- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – Jean-Dominique Bauby
- This is a fascinating biographical narrative by a victim of locked-in
syndrome. Baudy was an author and the editor of ELLE, the French fashion magazine, until he had a massive stroke in 1995 that left
him entirely paralized except for his left eyelid, with which he would learn to express himself. His speech therapist would show him or recite
an alphabet, and Bauby would blink to signal the letter he wanted. This is their devised arrangement of that alphabet followed by his witty,
personified description.
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E S A R I N T U L O M D P C F B V H G J Q Z Y X K W
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"The jumbled appearance of my chorus line stems not from chance but from cunning calculation. More than an alphabet, it is a hit
parade in which each letter is placed according to the frequency of its use in the French language. That is why E dances proudly out
front, while W labors to hold on to last place. B resents being pushed back next to V, and haughty J—which begins so many
sentences in French—is amazed to find itself so near the rear of the pack. Roly-poly G is annoyed to have to trade places with H,
while T and U, the tender components of tu, rejoice that they have not been separated. All this reshuffling has a purpose: to
make it easier for those who wish to communicate with me."
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Bauby worked with ghostwriter Claude Mendibil to write this book, and in spite of the tedious process of dictating the words one letter at a
time he is quite verbose and articulates many memories and fantasies, and the methods of living with his condition. His words are so
expressive it is easy to forget that they come from someone whose mind is trapped in a stationary body, and it's amazing that someone so
distressed can be so charming.
- Outliers: The Story of Success – Malcolm Gladwell
- In this fascinating book Gladwell theorizes how the success of many people we know, including Bill Gates, the Beatles, and J. Robert
Oppenheimer is a result of more than genius and talent. Gladwell defines "outliers" as people who do not fit into our normal understanding of
achievement.
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"They are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and
cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot."
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Through the circumstance of their birth they were fortunate to pursue their fields at a time and place that was to their advantage, literally
being in the right place at the right time. And then there is his 10,000 Hour Rule, where
the "greatest athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians and scientists emerge only after spending at least three hours a day for a decade
mastering their chosen field."
Blink — In this book Gladwell talks about "thin-slicing," making snap-judgements about things using unconscious tools
with little conscious analysis. I particulary enjoyed reading about "priming," i.e. influencing people's behavior by having them read something to affect
their thoughts before acting.
- Chronicles, Volume One – Bob Dylan
- This is Bob Dylan's autobiography and he really opens up. I learned so much about his life from his days in Minnesota to his early days in
Greenwich village. There are anecdotes of hanging out with friends, and what went through his mind during recording sessions. He describes his
relationships with Albert Grossman, his manager—Daniel Lanois, his record producer on several albums—and John Hammond, his producer
at Columbia Records, who really got his professional career going. I found his feelings about different people and events quite revealing. For
instance, of all the covers of his songs by other artists he thought Johnny Rivers' recording of Positively 4th Street really captured
where he was coming from when he wrote the song. Dylan never accepted being the "voice of his generation," which was thrust upon him.
- A Freewheelin' Time, A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties – Suze Rotolo
 Suze Rotolo is an artist who's original claim to fame was that she was
Bob Dylan's girlfriend as he was a rising star and appeared on the cover of his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, so this book has a lot of
biographical info on Dylan. Suze was a "red-diaper baby" (her parents were Communists) so she has a different perspective on a lot of things. A
very interesting episode is when she and a group of students travelled to Cuba in 1964 in defiance of the U.S. State Department's ban on
Americans going there. They could not fly directly to Cuba so they had go there via London, Paris, and Prague, and there were some pretty
tense moments in the various airports' customs as the U.S. tried to stop the trip. She was actually pretty liberated before there was a
feminist movement and she expresses some interesting feelings about her relationship with Dylan as his fame took off:
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"As time went by, those of us who were close to Bob were subjected to trickle-down fame."
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"I couldn't handle being 'one step closer to God.' I was being pecked at because of my proximity to the end of the rainbow."
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"I knew I was not suited for his life. I could never be the woman behind the great man: I didn't have the discipline for that kind of sacrifice."
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Suze is very bright, articulate, and charming, and I found this book hard to put down.
- Positively 4th Street – David Hajdu
- Subtitled The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña this book tells you a lot about the
lives of these great performers. If you lived through the folk revival of the early 60s (as I did) you will remember many of the people and
events in the book. Richard Fariña was a very driven man who recorded several great albums with his wife Mimi (Joan Baez's sister) and wrote a
great book, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, before he was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1966. Dylan sounds like a very
difficult man to like, but his life is fascinating and his music is great. I have many of his songs on my iPod, both by him and by others, and several of his videos on my website.
