Sheppard is an occasional college-level instructor of classical literature and a longtime baseball fan. His book underscores the parallels between the actors in Homer’s Odyssey and the men at the plate, on the mound, and in the field. There is bravery, trickery, perseverance, skill with ancient weaponry, drama, and heroism. Men face one another in grueling duels until one of them retires in defeat. Armies compete against each other under the heat of the sun for a day, a season, and sometimes for years. Only, Sheppard’s descriptions of Odysseus and his travails never quite crosses paths with the great men of the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox. A fantastic idea that didn’t quite reach fruition.
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1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin *** (of 4)
Andrew Ross Sorkin’s approach to the Great Depression is to follow some great men, day by day in the year leading up to the crash. What arises most clearly is the avarice of bankers and financial giants, who, though aware they were inflating a bubble, continued to lean on the Federal Reserve Board to allow the continual flow of inexpensive (low interest) cash. Absorbing all the cash they could hoard, bankers, who at the time could also sell securities, loaned money to vast numbers of average citizens, encouraging them to invest in the stock market.
The market had risen steadily during the 1920s so the appeal, coming as it did from wealthy tycoons and salesmen making commission, was irresistible. With a loan from a bank, an investor could purchase stock for two-fifths of its value, using the invested money as collateral. As long as stock values continued to rise, the gained income could be used to pay off the difference. When, in the fall of 1929, stock prices fell quickly, banks called upon their customers to repay their borrowed money to cover their losses in bank values. Money they did not have. At the same time, customers, worried about their rapidly declining valuations rushed their banks to take out their savings. Hundreds of banks collapsed along with the market. What Sorkin makes clear is that the 2008 economic crash was a repeat of 1929, and that the current tech bubble, again driven by the moneyed classes and Trump’s urging the Fed to obey his wishes looks awfully familiar.
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So Far Gone by Jess Walter **** (of 4)
Rhys Kinnick, a cantankerous, retired, environmental journalist, fed up with the world, and especially his son-in-law, leaves society behind to live off the grid in a dilapidated family property in Washington’s woodlands. Shane, the son-in-law, is an ultra-nationalist, militant, gun-toting, MAGA-loving, conspiracy-saturated, super-Christian. Having established the two poles in a divided America, the author Jess Walter, puts forth a laugh aloud comedy. Shane’s wife, Bethany, runs off leaving her two children with Rhys who has barely talked to anyone in seven years. Rhys packs his newly arrived grandchildren into his raccoon-eaten, barely functional car and teams up with Crazy-Ass Chuck Littlefield to search for Bethany. Shane’s Army of the Lord (AOL) brothers-in-arms aim to find Bethany first. A madcap pursuit ensues, as does a subtle commentary on the nation’s current political divide.
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The Fort Bragg Cartel by Seth Sharp *** (of 4)
What started after 9/11 as the U.S. War on Terror has declined into an interminable excuse for targeted killing, assassinations, and undercover attempts by the U.S. government to shape political outcomes. We arm and abet one set of tribesmen and kill opponents. To make it happen, a variety of special forces are trained as professional killers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Inculcated as assassins they are infiltrated around the globe, given false identities, and medical assistance in the form of highly addictive drugs to keep them alert and hyped for days at a time. As many of our so-called allies are also some of the largest drug producers and dealers in the world, huge numbers of Delta Force operatives have become profligate drug users. Because they can fly incognito, often on special aircraft, back and forth to places like Afghanistan, a surprising number are also drug importers and dealers themselves.
Sharp focuses much of his energy on the rampant drug use, scores of unsolved murders of soldiers (presumably drug related), and a much higher than average suicide rate on the sprawling, and evidently quite depressing, Fort Bragg facility. Nearly every case that Sharp doggedly follows ends with charges dropped or failed investigations. The explanation being that top brass have strong incentives to circle their wagons.
Sharp is so exasperated by cover ups from a military organization that specializes in misinformation as part of their operating procedures his last 75 pages are somewhat tedious summarizations of baffling murders, unlikely suicides, and horrible overdoses. His case that Fort Bragg is a den of iniquity is so strong that it swamps his earlier finding that the U.S. is secretly training professional executioners, urged them to murder, maim, and kidnap. Keeping score of their kills to gain rewards incentivizes indiscriminate list enhancements in the form of liquidations of innocents and complete absence of due process. Worse still, by all accounts their actions have not improved the outcomes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, Ukraine, the Balkans, Central America, Mexico, or if you are thinking ahead, Venezuela.
