The Fall of the Evangelical Nation -- Book Review Annals of the Former World -- Book Review The Private Life of Chairman Mao -- Book Review The Puerto Rican Diaspora -- Book Review Oranges are not the only Fruit -- Book Review Man and Wife in America -- Book Review Hard Drive -- Book Review The Life and Death of Planet Earth -- Book Review Empire of the Summer Moon -- Book Review The World Without Us -- Book Review Tabloid -- Movie Review
The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church. By Christine Wicker. New York: Harper Collins. 2008. 221 pp.
This book documents something I have known for many years, but never had hard systematic evidence for. Christine Wicker, through extensive study, investigation, personal observation, and careful thought has assembled the data which clearly indicate that the fundamentalist, right-wing, religious conservatism that so plagues the cultural and political life of America is in serious decline. The loud, aggressive, hard driving movement that is so visible and such a bane to every progressive trend in American society is actually a relatively small, but supremely dedicated and very well organized minority. And it is a minority that is beleaguered and under considerable duress. In the long view it has been in decline for over a century and that decline is accelerating. American people are slowly becoming less conservative, less religious, and more independent in their thinking and their lifestyles. This varies greatly according to location and circumstance, but the overall trend is unmistakable and Wicker argues very convincingly that it is permanent and irreversible. This change penetrates every aspect of American life, and in one especially outstanding chapter Wicker illustrates how it results in very profound changes in child rearing practices that indelibly shape the attitudes and values that children carry into adulthood. This is part of the reason why the move away from evangelical conservatism is irreversible: the way most children are being raised today precludes them from susceptibility to fundamentalist religious ideology.
For the past thirty years, 7 percent of the population has swayed elections and positioned itself as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong. By puffing its numbers and its authority, it has gotten legislation passed that opposes the popular will and has divided the country into acrimonious camps. It has monopolized the media so effectively that other religious voices have been all but silenced. It has been feared and loathed, revered and loved. It has been impossible to ignore. But underneath its image of power and pomp, the evangelical nation is falling apart. Every day the percentage of evangelicals in America decreases, a loss that began more than one hundred years ago. (p. 198)
America is slowly becoming more a more secular society, although its legal system is lagging behind that trend mainly because of the power and influence of this very committed, vociferous, well organized and well funded group. Wicker culls this conclusion from statistics and studies compiled mostly by the churches themselves. Church insiders know very well what is going on and they are alarmed. Wicker describes them as almost in panic. She shows us that Christian baptisms are down and dwindling, that devout believers are deserting the Christian faith in droves, that the behavior and attitudes of a great many common attendees are not at all orthodox, and that many of the great megachurches that have grown up in the last thirty years, which command thousands of adherents under the leadership of charismatic pastors and appear to be so powerful, are actually built on mountains of debt and are extremely vulnerable. Wicker understands how misleading statistics can be and one of the great strengths of her book is that she looks behind the statistics and analyzes them, not accepting them at face value, and often reaches very different conclusions from what one might take away from a superficial glance at the figures.
It is commonly reported that there are somewhere between 54 and 75 million evangelical Christians in the United States, if you count kids. That's roughly one out of four Americans. But Wicker uses the churches' own documents to show that that number is actually closer to 15 million -- which is still a lot of people to have firmly committed with a unified sense of purpose and agenda. But she goes on to look at the trends. The mainline Protestant denominations: the Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Lutherans, are all losing members and have been for years. It is the evangelicals who represent the growth in American Christianity. The Assemblies of God is the fastest growing of all of these evangelical denominations and their growth rate is only 1.86 percent, just slightly more than the growth rate of the U.S. population. Bobby Welch, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, launched a bold campaign to baptize one million people in 2006. It was an aggressive campaign carried out in all fifty states. When it was over they had baptized 371,850 people, a decline of over 4 percent from the previous year and fewer than they had baptized in 1950. Wicker goes on to point out that this number does not represent new converts to the faith, but is mainly a reshuffling of people from one denomination to another. You can be baptized as many times as you want, so a baptism does not represent a new convert to the faith. These baptisms represent mostly people moving from one brand of Christianity to another. In other words, the truth of the matter is that evangelicals are not converting non-Christian adult Americans in large numbers, especially native-born whites. This is an ominous realization for those churches especially when you consider how many people are leaving the Christian faith on a daily basis. Some of them are opting for an independent sense of spirituality not connected to any organized church, but many are becoming irreligious unbelievers.
Wicker's findings are supported by the American Religious Identification Survey of 2008. It reported that 76 percent of Americans identified as Christian in 2008 versus 86 percent in 1990. The challenge to Christianity in the U.S. does not come from other religions, but from a rejection of all organized religion. One out of five Americans failed to indicate a religious identity in 2008. 70 percent of Americans indicated belief in a personal god, while 12 percent are atheistic or agnostic, and 12 percent believe in a higher power, but no personal god. 27 percent of Americans do not expect a religious funeral at their death. Asian Americans are substantially more likely to indicate no religious preference than other racial or ethnic groups.
