Nighttown by Timothy Hallinan - Book Review

If you like your crime fiction detectives smart, funny, complex, and insightful and haven’t yet met Tim Hallinan’s Junior Bender, Nighttown (Soho Crime, 385 pages, November, 2019, $26.96/14.99) you’ve been missing a rising star whose latest outing, the seventh in the series, takes him to new heights of risk while continuing to grow and evolve as a character you will quickly come to treasure. Bender’s first arrival in Herbie’s Game won the 2015 Lefty Award for best comic mystery novel. Hallinan’s humor is character and plot driven, rather than built on the wisecrack. His characters are quirky and real, while protagonist Junior Bender, sometimes clueless about the characters he loves the most, earnestly works towards solving the problems of the problematic.

Bender lives mostly at night in the shadows, befitting because of the shady nature of his clients themselves. You see, he is the go-to detective for criminals who can’t seek help from the police to solve their problems. Junior, at once a deeply moral person and an accomplished thief who has never been caught but is always on the police radar, must navigate the dark world between people who have no compunction against killing him if he fails, and his own strong drive for stability and true love. Out of these internal conflicts emerges a fully-rounded person capable of both compassion and deviousness. His sense of justice is superb, fitting perfectly with the conscience he must battle all the time along with maintaining his ethical sense of responsibility.

Nightown Opens with Junior in a 1908 house once owned by a recently deceased isolate, one of Hallinan’s typically wounded women. Junior’s been paid $25,000, half of his offer for this job, to steal something, but he’s not certain why it has value. He does, however, know that he’s not the only person in the hunt. The book opens with Junior casing the house filled with Hallinan’s unique smells, creaking stairways, and off-beat observations of the world that only Junior Bender can fully inhabit. Furthermore, it soon emerges that Ronnie, Junior’s latest love, has a two year old son whose father has kidnapped him and kept him away from her. That’s the secret she’s been keeping ever since she was introduced to the plot line several books ago. I wonder though whether Junior’s ex-wife and daughter, her boyfriend, and the two computer wizard girls have disappeared to in this volume. I can only wish they return later in counterpoint to Ronnie.

Hallinan’s language sets him aside from every other contemporary fiction writer I’ve encountered. Especially with Junior Bender, the literate, sometimes off the wall imagery, similes and metaphors fly out of Juniors mouth or race through his head as if such a brilliant rif were immediately available to the rest of us, too. His dialogue sparkles as it defines class and character, combing with descriptive language to present a whole picture. There’s a joy in reading Hallinan, in simply taking in the breadth of what appears to be casual knowledge but must actually reflect the distillation of hours of careful research and wide, inclusive reading. As Hallinan manages to pack away two one hundred thousand word novels a year, most of it must come from some easily tapped internal source, but its breadth is enormous, suggesting deep familiarity with a wide range of literary material from outside his genre. How many detective fiction books mention Hieronymus Bosch?

Hallinan’s children, as odd, broken and twisted as they may be (Anime, Lilli, Eaglet, and his daughter Rena in the Bender series as well as Poke Rafferty’s wife Rose, daughter Mia and her street and school friends in the Bangkok-based Poke Rafferty thriller series) are real and seem alive. Junior may be the only character in the genre, at least the only one I’ve met, who likes nice kids, and talks to them as if they were humans. Robert A. Heinlein did that in science fiction a lifetime ago, but children are rare in genre fiction. Hallinan creates believable, quirky children today, developing Junior in whole, over time, as a man to whom family is real and matters, despite his own issues with personal reliability in relationships.

Timothy Hallinan

Timothy Hallinan has led an interesting and varied life, working in public relations, in the film industry, and doing corporate consulting on media and outreach. He is the author of three detective series. His first, the Simeon Grist novels were mostly published in the 1990’s, with a revival this year in a new and inventive (almost fantasy) manifestation. The Junior Bender series and the Poke Rafferty series have each been running at the pace of one novel each per year for the past several years. Hallinan lives in Los Angeles and Bankok, both of which add color and variety to his writing.

The convoluted plot of Nighttown (Soho Crime, 385 pages, November, 2019, $26.96/14.99) includes many of the characters that have appeared in previous Bender tales. As usual in series fiction, it’s not necessary to have read the previous versions to “get” this one, but I defy you not to go back to pick the earlier ones up and read them, too. I don’t think Hallinan’s characters emerge fully drawn from the head of Zeus, but they maintain an inner consistency, while growing, too. Nighttown is a particularly strong entry, deserving your attention and demanding your respect for the character and the mind creating him. Hallinan throws insights away that others, both writers and readers, would spend a lifetime seeking to discover. I read Nighttown in a galley version sent to me by the author, who, while I’ve never met him, is a frequent correspondent whom I consider to be a friend. I highly recommend the book.

