Category Archives: Reviews

China Syndrome : The True Story of the 21st Century’s First Great Epidemic

by Karl Taro Greenfeld

I remember one of the first truly scary movies I ever saw: The Andromeda Strain. This book follows the same template: a previously unknown virus emerges and starts killing people, spreading rapidly. Of course, Andromeda was science fiction, and SARS was all too real. Greenfield, the former head of TIME Asia, observed the epidemic’s growth from his home in Hong Kong. He’s written a compelling day-by-day narrative of the progress of the outbreak, beginning with its initial spread from restaurant workers in Shenzhen to the waning days of the epidemic. Along the way, he clearly explains the scientific and political obstacles faced by the scientists who were trying to pinpoint the etiology of SARS and how to treat it.
Greenfield’s account gives a great deal of credit to some individual scientists, which IMHO is as it should be. He also lambasts the Chinese government for its obstructionist and deceitful response in the first two-thirds of the outbreak, which is also fitting, given how their delays and obfuscations needlessly killed their own citizens.
If I have any quibbles with the book, they’re with Greenfield’s somewhat breathless narrative style. I sometimes felt like I was reading a several-hundred-page-long magazine article. Greenfield nails the story, though, and his conclusion– that the human race dodged a bullet– is right on. Highly recommended. (However, don’t read it while traveling unless you want to suffer panic attacks every time someone near you on the airplane coughs or sneezes.)

Double Eagle: The Epic Story of the World’s Most Valuable Coin

by Alison Frankel

This is one of those books that sounds really interesting at first, but which eventually gets shuffled aside in favor of other, more immediately interesting titles. Frankel’s book describes how a single 1933 “Double Eagle” $20 gold coin, taken surreptitiously from the US Mint in Philadelphia, became perhaps the world’s most valuable, and sought-after, coin. I just didn’t find the tale that compelling, laden as it is with lots of side discursions about coin collecting. Frankel says of one collector that “Either you have a passion for coins, or you don’t.” I guess I don’t. In fairness, I didn’t finish the book because the library was demanding its return; perhaps the last third is more interesting. I’ll probably go back to it once my queue gets a little shorter.

Body Brokers : Inside America’s Underground Trade in Human Remains

by Annie Cheney

I always thought it would be kind of cool to donate my body to science. After all, I won’t need it, and the thought that I might help a medical student or research scientist in some way was appealing. Now, not so much.
Hands down, this is the most disturbing book I’ve ever read. Annie Cheney takes a detailed look at the thriving body-parts industry in the US, and it’s not a pretty sight. There are federal regulations that control organ procurement organizations (OPOs), which coordinate the supply of transplantable organs. There’s no such oversight for the provision of other kinds of body parts, including corneas, tendons, bones, and various other parts. One of the most upsetting images to me was Cheney’s description of a visit to a surgical clinic in a swank Miami hotel; behind the doors of a meeting room, doctors learn and practice techniques for laparascopic kidney surgery on armless, legless, headless human torsos.
Cheney highlights a number of problems with the current state of the tissue industry, the biggest being that there are huge financial incentives for the sale of human tissue, and these incentives lead people to do unethical and illegal things, including harvesting tissue from deceased people without their families’ consent and “parting out” bodies donated to medical schools for profit. (I was especially distressed to read that LSU and Tulane are both big players in this latter industry). The recent scandal surrounding Michael Mastromarino‘s company (which not only stole body parts without consent but sold diseased tissue that was implanted into otherwise healthy people) is only a visible sign of the rot at the heart of this industry.
I don’t recommend reading this for enjoyment, but it was certainly an eye-opener.

Counting Heads

by David Marusek

David Marusek first came to my attention when I read his short story “We Were Out of Our Minds With Joy” in one of the Dozois “Year’s Best” anthologies. It was a terrific story about a future America peopled with clones, AIs, and a variety of perfectly logical technological extrapolations of today’s world (like “militia slugs”– little autonomous biorobots that roam around taking DNA samples and looking for terrorists and other scofflaws). The story packed a wicked emotional punch, and Marusek’s characters are among the most vividly imagined I’ve ever encountered in SF.
I was a little nervous when I started reading Counting Heads— could Marusek sustain the emotional intensity and character strength of his shorter stories? Turns out I shouldn’t have worried. He does so, and more. Counting Heads begins with a modified version of the events in “We Were Out of Our Minds With Joy”, in which a young newly married couple gets a permit to have a baby (in a very unusual way, it must be said) just before disaster strikes their marriage. The remainder of the novel combines an ensemble cast of characters, including a cop who happens to be a clone, a 29-year-old who’s decided to remain at a biological age of 11, a whole passel of AIs, and the original husband and wife– whose daughter’s head, severed and cryogenically preserved in a spacecraft crash, forms the titular head that’s being counted, or (more accurately) hunted. The evolution of the various characters rings true and adds a nicely nuanced emotional depth to the action and gadgetry.
This New York Times book review dismisses it as a typical sci-fi geek book. Perhaps that’s why I liked it so much. It’s true that the ending is overly abrupt– almost as though the book were arbitrarily cut in half, although the author says that’s not the case– but apart from that, if I could only recommend one science fiction book this year, Counting Heads would be it– it’s that good.

Blowback : A Thriller

by Brad Thor

Throughout this book, I kept mentally shaking my head and saying “yeah, right”– but I finished it anyway. This is Thor’s fourth book, and I guess he got bored with conventional thriller plots like the President being kidnapped; instead, we get a secret bioweapon originally developed by Hannibal (yes, the one with the elephants) and dug up by some dastardly Muslims. I found the plot predictable, but even so it was still an enjoyable read. Worth a trip to the library.