However, you should not be misled by this emphasis on figures to think that The Fall of the Evangelical Nation is a dry compendium of statistics and academic prose. It is richly illustrated with anecdotes and personal observations that allow one to see what is actually happening on the ground of people's inner lives, which is where religious faith ultimately resides. Wicker writes with passion and deep concern that stems from her own personal evolution as an evangelical Christian. She understands what is at stake for the personal lives of people and for society when religious faith plays a greater or lesser role. But what I really like about the book is that she knows that religious faith is ultimately a matter of the heart. It is in the private personal space of each individual's mind that religious faith thrives or withers. A variety of factors, both internal and external, affect that outcome and Wicker spells those out and examines them to great effect. The decline in religious faith in America is not a pendulum that may swing back one day; it is a permanent irreversible feature of our social landscape, and the society that results from it will look very different from the one we are living in now. Wicker does not attempt to look into the future to imagine what will come as a result of a less religious America, but she does realize that personal values are evolving toward a foundation based on empathy and human need rather than obedience to authority. Child rearing methods are becoming less punitive, more nurturing, and less dependent on a conception of the child as inherently evil. Those factors are revolutionary on a personal level and on a level of familial interaction and structure. This, as stated previously, is probably the most decisive factor making this progression toward secularization irreversible.
Furthermore the character of religious faith itself is changing in America and even the character of evangelical Christianity may be taking some revolutionary turns. The internet has diminished the need for the local church and allowed Christians to form communities of like-mindeds that are fluid in nature and not beholden to any structured leadership. One such group calls itself the Red Letter Christians, who give preference to the words of Jesus (printed in red letters in some Bibles) over the words of Paul. This results in a very different conception of the meaning of Christian faith with emphasis on moral conduct as opposed to ideological orthodoxy. Wicker, along with many church leaders, sees the flourishing of small independent Christian groups as a real threat to the integrity of the faith. Christianity is splintering and the multifaceted character it will assume in the future is hard to imagine. But the allegiance of Christian adherents to structured organizations with hierarchical, authoritarian leaders appears to be waning. This is good news for American society, which has been oppressed and restricted and beaten down in both its cultural life and in its private personal relations for more than a century by this severe, ascetic, authoritarian, intolerant world view promoted by fervent, deluded, short-sighted, ignorant believers. The misguided legislation based on this mindset has robbed American culture of much of its vitality and robbed American people of opportunities for personal and intellectual growth. Christine Wicker does an excellent job of exposing the emphatic vulnerability this limiting ideology and its organized adherents and their inevitable demise as a force shaping public policy in American life.
Annals of the Former World
By John McPhee
Farrar, Straus, & Giroux: New York. 1998
This is a magnificent book. I learned so much from it and it is beautifully written. It is quite long, 660 pages, and it took me a long time to read it, because I could only absorb a little bit at a time. But every page kept me engaged and attentive.
It is an introduction to geology. But it isn’t written like a geology textbook. It reads more like a novel than a textbook. It is written in a narrative style that zigs and zags and meanders but moves relentlessly forward in its intended direction. The premise is to introduce the geology of North America by driving across the continent on Interstate 80 from New York to San Francisco in the company of a series of experienced, professional geologists. Each geologist is an expert on a particular region, and as they go across the interstate, they stop to examine exposed rock formations where the road has been cut through them and thereby tell the story of the formation and geological history of the continent. It accomplishes this task very effectively. Most of the book is devoted to the geological development of the American Continent, which is an incredibly interesting and surprising story. But it goes far beyond that ambitious accomplishment. Before he reaches San Francisco he will cover in considerable detail, the history of geology as a science, the development of the theory of plate tectonics in the 1960s and the revolution it caused in geologists’ understanding of the earth, the formation of oil and other mineral deposits, the birth and development of the oceans, the ice ages, copper mines in Cyprus, the formation of the Hawaiian Islands, the Himalayas, the rocks brought back from the moon, Africa, Alaska, Macedonia, Scotland. He relates very personal biographies of the geologists who accompany him across stretches of the Interstate. He includes some very unique perspectives on the settlement of the American West.
It is an introduction to geology. But it isn’t written like a geology textbook. It reads more like a novel than a textbook. It is written in a narrative style that zigs and zags and meanders but moves relentlessly forward in its intended direction. The premise is to introduce the geology of North America by driving across the continent on Interstate 80 from New York to San Francisco in the company of a series of experienced, professional geologists. Each geologist is an expert on a particular region, and as they go across the interstate, they stop to examine exposed rock formations where the road has been cut through them and thereby tell the story of the formation and geological history of the continent. It accomplishes this task very effectively. Most of the book is devoted to the geological development of the American Continent, which is an incredibly interesting and surprising story. But it goes far beyond that ambitious accomplishment. Before he reaches San Francisco he will cover in considerable detail, the history of geology as a science, the development of the theory of plate tectonics in the 1960s and the revolution it caused in geologists’ understanding of the earth, the formation of oil and other mineral deposits, the birth and development of the oceans, the ice ages, copper mines in Cyprus, the formation of the Hawaiian Islands, the Himalayas, the rocks brought back from the moon, Africa, Alaska, Macedonia, Scotland. He relates very personal biographies of the geologists who accompany him across stretches of the Interstate. He includes some very unique perspectives on the settlement of the American West.