The Heritage by Howard Bryant - Book Review

The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patiotism by Howard Bryant (Beacon Press, 2018, 288 pages, $26.95/18.99) begins and ends with Colin Kaepernick, the black American football player who, when he’d had enough, decided to take a knee during the playing of the national anthem before kickoff of his now former team, the San Francisco 48ers in protest against the treatment of young black men at the hands of police across the country. Between these bookends lies a rich history of the political and social involvement of black athletes from the 1920’s to he present. Bryant writes highly readable prose, supported by anecdote and statistics to show the evolution and devolution of the super-stars during three distinct periods. The book is persuasive and interesting. Many people who read it will nod as the book rushes by and cheer at the conclusions. Lots of readers, less inclined to hear and understand, won’t like what they read.

After introducing the problem and model represented by Kaepernick, Bryant takes the reader back to the mid-twentieth century by introducing one of my own musical and political heroes, Paul Robeson, who, as a black student at Rutgers in the 1920’s twice recognized as a consensus All-American football football player and class valedictorian, graduated from Columbia Law School and established himself as an actor, singer (Old Man River and Water Boy), flirted with Communism before being deprived of his passport by the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and became a hero of the civil rights movement before his death in the 1965.

Bryant recognizes black athletes as creating a heritage of advancement and courage in the face of pre-war Jim Crow America and the world of increased opportunity represented by their return to an America changed by World War II and Harry Truman’s elimination of racial discrimination in the armed services. There athletes, represented by the likes of Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Joe Lewis, Jim Brown, Kurt Flood, professor Harry Edwards, Muhammad Ali and others established the place of black athletes to play and to speak out. Many, like Kurt Flood, John Carlos, and Muhammed Ali all sacrificed years of their professional lives as the organized sport and public resistance shortened or ended their careers. Their sacrifices and successes served to pave the way for others.“We had to take care of each other,” former baseball player and manager Dusty Baker said. “There weren’t that many of us. You knew the game didn’t always want you. You had to pass on what you knew, like, prepare the ones that were coming. That was your responsibility.” While sports provided an entree to wealth and fame, black intelligence and thoughtfulness were denied or ignored.

The second era, characterized by Bryan as the period of “Shut up and play!” featured the emergence of superb athletes who were able to dominate their sport, but were, at the same time, willing and able to characterize themselves as virtually race-less. While obviously men of color, their demeanor and dominance of their sport occurred in a time where their salaries as players were dwarfed by their income from product endorsements and public appearances. Athletes like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, O,J. Simpson preferred to duck social issues, while living lavish lifestyles and not speaking out on social issues, despite the fact that many able and talented black athletes were not being rewarded in the ways that they the stars,were. Bryant argues, “that for all the money, the players were still black, and the minute any one of them ran afoul of the white mainstream public, either by decline in play or by specifically taking a political stand that advocated for African Americans, that same public would be quick to turn on him.”

Then, two commercial airliners were crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 killing 2997 people and the world changed. Patriotism blossomed. The U.S. had eliminated compulsory military service in 1973, and all our armed services were staffed by volunteers. These two events ushered in a period of patriotic fervor eagerly promoted and paid for by professional sports. Policing that increasingly used military hardware and former members of the military to staff its force. Meanwhile, proliferating police illegal shootings and violence against the black community coincided with patriotic celebrations held in stadiums and on playing fields around the country. A new era of resistance to black issues came up against a new voice of African Americans with the money and the self-awareness to speak out on the issues confronting them as they became the majority of athletes in both the NFL and the NBA. Bryant characterizes this period as “The Awakening.” Black athletes’ voices were heard and their money was spent to help speak for them. LaBron James, Carmello Anthony, and, perhaps most visibly, Colin Kaepernick became symbols of the new willingness to speak out and contribute cash to causes. Bryant comments, “The real reclamation is when you decide to get on the bus. Where do you get on the bus? Where will you participate? The question will be, ‘What did you do for the people? What did you do with your wealth? Can I impact the life of a young person when it counts, not when it’s safe?”

Howard Bryant

Howard Bryant is a sports journalist and television personality appearing on both the radio and television. He often appears on the ESPN program The Sports Reporters as well as NPR’s Weekend Edtion. He has steadily risen from local beat to national prominence as a reporter and commentator. The Heritage is his fifth book.

Any white reader expecting The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patiotism by Howard Bryant (Beacon Press, 2018, 288 pages, $26.95/18.99) to provide comfort, should be warned. This book, read with an open and attentive mind will make you uncomfortable. Bryant’s narrative is compelling, his story-telling superb, his use of examples cogent and on-point, and the case he builds strong. The nexus of racism, changed definitions of patriotism, courage and avarice, and white complicity to silence the black athlete are difficult or impossible to deny. I highly recommend this book to any reader eager to understand the role of sport within today’s politics and divisions. I was provide the book as a pre-publication download by the publisher through Edelweiss. I read it on my Kindle app.