- The Nine – Jeffrey Toobin
- This is CNN legal analyst Toobin's description of the workings of the U.S. Supreme Court. He says there are two kinds of cases that come before
the Court, abortion cases—and all others. The position of the justices on this issue is quite profound, both in their actions and also in
their being nominated by the President to serve on the Court in the first place. There is a fairly complete account of the 2000 Bush v. Gore
case that gave the presidency to George W. Bush, which Toobin says,
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"... amounted to a catalog of [the Court's] worst flaws as judges."
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I strongly agree. He quotes justice Steven's opinion in which Stevens says,
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"Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the
loser is pellucidly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."
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In this case the majority of the justices were determined to overturn any ruling of the
Florida Supreme Court that was favorable to Vice President Gore. Justice Souter was so upset by the political nature of the decision that he
nearly resigned in protest. (From this opinion I completely lost my trust in the U.S. Supreme court to render an impartial, non-partisan
decision.) One funny situation that Toobin describes is that it is a running joke at the Court that Souter is frequently mistaken for fellow
Justice Stephen Breyer, even though the two bear little resemblance to each other.
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One day when Souter was making his usual solo drive from Washington to New Hampshire (where he has a home) he stopped for lunch in Massachusetts.
A stranger and his wife came up to him and asked, "Aren't you on the Supreme Court?"
Souter said he was.
"You're Justice Breyer, right?" said the man.
Rather than embarrass the fellow, Souter simply nodded and exchanged pleasantries, until he was asked an unexpected question.
"Justice Breyer, what's the best thing about being on the Supreme Court?"
The justice thought for a while, then said, "Well, I'd have to say it's the privilege of serving with David Souter."
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This book is a great read.
- A Long Way Gone - Memoirs of a Boy Soldier – Ishmael Beah (good interview videos on this link)
- This first person account of a boy's adventures in Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s is very gripping. When he was 12 years old Ishmael's village was raided by rebels and he fled with other children, enduring
"months of traveling, sleeping in the bush, and having to eat and drink what the forest provided." Eventually these children were recruited into the army where they fought many battles and participated in
the war's atrocities. After several years he was entered into a rehabilitation program, ultimately coming to the U.S. and finishing high school in Manhattan and getting a B.A. in political science at Oberlin College in Ohio.
Now he speaks at the United Nations, UNICEF, and other places to raise awareness of the continual and rampant recruitment of children in wars around the world. I highly recommend this book. I saw Ishmael speak
and he autographed my book!
- The R.Crumb Handbook – R.Crumb and Peter Poplaski
In the sixties I was a big fan of cartoonist Robert Crumb's Zap Comix and his characters Mr. Natural, Flakey Foont, Fritz the Cat, Devil Girl and the Keep on Truckin' guy,
so I was really thrilled when I received this autobiography of Crumb as a present from my wife. In The R.Crumb Handbook Crumb tells about creating homemade FOO comics as a child with his brother Charles. There are a lot of photographs and his
illustrations in the book. In one chapter he says something that I think sums up his philosophy quite well. Crumb says, "As a person I was weak and helpless in the real world. It's a jungle out there! But, since I'd rather be dead than mediocre,
my motto is: Every Drawing a Masterpiece!"
- State of War – James Risen
- This book gives a behind the scenes look at the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Some of the points Risen makes are:
- The Bush administration ignores or suppresses intelligence information that does not support its views
- There was no pre-war or post-war plan for the Iraq war.
- The CIA had no presence in Iraq before war began
- The Pentagon is against post-war nation-building
- The heroin trade was allowed to grow to outrageous levels
in Afghanistan because the US was afraid of inciting anti-American violence if they attacked the drug lords
- Rumsfeld, not Bush, has the last word in foreign policy
In November 2003, after the initial US invasion that had toppled Sadam's regime had quieted down, as the Iraqi insurgents were starting to become more active
an army officer said to the CIA station chief in Baghdad, "The war is about to begin." The violence has continued and Risen says it has begun to look like "we are in danger of losing a war we thought we had already won."
- Eats, Shoots & Leaves – Lynne Truss
- This book is a punctuation lover's (or stickler's) delight. One of the most prominently misunderstood and
misused characters in the English language is the apostrophe, and the book has many examples of its questionable use
(eg, should that be its or it's?), a common misuse being writing "CD's" and "1990's" instead of "CDs"
and "1990s". Truss points out that text messaging has really caused punctuation rules to be ignored, and it will be interesting to see
what influence this freewheeling style will have on regular writing. Some may find these rules too rigid, but if you think of
punctuation in the way Truss describes it, as "a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling,"
you can appreciate its power and usefulness. Truss is charming and witty, and I caught myself laughing out loud many times
as I read this book.
