Book Series Review: The Dune Chronicles: Dune (1965), Dune Messiah (1969), Children of Dune (1976), God Emperor of Dune (1981), Heretics of Dune (1984) and Chapterhouse: Dune (1985). Frank Herbert.

Today I'm doing something a little different.  Instead of writing a review of one book, I'm doing a quick summary of a series of related books by an author that deserve to be recognized as a whole body of work. There are several such series that are lifetime favorites of mine, so I'll begin with Frank Herbert's Dune Chronicles, a 6-book set written and published during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.  

(I am not including in this discussion the many other Dune novels spun off and written by Herbert's son Brian Herbert, and several other writers with whom he collaborated, even though I understand that many of them were based on notes and ideas for stories which Frank Herbert had created).

There is no doubt that the Dune Chronicles is one of the greatest book series, if not the greatest, in all of science fiction.  I re-read all three of the first three Dune books recently for the first time in decades, and then kept going with the other three books in Herbert’s 6-book epic Dune series, in part to see how well they have withstood the test of time.

I’m pleased to report that they are still every bit as relevant, as prescient and as timeless as they seemed when I first read them long ago; in fact, some recent commentators have suggested they’re even more relevant now, given the geopolitical, military and ecological developments on planet Earth since Herbert finished the last of the books in the 1980s.

The first three and best-known novels in the 6-book set, Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune, trace the rise and fall of a galactic empire under a young nobleman, Paul Atreides, who becomes the messianic leader of an oppressed people on the desert planet of Dune when he acquires the ability to see the future. Its narrative arc is centered around a classic “hero’s journey” story line, inextricably linked to a long tale of revolution, imperial foundation, conquest and dissolution.

The stories feature great power conflicts and intrigue on a bleak desert planet, a poor but well-adapted nomadic people with a mysterious, fierce religion, and a valuable resource they control that is key to all interplanetary travel and trade. Sound familiar? It did in the 1960s and 1970s too, even before the 1973 Oil embargo and the Middle East Forever Wars of our recent times.

The remaining three books (God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune) are somewhat more esoteric. God Emperor of Dune brings a final end to the Paul Atreides-centered imperial era, by revealing how his son Leto II acquired godlike powers and near immortality, and then instituted a forced era of peace and civilizational stagnation across the galaxy spanning thousands of years.

Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune then trace various further developments in the long history of interstellar humanity, and the ultimate fates of several of the secretive organizations and movements that played such important roles in the first three Dune novels.

I actually found the latter three books better, and more memorable and intriguing this time, than when I read them when they were first published in the 1980s, but I believe they are more of an acquired taste. They may be too complex and too far removed for many readers from the simpler “hero’s journey” and “rise and fall of an empire” themes of the first three books.

Nevertheless, all these stories are rich in ecological, political, religious, military and economic speculation, and come with loads of intrigue and adventure. They were also exceptional compared to most "golden age" science fiction stories, in Herbert's interest in and explorations of the power and importance of women and their social roles, intellects and abilities in the human story, as well as those of the men. Very highly recommended.

Movie Review: Te Ata (2021). Netflix.

This is a short historical docudrama about an early 20th century young Chickasaw woman from Oklahoma, known as Te Ata, who became a famous actress and performer despite discrimination and prejudice against her as a Native American and a woman.

She eventually became a friend of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and a legendary storyteller and performer of traditional American Indian cultural stories and myths. I had never heard of her before, so this was an interesting and worthwhile revelation. Recommended.

Book Review: The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb (2019). Sam Kean.

This history book is an account of the small number of scientists, OSS (U.S. Office of Strategic Services) and SOE (British Special Operations Executive) members, political and military figures and oddballs who worked to prevent Hitler and the Germans from developing atomic weapons in World War II.

It includes the story of Mel Berg, a well-known Major League Baseball figure and Red Sox catcher (and a secret OSS agent), some of whose exploits, including an attempted assassination of the German physicist Werner Heisenberg in Switzerland were also the subject of a recent very good spy movie, The Catcher Was a Spy (2018).

Numerous other famous and less well-known figures also played a part in the narrative, and the efforts to deny the Nazis the atomic bomb. This was an intriguing look down another of the endless little byways of the World War II story. Recommended.

From Wayne: Blog News and Brand New Driver Song Release.

As most readers know, The Memory Cache blog is my personal platform for sharing my writing, ideas, useful information and reviews with a reading audience.

Since I launched it back in February, I've been very pleased to see that there does appear to be a small but regular group of people who are coming back regularly to see what's new, and what books, movies and TV shows I've reviewed recently.

I noticed the other day that the site's page view count has gone over 2,500 since I launched it. It's not millions, but it's still gratifying!

Thank you so much for your interest, and please let your friends and family know about the site too, if you think they might enjoy reading it, and using its categorized lists of different types of content to find good books to read, good shows to see, and interesting topics to discover and learn about.

Meanwhile, some readers may not know that the other creative project I started early in the pandemic, as a new hobby, was writing and recording my own original rock, country and folk-influenced songs.

I released my first three singles last year, with music videos, which you can hear on all major music streaming services, and also see on my YouTube channel, which you can find by clicking on the link to my music under the Favorite Links heading on the right side of the page. You can also find my artist social media accounts on both Facebook and Instagram at @wayneparkernotes. Please feel free to follow me there if interested.

In that vein, I'm delighted to announce the release today of my latest song, Brand New Driver, which is now available or arriving soon at all major music streaming services, as well as on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Check it out! And I do hope you enjoy it.

Have a great day, and rock on!

Book Review: In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown (2018). Nathaniel Philbrick.

Another excellent popular American history work by Philbrick, this book covers the last three years of the American Revolution, focusing on the battle for the South during that period, and Washington's growing understanding of the need for naval power to counter the Royal Navy's control of the American coast.

Philbrick documents Washington's ongoing efforts to get the French to commit a large naval force to the war, which caused him endless frustrations and delays, but ultimately led to the Battle of the Chesapeake between British and French fleets.