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Loser's Bracket by Chris Crutcher - Book Review

I met Chris Crutcher at a National Council of Teachers of English convention in Orlando (could have been Anaheim) in the late 1980’s where he was giving a presentation on Young Adult fiction. He was a trim, handsome, athletic looking man who was a school counselor and an athlete. Someone asked him what set young adult fiction aside from other fiction works. He responded, “The length.” I was intrigued, bought a couple of his books and devoured them avidly. I was teaching English at the time and chair of a large English Department in a Pennsylvania school district. I enjoyed the books, thought them useful for non-readers and less able students in our district, and encountered strong resistance to using them as assigned reading when I suggested it to my colleagues. Since heading in other directions, I rarely read Young Adult (also called Adolescent Literature) these days, but when I do, I usually enjoy a good read dealing with the problems of developing young people whose feelings are close to the surface and whose experience is limited, to be interesting and arresting reads while not demanding too much of me. They deal with the real problems adolescents encounter: popularity, over-weight, dis-functional family life, adjustment to sexuality, and maturation, and more. These are all real problems that young people often find it difficult to discuss with adults. Thus the novels can provide help to them, or a platform for such discussions. As such, reading them can be crucial to helping with problems young people are encountering in their real life in ways that can displace the problem onto others they encounter in the pages of a book. They can discuss these issues with other kids or adults who know how to listen in constructive and useful ways. English teachers who say, “I’m a teacher, not a therapist” are missing the point as well as a chance to involve their students in literature which can turn them into lifelong readers.

Loser’s Bracket by Chris Crutcher (Greenwillow Books, 2018, 256 pp, $17.99/9.99) is told in first person narrative by Annie Boots, both a gifted athlete and student, whose life has been fractured. Her mother Nancy is over-weight, an alcoholic and drug abuser. Her sister Sheila a drug abuser in and out of rehab, an absent father, and Sheila’s son, who has his own problems. Nancy has been removed from custody, and Annie has been fostered by an upper middle-class family named Howard, which has its own problems, but, despite the father’s controlling needs to make her a star athlete, which she is anyway, Annie’s in a good situation while yearning to stay connected to her biological family. The story revolves around the interactions between and within these two families and the custody system. Annie describes the situation in breezy, accessible language with a degree of understanding and anxious good humor. She comes across as likable and insightful while trying to deal with her own problems.

In the guise of a book club held at the local library, and definitely not in school, Crutcher includes a chapter about the writing process that, for any student struggling with writing anything contains some of the best advice I’ve ever read about how to achieve a desired outcome, no matter what emerges and how surprising it might be. Annie, carrying all her load of Nancy, her mother, Sheilla, her sister and Sheila’s missing son, as well as her foster parents and all the talents and skills she has remains, as she has been throughout the book, an open conduit to experience with a blockage for internalizing what she learns. As the story moves along, the characters learn that unlike in the books they read to each other, they are the authors of their own stories. Thus, the novel moves the characters and the reader toward an understanding of each of our capabilities for taking charge of our own lives. The disappearance of her brother creates dramatic tension, keeping the story moving forward as does the tension between Annie’s foster parents and within her biological family.

Chris Crutcher

Chris Crutcher is the critically acclaimed author of twelve novels, an autobiography, and two collections of short stories. He has won three lifetime achievement awards for the body of his work: the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Outstanding Literature for Young Adults, the ALAN Award for a Significant Contribution to Adolescent Literature, and the NCTE National Intellectual Freedom Award. Drawing on his experience as an athlete, teacher, family therapist, and child-protection specialist, he unflinchingly writes about real and often-ignored issues that face teenagers today. He lives in Spokane. (Amazon profile)

Chris Crutcher writes stories that address issues not unlike similar issues dealt with in any novel focused on adults, but revolving around the lives, concerns, and developmental problems of teenagers. Telling this story in first person put the reader inside the skin of an adolescent girl facing and surmounting problems that would be difficult for anyone. He uses lively dialogue bringing the kids to life while the adults are not the adult stereotypes often found on television and in lesser books. These are real people living real lives. Loser’s Bracket is not just a good young adult novel, it’s a good novel. I was supplied a digital copy of the book by the publisher through Edelweiss. I read it using my Amazon Fire tablet.

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Can It Happen Here? by Cass Sunstein - Book Review

The essays in Can it Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America (Dey Street Books, March 2018, 496 pages, $11.99/12.18) vary widely in accessibility, readability, and sense of audience. They represent a set of, largely academic papers that may raise more issues than they settle. Nevertheless, I came away, despite the pessimism of some of the essays, with the sense that if Americans act with courage and fortitude, our institutions will survive the Trump assault on them. Most of the writers, drawn from top, mostly American, universities suggest that, while there seems to be world-wide skepticism toward liberal democracy, we can weather the storm by relying on the checks and balances established in the Constitution, maintaining a free press, and the engagement of the electorate in the political process.

The title of the book is drawn from Sinclair Lewis’s satirical novel, It Can’t Happen Here, written in 1936, which followed the career of a fictional governor, much like Huey Long, the populist governor of Louisiana, who took a run against Franklin Delano Roosevelt before his assassination in 1936. Lewis’ autocratic, totalitarian character, perhaps modeled on Adolf Hitler is elected president on a platform of populism and traditional values. Sound familiar? The title of Lewis’ book is turned into a question, which each of the writers examine in their own fashion.

