoted one of his students, who, in planning her schedule chose a career-oriented course “for my parents,” and a humanities course “for me.” Prof. D. argues that since college is all about you becoming you, all your courses should be about you. I see his point, but I’ve got my own variation. I plan to use it with my own kids. “One major for love; one major for money.” Heck, if it comes to that, major for money, and minor for love. People have to be practical, says the Bachelor in Philosophy who earns her living as a secretary. I was trained to read, reflect, and write in college. It remains my favorite activity, which is why I’m so active here on Goodreads. But as much as I wish someone would pay me to write what I think, nobody does. Reading, writing, and reflecting have enriched my life in all the ways a college education is supposed to. But a little less idealism and a lot more practicality would have done me good.
Citations:
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J.D. Salinger
by
George Eliot
9.
by William Deresiewicz (no photo)Finish date: February 7, 2015
Genre: Memoir
Rating: A-
Review: Professor Deresiewicz’s book Excellent Sheep affected me so strongly, I just had to follow up with his book on Jane Austen. It has none of the polemics of Excellent Sheep; it’s just a memoir of his grad school years and how he went from a Jane Austen hater to a fan. His dissertation covered all six books, so presumably, this book contains all the personal reactions that didn’t fit into his academic research. The book circulates between summaries of the novels and the life lessons he learned for them, with a little biographical background on Austen thrown in. In that sense, it’s very similar to Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch.
The book opens with Emma, which was a great choice since it’s Austen’s funniest work. The second chapter is about Pride and Prejudice, far and away her most popular. After that pleasurable romp, it was easy to transition into Northanger Abbey, which is my least favorite of Austen’s novels. Surprisingly, though, it turned out to be my favorite chapter. The other chapters explored the themes of love, friendship, and character, which are all important issues, but because Henry Tilney is so much wiser than Catherine Morland, and because she is so young and naïve, this is where Professor Dersiewicz got to explain how he evolved as a teacher. His advising professor was a major figure in this chapter, and like Professor Dersiewicz, I loved his approach to literature: experiential, not “academic.” That’s precisely the tone the memoir was written in. It’s educational and you’ll learn from it, not because it analyzes how Austen’s work fits in with some theory or other, but because it shows how one man related Austen’s themes and character insights into his own life.
Citations:
by William Deresiewicz
by
Rebecca Mead
and
by
Jane AustenNot mentioned, but also:
and
by
Jane Austen
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It's a book about Jane Austen's books. It would be neglectful to leave out even one of them. I feel bad that I didn't mention them all in my review.
(Jane Austen)
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10.
by
Dr. David Lazerson Finish date: February 15, 2015
Genre: Memoir
Rating: A
Review: Crown Heights is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York populated mainly by African Americans and immigrants from West Indian countries like Jamaica and Trinidad, but it is also the central headquarters of the Hasidic Jewish sect of Lubavitch, so there’s a sizable Hasidic population there, too. In August 1991, these two populations clashed when one of the cars in the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s motorcade crashed into an African American child. When Hatzolah, the Orthodox Jewish EMT service, arrived on the scene, the police directed them to leave the child alone and to care only for the injured Jews. This set off four days of rioting and violence, and eventually, a young Jewish rabbinical student was killed. Dr. David Lazerson a/k/a “Dr. Laz” was appointed the Jewish liaison for unity in the aftermath of all this volatility. This book is the story of how he and his group, Dr. Laz and the Cure, increased the peace.
Because of its message, I’ve given the book 5 stars, but I debated about taking off one star for poor editing, e.g. typos and misspellings. In the end, though, the book was so uplifting and page-turning, I couldn’t give it anything less. And it isn’t all hippie-dippy stuff either; Dr. Laz describes the flak that he and his African American counterpart, Richard Green, got from their respective communities. They persisted and succeeded in spite of it. They began with dialogue groups between African American and Lubavitcher teens in which each questioned the other on the hard issues, including their stereotypes about each other. It evolved into the formation of a basketball team on which both sets of kids played, and since Dr. Laz is a musician, a rap group formed as well. They eventually got quite a bit of media attention. They were on Donahue and other news shows. Showtime turned their story into a TV movie. The team even got to play in Madison Square Garden! How Dr. Laz kept his head from swelling through all this is a testament to how down to earth he is. The publicity was always for the mission, not the man himself.
Though I’ve known Dr. Laz for years, what finally brought me to his book is that my own town is going through a similar conflict. Nobody has died, thank G-d, but there is an ongoing, highly contentious dispute between public and private school interests. Basically, there have been accusations of misallocation of funds, which, of course, fits in with the classic anti-Semitic stereotype of thieving Jews. The first step toward peace, at least as far as I’ve seen, was last week at a non-religious private school (Waldorf). I’m hoping it’s just the beginning, and I’m hoping Dr. Laz will bring his cure to Ramapo. May Hashem help – we surely need it!
11.
by
Jasper FfordeFinish date: February 27, 2015
Genre: Science fiction
Rating: B
Review: I’m not a big science fiction fan, but any book with the name “Eyre” in its title is pretty much irresistible. Unfortunately, the first journey into Jane Eyre doesn’t happen until Chapter 6, and then the novel almost all but disappears from the plot until Chapter 30. In between are the adventures of protagonist Thursday Next, a spunky female detective in a world where time travel is common. It was interesting for a while, but it went on for way too long. If my husband hadn’t assured me that Jane Eyre figures in heavily at the end, I probably would have given up. He was right, though. I loved the ending.
Jane Eyre fans who also like science fiction will probably like this book very much. But if you’re like me, and you love Jane Eyre but aren’t so wild about science fiction, be forewarned: there’s much more of the latter than the former in this book. In other words, 3 star beginning, 2 star middle, and 4 star end. You may just want to re-read the original instead.