Philbrick portrays this sea battle, where the French navy forced the British fleet to escape to the north to refit and regroup, as the decisive development that set up the American victory at Yorktown, by cutting off Lord Cornwallis's forces from resupply or escape by sea. 

It's a lively read, and a good military and political analysis of this less well-known phase of the Revolution. Recommended.

Book Review: Children Who Remember Previous Lives (2001). Ian Stevenson.

Some years ago I heard about the work of a University of Virginia Medical School psychiatrist, Dr. Jim B. Tucker, who has spent his long academic career (up to the present) researching thousands of cases of the phenomenon of very young children who claim to remember details of previous lives, which has been reported in societies around the world. I then read two earlier books he had written, recently combined into one, Before: Children’s Memories of Previous Lives (2021), which I reviewed here. From this I learned that Dr. Tucker is almost certainly the world’s current leading academic authority on this unusual phenomenon.

However, as I learned from Dr. Tucker’s books, an earlier researcher, Dr. Ian Stevenson, was actually the original study founder, and Dr. Tucker’s predecessor, mentor and academic advisor in the long-running University of Virginia research study of children with previous life memories, which has now been underway continuously for the past fifty years.

In Dr. Stevenson’s book, which is remarkably dry, clinical and scientific for a topic which you might expect to be eerie, sensational and speculative, he presents an intellectual defense and report on his life’s work, his approaches to compiling and analyzing reports, and the rigorous research and interviewing methodologies he devised early on, with which the study has been conducted.

He begins by describing how the study came into being. He lists all the countries around the world where he and his colleagues have collected reports, and discusses cultural factors and differences between sets of reports from different countries. He delves into many aspects of solved and unsolved cases (a solved case is one where the deceased person whose memories the child claims to have is identified, so that the facts claimed by the child can be compared to official documents, and usually the memories of families and friends of the deceased).

Stevenson reviews the frequency and characteristics of many of the common elements of reports, such as: average time between lives in reports from different cultures, familial connections between current and reported previous lives, birthmarks coinciding with circumstances of death of reported previous lives (such as birthmarks or deformities in the same place on the child’s body as the site of wounds on the deceased), frequency and behavioral effects of sex change between lives, presence of vivid “announcing dreams” to pregnant mothers of children who subsequently report memories of a past life, and many other commonly-occurring features of cases.

Stevenson also evaluates alternative explanations to reincarnation in these cases, the effects of widespread cultural belief or disbelief in reincarnation on the frequency of reporting and the characteristics of reports taken from different parts of the world, and considers philosophical and religious implications of differing proposed explanations relative to the major world religions.

Most importantly, he makes it clear that as a scientist, he doesn’t claim to know whether this phenomenon and his study of it “proves” reincarnation. But he does suggest based on exhaustively documented reports from thousands of case histories, and the fact that young children don’t have the experiential knowledge or the access to information to make up the detailed, very specific sets of facts they frequently recount (which are often verified in solved cases), that reincarnation may provide the least convoluted and perhaps most likely explanation to fit the inexplicable nature of this phenomenon.

This book is an important foundation for understanding the study of children who remember past lives, by the leading and original scientist in this unusual research field. It can be heavy going in parts, because of Stevenson’s dry, dispassionate and unsensational writing style, but that in fact lends to its credibility. Recommended.

Miss Fisher's Mysteries. Seasons 1-3 (2012-2015). Amazon Prime (Acorn).

Although this popular Australian mystery series had an amateurish feel to it (or perhaps it was just done that way to deliberately mimic a much earlier movie-era style), it nevertheless featured the oddly charming if improbable story of an heiress and World War I survivor who returns from Europe to Melbourne in the 1920s, and decides to help the local constabulary solve murders and other crimes.

The wealthy Miss Phryne Fisher (played by Essie Davis) is beautiful, uninhibited and sexually liberated, a stylish dresser, a pilot, a horseback rider, a race car driver, an actress, a femme fatale, a mentor to young girls, an inspired crime-solver, and a heroine who's always ready with her signature gold-plated snub-nose revolver whenever things get dangerous. Is there anything she can't or won’t do, for the sheer thrill of it, while solving the mystery and catching the criminal?

It was corny and old-fashioned, but fun. I also saw the movie, Miss Fisher & the Crypt of Tears, released in 2020, which was essentially more of the same. Recommended.

Book Review: Chaos Monkeys: Inside the Silicon Valley Money Machine (2016). Antonio Garcia Martinez.

Chaos Monkeys is a gossipy but amusing personal account of life in the fast lane of post-2008 crash Wall Street investment firms, Silicon Valley startups, and Facebook, by a young man who experienced it, and was there in the middle of it as it was all taking off. It's cynical, funny and outrageous, with very good insight and commentary on how things really work in the high-stakes worlds of big money and venture capital.

It also contains the clearest descriptions that I have ever read of how online real-time advertising markets work in the virtual world of Facebook, Google, Twitter and others. These mechanisms and algorithms, which daily supply all those eerily relevant and timely ads on your smartphone, as you're browsing some seemingly unrelated app, are technologically impressive, at the same time they are truly disturbing and annoying on the level of the invasions of our personal privacy which are required to make them work.

Martinez's descriptions of how these uncanny and often creepy systems and markets were developed, and how they function, is crucial reading for anyone who wants to understand the strange social media and internet world all around us, which most of us now take for granted (although it shocked me today to recall that the iPhone and its ubiquitous smartphone descendants have only been around for about 15 years). Recommended.

Editorial: On Current Events, and Today's Abortion Rights Decision.

Hello, dear readers. Here on The Memory Cache blog, it’s once again Rock and Roll Friday, the fourth Friday of each month, where I try to post several reviews of books I’ve read and shows I’ve seen that relate to popular music and the music industry. In keeping with this tradition, I have posted a book review of Dave Grohl’s book The Storyteller, and the fascinating documentary interviews of Paul McCartney called McCartney 3,2,1. After all, the show must go on, and we need to keep trying to find joy in our lives, and things to celebrate and enjoy.

