Category Archives: Reviews

The Phony Marine: A Novel

by Jim Lehrer

Short book, thus a short review. This is a finely crafted story told by an extremely competent talespinner. Hugo Marder, a men’s clothing salesman, has always wanted to be a Marine. When he buys a Silver Star on eBay and wears it, suddenly people start treating him like someone who matters. He plunges himself into Marine Corps lore in an attempt to match the background of a real Marine, and he faces some circumstances that help define who he really is. Lehrer takes a fresh look at what it means to be a hero and how our culture treats its heroes. It’s a quick, but fun, read that leaves you with some substance once you’re done. Semper fi.

The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute

by Michael Ruhlman

Four years ago, I reviewed Ruhlman’s Walk on Water. That year, Julie gave me this book. Until recently, it sat unread on my shelf. What a mistake! Ruhlman has written a superbly readable narrative of what it’s like to study at the Culinary Institute of America, someplace I never imagined giving a hoot about. I am very much a meat-and-potatoes (or, more accurately, boudin-and-rice) kind of person. I’m not a foodie, and you never could have convinced me that I’d devour a book about cooking school– but I did. Ruhlman writes with a keen eye for detail, a snappy sense of pacing, and a willingness to philosophize about himself and the culinary field that I found simultaneously refreshing and reflective. Highly recommended, even if you prefer Burger King to Bourdain.

Breakpoint

by Richard A. Clarke

Say you wanted to read an exciting techno-thriller, filled with interesting characters, cool gadgets, realistic scenarios, and a writer who knows how to join them all together. Sound good? Excellent. In that case, don’t read this book.
I’m not sure how Richard A. Clarke got a rep as being a deep technical thinker. Maybe he is, but if so, this book certainly doesn’t show it. Breakpoint centers on a shadowy conspiracy to screw the civilized world by destroying much of its information infrastructure. The book starts well enough, with an attack on the terminating points for transoceanic cables that link US internet traffic to the rest of the world. However, the continual pseudo-technical blathering (“server-motor-driven”? err, maybe you meant “servo”?) about “Sytho Routers” and “Living Software” (a spanking-new self-replicating software package that will simultaneously give us a cross between Kurzweil’s Singularity and Skynet) quickly becomes intolerable.
The characters have little verve or dimensionality, the dialogue is bogus (particularly when 1337 h4xx0rs are speaking), and the whole thing left me shaking my head.
I haven’t finished it yet. I keep hoping that it will get better, while simultaneously knowing that it won’t. Don’t bother.

Dear Avis Rent-a-Car:

Please accept my thanks for renting me a Chevy Uplander minivan instead of the car I actually reserved. Ordinarily I would have preferred to have a standard sedan. since I was traveling solo. However, I’m grateful for the opportunity you gave me to drive an Uplander during my recent trip to Seattle. Why? Because it helps me appreciate the engineering quality, driveability, ergonomics, and product quality of my Dodge Grand Caravan. In fact, I can say that the Uplander was inferior to every other car I’ve ever owned or even driven, including the 1972 VW Super Beetle.

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The Threat: A Novel

by David Poyer

I’m a big fan of Poyer’s past work. In fact, except for his Civil War-era novels, I’ve read all of his books, and as different as they are (ranging from modern war-at-sea novels to a look back to rural Pennsylvania in the 1930s) they’ve all been excellent. Sadly, though, I don’t think The Threat is up to his past standards.

Dan Lenson, the main character here, is probably the luckiest sailor alive. He’s survived having his ship run over by an aircraft carrier, attempts on his life by angry crewmen, getting blown up by the Iranian Navy, becoming lost in the Canadian Yukon, being tortured by Saddam’s Revolutionary Guard, and having a low-yield nuclear weapon detonated abeam the first ship he actually got to command. After all this excitement, being named to the National Security Council as the chief of the counterdrug office seems like it would be a letdown. Lenson quickly makes an impact in his new job, which results in him being shuffled off to join the rotation of military aides who carry the nuclear “football”. Sinister forces are at work behind the assignment, though; the sitting President is a dishonest sleazebag who is loathed by the military– some of whom may be plotting to assassinate him and pin the blame on a convenient target. Like, say, a decorated-but-unstable military officer whose wife just left him. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Poyer still has the exquisite eye for detail, and description that he has long had, but because he turns it to the political arena it doesn’t have nearly the same impact as it does when he describes the high-speed chess of battles at sea, or even the quieter poetry of the sounds and sights of a ship under way. The plot development was regrettably predictable, and the good and bad guys are straight from Thriller 101. There are some memorable scenes (like when the President faces a hostile crowd of grunts at a field base in Africa), but overall this wasn’t up to the standards of Poyer’s previous books. You might still enjoy this, but if you’re new to his series start with The Med or one of the Tiller Galloway series.