The writers aredrawn almost entirely from Academia and selected from elite institutions dominated by the Ivy League and the University of Chicago. Including editor Cass Sunstein, there were nineteen writers distributed thus: Harvard – 5, Chicago – 5, Yale – 2, NYU – 2, Columbia – 1, Princeton – 1, Cornell – 1, Duke – 1, George Mason – 1. In terms of specialties, they were distributed this way: Law – 11, Economics – 2, Diplomacy – 1, varied social sciences – 5. Several were described as being multi-disciplinary. Given these distributions of institutions and specialties, it’s little wonder that many of the entries were jargon-filled and somewhat repetitive. One of the contributors, Samantha Powers, also happens to be married to editor Sunstein, although I can see no reason why she doesn’t belong in this distinguished group.

Can It Happen Here? considers whether the inclinations and indications from the Trump administration can or will lead to the loss of our democracy and the imposition/acceptance of an authoritarian form of government in the United States. While, in his preface, Sunstein suggests that this dark vision of what America might become isn’t yet happening, those who can imagine such outcomes are writing and speaking about it. They belong to a long history of those who’ve written about an apocalyptic view of democracy and freedom.

The essays range from thoughtful and insightful analyses of Donald Trump’s mind and approach to stunningly difficult to read and interpret research studies written for an academic audience. They often are much in need of interpretation for even the intelligent lay reader. As such, it seems to be a book in search of an audience who can find enough sustenance to make it worth purchasing. It contains too much jargon and too many statistics to be useful to the general reader, and too little for the specialist.

The general tenor of this collection is to suggest that while Trump, his authoritarian vision and the alignment of his appointees towards the very forces he campaigned against, while deeply upsetting and destructive, is likely to fail as other efforts to exert control over the government and people of America have failed in the past. But the ride isn’t going to be pleasant and the destruction may take years to heal. Since there are few examples of authoritarian or anti-constitutional governance in this country, several of the writers depend on authoritarian influences in Hungary and Poland, which have pulled back from democracy. They also rely on the rise to power of historical figures like Louis Bonaparte in France, Hitler, and Mussolini, all of whom overthrew representative governments to install autocratic rule before failing.

Most of the essays strike a center-left middle ground, as one might expect from a group of writers dominated by men (only two women contributed chapters) trained in law who also teach it in elite settings. There’s a strong presumption that the principles enshrined in the Constitution and embodied in the checks and balances and the Bill of Rights, with special emphasis on the role of the press, whose voice is guaranteed by the First Amendment will prevail. Meanwhile, the concerns of the unruly extremes of both parties is under-emphasized as the writers place their faith in the good sense of the center.

Cass Sunstein

According to Amazon, “Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School, where he is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. He is by far the most cited law professor in the United States. From 2009 to 2012 he served in the Obama administration as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He has testified before congressional committees, appeared on national television and radio shows, been involved in constitution-making and law reform activities in a number of nations, and written many articles and books, including Simpler: The Future of Government and Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter.”

Canit Happen Here?: Authoritarianismin America (DeyStreet Boois, March 2018, 496 pages, $11.99/12.18) edited by Cass Sunstein consists of seventeen essays edited and curated by Cass Sunstein examining the rise of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency of the United States and its possible outcomes. Relying on the history of several authoritarian rises and failures in world history as well as a social psychological approach to American predictions, the book speculates about the possible continued world-wide rise of authoritarian rule and its possibilities. With regard to the U.S., the essays hold out some optimism, assuming that Americans and our institutions stand tall and act bravely. The essays are uneven, but many deserve careful, thoughtful study. They are marred by their tone and the denseness of the prose in some. The book was provided to me by the publisher as a digital download through Edelweiss, and I read it on my Amazon Fire.

Eisenhower: Becoming the Leader of the Free World - Book Review

Louis Golambos’ new biography Eisenhower: Becoming the Leader of the Free World (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018, 296 pages, $23.65, 25.58) presents a picture of Dwight David Eisenhower, the thirty-fourth President of the United States, from the perspective his career as it prepared him for becoming Supreme Allied Commander of American forces in Europe during World War II, which propelled him into the presidency, succeeding Harry Truman in 1952 and serving as President until 1960. As a general, during World War II, he was widely, and justly, credited with having used superior organizational and political skills to coordinate allied efforts towards ultimate and complete victory, while garnering the recognition and popularity to achieve a huge electoral victory in 1952. As president, he again balanced a variety of national and international interests to lead America back towards peace while establishing the military might that staved off war with Soviet Russia. Furthermore, he coordinated efforts to bring the Korean conflict to its lingering conclusion, despite never being able to broker more than an armistice there. Most prominent in the biography is Golambos’ emphasis on Eisenhower’s preparation for and assumption of leadership, while his domestic and personal life is downplayed.