But it’s hard to feel celebratory in the wake of this morning’s expected but disastrous Supreme Court decision reversing Roe vs. Wade, and striking down abortion rights for women across much of this country. There is particularly ominous language in Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion, which states clearly that today’s decision, and its underlying legal theory, are laying the basis to roll back many other personal rights of privacy, and human rights, that we have enjoyed and come to depend upon for the past half century. Same sex marriage? Contraception? Interracial marriage? All of these rights and others we take for granted now hang by a thread.

At the same time, we have so many other deeply concerning issues confronting us. Of course, there is the lingering trauma and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic which has caused such havoc to our lives and the world for the past two+ years. There is the ongoing struggle over reasonable gun control measures, and the shock of the constant string of mass casualty shootings, and daily gun fatalities in neighborhoods across the country. There are the hearings in Congress that are revealing the full extent of the attempts to overthrow our democratic system of government in 2020 that led to the January 6th uprisings. There is the danger that these subversive strategies are ongoing, and are now aimed at completing successfully this fall, and in the 2024 election, the insurrection that failed the last time. There is the dangerous and destructive war in Ukraine. And then there is the inflationary moment in the economy, which hits many of us so deeply in our personal finances, and our everyday standard of living.

Behind all of these unending issues and worries sits the most catastrophic looming crisis of all: the climate change which is rapidly destabilizing the planetary environment upon which we all depend for our survival and prosperity. I fear the urgency of trying to solve this confoundingly difficult global problem is increasingly being lost in the noise about all the other more immediate and localized crises that hit the headlines every day.

I believe most of us are trying in some way to figure out what we can do to help. I wonder that too. I know voting for responsible people, and doing what we can to support good people in public service who are trying to fix things and make them better, can go some ways. Standing up to authoritarians who would undermine our democratic system is going to become increasingly necessary and urgent in the days ahead. We will all need to get more involved to save ourselves and the world we want to live in.

For myself, I intend to keep using this blog to bring useful information to your attention. Of course, some of it will be just for fun, and to help keep us sane, but as much as possible, I will be highlighting books and shows that call out problems, identify solutions, explain what’s going on, and fight injustice. I hope you’ll continue to come by the site, and see what’s new, and perhaps it can help you be informed and provide tools for understanding your own situation as it develops, and doing what you can to respond constructively to events as they unfold.

Best wishes to you and yours, and try to stay positive. It looks like a bumpy road up ahead.

TV Review: McCartney 3,2,1 (Season 1, 2021). Hulu.

I recently had the opportunity to watch a marvelously understated little documentary mini-series on Hulu called McCartney 3,2,1. The “McCartney” in the title refers to Sir Paul McCartney, one of the two surviving Beatles, Wings bandleader, genius songwriter (with and without John Lennon) and legendary solo artist throughout the past fifty years of rock music history.

The documentary itself is incredibly spare in action, setting and appearance. It was shot in black and white, mostly in a simple music studio with a mixing board and not much else, and features nothing more than two people talking for the entire six sessions of the mini-series. One of them is McCartney, as he is now, the elder statesman and extraordinary maestro of the rock and roll music world that he and his band-mates in the Beatles played such a profound role in creating.

The other person is the interviewer, Rick Rubin. Many readers may never have heard of him, but for popular music historians and enthusiasts (present company included), he is also a legendary figure, for Rubin has produced best-selling records for and by many of the top stars of rock, country and hip-hop. He is a brilliant sound engineer, with a deep appreciation for the artists, studios, recording history, sonic qualities and music trends which have shaped popular music over the past 50 years, many times with his hands at the controls of the mixing boards during the recording sessions.

Rubin is the perfect interviewer to ask McCartney fascinating and in-depth questions about how some of the greatest Beatles’ songs and albums were created. He has a warmth and sense of humor which draws McCartney out, leading to fascinating personal anecdotes, and so many surprising stories about how iconic sounds in different Beatle songs came into being.

The two of them are also aided in this exploratory process by the fact that Rubin has some of the Beatle's multi-track song recordings loaded into the mixing board, so he can actually play and separate out the sounds in particular song mixes, and then talk with McCartney about how and why things were done as they were.

There are also plenty of personal reminiscences from McCartney about the Beatles’ experiences and influences at different stages of their years together, and their relationships within the band, especially his close personal and creative connection with John Lennon.

This may not be fascinating to people who aren’t Beatles fans, and particularly not if they also don’t know or care anything about the creative process by which original music is made. But for anyone who loves the Beatles and their music, and wonders how on earth they were able to write and record so many different kinds of timeless songs in a few short years, this is all very revealing, and it's an amusing, animated conversation between two old pros that we are privileged to see and hear. Highly recommended.

Book Review: The Storyteller (2021). Dave Grohl.

For those who don’t know who Dave Grohl is, he might say facetiously that he “was that other guy in Nirvana”, that is, the power drummer behind the drum set, who provided the pounding beat while Kurt Cobain was out front, playing guitar and singing the generation-defining Nirvana songs he had written, for those few short years until Cobain took his own life at the peak of the 1990s Seattle-based Grunge rock era.

As the band-mate and close friend to a tragically and prematurely deceased rock superstar, Grohl could easily have self-destructed, retired and vanished from the music scene, or chosen to switch to a different career. But he did none of those things. Instead, after a brief hiatus, he re-created himself as a guitar player, lead singer, songwriter, front man and bandleader for another top rock act of the 2000s era which he founded, The Foo Fighters.