The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America’s Coastal Cities

by Mike Tidwell

As much as I enjoyed Tidwell’s Bayou Farewell, I expected to enjoy The Ravaging Tide too. However, I couldn’t even finish it; the tone was just too preachy. Tidwell makes some important points about the importance of coastal cities (and wetlands) to the American economy, and he lays out a pretty good case for why all Americans should care. However, that wasn’t enough to get me to finish. Maybe I’ll give it another try at some future time.

Four Days to Veracruz : A Novel

by Owen West

Four Days to Veracruz : A Novel is one of the most vivid thrillers I’ve ever read– and I read a lot of ’em.
The author, Owen West, is a serving Marine officer who’s also an adventure racer (think Eco Challenge). He draws on both those skill sets for this book, which tells the story of a newlywed couple who accidentally trespass on a Mexican drug lord’s estancia and are held hostage. They manage to escape, killing the drug lord in the process, but when they go to the local police their real problems start. Fortunately, the newlyweds are both adventure racers, and the husband is a Marine infantry officer (the husband and his best friend, Gavin Kelly, are both return characters from West’s Sharkman Six).
West did a great job with pacing and plotting, and his descriptions of the physiology and psychology of adventure endurance racing are interesting in themselves. There are many minor implausibilities (not the least of which is the inclusion of an Aztec serial killer as a foil for the chase), but they’re outweighed by West’s skill at moving the story along. Highly recommended.

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

by Brian Wansink

This is perhaps the most interesting book I’ve read in the last few years, right up there with Freakonomics. I’ve written briefly about Brian Wansink before, and I’m pleased to report that his book matches my initial impression of his work: it’s a neat hack. Wansink’s basic theorem is that, because there are so many environmental factors that influence how much people eat, you can manage your weight simply by juggling those factors to work in your favor. I tried using a smaller dinner plate for about a week and found that– sure enough– I did eat less, even though I didn’t feel hungry or deprived.
There are a ton of interesting anecdotes in the book, but Wansink is careful to knit them together into a simple plan: slightly change your eating habits as he suggests, and you’ll lose weight slowly (he proposes a simple estimate: cut N calories per day and you’ll lose N/10 pounds in a year). His focus is on weight management through environmental and portion control, which I think is pretty sound. Interestingly, there’s a good bit of overlap with The Hacker’s Diet, at least in terms of Wansink’s emphasis on gradual weight reduction instead of sudden changes in eating habits.
Wansink also engages in some pretty cool mythbusting; for example, he compares the number of calories people consumed with the number they thought they were eating at both Subway and McDonald’s. Result: people who ate at Subway, which heavily promotes its food as healthy, underestimated the number of calories they actually ate by as much as 20%. Oops.
Highly recommended as a fun read; the more so if you’re actually trying to control your weight.

No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Falluja

by Bing West

The first book I read by Bing West was The March Up. It was excellent, if somewhat dry. This book is head and shoulders above West’s previous book. In No True Glory, West gives a detailed, week-by-week account of the on-again, off-again US response to the Iraqi insurgency in the city of Fallujah. He does an excellent job of presenting both the high-level strategic considerations (and blunders) of the US and Iraqi governments and the nitty-gritty, house-by-house fighting that ensued.
West doesn’t pull any punches. He clearly identifies the critical US mistakes (including the decision not to “finish the fight” with the insurgents in April 2004), and he names names. Paul Bremer and John Abizaid don’t come off looking good by West’s descriptions. By the same token, he does a fantastic job of portraying the life of a Marine infantryman in the First Marine Division. I don’t think most Americans realized how brutal the fighting in Fallujah during the second assault was– or the degree to which the battle was poorly reported, or misreported, by the US media.
In reading this, I gained a new appreciation for the valor, dedication, and perseverance of the US Marine Corps. I highly recommend this book to everyone– including (or perhaps especially) people who normally avoid military history. Whether you support this war or not; whether you support President Bush or not; Americans should understand the sacrifices that our Marines have made on their behalf.

747: Creating the World’s First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation

by Joe Sutter, Jay Spenser

If you’re at all interested in aviation, read this book! Joe Sutter has written a delightful account of his career at Boeing and his role in driving the creation of the 747 jumbo jet. The book is a fascinating look at the old-school culture of aerospace engineering (in that regard, it’s not dissimilar from Skunk Works). It was a quick read, and there’s not a ton of technical detail. However, there is enough detail to have kept the book interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and when David read it he loved it too. That’s high praise indeed, given how much he reads 🙂 Highly recommended for the aviation or biography buff; everyone else would probably be better off reading something else.