Citation:
by
Charlotte Brontë
12.
by
Michael LewisFinish date: February 28, 2015
Genre: Business
Rating: A-
Review: Every time I read a book about Wall Street, I have two basic reactions. 1) I don’t quite get all the details of the scam here, but I understand that there is one. 2) All those bullying business majors who made my first few weeks of freshman year so miserable went and did the same to the world’s economy. Luckily, this book isn’t just about the self-entitled financial middlemen who profit at their clients’ expense. It’s about a small group of Wall Street guys who tried to reform the system from the inside. From what I gather, they’ve been successful.
The leader of the reformers is Brad Katysuma, but I thought the people he assembled for his team were much more colorful. There was Ronan Ryan, an Irish tech with a mouth like a sailor, Zoran Perkow, who on 9/11 decided that he was at his best in a crisis so made a career change to the high-stress environment of Wall Street, and a former military man with the unique gift of mapping out complexities, whether on the battlefield or the stock market. Even though I didn’t get all those complexities, the focus on the personal made the book more accessible. The book also details the biography of one man not on Brad’s team: Serge Aleymov, the only Goldman Sachs employee to serve time since the crash of 2008.
If I had a significant amount of money, I’d invest it with Brad Katsuyama. But since I don’t, I can content myself with knowing that at least one guy on Wall Street actually has integrity.
MARCH13.
by Scott A. Sandage (no photo)Finish date: March 10, 2015
Genre: History
Rating: A-
Review: Before reading this book, if anyone had asked me how I thought the term “loser” became the catch-all insult that it is now, I would have guessed it was the influence of sports. What other human endeavor divides people up into “winners” and “losers” so clearly? As it turns out, though, the source of the term is from business. In the early 19th century, when business was unregulated and market failures could result in panics, bank runs, and the uprooting of thousands of people’s lives, “loser” simply meant someone who lost money due to circumstances beyond his control. But by mid-century, as capitalism grew and the myth of the self-made man began to take hold, financial failure was seen as a fault “in the man.” As the author puts it, that is how the language of business came to be applied to the human soul.
Because the author stays mostly in the 19th century, the book is rather a heavy read. Failure is a tough subject regardless, but coupled with the old-fashioned style of period newspapers, the first few chapters were hard to get through. The book picked up in the middle with the story of Lewis Tappan, founder of the first credit rating service. Now, there’s a lot to admire about Tappan. He was the abolitionist who paid for the attorneys who represented the escapees in the Amistad case. He even paid for the escapees’ passage back to Africa when they won. But his business was ugly. In this digital age, we’re all worried about how our computer use is being tracked, but what went on before computers was at least as bad. It may even have been worse because it was all based on the subjective judgment of human informers. Eventually, someone brought suit against Tappan and won. Beardsley vs. Tappan may have been the first Supreme Court case to test the legal concept of the right to privacy.
Later chapters include the post-Civil War fight for bankruptcy laws and a sampling of “begging letters” sent to John D. Rockefeller, but the very best part was the epilogue because that is where the author went into the world we live in, mentioning such diverse sources for the term “loser” as Willy Loman, Bob Dylan, and Columbine High. Brilliant as the first sentence of this book is, I think the author should have put more from our modern world into the beginning. People like to read what they’re familiar with, and since much of this book covers the lives of “losers” we’ve never heard of, mixing more from the world we know would have made the first part of the book less of a chore to get through. Having said that, the book is definitely worth the effort. I learned plenty and I completely agree with the author. Failure is the flip side of the American dream, and as long as we continue to demonize it, we are damaging ourselves and others.
Mod
14.
by
Sudhir VenkateshFinish date: March 16, 2015
Genre: Sociology
Rating: A-
Review: Most GR reviewers don't seem to like Sudhir Venkatesh's second "pop" book as much as Gang Leader for a Day. (See Review #5 above.) While it didn't move me quite as much, particularly at the end, it was still a page-turner full of compelling true stories. The book picks up where Gang Leader for a Day left off. Finished with his grad school work at the University of Chicago, Professor Venkatesh is now taking a job at Columbia University in New York. The main theme of the book is that unlike Chicago, where segregation along class and racial lines is stark, people in New York "float." The opening scene is at a party in a Soho art gallery where two of Professor Venkatesh's friends/subjects meet. Shine is a Harlem drug dealer looking to service the Wall Street crowd. Analise is a wealthy Harvard grad running an "escort service" that caters to the very same Wall Street crowd. In Chicago, these two would never have crossed paths. In New York, where richer neighborhoods are just a short subway ride away, cross-class interactions are much more frequent, at least in the criminal world. Note that I said "interactions," though. Actual upward mobility is much harder.
Most of the book is about prostitution - from high end "escorts" to low level street walkers. The high end was the more interesting. It's so lucrative a business, a Harvard graduate preferred to her other career options! Some of the madams make a fair case that they treat their employees well and that they are actually empowering the women. But on the high end of the business as well as the low, violence from the johns does happen. Then their case looks a whole lot weaker.
One of the criticisms I read of this book was that Professor Venkatesh put too much of his own story into it. I disagree completely. If he hadn't explained his own reactions to all he was seeing, he would have come across as a robot. Besides, most of us are much closer to him than we are to any other person in the book. He studies criminality, and we read about it, but most of us aren't engaging in it. And while he does make these people seem like normal, feeling human beings, it's inevitable that he, the observer, and we, the readers, experience some sense of moral superiority in this story. I know I'd rather be the bored secretary that I am than Analise, no matter how much money she makes.
The book is definitely more educational than it is voyeuristic, so it's definitely worth reading. I personally have come to admire Professor Venkatesh's work tremendously. Perhaps someday I'll gather the courage to write to him.
Citation:
by
Sudhir Venkatesh
The History Book Club
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