Along the way, he did quite a few other interesting things too. He has produced several music-related documentary movies and TV shows, including a fascinating movie he made for Netflix, Sound City (2013), about a legendary old Los Angeles music studio, the stars who had recorded there, and the marvelous obsolete analog mixing board he ultimately rescued for his own home studio; a TV mini-series, Sonic Highways (2014) documenting a 20th anniversary recording tour for the Foo Fighters, during which they recorded at eight famous studios across the country; and a mock horror movie with the band, Studio 666 (2022).

He has also had various collaborations with other famous musicians, including a memorable performance on Saturday Night Live playing drums with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which led to an offer from Petty to join the band, but which he ultimately declined in order to pursue his plans for the Foo Fighters band he had just started.

In The Storyteller, Grohl doesn’t write a straight narration of every twist and turn along his path, or provide a precise chronological account of his career and life. Instead, he tells stories: anecdotes of different things he experienced, and things that happened to him that impacted him personally, emotionally and professionally. It’s occasionally a little confusing, because he sometimes jumps back and forth in time, but ultimately it allows him to connect the dots, and paint a convincing picture of himself as a man and an artist.

This is a worthwhile and self-reflective autobiographical sketch by one of the leading and most popular men of the contemporary rock music world, who survived a devastating personal and professional loss early in his career, along with outsized fame and celebrity at an early age, only to start over and succeed again on his own terms. Recommended.

Book Review: Becoming Bulletproof (2020). Evy Poumpouras.

A former female Secret Service agent combines stories from her career, protecting the lives of several presidents and their families, with insights on how many aspects of her training as an elite security agent can help individuals to be safer and more secure in their daily lives.

The author is particularly revelatory in her discussions of interrogation techniques, and how to tell if someone is lying. She is a believer in "soft" methods that try to build an empathetic connection between interviewer and subject, and describes the sometimes counter-intuitive approaches she would take in order to elicit confessions, and to know when the subject was lying or telling the truth.  She also suggests these techniques and insights can be used by others, to be able to avoid being deceived and victimized by others in the course of their everyday lives.

I've read several of these kinds of "how to be more secure" books. It is intriguing to learn the ways of thinking and the psychological techniques used by law enforcement and intelligence experts, which certainly could translate into normal work and life situations. But I also think that most of us don't have all that many opportunities to practice and learn these sorts of skills, and to develop the level of awareness of others and of our physical environment that a top professional like Poumpouras does in the course of a law enforcement career.

Still, it was an enlightening read, and I also enjoyed her perspective on various presidents and some of their family members from her close interactions with them on their protective details. Recommended.

TV Review: The Restaurant (from Sweden, Seasons 1-3). Sundance.

This series is the story of a multi-generational family and their employees and friends, beginning at the end of World War II and moving forward into the early 1970s, who work together and fight with each other in and about the family's fancy prestigious restaurant in Stockholm.

The Restaurant has sometimes been compared to Downton Abbey, for its themes of class conflict within personal relationships, intrigue and competition within families and friendships, and love and betrayal.

It’s pretty good entertainment, although some of the family members display really contemptible behavior toward each other (I guess that's what makes it good drama). With sub-titles (from the original Swedish). Recommended.

Book Review: A Gentleman in Moscow (2016). Amor Towles.

This is the beautifully written story of an elegant Russian gentleman and nobleman of the old order, Count Alexander Rostov, who becomes a "former person" when he is sentenced by the young Soviet regime in the 1920s to live out his life confined to the Metropol Hotel in Moscow.

It’s a remarkable tale of how he copes for years under a kind of luxurious house arrest, and finds meaning and love in the human relationships he builds in his tiny slice of Russian society. At the end, there’s a surprise foray into espionage, intrigue and danger, which adds delightful spice to the story. Highly recommended.

Book Review: Killers of the Blood Red Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (2017). David Grann.

This troubling but important book is a history of the murders, plots, investigations and ultimate convictions surrounding the violent deaths of many Osage Indians in Oklahoma during the 1920s, by which a few local white men conspired to kill off tribal members in order to gain control of the victims' shares of the tribe's fabulous oil holdings and wealth.

It's a story of despicable greed, betrayal, racism, conspiracy and the rise of the FBI, for which this was one of the first big sensational cases J. Edgar Hoover used to promote his new FBI organization.

A disturbing last chapter reveals that the author, through additional research beyond the main arrests and convictions which make up the book's narrative, discovered abundant historical evidence of the involvement of a much larger number of white participants than those convicted, in murder, theft and cover-up of many more crimes against the Osage Indians, over an even longer duration than that covered by the book. Recommended.

Book Review: Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from Bubonic Plague (2019). David K. Randall.

This is an interesting social history about the appearance of Bubonic plague in California at the end of the 19th century, which was the last major appearance of the plague on the North American continent.

The narrative covers the careers of the two successive key figures in the nascent U.S. Public Health Service who tried to track down and fight the spread of the plague, particularly in the oppressed and socially isolated Chinese immigrant community in San Francisco.

In the process, Randall describes the complex set of factors, including poverty, terrible tenement housing conditions in Chinatown, an out-of-control rat population, international trade pressures and local racism which had to be understood and overcome in order to put an end to the last major plague outbreak in America.

This book is an excellent piece of social history, weaving together a rich mixture of people and populations, racist movements, the science and development of modern epidemiology and public health, crime, “great man” biography and San Francisco local politics at an early stage of the city’s rise. Highly recommended.

TV Review: Self-Made (2020). Netflix.

This was a 4-part miniseries about Madam C. J. Walker, the first black female millionaire, a poor woman in the early twentieth century who built a huge and enduring hair product empire and personal fortune, focused on the cosmetic needs and desires of black women. 

Needless to say, it didn't all go smoothly, and she had to overcome constant prejudice and obstacles as both a woman and an African-American, but she had an indomitable will to succeed, which comes through well in this series. Starring Octavia Spencer as Madam C. J. Walker. Recommended.

Book Review: The Inequality Machine: How College Divides Us (2019). Paul Tough.