Point of Entry: A Novel

by Peter Schechter

This is a terrific first effort– one reviewer on Amazon called it “exciting and entertaining”, and I agree. Schecter draws on his background as an international consultant, and a deep knowledge of Colombia, to lay out an interesting scenario: what if some smart terrorist (or government, in this case) decided to leverage an existing Colombian-controlled drug smuggling system to get fissile material into the US? Arrayed against the bad guys are a memorable cast of characters, including the president of Colombia (a former Miss Universe), the president of the US (a widowed Midwestern farm boy who gets quite an education), Fidel Castro, and a variety of lesser, but still well-characterized, lights. The local descriptions are superb, the overall plot is both plausible and quickly executed, and the pace is fast. My only complaint is that many of Schecter’s characters sound alike– not an uncommon problem for first novelists. I look forward to more of Schechter’s books in the future. Highly recommended.

This is the only current book that covers Live Communications Server 2005. Fortunately, it’s a good introduction. Joe Schurman has written a readable, useful book that covers much of what you need to know to install and manage LCS, even if you are fairly inexperienced. The book assumes medium familiarity with Active Directory, and it helps if you have some Windows admin background.

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The Alibi Club

by Francine Mathews

This was probably a great book– after all, Mathews clearly knows how to write great thrillers. Sadly, I found it turgid, slow-moving, and dull. The characters were wooden (bad German? check. spunky American heroine? check. lily-livered French diplomats? check. You get the idea.) The big secret of the plot goes essentially nowhere. Reviews on Amazon praise the intricate detail that Mathews lavishes on describing 1940 Paris. If that’s your thing, you might like this book, but I sure didn’t.

Rumspringa : To Be or Not to Be Amish

by Tom Shachtman

Shachtman’s book is based on an extensive set of interviews with Amish teens and adults from a variety of areas; the interviews were originally collected for a documentary called The Devil’s Playground. The result is an affecting book that portrays Amish culture in a unique way.
This was perhaps one of the most enlightening books I’ve ever read, in two senses. The first is that it taught me a great deal about Amish culture. I’m probably not alone in that I knew very little about the Amish beyond what I saw in Witness. For example, I didn’t know that there are multiple sects of the Amish faith– each congregation can create its own ordnung, or set of rules, and different congregations have different rules about what kinds of interactions with the outside world are permitted, discouraged, or outright forbidden. (I also didn’t know that bishops are chosen by lot from the congregations, and that they serve for life– yikes!)
The second way this book enlightened me is to give me a further testimony of the importance of the family. Although Amish doctrine differs in many ways from LDS doctrines, one attitude shared by both is that moral standards aren’t prison bars that keep people in– they’re more akin to a picket fence that helps separate what should be an enclave of love from negative influences in the outside world.
Shachtman is careful not to describe rumspringa as a period when teens are encouraged to go out and do things that violate the tenets of their faith, although many of them do. However, overall the Amish church has a very high retention rate– north of 90% by most estimates. He includes interviews with a few people who’ve left the church; some are glad, and some are not. He also intersperses comments from scholars who study Amish culture, which provides a welcome third-party perspective. If this book has any flaw, it’s that writing an entire book based on interviews leads to a disconnected prose style composed mostly of pasted-together quotes. Once I got used to it, though, I was fascinated by what I learned. Highly recommended.

As part of our trip to Niagara Falls (more on which later), we took the boys to see Cirque Niagara‘s presentation of “Avaia” tonight. I wanted to jot down a few thoughts before I forgot them (the incessant din will do that to me.)
In summary: great show, and well worth the money.
The show bills itself as a spectacle for all ages, and it really is. The show is somewhat similar to Cirque du Soleil in many respects: the loud music, the physical prowess of the atheletes, and the motif of two or three clowns who tell a story of their own that’s basically orthogonal to the main story.
“Avaia” is unique because it incorporates horses, and lots of ’em (the brochure says 19, but I wasn’t counting). The human acrobats are outstanding, but the men who do stunts while riding are really something to behold. There’s knife throwing, a couple of sword fights, women balancing 20′ in the air on long poles, a foam rubber shotgun, and more. The boys were completely enchanted, and I think this is something they’ll remember for a long time. (They don’t allow any photography, so you’ll have to take my word for it.)
We sprang for seats in the “red zone”; we ended up in row 2 of the center stage section. These were fantastic seats, and I thought they were well worth the money. The Cirque promoters have plastered Niagara with signs offering free kids’ tickets, but that offer only holds if you buy the $39 obstructed-view adult tickets. However, the arena is small enough that the view wouldn’t be very obstructed so it might be a good gamble to take. Matt was awfully surprised when one of the clowns went running up the aisle right next to us; his facial expression was priceless! Speaking of which: kids 5 and under get in free if they’ll sit on your lap. The 4 seats we bought were actually bench-style seats that were wide enough in total
to hold the five of us fairly comfortably, except that they have narrow pitch and little padding– be forewarned.
All in all, this will probably be one of the highlights of our trip. I highly recommend it.