There are discussions of the formation and life cycles of rivers and lakes, glaciers, the origin and formation of various kinds of rocks and how geologists determine the ages of rocks and geologic formations such as oceans, lakes, rivers, and mountains. He has the best description I have ever seen of the California fault system and the mechanisms of earthquakes. He gives a very interesting, detailed description of the recent 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake near San Francisco. You gain a appreciation of the complexities of interpreting geological features and how understanding any geological feature requires a tremendous amount of study and reflection. Things are not always what they seem in geology. You can’t necessarily tell where something came from or how it got that way by looking at it. Interpreting any geological feature requires extensive background and informed study. What I found myself struggling with was the concept of geological time. It was hard for me to get a handle on the difference between 3 million years, 30 million years, 300 million years, and 3 billion years in terms of what developments and changes can take place in those time periods. One very good feature of the book is a series of charts at the very end on the last few pages that show the named geological ages and the periods of time that they cover. I referred to these charts again and again as I read this book. They were extremely helpful. It was a long book and I could point out many interesting passages and discussions on many different topics, but I will leave off with a very strong recommendation for a very informative, interesting and readable book.
The Private Life of Chairman Mao
by Zhisui Li, English Translation by Tai Hung-Chao
Random House: London. 1994
This book is probably the best biography I have ever read. It is a tour de force. It is astonishing. It is an intimate portrait of one of the most formidable and destructive leaders in human history. It is a study in how personal psychopathology in a political leader can be translated into a social nightmare for the people whom he governs. The author was Mao’s personal physician for twenty-two years until his death in 1976. But he became much more than a physician to Mao. He became a confidant and advisor, a reluctant political player in the swirling maelstrom of Communist Chinese politics through Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” and the Cultural Revolution. It is a very personal book. I wouldn’t say that he became Mao’s friend, because it was not clear that Mao had any “friends” in the ordinary sense of that term. Every relationship in Mao’s life had political meaning. But Dr. Li was on very close, intimate terms with Mao, and Mao trusted him as a physician despite many strains and rough spots in their relationship over the years.
This book is several biographies at once. It is a biography of Chairman Mao in his later years, and it is also an autobiography of the doctor himself and an astonishingly intimate window into Mao’s inner circle at the top of the Communist party of China. Dr. Li got his position as Mao’s physician through an offer he couldn’t refuse. And once you became part of Mao’s inner circle, you did not get out voluntarily. And you didn’t want to get out involuntarily.
Mao liked to play with girls (and boys, but mostly girls from Dr. Li’s account). He liked them naïve, simple and young. They were provided to him by the hundreds, if not thousands, and this was when he was 60+. As he got older he grew to trust his young girls more than he trusted his own staff. The girls were simple and not political players. They would fight and scrap with him and speak their minds frankly in a way that his underlings in the Communist Party never would. It was probably refreshing to him in comparison with the world of suspicion, calculation, uncertainty, and shifting loyalties that always lurked in the world of politics. One of them, Zhang Yufeng, became his personal secretary, his gatekeeper, and the closest person to him in the last few years of his life.
He believed everyone should taste a little bitterness in life, and he seemed to make sure that everyone he came in contact with tasted their fair share, from his doctor, to his women, to his subordinates, to his colleagues, to the whole nation of China. He himself had lost eight family members and countless friends and colleagues during the long wars of revolution. He seems to have become inured to suffering and death. Individual lives were not valuable. He was prepared to sacrifice the lives of tens of millions, even hundreds of millions, of people in order to accomplish his objectives. He carried at least two communicable venereal diseases which he refused to have treated and which he knowingly and willfully passed on to his many partners. He was evil in the sense that there was a concealed malevolence in his character whose objective and delight was to bring chaos and carnage to people’s lives. I think he wanted them to know a little bit of the pain that he had felt, the price he had paid in order to accomplish what they could enjoy. He seems to have believed that everything good comes at a great price. He exacted that price from everyone he came in contact with.
This book helped me gain an understanding of the Cultural Revolution which I never really had before, despite having read Edgar Snow’s The Long Revolution many years ago. First of all, it was not really a revolution, and second, it was not really cultural. It was essentially a civil war instigated my Mao himself against his political enemies in the Communist Party. Mao was disenchanted with the Communist Party. He had major rivals within the party and resistance to many of the policies he wanted to pursue. The perversity and stupidity of his “Great Leap Forward” was a catastrophe for China and resulted in the starvation of tens of millions of Chinese people and the devastation of the economy. But Mao was unfazed. He was prepared to sacrifice the lives of others, in the millions if necessary, in order to realize his vision of “communism.” However, competing visions for China’s future were being put forward and criticism of his policies and of Mao himself was also being voiced. Mao, despite his enormous power, lived in constant fear of his life. He never liked to stay in one place very long. He was constantly on the move. Whenever he went someplace he returned by a different route. He never retraced his steps. Even during his dance parties when he was playing with his young girls, he was paying attention to who else was there and who wasn’t. The Cultural Revolution was an attempt by Mao to purge the Communist Party by using elements in the society outside of the Communist Party. These were the Red Guards, young, inexperienced, blindly devoted followers of Mao, whose ferocity he unleashed savagely against his enemies. The doctor tells some of the story of the Cultural Revolution, but being part of Mao’s inner circle isolated him from much of its ferocity and chaos. I wish he had talked more about the politics of this, actually.