This book, which was originally published under the title The Years That Matter Most, is a surprisingly interesting and informative exploration of the college admissions process, and how success getting in and completing a degree shapes life outcomes. 

Topics covered include: the special role of elite universities, and the way the competition and criteria to get in to them ends up favoring the children of the wealthy; the social and academic difficulties of poor and minorities when they do get in to the elite schools; the ways that SAT and ACT also favor the wealthy, but are poor predictors of collegiate academic success compared to high school grades; the value of "top 10%" admissions policies in bringing in students who are the most highly qualified and most likely to succeed, regardless of social class; and academic approaches and non-academic factors that affect success and degree completion.

The author nicely blends social science research in these areas with personal interviews and stories of individual students, whose experiences illustrate different aspects of the topics covered in the book. Recommended.

TV Review: The Undoing (2020). HBO Max.

The Undoing, a major HBO mini-series released late in 2020, stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant as a rich and successful power couple on the upper West side of New York, whose pre-teen son attends an elite private school.

Early in the series, another parent from the son’s school is murdered, and the series shows the impact of the unfolding murder investigation on the couple’s "perfect marriage", as it comes apart under the pressure of unfolding events and revelations.

This series came in for a lot of critical commentary by reviewers -- one writer said it was "lifestyle porn", because of the obvious wealth and privilege of the main characters -- but I thought it was perfectly appropriate to the story. Excellent and riveting entertainment, with tremendous, suspenseful acting and script. Recommended.

Book Review: The Looming Tower (2007). Lawrence J. Wright.

I read this very good book and Pulitzer Prize winner after seeing the same-named HBO mini-series (starring Jeff Daniels) based on it. It is an absorbing account of some of the key events in the late 1990s and early 2000s which led up to the Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

The story is told through the experiences and perspectives of a few important characters, particularly in the F.B.I., C.I.A. and Al Qaeda. It gives a disturbing view into how bureaucratic infighting between the F.B.I and C.I.A., and a lack of comprehension (by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence groups) of the nature of the Islamic Jihadist movement, organizations and leadership led to the intelligence failures before the Nairobi Embassy bombings in 1998, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, and the 9/11 attacks.

It may seem that these events are all well-worn or tired stories by now, but I found the book (as well as the TV series) provided a fresh perspective, and some valuable new insights into the human and institutional fallibilities that allowed Al Qaeda's terrorism to carry out its most successful attacks on our country and its people. Recommended.

Book Review: The FBI Way (2020). Frank Figliuzzi.

The author, who is now a cable TV analyst, was a career FBI agent who eventually rose to high-level leadership within the organization. His book is a combination of insights into the "FBI Way", that is, describing the norms of the organization and the processes they use to foster excellence, responsibility and integrity in their staff, with illustrative examples of how these norms and processes have succeeded and failed, taken from his own career and experience.

Figliuzzi is not a fan of Donald Trump, so he does cover topics in the latter part of the book relating to how the FBI was challenged by Trump's attitude toward the Bureau, and by his attempts to destroy its independence, and turn it and the Justice Department into tools of his own authoritarian and gangsterish aspirations. Recommended.

Movie Review: The Railway Man (2013). Netflix.

Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman star in this movie based on the true story of a British World War II veteran and former prisoner of the Japanese, tormented after the war by his past, who tracks down one of his wartime torturers, and ultimately forgives and reconciles with him. Kidman portrays the protagonist's later-in-life romantic interest and then wife, who believed in him and helped him through his postwar struggles.

An interesting and well-acted historical drama about the savagery of war and its traumatic aftermath, as well as the healing possibilities of forgiveness. Recommended.

Book Review: American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts (2019). Chris McGreal.

This is a deeply-researched account of how the American opioid crisis began in the early 2000s. There was so much about how the opioid crisis came about that I did not know, but that I learned from this book.

It began in West Virginia, where coal miners wracked with pain from their hard work in the coal mines were offered a “cure” for their pain by local doctors, consisting of the heavily marketed new artificial opioids such as oxycontin and oxycodone. At the same time, medical practice and thought had been veering from the prohibitionist approach of the mid-twentieth century toward a more “liberal” view that it was the doctor’s job to treat pain wherever possible, using whatever pain-killing drugs were available.

Into this mix of social conditions, changing medical treatment philosophies and opportunities for profit came several Big Pharma companies, with some brand-new drugs to push and a lot of money to be made.

Soon, prescription “mills” were springing up in little towns in the coal fields, aided by a few unscrupulous physicians, and then almost overnight, billions of pills were being sold by a few rural drug stores. From there, the scourge moved outward, as Congress failed to respond to the small number of physicians and whistleblowers who raised the alarm about the addiction crisis in the making. 

McGreal does an excellent job tracing the social and political history of the opioid crisis, and describing in devastating detail the way it spread through American society and families. Recommended.

Book Review: A Long Night in Paris (2020). Dov Alfov.

A very promising first novel by an Israeli journalist, this well-written spy thriller and murder mystery starts with the mysterious disappearance of a young Israeli high-tech businessman at Orly Airport in Paris.

From there, the fast-paced adventure pits two resourceful "acting" leaders at different levels in a top-secret Israeli spy agency (one young and female, the other older and male) against their own organization's internal political conspiracies, the plodding French police inspector who is trying to manage the case, and a complex Chinese assassination plot.

To make it more challenging, another Israeli agent goes missing, as our two heroes rush to understand the underlying cause of the sudden outbreak of high-profile murders in the French capital.

An enjoyable and satisfying tale, with excellent characterization, plenty of high-tech intelligence wizardry, and an amusingly jaundiced view of the inner workings of police and intelligence organizations. This would make a great movie. Recommended.

Book Review: Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (2016). Cathy O'Neil.

Ms. O'Neil, a PhD data scientist, peers behind the curtain of how our automated society uses algorithms based on opaque assumptions and dubious logic to reach conclusions about us in every sphere of our lives, that tend to perpetuate stereotypes, increase unfair discrimination, and undermine the democratic ideal that as individuals, we should all be treated equally under the law.