Golambos emphasizes the development of Eisenhower’s character growing up in relative poverty in Abilene, Kansas where his father was an angry, disappointed smart person who never achieved the social or economic position he thought he deserved, leading to an often violent approach to discipline with his six sons. Meanwhile his mother, Ida, was a deeply religious, warm, effective mother who dealt lovingly and thoughtfully with her developing sons. According to Golumbus, Ike’s early career at West Point and in the Army was dominated by the conflict between his two contrasting parents, leading to a strong and effective leadership style with his subordinates but to his having a difficult time dealing with authority at West Point and later which, in his early Army career, retarded his advancement.

His slow rise in the post war Army was worsened by his resistance to authority, often showing a temper he sought throughout his career to control. Early, he showed himself to be a prescient analyst of the future needs and directions of the Army, often rejected by superior officers trained in the pre-war environment of horses and then trench warfare. Eisenhower understood and promoted the importance of the tank as the coming major offensive weapon against the resistance of his superior officers, leading the retarding of his advancement. His assignments often emphasized training positions which also allowed him to coach football, but kept him as a staff officer. Meanwhile Douglas MacArthur and others who had earned combat stars, moved up the Army hierarchy.

He was lucky to be noticed by General Fox Connor who became his and Patton’s mentor. Conner mentored Ike as his Chief of Staff in Panama. He had the qualities to teach Ike how to manage the bureaucracy above him by attention to detail while developing confidence in his own ability to lead. He gained greater responsibility and was assigned to training tank troops under George S, Patton who was in Pershing’s command. Sent to train tank officers in Gettysburg, he continued to rise, but without distinction. He was deemed by his superiors to treat “others with respect and gave careful attention to their needs. He demanded discipline without being petty.” A pretty good description of the parenting he had received from his mother. Ike’s rise in the Army depended upon insights from two mentor/sponsors who recognized in him qualities not readily apparent to others. Fox Conner during the period between WWI and WWII and General George C. Marshall’s appointing him to be the top general in the planning for the invasion of Europe, which, at the time seemed to be a “stunning” move on Marshall’s part.

This book contains important lessons about leadership within a bureaucracy that rising or potential leaders should learn if they are to succeed. The book has significant relevance to those who would seek advanced leadership in any setting – business, schools, politics, or the military. The progress of Ike’s career and the Golumbus’ account of his weaknesses and strengths point to skills which should be emphasized in leadership programs in graduate school as well as learned by potential mentors and those seeking leadership themselves. Golumbus’ skill in relating these lessons to the historical herky-jerky prograss of Ike’s career is carefully structured and presented in such a way as to make it palatable to all the but the most heedless people who find themselves stymied in their ambitions.

At the close of the war Eisenhower accepted the presidency of Columbia University, a role he was totally unsuited for, while preparing for his run at the presidency. In assessing Ike’s role as president, Golumbos points to his achieving world peace and insuring American prosperity, while developing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to resist Soviet expansion in eastern Europe. Eisenhower’s entire career path had prepared him to use guile, charm, and power in equal proportions to maintain the U.S. at the top of world influence. He spent lavishly on retaining military strength while campaigning ceaselessly for peace, all with his world famous Eisenhower grin.

The book contains only one mention of Ike’s relationship to his driver Kay Summersby, but there’s a longer and more useful note that helps redress that oversight. Also, his deteriorating relationship with his wife, Mamie, who became a difficult alcoholic as she aged, is hardly discussed in the text, which focuses very successfully on Ike’s developing leadership skills, his ability to work across a wide range of personalities, organizational goals, and systems to achieve what Golambos calls a “middle way.”

Louis Golambos

Louis Golambos is professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University. He edited The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, a massive twenty-four volume collection.

Eisenhower is often seen as a plodder who emerged from a very long development period, rising to the demands of command during World War II and then rode his fame to two terms as President. He is revealed. Eisenhower: Becoming the Leader of the Free World  (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018, 296 pages, $23.65, 25.58) in this very thorough account of his professional military and political life, as a talented leader, able to encourage subordinates to obtain the best from them with a vision far greater than he is often given credit for having. Almost one third of the text is devoted to references and extensive notes. Golumbos has made a substantial contribution to understanding of this important military and political leader of the second half of the twentieth century. I read the book as an electron pre-publication copy provided by the publisher by Edelwiess: Beyondthe Treeline. I read it on my Kindle app.

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Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic by David Frum - Book Review

David Frum has written an erudite, scholarly, entertaining, coruscating, and, ultimately, both deeply scary and hopeful book called Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic (HarperCollins, 2018, 320 pages, $25.99/12.99). Using elegant, nuanced writing and thoughtful analysis based on deep, and wide research, fully thirty percent of the text is taken up by footnotes, Frum carefully builds his argument using well-recognized sources from across the political, historical, and media spectrum. He presents a clear-eyed vision of Trump world from a Republican intellectual who wants him to do well and achieve the conservative goals his party has long felt powerless to achieve. Frum carefully uses what Trump says about his goals both as a candidate and as President, as well as a wide array of his allies, the media from Fox & Friends to Meet the Press, from Hugh Hewitt to Mark Levin. He’s careful, judicious, and, ultimately... damning.