- Seabiscuit – Laura Hillenbrand
- This is the story of one of the greatest thoroughbred racehorses in history. With smallish stature, knobby knees,
and slightly crooked forelegs, Seabiscuit was the
most unlikely of champions, but the team of owner Charles Howard, trainer Tom Smith, and jockeys Red Pollard &
George Woolf brought out his natural competitive instincts and winning ways. I was fascinated to read about the
intrigue of the racetracks, the tough and dangerous lives of the jockeys, and especially the play-by-play action
of specific races, like the match race between Seabiscuit and Triple-Crown winner War Admiral. Hillenbrand details
a world I knew very little about before reading this book. I learned
of the importance of the relationship between the jockey and the horse, and that a horse race involves strategies
that start way before the actual race and continue to develop right up until the horses cross the finish line, and
that a race horse might need stablemates who provide a calming influence, in Seabiscuit's case an old horse named
Pumpkin, a dog, and a spiker-monkey. The book was made into a movie
in 2003.
- Catch Me If You Can – Frank W. Abagnale, with Stan Redding
- This is the thrilling autobiography of one of the most incredible con men in modern history. Frank Abagnale
details his notorious escapades which he carried out for five years in the 1960s in all 50 states and 26 countries
until he was finally caught and imprisoned. I remember hearing about several of his capers (putting his account
number on the deposit slips in the bank lobby, and the "OUT
OF ORDER" sign on the night depository) but I didn't realize they were the work of the same
individual. His primary scam was cashing fraudulent checks ("paperhanging") by which he acquired $2.5
million. He was also very successful at his impersonations of an airline pilot (for years he rode for free in the
cockpit of airliners as an off-duty copilot), a doctor (he administrated the pediatric unit of an Atlanta hospital
for a year), a lawyer (this high school dropout actually passed the Louisiana bar exam to work as a prosecutor in
the state Attorney General's office), and a college professor (he taught a summer course in sociology at BYU).
This fascinating book was made into a movie in 2002. Ironically (or
perhaps logically) Frank now heads up a firm, Abagnale & Associates,
that specializes in fraud prevention.
- Divided We Stand – Eric Darton
- This erudite biography of the World Trade Center in New York includes a history of the Port Authority, who built
the WTC. It is a fascinating account of the battles between the development side (the Port Authority, David and
Nelson Rockefeller) and the existing merchants who would be displaced. Darton is a native New Yorker who witnessed
this entire decades-long episode in the history of the development of Lower Manhattan. Ironically, though this
book came out in 1999, the title and battleground theme of the cover makes it look like a story about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
- Miles: The Autobiography - Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe
- Miles always marched to his own beat in contemporary music, and he
was always inspired by new and younger musicians. His music continuously evolved, so his response to people asking
him to play something he had recorded years before was "I tell them to go buy the record. I'm not there in that
place any longer and I have to live for what is best for me and not what's best for them." He reveals a lot of
fascinating details about the recording sessions and tours he did over the years, and the musicians he played
with. Miles had a public persona, so it is interesting to hear about his private life from his perspective.
Miles' language is a little rough at times, but out of respect Troupe chooses to leave his words uncensored, like
his music.
- Ball Four – Jim Bouton
- When this hilarious baseball tell-all came out in 1970 it was ripped apart by the baseball establishment with
cries that it was all lies. Bouton, who pitched for the Yankees and several other teams in his career from
1962-1978, writes about life in the locker rooms, dugouts, and bullpens that is not seen by the fans. His wit is
very sharp and I laughed continuously while reading it. Bouton's honesty helps take some of the players off their
pedestals and shows us that they are just human beings, with the same insecurities as the rest of us, and engaged
in some of the same crazy activities. Besides his sense of humor, I admire Bouton for his beliefs. For more about
the book and Bouton, check out
"Ball Four by Jim Bouton".
- Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer
- In May, 1996, more than a dozen expeditions climbed to the summit of Mt. Everest where 12 climbers
were killed in a blinding blizzard. Krakauer was one of the survivors and he tells the story
in sobering detail. I found this book very difficult to put down. Another best-seller by
the author is Into the Wild.
- Prozac Nation – Elizabeth Wurtzel
- In spite of her severe clinical depression (and with the help of psychopharmacology), Wurtzel is articulate and
witty, and I find her book strangely charming. She was criticized by some reviewers for
being overly self-indulgent, but this is her autobiography and I think it should be told that way.