She explores how this dynamic of biased and opaque algorithms works to our detriment in education, personal finances, job-seeking and employment, voting and health care among other important spheres of our lives. Recommended.

Book Review: The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google (2017). Scott Galloway.

This book provides a dire warning on how each of the "Big Four" tech companies (five, if you include Microsoft, i.e. Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple) is undermining freedom, democracy, economic fairness and other positive values by the different ways in which they mine and exploit our data and manipulate us, using tools of control that dwarf anything ever seen before.

On The John Oliver Show (on HBO) last Sunday (June 5, 2022), Oliver's main segment described two bipartisan bills being considered in Congress right now to address issues of anti-competitiveness and monopolistic practices by these same companies. The Four is excellent background reading for understanding why and how these practices are destructive to individuals, small businesses, the democratic political system and the economy, and why these proposed anti-monopolistic bills are a necessary first step in reigning these companies in.  

Galloway does a particularly good job highlighting how all the destructive aspects of these companies' activities are carried out under the guise of friendly, liberal corporate images, and aided by the seductive attractions of all the everyday conveniences, incredible tools and bright shiny objects they provide, and upon which we all depend. Recommended.

Book Review: Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II (2012). Arthur Herman.

Freedom’s Forge is a very worthwhile and important history of how American businesses jumped into the fray early in World War II, after more than a decade of the Great Depression, to make America "the arsenal of democracy". The author particularly focuses on the crucial role played by Bill Knudsen (head of of General Motors) and Henry Kaiser (the construction magnate who branched out into many other business areas to serve the war effort).

This story is well-researched and intriguing, as well as inspirational. It's almost unbelievable to learn how fast businesses (both large and small) were able to re-tool and start turning out astonishing quantities of weapons and material once the U.S. went to war.

There is also a fascinating discussion of how many individuals and families were able to start small businesses as parts suppliers for the major manufacturers (with the help of a government office coordinating collection and publication of requirements) and thus escape their Depression-era poverty while aiding the war effort.

It makes one wonder why we moderns, with all our technological wizardry and productivity, don’t seem able to pull off similar overnight industrial miracles with respect to transforming our fossil-fuel based economy and way of life to ward off the worst effects of climate change. Recommended.

Book Review: The Good Lord Bird (2013). James McBride.

This is an amusing and award-winning satire and fictional narrative of the last years of "Osawatomie" John Brown (the famous abolitionist), as told through the eyes and experiences of a young slave boy who is mistaken by Brown for a girl.

Our narrator ends up being freed by Brown, and swept along (now masquerading as a girl) as Brown leads his abolitionist campaign, and his tiny "army" of religious fanatics, from skirmishes in Kansas to their inevitable denouement at the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry.

Along the way, John Brown and his ragtag group encounter Jeb Stuart, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, as well as other minor heroes and villains of Brown's real-life famous private crusade against slavery that helped spark the Civil War. Recommended.

TV Review: Friday Night Lights, Seasons 1-5. Hulu.

This NBC TV series from 2006-2011 is based on a non-fiction book of the same name from the 1990s, and a 2004 film of the same name. For reasons unknown, this gem of a series slipped by me at the time it was originally broadcast, and then for the past decade on streaming TV.
 

Big oversight! This was one of the better series I've watched in the past several years, and there was a lot of it to binge (five seasons). At the center of the show is a recently-hired high school football coach at a public school with an elite football program in rural Texas (played by Kyle Chandler), and his wife (Connie Britton) and daughter (Aimee Teegarden). But it also features a very strong and diverse ensemble cast of supporting characters, including students, football team members, and local boosters, parents and personalities.

What is fantastic about it is how real it is -- there's hardly a social issue or problem affecting American families, adults and kids (especially teenagers) that doesn't appear, all wrapped around a sports team drama. And those issues are just as contemporary and topical today as they were ten years go.

I also learned from reading an online story about the making of this series that the filming style was quite unusual, in that scripts were used only sparingly. The actors, steeped in their roles and their characters' identities, would usually be told the scene situation, and then would improvise their performances as they filmed. It led to a very moving and believable drama series, extremely well acted -- and thoroughly enjoyable. Highly recommended.

Book Reviews: Blackout (2010) and All Clear (2010). Connie Willis.

I recently re-read these two thick science fiction and historical novels, which were originally intended to be one volume, but grew to be two because Connie Willis couldn't fit the whole grand story into one book. They are built on the same time-travel plot premise introduced in The Doomsday Book, which I reviewed recently.

It's six years after the events of The Doomsday Book (it’s now 2060), and the time travel missions of the student historians at Oxford have proliferated, but trying to manage the complexity of it all is becoming an ever more chaotic process. Planned drops into past eras are being reshuffled by Mr. Dunworthy (the head of time travel historical studies) at the last minute, no one can get the right period outfits from the Costume department because the historians' schedules keep changing, and it seems to be increasingly hard to find drop sites (exact times and places in the past) that will work with the time travel machinery.

Into this organizational maelstrom come three young historian innocents, Merope, Polly and Michael, each headed for different periods and situations in World War II Great Britain, including the children's evacuations from London, the evacuation from Dunkirk, and the Blitz (the German bombing of London). But once they arrive, they slowly discover their return drops won't open, and they eventually have to face the possibility that perhaps there's no way back to their own era.

Is time travel broken? Could they be altering the outcome of the war by their own actions (which isn't supposed to be possible, according to their time travel theory)? What is going on back in future Oxford? And how can they make contact with each other, to figure out what’s wrong and how to return to their future?

Using Connie Willis's trademark plot devices of missed connections, endless frustrated plans, messages not received or answered, and time travelers under unexpected duress having to constantly improvise new solutions, these two books are a truly wonderful tour through the heroism and bravery of the British people in World War II. Marvelous, moving and really fun to read! Highly recommended.