I found myself disappointed about a couple of things, although they do not detract from the overall superb quality of this book. One has to do with how the doctor presents himself. He portrays himself as a political neophyte, a reluctant outsider who is unwillingly drawn in to the political intrigue of Mao’s inner circle. This was undoubtedly true at the beginning. But as the doctor became closer to Mao, on increasingly intimate terms with him, and more involved with the other players in the political drama, the picture of him as the naïve outsider becomes less and less convincing. The doctor became a partisan. He was close to Chou en Lai, and very close to Wang DongXing, the head of Mao’s security forces. He was an enemy of Chaing Ching, Mao’s wife and leader of the so-called “Gang of Four.” He is very candid about his fears in this role, but I think he is also being less than candid about his ambition and his involvement in the intrigue itself. I also wonder at the doctor’s sexual naivete. At the beginning he was very straight and conservative, and shocked at the debauchery of Mao’s life, but he was with Mao a long time. He attended many dance parties and sex parties presided over by Mao where many attractive young women were present and available. He records that Mao encouraged his participation. He was young and very attractive – especially in relation to Mao. But he presents himself as being merely an observer to these debauches, but not a participant. I question this.
The other comment is that I think the doctor knows a lot more than he has told us, both about the political matters as well as the sexual matters. This book is about 650 pages long, but I think it should be 1500. I would like to hear a lot more detail, particularly about some of the other people involved in the drama. He could have developed some of the other characters in the story more than he did. I understand that he wanted to keep focused on Mao, but he had a lot of knowledge and a perspective that was very unique and invaluable. Some incidents were spare on depth and detail and I would like to have known more and I am sure that the doctor had knowledge. He was selective in this presentation. This is of course a necessity in a book covering twenty-two years, but his knowledge is so important and otherwise so inaccessible that I think it is regrettable than he was not even more forthcoming than he was. I also wish there had been more follow up on some of the people and their fates subsequent to the boundaries of the book, which is Mao’s death in 1976.
Dr. Li originally wrote the book in Chinese and had it translated into English. It was published in the UK by Random House in 1994. There is a Chinese edition, but it is not in print. I found some used copies for $60+. You can’t get this in China. You could probably get into trouble for even having it in China. But if you are Chinese, you should read this. Any political leader should read this. Anyone interested in philosophy of politics and society should read it. It’s a profound lesson in the dangers of concentrated political power and a somber illustration of how far things can go and how deep a descent can be.
The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Themes in the Survival of a People
By Frank Espada
Self-Published: San Francisco, 2006
This is a beautifully produced photographic essay on the plight of the Puerto Rican people in the United States. It begins, interestingly, in Hawaii but spreads across the entire United States, with stops in New York City, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey, Chicago, Washington DC, and California. Most of the photographs are from the 1980s, with a few somewhat earlier. The photographs are supported by well written, informative text that movingly documents the struggle of a displaced, disenfranchised people. The Puerto Rican people are in a peculiar position which has made them especially vulnerable to exploitation and discrimination. They are part of the United States, so they are American citizens. But they are not a state. They do not vote in federal elections and have no representation in the U.S. Congress. Puerto Rico is considered a “commonwealth,” with a somewhat confusing and ambiguous status. The issue of statehood versus independence versus continuation of the status quo as a commonwealth is a matter of ongoing debate among Puerto Ricans. However, the history of the relationship with the United States is akin to the relationship between a colonial power and a colony, namely, oppression and exploitation by large well capitalized interests. This book is the visual documentation of the human impact of that relationship. In response to the economic hardships facing them on the island, many Puerto Ricans migrated to the United States mainland and Hawaii in hopes of improving their lot. Espada's assessment of that quest is generally negative. He believes that living conditions in the Puerto Rican communities have worsened between 1980 and 2000. However, his beautiful black and white photographs, which include many sensitive portraits as well as urban landscapes, reveal a community with great vitality and youthful energy struggling against the harsh background of poverty and discrimination. Although they are downtrodden, these people are not in despair. That can be clearly seen in the photographs. These are people with dreams and the drive to pursue them. These are communities that have strong internal bonds and are engaged in a vigorous ongoing struggle to improve their fortunes. Espada has been an activist and a leader in that struggle as well as a photographer who documents it. He has produced a very moving and informative book that is a credit to his people and their ongoing endeavor. In the interest of full disclosure Frank Espada has been a teacher, mentor, and friend of mine for probably twenty years. He brings high standards of craftsmanship and quality to his work as a photographer. One sees those standards of excellence at work in the skill and thought with which this high quality book has been put together. It is an excellent addition to any photographic collection.
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
By Jeanette Winterson
Atlantic Monthly Press: New York 1985
This is a well written coming of age story about a young English girl growing up under difficult circumstances. The difficult circumstances are her mother’s total absorption in a very conservative version of evangelical Christianity. Although the story takes place in England, the characters are English, and much of the culture and mentality presented is English, I believe many American readers will be able to relate to the book, particularly if they come from a conservative religious background.