David Frum

David Frum, born in Canada, has degrees from the University of Toronto, Yale University, and Harvard Law School. As he said in Newsweek, “I'm a conservative Republican, have been all my adult life. I volunteered for the Reagan campaign in 1980. I've attended every Republican convention since 1988. I was president of the Federalist Society chapter at my law school, worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and wrote speeches for President Bush—not the "Read My Lips" Bush, the "Axis of Evil" Bush. I served on the Giuliani campaign in 2008 and voted for John McCain in November. I supported the Iraq War and (although I feel kind of silly about it in retrospect) the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I could go on, but you get the idea.” He has been an American citizen since 2007, while having been active in American politics for most of his adult life.

Frum, who appears to be no admirer of Trump, nevertheless paints what seems to me to be an accurate and un-frenzied picture of how Trump uses real and imagined power along with blunt bullying and lying to force people not his natural allies to line up with him and do his bidding, while many of them have taken positions in the government which will allow them to create no end of un-doing a generations long pattern of increasing governmental oversight of their enterprises. Meanwhile, useful regulations and protections are thrown out with the bureaucratic overburden and there’s so much self-dealing the public becomes inured to it. He demonstrates how the use of language in the Trump administration masks the goals of those he’s appointed to make America a more dangerous, dirty, and divided country.

The structure of Trumpocracy lays out the ways in which Donald Trump behaves to bring maximum attention to himself while having limited interest in the history, laws, traditions, and structure of our country. He consistently acts in such a way as to increase his own power while not seeking advice or counsel from those who truly understand how the government works, especially with reference to our hallowed separation of powers and reliance upon them to come to reasonable governance for all. Frum writes that under Trump, “The government of the United States seems to have made common cause with the planet’s thugs, crooks, and dictators against its own ideals—and in fact to have imported the spirit of thuggery, crookedness, and dictatorship into the very core of the American state, into the most solemn symbolic oval center of its law and liberty.” He continues, “Trump’s hope was that an unconstrained America could grab more power for itself (and thereby for him). He never understood that America’s power arose not only from its own wealth and its own military force, but from its centrality to a network of friends and allies.” For Trump there is no win-win, he can only win if someone else loses, and he will never share his wins with anyone.

The author treats extensively the web of associations, betrayals, and the apparent idea that America itself must not only be first, but alone at the top. “Trump throws everyone under the bus in his eager embrace of...Himself! He seems totally unaware of the intensely interwoven mutual dependency that exists between the President and members of Congress in seeking to enact his agenda. As a man with no knowledge of how government works or the place of the Presidency in it, he continues to show no interest in policy, the rule of law, or political realities. Frum emphasizes his treatment of Carmen Yulin Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, and Senator Jeff Flake, from Arizona, as examples of people whose support he needed who he gleefully destroyed in his own interest. His cruel decision not to allow Sean Spicer to meet the Pope stands as a testimony to his willful nastiness. Trump’s insistence on flattery and abject adherence to his neediness is stomach turning. Frum details a televised cabinet meeting during which a round-table of cabinet secretaries vomited out flattering lies about the fine job Trump was doing. He contrasts that to George W. Bush’s deep skepticism to anything that smacked of flattery.

A major advantage of a book from a person like David Frum is that it steps back a little way from the day-to-day cascade of cable news, or even from the weekend talk shows to take a wider and more comprehensive portrait of Trump and the Trump administration. As such, it can be both nuanced and comprehensive. By battling against everything the press says that could be mildly seen as critical, Trump actively works to reduce the influence of the press at home and abroad. His and his surrogates, particularly at Fox News, encourage discrediting even the most reliable and honest reporters. Furthermore, he actively supported authoritarian leaders in other countries when abroad in their efforts to muzzle their own press.

 Frum argues that Trump’s negligence and laziness actually strengthens him through eliminating all normal checks and balances. He shows how Trump relience on outmoded and failed Republican ideology has replaced conservative thinking. However, Frum despairs at the ability of the incumbent to see or understand what that might be. Nevertheless, he concludes his very fine book on a note of hope generated from reactions to the negative affects of the Trump administration. David Frum’s Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic (HarperCollins, 2018, 320 pages, $25.99/12.99) stands as a sober, yet often frightening, at least to me, assessment of the Trump campaign and most of his first year. The book has earned the highest of recommendations I can give it. I received a free copy of Trumpocracy from the publisher as an electronic pre-publication through Edelweiss and read it on my Kindle App

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A-List by D.P. Lyle - Book Review

A-List by D.P. Lyle (Oceanview Publishing, 2017, Oceanview Publishing, $14.95/$9.99) is a lively, detective procedural set in New Orleans, which always provides lots of local colorful characters to story lines. Kirk Ford, a movie star with a “pretty” face has woken up in his hotel room with the dead body of his current girl friend lying beside him. That’s the entry to the plot of the second outing of the Jake Longley Novel by D.P. Lyle, a veteran writer of crime fiction and real crime books. Jake Longley, something of a slacker son ex-baseball player son of P.I. Ray Longley, proprietor of Longley Investigations, is eyeing the beautiful, lithe, Nicole Jemison as she exercises and he fantasizes, when the phone rings, providing an entry into the fast-paced, intriguing world of this second book in a new series set in New Orleans, where the death occurred. In strong, hard-boiled detective writing, A-List starts off with plenty of snappy dialogue, strong place-setting description, and driving plot to capture the reader and propel the story forward with these two likable problem solvers whose looks and tastes for life and each other make them both attractive and the nutrient for the pleasant diversion to come.