Book Review: Indestructible: One Man’s Rescue Mission that Changed the Course of WW II (2017). John R. Bruning.

This is the story of "Pappy" Gunn, a legendary air force officer in World War II, who was forced by his military obligations to leave his family behind in Japanese-conquered Manila, then waged a virtual one-man war in the Pacific to rebuild, redesign and improve American aircraft as ground and sea attack weapons delivery systems, fight the war himself as a decorated combat and transport pilot, and at the same time try desperately to rescue his family from brutal Japanese internment in the Philippines.

The stirring story of a brave and unstoppable pirate, pilot, engineer, warrior and military leader to many in the South Pacific theater, and a moving family story of survival against impossible odds. Recommended.

Book Review: Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II (2017). Liza Mundy.

This story is reminiscent of the excellent book and movie Hidden Figures, but without the racial discrimination component to the story. It tells the story of how young women (mostly white) with high math and language aptitudes were recruited by both the Army and the Navy from top American women's colleges in the early 1940s, and then went on to play a crucial role in cracking enemy codes throughout World War II.

It’s yet another inspirational story about previously-unheralded women who contributed to the victories and legacies of the Greatest Generation at war. Recommended.

TV Review: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Season 1 (2022). Disney+.

The first two live-action streaming TV series that Disney launched, based on the Star Wars universe, were The Mandalorian (Seasons 1 and 2, so far), and The Book of Boba Fett (Season 1). Both stories are set in the Star Wars galaxy and timeline, but at least initially have little connection to any of the main plots and central characters of the eleven feature-length Star Wars movies that have been made.

Although there are aspects to both of these Disney TV series that will appeal to die-hard Star Wars enthusiasts, these first two Disney Star Wars TV shows have left me (as a dedicated Star Wars fan who has enjoyed all the big-screen films since the first one was released in 1977) feeling distinctly underwhelmed, and missing some of the vital appeal and magic of the movies.

This is all just background and prelude to the new (and third) Disney Star Wars live-action streaming TV series Obi-Wan Kenobi. And I am happy to say: “This is the droid (oops, I mean, the Star Wars TV show) you are looking for”. Thus far, I’ve only seen the first four of six episodes of Season 1 (and I do hope they make a bunch of seasons). But they have been extremely enjoyable, and fully worthy additions to the Star Wars canon.

To begin: having Ewan McGregor reprise his role as the (then-young) Obi-Wan Kenobi from the prequel trilogy is marvelous good fortune. He is appropriately aged in real life to be playing Obi-Wan as he is now, as his story resumes, ten years after he defeated Anakin Skywalker in The Revenge of the Sith, but then was forced to flee as a Jedi refugee from the Empire just to stay alive, and to guard the life of the hidden child Luke Skywalker on Tatooine.

McGregor is a wonderful actor, who captures perfectly the defeated, discouraged and isolated former hero he has become, now hiding out alone in a desert wasteland, with only a tiny spark of his former brilliance or his many talents visible. Watching him carve off and hide small bits of alien meat product every day for his trusty mount, at his dead-end meat-packing job on Tatooine, conveys better than any words how far he has fallen from the glory of his former Jedi Master days.

But there are plenty of new adventures awaiting Obi-Wan. He will have to confront new and old enemies, and he'll be drawn into unexpected events, and a dangerous plot initiated from the planet Alderaan, which will bring Luke’s hidden twin sister Leia into the story.

And the young Leia Organa (as played by Vivien Lyra Blair) is a delight – a petite, 10-year old girl with preternatural awareness of the adult world around her, a kind and generous spirit toward droids and other lesser beings, a wise guy mouth, and an irreverent, non-compliant attitude that is completely consistent with the young adult Carrie Fisher version of Princess Leia we have all come to know and love from the original trilogy.

I can’t say how this series will end, or whether we will have more seasons ahead to which we can look forward (I would assume so). But for now, it's looking good! If you love Star Wars, watch Obi-Wan Kenobi as soon as you can on Disney+ (new episodes each Wednesday). And May the Force Be With You.

Book Review: Kindness Goes Unpunished (2008). Craig Johnson.

This is the third Walt Longmire mystery novel. Sheriff Walt’s daughter Katie is viciously attacked and put into a potentially fatal coma in Philadelphia, where she has been working as a young lawyer and has an apparently abusive boyfriend.

Walt and his best friend Henry Standing Bear, in town for a display of Native American cultural artifacts, go looking for her attacker, while meeting Walt’s deputy Vic's whole family of Philly cops. Vic comes back from Wyoming to help Walt, and there is a race to see whether she or her divorced mother (or both) might end up in bed with Walt. No spoilers here! But another worthy addition to the Longmire saga, this time in an East Coast urban environment. Recommended.

Book Review: Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter that Changed America (2020). Jim Rasenberger.

This book was a bit slow and academic in style as popular biographies go, but had a very iconic American mid-nineteenth century historical figure as its subject. Of course, everyone has heard about Samuel Colt, his invention of the Colt revolver, and the old line about “God made men, but it took Colonel Colt to make them equal”. But there is a great deal more to Colt’s story.

Colt spent decades trying to invent things, frequently impressing people with his ambition and his inventing skills, but constantly being short of money, and continuing to tinker with his revolver design over many years, before he was finally able to convince the U.S. government to start buying it.

He is considered to be the real father of industrial mass production, which he created by building his own factories for gun manufacture. He survived several scandals, including the notorious trial of one of his brothers for murdering a young woman, and only saw his fortunes finally take off as a result of the Union’s industrial build-up for the Civil War.

By the time he died, he was presiding like a lord over his own “company town” in Connecticut, filled not only with the factories where his guns were made, but also the planned housing of his employees, for whom he had the same sort of godlike status as a modern-day Gates, Jobs or Zuckerberg.