The book clearly illustrates the inadequacy of the Christian religion for dealing with the major problems of life and the devastating impact it can have on human relations and on the families of those who take it seriously. The girl grows up as a child immersed in the church, the Bible, and its teachings. She is completely dominated by her mother. Her father is pretty much absent and is not really a player in the drama of her development. When she is about fourteen she has a sexual affair with a girlfriend her own age. It is quite passionate and she is in love. She made the mistake of attempting to open up to her mother about it and the reaction of the entire community was terrible. The girls are forced to “repent” and end the relationship. Jeanette’s repentance is only superficial and she wants to continue the relationship, but Melanie, the girlfriend, repudiates the relationship as wrong and rejects her. Jeanette goes on to form other female sexual relationships eventually breaking with her mother and the church she grew up in. Melanie marries and is last seen pushing a stroller.
There are a number of interesting issues raised by this book. The utter inadequacy of the Christian faith in dealing with sex is painfully clear. This is a failing that is played out in myriad variations in millions of homes around the world and will certainly resonate with many people. It is not only homosexuality that the Christian faith cannot accommodate, it is sex in general. Christianity is a sex negative religion and this book is a small illustration of the immense destruction that this causes in the lives of people who fall victim to it. This inconsequential affair between two very young girls brings this whole community into an uproar. The perverse, prosecutorial overreaction is symptomatic of a pervasive emotional malaise that is firmly rooted in their Christian religious beliefs.
She brings up another interesting topic in her section entitled Deuteronomy. This is a short section in the latter half of the book where she discusses her philosophical position on storytelling, history, and the past. “Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don’t believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots.” I take exception to this. Some things have to be true. Everything cannot be an interpretation and thus subject to variability. For example if an airplane crashes on such and such a day and 200 people are killed, there can be no doubt or flexibility about the truth of that event. The farther away from that event that we march in time, the harder it may be for us to ascertain its occurrence, but that there was or was not such an event cannot be disputed. In principle there is a truth of the matter. There are such things as facts. But the past can obscure them and make them difficult to determine. Every good lawyer knows this. So while the point she makes about the manifold possibilities for interpretation and perspective that any story or event offers is well taken, she goes too far in denying that there is any such thing as “truth.” The world is not entirely arbitrary, which is what it would be if “truth” could be anything we wanted it to be. There is a place for what we call “history” and the narratives of history do make “progress.” The asteroid that struck the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago is admittedly an interpretation, a construction built from a myriad of observations and theoretical reasonings. But there is an underlying truth to the matter. There either was such an asteroid and such a collision or there wasn’t. And it is possible through the use of reason and observation to arrive at an assessment of its probability or improbability. That is what history and science do. We measure our “progress” in these endeavors by our ability to make accurate predictions and to solve problems. The scourge of smallpox has been eliminated from the world because we have been able to ascertain the “truth” of its genesis and prevention. One can find many other such examples. Winterson’s skepticism of history and science is unwarranted and naïve, but she has put her finger on the profound ambiguities of human relations and the necessity to exercise caution in making assumptions and drawing conclusions about the experiences and relationships of other people. This is a caution that American readers would do well to heed.
It’s a nice little book. Not too long, but interesting, well written and exploring numerous issues relevant to the lives of many contemporary people.
Man & Wife in America : A History
By Hendrik Hartog. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002
This is an outstanding legal history of marriage in the United States from its beginnings through "the long 19th century" as Hartog puts it, which lasted "until sometime after World War II." It will be especially interesting to people who have some legal training or background. The casual reader may find it a bit of a challenge. The prose tends toward the legalistic, full of legal terms and definitions. Defining these terms through the details and decisions of specific cases is indeed the bulk of the book. But these definitions and their legal and extra-legal underpinnings are the heart of marriage law through the 19th century – and our heritage today.
The main point that I took away from this was a realization of how imposing a factor property, money, and wealth are in the institution of marriage. From the legal point of view, marriage is largely a property contract. It is a very peculiar one, to be sure, with many catches and clauses, but when a marriage comes before the law, at least in the time frame covered by this book, the issues are ones of property and financial support. However romantic you might have been when you began the marriage, when you come before the courts you are talking about money and property. You don't sue your partner because you are unhappy, because you are sexually dissatisfied, because you don't feel loved, or you can’t get along on a personal level. The emotional issues, the interpersonal issues, the dreams and expectations that usually provide the impetus for marriage on a personal level, are not the issues with which courts are concerned. The courts are concerned by and large with dividing up property, settling estates, seeing to it that financial obligations are met. Marriage in the courts is very unromantic. After reading this book, it seems to me that it would do people well to consider this aspect of it carefully before entering into marriage.
Hartog clearly knows the material. He seems to have a vast knowledge of the cases and legal culture of this time period. He carries us up to about the mid-1950s and then finishes with a cursory summary bringing us forward to the present. The book is mainly about the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, but he presents a solid foundation. Anyone who thinks seriously about marriage, either philosophically or on a personal level would benefit from reading it.
Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire
By James Wallace and Jim Erickson
HarperCollins: New York. 1992
Bill Gates is an interesting person. Not necessarily a likeable person. Many people dislike him strongly. But there are many fascinating nooks and crannies in his personality. His drive, his intensity, his intelligence, and his leadership must command respect, if not admiration. This book covers his early years and his rise to the top of the computer industry. He was still not married when the book ended. It gives a pretty good picture of his early development as a computer geek. What it doesn’t give is an intimate portrait of Bill Gates. It doesn’t examine his family relationships, his parents, siblings, childhood experiences in any great depth. His name is William Gates III, which indicates a strong family tradition of pride and high expectations. He has a close relationship with his mother and his family has been very supportive of him throughout his life, but beyond that there is not much detail offered. He has an older sister who is barely mentioned in this book. There is a lot of personal information about him in the book, however. I wouldn’t say that the book is sanitized, but it steers clear of his intimate family life – which I would like to see more of in order to understand his emotional temperament and the ferocious, all consuming, implacable drive to succeed and prove himself the best at all costs. The temper tantrums, viciousness, and duplicity testify to the intensity of those needs. There is a high degree of anxiety underlying all of this, but its origin remains murky.
Mathematics, and especially computers, is about power, control, and domination. In a computer nothing is chance – unless you program it that way. Computers, through software, yield absolute control and predictability. It is not an accident that this would be the driving passion in Bill Gates’ life. One of Gates most derisive assessments of a person is to call someone “random.” Gates doesn’t like unpredictability or anything that cannot be controlled. That might help to explain his fondness for speeding in his cars (sometimes as high as 150 mph). There is a very strong need to prove he is in control, first and foremost of himself, and this is affirmed through testing his mastery of external challenges.
The book tends to stick to the facts and is spare on interpretation. That is probably a good thing. However, sometimes I wish there was more psychological depth. His fondness for gambling, speeding, and workaholism all reflect deep personal need to push himself to the limits – but why? There seems to be an underlying sense of worthlessness or futility which he is forever trying to counteract with ever greater achievements and the defeat of his rivals, who threaten to expose that vulnerable sense of failure or unlovability. There was a remark from one woman whom he dated that he had felt very lonely as a child and was also lonely as an adult. She said he hides his hurt and disappointment when key employees leave Microsoft. I suspect there is a lot of hurt and disappointment in his personal relationships that one rarely sees. The workaholism covers it.
There were two incidents of personal disappointment reported in the book that I felt were particularly unfortunate. One was a long time friend who was not part of the computer world was supposed to meet him and go to a movie – after Gates had become a prominent figure in the computer world. The friend arrived significantly late. Gates did not say anything, but after that the relationship withered. This friend did not respect his time and his importance. On another striking occasion he went out with a few low level Lotus employees and spent a long night for over four hours in a hotel bar just chatting candidly and informally about himself and some business matters. The next day the three employees met and decided to write up a memo recalling as much as they could of what Gates had said. One of the three dissented and would not participate, but the memo was written and sent to some top level Lotus executives, one of whom was a Gates enemy. From there it was sent to one of Gates enemies at IBM and finally a garbled version was published in Infoworld, a computer industry magazine, causing a furor. I felt it was a very unfortunate betrayal that a moment of relaxed informality and personal engagement would be opportunistically turned against him. It made me wonder how he values human relations and his basic outlook toward them being in his position? Girlfriends did not have high priority in his life during his early years as some found out.
The book is a well balanced presentation. It is sympathetic and at the same time unsparing. It is weighted toward his business ventures, but then, that’s how his life is. Life equals work and work equals life. This is the fundamental equation in Bill Gates’ life, and anyone who works at Microsoft is expected to adopt it as well. The authors give rather thorough overviews of Microsoft’s relationships with IBM, Lotus, and Apple, among many others in the computer industry. His success cannot be attributed to luck. Bill Gates would have been successful no matter what direction he had taken. Where luck entered the picture is in being in the right place at the right time when the world was on the cusp of the computer revolution. That revolution would have occurred without Bill Gates. If Bill Gates had come along two years later, he probably would not have become the world’s richest man – although he certainly would have done very well. But his unique personality and abilities in the right nurturing environment at the right moment in history is what made this story and reshaped the modern world. This book is an excellent introduction to the inside story of this world transformation. It will be fascinating to anyone who lived through the computer revolution and watched these developments unfold.
The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology charts the Ultimate Fate of our World.
By Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee
Henry Holt: New York. 2002
We are a fortunate generation in that we are the first people in human history who really understand in the broad outline where it all came from, how we got here, and ultimately where it is all going. No other people that have ever lived have known this. People have always wondered. They have dreamed; they have imagined; they made up stories; but no one really knew. Today we know. Not in all the details and there is much that is still mysterious and puzzling, and more surprising discoveries certainly await us. But over the last forty to fifty years especially, the big picture of the story of life is becoming increasingly clear and vivid.
The Life and Death of Planet Earth gives a sweeping panorama of that knowledge with an emphasis on the future, on the destiny of the earth and all living things that inhabit it. The story is bleak and is told in counterpoint to the story of the death of Peter Ward’s own mother. The poignant description of the decline and death of his own mother serves as a metaphor for the ultimate decline and death of our planet. All things must pass: our mothers, ourselves, even the earth itself will ultimately disappear and vanish. The Age of Life on earth is already past its prime. The planet is already in decline in terms of its habitability for complex life. In another 500 million years or so, all that will be left is bacteria. Bacteria could last quite a while longer, perhaps several billion years. But ultimately as the earth’s temperature heats up due to the sun’s gradual brightening, they too will finally succumb. The sun is about 30% brighter now than it was at the time of the earth’s formation. In a billion years it will be another 10% brighter than it is now. This will very slowly but steadily increase the surface temperature of the earth. In perhaps a billion years, maybe even sooner, the oceans will evaporate and be lost into space.