Of the external influences on her life she says, "I was like an already overspiced stew, and
all the chefs adding all their condiments were only making it more foggy and muddled and bad." With one Catholic
parent and one Jewish parent, Wurtzel says, ". . . the difference between Catholic guilt and Jewish guilt is that the
former emanates from the knowledge that we are all born already fallen, that there is nothing we can ever do to
overcome the original sin; the latter springs from a sense that everyone of us was created from God's image and has the
potential for perfection. So Catholic guilt is about impossibility and Jewish guilt is about an abundance of possibility."
The theme of this book is reminiscent of I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can by Barbara Gordon.
- Outrage – Vincent Bugliosi
- Subtitled "The Five Reasons Why O.J.Simpson Got Away With Murder". Bugliosi is disgusted with the way the
L.A. prosecutors handled the Simpson case. If he hadn't used Outrage as the
title of this book it would have been a good title for None Dare Call
It Treason, his scathing article in The Nation about the
U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave George W. Bush the 2000 presidential election.
He used The Nation article as the basis for a book, The Betrayal of America.
Bugliosi was the prosecutor of Charles Manson, and his book about
that case, Helter Skelter, was a best-seller.
- Liar's Poker – Michael Lewis
- The first in a series of books I read several years ago about incidents in the financial world. While I'm not a
big follower of the stock market, there have been some very interesting Wall Street stories. Other books I enjoyed include
The Predators' Ball by Connie Bruck, Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan
Burrough & John Helyar, Inside Job by Stephen Pizzo, Mary Fricker, & Paul Muolo,
Sudden Death by Mark Stevens.
- Be True to Your School – Bob Greene (I still like his writing in spite of his troubles)
- Bob Greene grew up in Ohio and became a writer and journalist (Chicago Tribune). This is the first book of
several I've read by him and it really grabbed me because it was a biography of his life during his high school
years in the 60s (my era). One of his more recent books is Hang Time, about Michael Jordan.
- Second Wind – Bill Russell
- I love sports biographies, especially autobiographies. Bill Russell's memoirs are thoroughly enjoyable.
It's remarkable to hear him describe how he developed his defensive style by replaying in his head the game he had just played.
Being left-handed, Russell mentally practiced mirroring the moves of a right-handed player and learned to block shots.
- The Reckoning – David Halberstam
- This book traces the histories of Ford and Toyota, the number 2 auto makers in the USA and Japan at the time he
wrote it (1986). Halberstam is one of my favorite authors and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Vietnam War
for The New York Times.
- Insanely Great – Steven Levy
- This is the story of the Macintosh computer. I found it particularly amusing when I read how Steve Jobs and others
from Apple were inspired by a visit to the Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) labs in 1979. PARC is the place
where many of the things we take for granted in the computer world were developed, like the mouse, pop-up windows,
many word-processing features (including Copy, Cut, Paste, Undo), and using bit-mapping for screen
graphics. Levy is a regular contributor of technical articles to Newsweek and has written several other
non-fiction books.
- Where Wizards Stay Up Late – Katie Hafner / Matthew Lyon
- This book follows the development of the ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet. The book is filled with stories of incredibly
intelligent people. You will learn how the @ symbol was put in the email address, hear some interesting early flaming stories,
how the Ethernet came about, and read about the early debates over Net privacy and censorship in the message groups.
- The Cuckoo's Egg – Cliff Stoll
(he has a skimpy website)
- Stoll's first person account of monitoring hackers as they attempt to break into US military computers is as
thrilling as fiction. Unfortunately, after writing such a great Internet-espionage thriller, Stoll has become
disgruntled with cyberspace and the way computers have infiltrated America's schools.
Other books about hackers I've read include:
 Takedown |
(1996) - |
Tsutomu Shimomura (with John Markoff) |
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The Fugitive Game |
(1997) - |
Jonathan Littman |
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Cyberpunk |
(1995) - |
Katie Hafner and John Markoff |
The Cyberthief and
the Samurai |
(1996) - |
Jeff Goodell |
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The Hacker Crackdown |
(1994) - |
Bruce Sterling |
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Masters of Deception |
(1999) - |
Michelle Slatalla and Joshua Quittner |
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Hackers |
(1994) - |
Steven Levy |
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe (I also review Wolfe under Fiction)
- A definitive documentation of the hedonism of the hippie generation, Wolfe's 1968 book follows the psychedelic
exploits of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and their
cross-country journey in a wildly painted school bus. Reading this book had a tremendous influence on my lifestyle
in the late 60s.
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Books