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VOX: Today, Explained podcast
On October 20, my interview with Vox reporter, Jonquilyn Hill, hit the airwaves. Much to my surprise, the story rose to #2 Most Popular Story of the week, which I think says a lot about how much we all yearn to escape from the rest of the news cycle.
As it says above, to hear the story (stories?, as there might be a longer version of just my segment) you need to have a paid subscription to Vox or a a reliable podcast app like Spotify, Amazon, or Apple.
If you want the transcript, you can see it here.
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Buckwheat – Whole Wheat Sourdough (and some Ciabattas)
Every once in a while a bread releases from its pan and delivers so much flavor that you cannot believe it is even related to loaves bagged in plastic in the bread aisle.
This recipe from Melissa Johnson at Breadtopia can be made with either buckwheat porridge or buckwheat flour. I made this loaf with freshly milled buckwheat flour and freshly milled heirloom wheat (Turkey Red). It is a loaf where you can actually taste the richness of slowly baked grains, gently browned in the oven after a slow deliberate fermentation.
And some ciabattas, because who doesn’t like ciabattas fresh from the oven?
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Lost and Found by Kathryn Schultz *** (of 4)
In the same year, Kathryn Schultz’s father died and Schultz met the love of her life. She found her wife and lost her father. While riding the elevator of depression and elation, Schultz does more than simply bring us along for the ride. She universalizes her experiences. We all lose things, daily, so that over the course of a lifetime we are destined to lose everything from a paper we put down just a minute ago to a thought that flew through our heads without pausing long enough to hang onto, to the people we love most. Similarly, we stumble upon a song that brings us shocking joy, an ability to achieve what we previously thought impossible, and if we are lucky, and forgiving, a life partner. Schultz gets us to recognize that life is observing, accepting, and, because we have few better choices, embracing both lost and found.
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Sun Storm by Asa Larsson *** (of 4)
A pastor is ritualistically murdered inside his church in Sweden. Not just Sweden, but under the writing rules of Scandinavian noir, the murder is committed in northern Sweden, and in the winter, so almost every page is cloaked in snow, ice, and perpetual darkness. Flying up from Stockholm to her isolated hometown of Kiruna is the lawyer Rebecka Martinsson. Rebecka dives into the cultish, charismatic church that has ensnared so many in the isolated community she was so desperate to leave. Three remaining preachers continue to promote an evangelical faith that heals the sick more effectively than medicine. Suspiciously, the pastors have homes and cars to match the outlandish size of their gleaming new megachurch. While preaching piety and patriarchy, unholy secrets lie just below the surface making Rebecka’s investigation, and Larsson’s nearly 15-year-old novel, feel rather contemporary.
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Night Heron by Adam Brookes ** (of 4)
This spy drama set in China received excellent reviews when it came out in 2014. A Chinese spy for British intelligence called Peanut breaks free from a remote Chinese prison camp where he has been incarcerated for two decades. On the run, but determined to reactivate his connections and expose China’s advanced rocket systems, Peanut contacts Phillip Mangan, a muckraking British journalist posted in Beijing. Mangan is reluctant to get involved, but is shoehorned into running Peanut by Britain’s secret service.
The author, Adam Brookes, a former journalist himself, excels at exposing Chinese bureaucracies, its secret police, bruising interrogation techniques, and attempts to maintain state control at any cost. In contrast, his spy craft reads like it was assembled from magazine articles and his plot progression like it was derived from movies that he’s seen.The book received a few awards and nominations and the journalist protagonist turned spy is featured in subsequent books that I don’t think I am going to read.
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Tru Biz by Sara Novic **** (of 4)
The scene is River Valley School for the Deaf just outside Cincinnati, Ohio. Charlie, a teenager with crappy cochlear implants and parents who prevented her from learning to sign, moves from mainstream Jefferson High to River Valley. Deprived of full language learning until her transfer in 11th grade, Charlie has to learn American Sign as a second language amongst students whose mother tongue is ASL. Also she has to manage divorced parents, boarding school, and teenage experimentation with drugs, alcohol, sex, and her first opportunity to attend classes not as a “special” learner.
As readers we learn the basic history and rules of grammar of ASL, Black ASL, the racist reasons for Black ASL, and centuries-long attempts to squash the separate culture and identities of deaf people. Alexander Graham Bell is among the more recent eugenicists (really) who thought that deaf people should be eliminated from society. Which raises the question—while we root for Charlie to overcome the buzzing implant in her head and a mother who still wishes her daughter were perfect, rather than deaf—of whether scientific advances in implant technology will correctly, or wrongly, eliminate deafness and a proud deaf culture.