There is some uncertainty about how long this will take. It could be as quickly as 100 million years, or more likely several billion years. But once the oceans are gone the time of life on earth is over. A few primitive bacteria could persist several billion years longer depending on how hot it gets on the earth’s surface. But the earth as a haven for evolving life will be over. Once all life is extinguished, the earth will still continue as a hellish shell for perhaps another several billion years until the sun reaches the end of its life as we know it, and expands into a red giant. This will most likely engulf the earth into the body of the sun; the interior temperatures of the sun will dissolve all chemical bonds between atoms and the earth and everything in it will be vaporized. That will be the final chapter in the history of the earth, ladies and gentlemen. Have a nice day. But it won’t happen for another 6 or 8 billion years, so you don’t need to worry about it too much. You’d better be worried about ice and glaciers. But I’ll let them tell you about that. They pointedly avoid discussing the ultimate fate of humanity. But our fate is complicated by a number of possibilities that are not easily estimated: not only our response to climate change, but also the possibilities of infectious diseases, and warfare.
The authors do an excellent job of explaining the workings of the carbon cycle, plate tectonics and the biosphere in regulating the earth’s temperature and how these huge forces interact and evolve over long periods of time. Life can only exist within a rather narrow temperature range and the relative stability of earth’s temperature over hundreds of millions of years has enabled life to evolve into the complex forms that we see today. Powerful natural forces are at work to keep the earth’s temperature fairly stable, but those forces also evolve and change over time, they are subject to fluctuations that can have profound effects on living things, and eventually it will be temperature that finally spells the demise of life. The authors do an excellent job of explaining this and making these relationships clear. You have to read this book carefully. There is a lot to absorb, but they have put it all down with clear explanations, and you can really put the story together from a careful reading of this book. They also consider scenarios such as a comet striking the earth or a gamma ray burst from a supernova. These are both highly unlikely, but were either to occur it could bring a very abrupt catastrophic end to life on planet earth. In lieu of sudden catastrophe, evolution will do its inexorable work and ultimately close the curtain down on life and this is their main emphasis. Altogether Ward and Brownlee have written a beautiful, readable account of the timeline of the earth and its future. It is a rich, stimulating overview that avoids the technical calculations. It deals with the big questions, the simple questions, the most profound and searching questions that people wonder about as children, and it answers them. Anyone interested in our ultimate destiny should find it a sober, provocative, and interesting summary.
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History. By S. G. Gwynne. New York: Scribner. 2010. pp. 371.
This is a riveting, absorbing story of the Comanche nation and the conquest of the Great Plains and Texas by white Americans in the mid-nineteenth century. It begins on May 19, 1836 when a party of Comanche raiders brutally killed most of the family of Benjamin Parker roughly 50 miles east of what is now Waco, Texas. Nine year old Cynthia Parker was kidnapped that day and raised in the Comanche tribe. Twelve years later she would give birth to a son named Quanah, who would be the last and greatest leader of the Comanches. The book tells the story of Quanah's journey from "Stone Age barbarian into the mainstream of industrial American culture." But it is not simply a biography of Quanah Parker. Quanah Parker actually comes to the fore in the later chapters of the book. Most of the book is a social and cultural history of an age of ferment and radical transformation on the American Great Plains. Technology, migration, warfare, and the quest for wealth would dramatically sweep away within a few decades the Stone Age way of life that had been in place on the Great Plains for centuries. Gwynne depicts that ancient way of life with great vividness. The book is carefully researched and detailed, but not at all pedantic. He focuses on the personalities and the human dramas that were fabric of this whole panorama of historical developments: Ranald Mackenzie, Cynthia Parker, William T. Sherman, George Armstrong Custer, the white buffalo hunters who finally exterminated the buffalo, the relations between the various Indian tribes of the plains, the tactics of warfare, the treatment of captives including torture and gang rape, the treatment that the conquered Indians received from the American government, life on the reservations, among many topics thoughtfully covered with great sensitivity and detail. The Americans and the Comanches, despite the vast cultural gulf between them, actually had some similarities in basic outlook. Both were aggressive, militaristic societies that lived by warfare and conquest. Both could be unspeakably brutal. Both valued an inner sense of freedom and unlimited possibilities. However, the Indians never had a chance. Despite many early victories and their ability to wreak much havoc on the early frontier settlers, the tide of white settlement was too overwhelming. In a very short time the Stone Age way of life that depended on hunting buffalo on horseback with bows and arrows was completely swept away and replaced with settled towns, farming and cattle ranches. Remarkably, Quanah Parker, through shrewdness, intelligence and flexibility, was able to make adjustments and achieve a reasonably successful life under the white man's regime, both for himself and for many of his tribesmen. It is a fascinating story, carefully researched, and beautifully told by a very able writer.