While Jake seems to be a reluctant detective and Nicole a willing and talented apprentice, the chemistry between the two jumps off the page. They often appear, almost, as willing, attractive sex kittens eager to roll around in the hay or luxuriate in the shower before getting on with the business of solving the crime. However, considering the present climate, this might not be an auspicious theme for a contemporary who-done-it’s interpersonal plot line. Nevertheless the setting and situation are made for a good story. The murdered girl is the niece of Tony Guidry, identified as a local mobster well connected with the political and law enforcement authorities. The initial bail hearing with its gawking crowd in the background sets the hierarchy of power in notoriously corrupt New Orleans. It’s up to Jake and Nicole to find the keys to this very promising romp.

Lyle uses well-wrought, fast-paced dialogue to reveal character and plot. He is a real pro at this, combining punchy, brief description with dialogue to make the book a consistent page turner. This combination often differentiates the newcomer to genre fiction from more experienced writers. Early in this reading, the first with this writer for me, I couldn’t tell whether the dramatic tension resulting from these strong story telling traits would continue. His continued precise, vignette descriptions of characters and settings throughout the book display his ability to sustain the tone. Such sparse immediacy is often the work of very careful paring down to essentials found in good popular writers of contemporary fiction, where readers insist on getting on with it.

As the story proceeds, it develops that both Kirk and the dead Kristi had Ketamine in their systems, suggesting the possibility that a third party has somehow entered the locked room to strangle Kristi. The book is flawed, with a guilty suspect emerging too soon, as the trick in a who-done-it is to introduce the character, yet keep guilt hidden as long as possible, allowing the guilty person to emerge as a surprise. This separates it from a procedural, where we may know the guilty party but find intrigue in the process of discovering who it is. Let me know if you find the same issue.

A-List contains an interesting emerging father/son relationship between the seemingly shiftless Jake, a former major league pitcher whose career was shortened by injury, and his father Ray, the head of Longley Investigations and a smart, hard-working guy who always puts work first. It adds some depth to Jake who turns out to be less of a slacker than he tries to appear.

D.P. Lyle

Lyle is at his best when revealing plot and character through dialogue. Setting becomes the backdrop for the revealing dialogues he creates between his people. He has a clear idea of what motivates each one as characters emerge in their discussions with others, each one letting the reader in on important details. He is an experienced writer who has written several other series as well as several books about how to write detective fiction. After many years practicing medicine as a cardiologist, he now writes non-fiction about forensic medicine with an eye toward supporting other crime writers. He also maintains The Crime Writer’s Forensics Blog.

A-List by D.P. Lyle (Oceanview Publishing, 2017, Oceanview Publishing, $14.95/$9.99) resonates with skill, insight, and the plain hard work of good writing. But, about ¾ of the way through the book, I think I solved the crime. This is a disappointment in a book with fairly intriguing characters, lots of excellent dialogue, and the always intriguing setting in New Orleans, to discover a plotting flaw that may give away the doer through a plotting error. Nevertheless I enjoyed this book while discovering a new, to me, writer who has the added attractiveness of having written several other series as well as books designed to help aspiring and practicing mystery writers cope with technical details about writing. I read A-List as a pre-publication electronic book provided by the publisher through Edelweiss on my Kindle app.

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Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson - Book Review

Walter Isaacson’s huge biography Leonardo da Vinci (Simon & Schuster, 2017, 624 pages, $35.00/16.99/14.88) big, thick, heavy, beautifully illustrated provides a wonderful journey through the life, mind, and works of a genius who lived more than 400 years ago, but whose creativity, versatility, and imagination rebound through the ages to still affect our sensibilities today. Isaacson, whose previous biography of Einstein I also read and reviewed, stands as one of the major public intellectuals in America. Because he, himself, approaches his subjects with such appreciation and wonder, his books serve to open the minds of their readers, making the subjects accessible to ordinary folks.

Was Leonardo truly the greatest genius of all time, or did he happen to come along when all the conditions were right for a single person to capture and embody huge chunks of the world’s knowledge and experience? Science, math, engineering, art, sculpture, and technology were all encompassed in his studies and interests. His observational skills were without peer. He has obsessive about following through on questions that occurred to him, for instance, insisting on a comprehensive knowledge of anatomy to build invisible skeletons under the skins and clothing of his paintings.