Revolver is an interesting account of a controversial American industrialist, inventor and public figure, and the mid-nineteenth century American society in which he lived. It also gives some important historical context to how lethal modern repeating firearms were first developed and marketed to American society, culture and the government, long before our era of the NRA-supported gun industry, high-capacity pistols and military-style assault rifles. Recommended.

Book Review: News of the World (2016). Paulette Jiles.

This is a very satisfying Western story about an old man, a veteran of several American wars of the early and mid-19th century, who travels from town to town across the post-Civil War west, eking out a living putting on one-man shows, where he reads and comments on stories from the newspapers of the time.

At one stop, he reluctantly accepts the job of returning a 9-year old white girl, who's been abducted by and lived among Indians, to her surviving family members.  It’s a great Western adventure tale about two lonely but strong-willed people, who learn to love and care for each other across the wide bridges of age, culture, language and understanding between them.

I previously reviewed the movie version based on this book, starring Tom Hanks.  I would rate the book as even better than the movie, due to its sensitive and powerful evocation of the complex emotions and slowly-developing relationship between the old man and the girl, and its focus on the unusual history of whites kidnapped by Indians, who then didn't want to return to white society, or to be "rescued" from their Indian families and tribal life.  Highly recommended.

Movie Review: Being the Ricardos (2021). Amazon Prime.

This movie was heavily reviewed last year, mostly favorably, and was written and produced by Aaron Sorkin.  It features Nicole Kidman playing the role of Lucille Ball, during a particular week of filming of the second season of "I Love Lucy", in which she and her husband Desi Arnaz ((Javier Bardem) are trying to deal with tabloid reports that she is a Communist, how to reveal the fact that she is pregnant with a new TV season ahead of her, and pressures in the marriage as Lucille finds out that Desi may be cheating on her.

Kidman's performance is excellent, but the script doesn't require her to re-create many of Lucy's hilarious "physical comedy" performances in the show -- instead, she shows the "behind the scenes" Lucille, especially her genius at envisioning what would make a scene hilarious and believable, and her tough, calculating professional actress side, as she tries to get and retain the fame and respect she seeks. 

There were some disorienting "flash back" scenes, where I lost track of when the scene was taking place relative to the main story line.  But in general, this was an interesting and believable story of two famous Hollywood and TV icons, and their complex professional and personal relationship.  Recommended.

Book Review: Code Over Country: The Tragedy and Corruption of Seal Team Six (2021). Matthew Cole.

This book presents us with the dark side of one of the most legendary and highly-esteemed U.S. military units in our history.  It’s about the U.S. Navy SEALs, and especially the most elite SEAL team and its members, known as SEAL Team Six.

The author first tells the story of the Navy SEALs, going back to their initial formation as UDTs (underwater demolition teams) in World War II, divers whose job was to swim ashore on landing beaches to scout the terrain, and blow up obstacles that would otherwise impede troops as they landed on the beaches.  He then traces their evolution through the growing U.S. emphasis on developing special operations capabilities in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, including the rise of other groups like the Army’s Green Berets and Delta Force, as well as the SEALs.

Everyone knows about SEAL Team Six, who are by now the most famous of all the U.S. special operations groups.  Their members included the snipers who killed the Somali pirates who had kidnapped the captain of the hijacked American cargo ship Maersk Alabama, and also the team that attacked and killed Osama Bin Laden at his hideout in Pakistan.  These were both astonishing feats of military technical skill, planning and heroism, and they have been rightly celebrated by Americans.

The problem as Cole presents it is that SEAL Team Six had at its core from the foundation an ethos of loyalty and secrecy to the team and its commander that were counter to the general SEAL values of loyalty to the country, self-sacrifice and a willingness to stay quiet and not seek personal gain from the silent work they are charged with carrying out.  

The original founder of SEAL Team Six, Richard Marcinko, was considered by many to be an egotistical self-promoter, who wrote books about his exploits and did public speaking tours, and who was eventually dismissed.  Based on the example he set, though, others in the organization have since taken the same route, as has been seen in the years since the Bin Laden action, where several veterans of the raid have written “tell all” books, and tried to take credit from each other for firing the shots that killed Bin Laden.

Cole does a thorough analysis too of what the “Forever Wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq have done to the SEALS generally, and particularly to SEAL Team Six, in forcing them to move from being a small, secret elite force used for occasional special missions, to being deployed on a nightly basis for years on end as just another set of skilled killers in the “War or Terror”.  He describes the negative effects on the fighters in terms of PTSD, ruined marriages and family lives, and other familiar symptoms of these wars’ combatants, but also on how some of the SEALs eventually decided to leave the team, and then tried to monetize their special operations skills and experiences by going public about their exploits.

I recently reviewed Ryan Busse’s autobiography Gunfight, in which he describes how in the first decade of the 2000s, the NRA began to lionize elite fighters from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to use them to promote military-style weapons, equipment and combat apparel at NRA Conventions and in the gun industry’s media promotions.  I realized when reading the descriptions in Cole's book of how some of the self-promoting SEALs became “rock stars” of the NRA that they were undoubtedly some of the same people that Busse had been describing.  

We are probably seeing some unintended after-effects of this glamorization of the trappings of elite special operators in the spectacle of young men arming themselves with AR-15s, and wearing camo apparel and body armor to attack their local children’s school or grocery store, as well as in the heavily armed presence and paramilitary appearance of young male political protestors at rallies in the past several years.

Cole is clear in pointing out that most of the men (and they are almost all still men) in the SEALs and other special operations groups are dedicated, brave and highly-skilled American patriots, who routinely go above and beyond the call of duty to do what the country asks of them.  His point, though, is that the very code of the SEAL Team Six organization, and its tendency to keep secrets about problems and individual malfeasance within the group, creates a dangerous opportunity for operational mistakes and corruption to remain unexposed and unchallenged within the team, and by the political leadership of the nation and the public, and thus to continue.

This is a valuable expose’ about serious problems within one of our most storied and revered military units.  Highly recommended.