The World Without Us
By Alan Weisman
New York: St. Martin’s Press 2007
The World Without Us is an outstanding achievement on many levels. It is well written, well researched, imaginatively conceived, and keenly relevant. The conception is a simple thought experiment: if humans were to suddenly disappear from the earth, how long would all that we have created last? Another way of putting it would be: how long would it take the earth to recover from the devastation and havoc that we have wrought upon it? For those who feel a need to go to the barricades in order to defend the earth the answer might be comforting: for the most part, the earth will dispose of us and most of our legacy in fairly short order. Within a few hundred years and certainly within a few millennia the earth would obliterate most of what we have left behind and reclaim for untamed wilderness most of what we have imposed upon it as “civilization.” There are some exceptions, such as things carved or built with stone, plastic will last at least 100,000 years, and radioactive waste will be killing things for millions of years. But most everything else is highly perishable. Weisman has gone to an enormous effort to write this book, traveling to every corner of the globe: England, Africa, Turkey, the Korean Demilitarized Zone, Poland, Cyprus, Guatemala, Panama, the South Pacific, all over North America, talking to a wide range of scientists, engineers, and even religious leaders. The amount of knowledge he has packed into this book is staggering. And it is all conveyed in a very readable engaging style that is a joy to be immersed in. The book does get a hold of you. One sees very clearly from this book how precarious our civilized way of life is and how dependent it is upon constant maintenance and vigilance. Some of the many topics covered are: the New York City subway system, plant species introduced into foreign environments by humans, the fate of skyscrapers, the extinction of prehistoric North American mammals, the effect of elephants on the ecology of Africa, reckless development on the northern coast of Cyprus, underground cities in Cappadocia, Turkey, the fate of plastic and the Pacific Ocean Gyre, storage tanks containing highly explosive fuels and gases, oil refineries along the Texas coast, the return of agricultural land to forest, fertilizers and their impact on the environment, the English Channel Tunnel (the Chunnel), the Panama Canal, the ecology of the Korean demilitarized zone, the degradation of the ozone layer, radioactive waste, unattended nuclear power plants, mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia, the collapse of the Maya civilization, burial caskets and tombs, the fate of artwork, coral reefs, as well as many smaller topics and tributaries, all thoroughly researched with personal visits and conversations with experts. This is a very informative, interesting, well written narrative about our past and our future and the future beyond us. It is also about how fragile our civilized way of life is and how easily and how quickly it could fall apart. The modern world certainly isn’t necessary. Nature would make short work of it. The remnants of us could soon be precariously eking out survival on what little is left of it. Weisman has given a fine panorama of the durability and the impermanence of all human achievement.
Tabloid
Directed by Errol Morris
See the movie before you read this. This is an analysis more than a review.
This film is an case study in self-indulgence, narcissism, manipulation, hypocrisy, and deceit. It was a scandal that apparently received more attention in England than here. I had never heard of this woman or this bizarre case until seeing this film. Joyce McKinney, as a young woman, got involved with a Mormon man named Kirk Anderson and was expecting to marry him, when he suddenly and inexplicably disappears. He had gone to England as a Mormon missionary, fulfilling a Mormon requirement for dutiful missionary service. McKinney tracks him down in England, taking several male bodyguards with her, including a pilot. She proceeds to "kidnap" him, hold him in a cottage in southern England for some days or weeks, "forces" sex upon him in an attempt to wrest him away from the Mormon "cult" into which he has been indoctrinated and immersed. She ends up being arrested but escapes back to Canada and the U.S. The film is the story of this saga told through interviews with a number the of players (but not Kirk Anderson) and supported with ample documentary footage. It is dominated by Joyce McKinney who tries to present herself as a wounded woman on a quest to rescue the brainwashed Kirk from the clutches of his Mormon captors. It is her undying love for Kirk that impels her to go on this arduous, indefatigable quest.
The thing is: I don't buy it. This woman has a flair for attention getting spectacles, as well as acting, disguise, manipulation and deceit. She's very good at presenting herself in a way that will be ingratiating while at the same time concealing or denying mountains of contradictory evidence to her version of the facts. A much different construction of her character was uncovered by the Daily Mirror which revealed her extensive career as a sex worker specializing in bondage and domination. This relentless pursuit of Kirk can be seen as an extension of that mentality, except that the Mormons were a little too much for her. The film is really a study of rage wrapped in cotton candy. A curious incident is reported from her later years about a dog that fiercely attacked her and nearly killed her. The dog was her own, part pit bull and part mastiff, and reportedly weighed 150 pounds. She had obtained him as a guard dog and attributed the attack to veterinary assistants who drugged the dog for sport which caused the dog to attack her. This is probably the most implausible of all the implausible tales that she tells. I suspect she had been abusing the dog and it turned on her, but of course, we will never know the truth. However, the film presents her version without question. It is probably the most outstanding example of a highly dubious rendition of events not critically examined by the director and allowed to pass for truth. The director has apparently been duped or is being complicit in this con throughout in spite of the fact that he had much contrary evidence to the self-serving masquerade presented by Joyce McKinney, a fair portion of which was actually presented in the film. Yet he still allowed McKinney to dominate and the film and to present herself in an ultimately sympathetic portrayal. He failed to take a critical or prosecutorial stance toward her many dubious claims and did not pursue or develop the substantial evidence for a very different construction of her character, and thus furthered the fraud by this attention hungry self-promoter. I'm not saying don't go see the film. The film is engaging, interesting, and even entertaining. It is well put together and technically competent. The story is intriguing, but watching this movie feels a little bit like being in church, where the speaker is well-spoken, smooth and polished, but you have the gnawing feeling that everything you are being told is a crock.