Leonardo, born in Vinci, a town near Florence, Italy in 1452, the illegitimate son of notary Piero da Vinci, who was able to help promote his artistic efforts despite never having legitimated his brilliant son Leonardo, was apprenticed to an artist in Florence where he soon distinguished himself as a master of perspective, color, and drafting. Throughout his long and illustrious career, Leonardo moved restlessly from Florence to Milan to Rome, and eventually to France, where he spent his last years attached to King Francis I and died in 1519. Leonardo is renowned for his great paintings The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper as well others. Beyond painting, his achievements and ideas in engineering, technology, anatomy, military science, mathematics and further were recorded in his journals. Many of his discoveries and speculations were lost for hundreds of years, because he neglected to publish his writings and drawings, while abandoning or procrastinating in completing many of his most famous paintings. Despite this, on his death he was recognized throughout Europe as one of history’s greatest geniuses, a reputation which has only become brighter through the ages.

Mona Lisa

If you’re a person who goes to museums or enjoys paintings and painting, you’ll never look at a canvas or drawing with the same perspective (pun intended) after reading Isaacson’s chapter on the “Science of Art,” which explores Leondardo’s deep and inter-related developing ideas spreading far beyond art into the realms of science and math. “Just as he blurred the boundaries between art and science, he did so to the boundaries between reality and fantasy, between experience and mystery, between objects and their surroundings.” (270) Thus the sciences become metaphysical, moving into the space where observation interacts with belief and knowledge.

Isaacson makes the discovery, search, acquisition, and verification of Leonardo’s work into exciting detective stories, bringing the tales into the present day while remaining thoroughly in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Names like Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark vie with Sforza and Ludivico as important in the Leonardo story, giving the whole book a shade of a contemporary thriller without the boiler plate of Dan Brown. A hint of a Mona Lisa smile flits around Isaacson’s mind as he weaves the story of how art, technology, and science first combined in Leonardo’s ceaseless search for more remains alive with the search for the Master. The chapter on La Bella Principessa, a previously unattributed drawing, provides as good detective writing as any novel while its owner covers Europe and the U.S. to confirm the insight which had first prompted him to purchase the piece.

Leonardo's Drawings

Leonardo’s intellectual development from being a believer in experience as the best teacher to combining his own current experience with traditions and knowledge handed down from antiquity in writing, architecture, mathematics, science, optics, engineering, sculpture, and art help him create the qualities that so characterize the Renaissance as re-birth and new birth of how to know. Much of Leonardo’s writing becomes a treatise on ways of knowing. Isaacson delights in exploring Leonardo’s mind through his almost limitless works distributed worldwide to libraries, museums, and private collectors. Leonardo’s experiments with using shadows, colors, shapes as well as his thought experiences recounted with words and illustrations suggest the breadth and intensity of his quest. “Just as he blurred the boundaries between art and science, he did so to the boundaries between reality and fantasy, between experience and mystery, between objects and their surroundings.” (270) Thus the sciences become metaphysical, moving into the space where observation interacts with belief and knowledge.

Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson, University Professor of History at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN, and editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Leonardo da Vinci; Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; and Kissinger: A Biography. He is also the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. In Leonardo da Vinci, he emerges as a benevolent character himself, taking joy in his own searches as he seeks to fathom the genius of this exceptional character in human history.

Perhaps no artist, no character, in history has left so much data while remaining such an enigma. Yet, as Isaacson brings his narrative to a close, Leonardo becomes increasingly difficult to encompass. His passions, his intelligence, his ceaseless questioning followed by obsessive studies helped lead him to some understanding of the answers he sought leaving those viewing his work with a certain frustration. While giving so much, Leonardo, like his most famous painting, holds himself slightly aloof, leaving uncertainties for us to contemplate for eternity.

Isaacson challenges the reader. In his discussion of Leonardo’s thoughts about how water flows and eddies, he interrupts the discussions to say, “Try noticing all that when you next fill a sink,” (432) stopping the reader to consider staring deeply into the bowl of water after shaving. His own delight at exploring Leonardo’s world, his insatiable curiosity and his ability to illustrate revelations clearly and precisely intrigue and elevate the author’s own thinking. Isaacson’s books on Leonardo, Franklin, Einstein, and Jobs detail the exploration of the world through the eyes of geniuses most of us can’t fathom ourselves, let alone illuminate for the thoughtful reader. I bought my own copy of Leonardo da Vinci and give it my highest recommendation.

Some thoughts on how to read this book: I bought Leonardo di Vinci as a hardback book on the recommendation of a commentator who mentioned the quality of the photographs, which are very good. However, if I were to purchase it again, however, I would buy it as a Kindle book, even though, at present, the Kindle version is more expensive than the hardback. I found it advantageous to access the largest image available on Google Images using my browser to focus in on small details as I read. Many of the details Isaacson writes about emerge on such close attention. It would be better still, to be able to examine the originals in detail. Unfortunately…..