Thanks to a confidential source at Verizon, I found out that Palm is preparing a revision of the Treo 700w for immediate release. Can’t wait to get my hands on it! I can’t say much about the details, but you can see a picture here.

Bob Thompson mentioned that he was looking for books for a young neighbor. Based on my own kids, I thought I’d write a few quick recommendations. David, my eldest, is 11, and loves to read more than anything (well, except for eating and playing the Xbox 360). He’s read a few of the Heinlein juveniles, but they haven’t really captured his interest, although I’m going to try again to get him to read Starship Troopers. These books, on the other hand, have been among his favorites:

• Scott Westerfeld‘s Uglies trilogy (Uglies, Pretties, and the just-released Specials). Scene: future post-industrial world where cosmetic surgery is mandatory at age 16. This leads to very different social dynamics than we’re used to, but something is rotten in Denmark. Lots of beauty-is-more-than-skin-deep and don’t-judge-books-by-their-covers messaging, but it’s fairly subtle. (n.b. for grownups, I strongly recommend Westerfeld’s Risen Empire books– outstanding in both characterization and execution!)
• Elizabeth Moon‘s Trading in Danger, Marque and Reprisal, and Engaging the Enemy(which just came out; I haven’t read it yet). Kylara Vatta is expelled from her homeworld’s military academy, so her dad assigns her to take a family freighter to the breakers’ yard– only a war interferes. Very strong female characters; they’re starship captains and spymasters, for crying out loud! Moon is a former Marine, and her space battles (both infantry and naval) are invigorating.
• Anthony Horowitz‘s Alex Rider series. Not really SF; Rider is a 14-year-old boy who runs afoul of MI-6 after he discovers that his father was actually an agent. Six or seven books in the series; both my 11- and 8-year-olds love them. No particular redeeming quality other than being fast-paced.</li?

I particularly like these books because there’s nothing I wouldn’t want my kids to read: no sex, very little bad language, etc. I realize that some people aren’t as concerned with what their kids read/see/watch, but I appreciate these authors’ efforts to write YA fiction that I’m not embarrassed for them to read. Case in point: John Varley’s Red Thunder was a great Heinlein-ish YA book, except that RAH would never have put Varley’s raunchy language or explicit sex into a YA book. The same is true for Westerfeld’s Peeps, although it’s quite a bit milder than Varley.

Red Star Rogue : The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine’s Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S.

by Kenneth Sewell, Clint Richmond

Sewell has written an interesting conjectural account of how a rogue faction in the former USSR’s government planned and executed an attempt to start a nuclear war between the US and China. The plan revolved around K-129, a Golf II-class ballistic missile sub. According to Sewell’s theory, the sub was seized after sailing by a crew of osnaz (KGB special forces troops); the osnaz then moved the sub to within about 400nm of Pearl Harbor and attempted to launch one of the sub’s 1MT warheads. The launch attempt triggered an anti-tampering device in the missile warhead; the resulting explosion and fire damaged the sub so severely that it sank with all hands.
Sewell cites lots of circumstancial evidence, and clearly he’s done a great deal of research. He lays out a fairly convincing case– at least as far as I read. His writing style is terribly repetitive, and I just couldn’t take it any more. For all I know, the hard proof is included somewhere after page 200 or so, but I guess I’ll never find out.

Blown

by Francine Mathews

If you haven’t read Francine Mathews’ previous book, The Cutout, you won’t be able to make any sense out of this book, so be forewarned. However, both books are excellent.
The plot of Blown follows linearly from the end of Cutout: Caroline Carmichael is a CIA analyst whose husband is implicated in the kidnapping and murder of the Vice President by 30 April, a neo-Nazi terrorist group. Carmichael returns to the US– just in time for a series of attacks staged by 30 April in the US. That starts the hunt, involving Carmichael, her husband, and a cast of other characters first introduced in Cutout.
Like Greg Rucka, Mathews’ characters don’t have superhuman powers of deduction, intuition, or physical strength. That doesn’t mean that they’re ordinary in any way, merely that they’re believable. In particular, Caroline Carmichael is a terrific heroine, combining a quick mind and temper (her husband’s nickname for her is “Mad Dog”) with an active interior life and an affecting set of emotional issues (to be expected after your husband comes back from the dead).
Highly recommended, but be sure to read Cutout first (it’s just out in paperback, so this should be easy). Mathews’ forthcoming The Alibi Club is already on my to-read list.

Private Wars (Queen & Country Novels)

by Greg Rucka

Like Daniel Silva and Barry Eisler, Greg Rucka is a must-read author by my lights. Any book he writes, I’ll read; his Atticus Kodiak books remain among my favorite thrillers. This book is no exception to that general rule; it’s a terrifc, gritty, dark tale of Tara Chace, a British MI-6 agent from Rucka’s Queen and Country graphic novels. In this book, Chace is assigned to extract the son of the president of Uzbekistan to save his life after his sister mounts a coup attempt against their ailing father. The plot is too complicated for me to describe in detail without giving lots of goodies away; there are some very disturbing things that happen along the way, and to his credit Rucka portrays them not as exigencies– as might Lee Child– but as terrible but necessary steps taken in search of a higher goal. Of course, that leads you to wonder about whether the goal itself is worthwhile, which I think is Rucka’s point.
Highly recommended.

The Last Coach: A Life of Paul

by Allen Barra

What a pleasure this was to read! I grew up in the South, in the heart of SEC country, and I lived in Alabama, where Bear Bryant is still revered, from 1991 to 2002. Even with that background, I didn’t really know much about Bryant or the many ways in which today’s game of college football reflects his personality and career. He was an old-school coach who believed that desire was at least as important– if not more so– than pure talent, and both his coaching strategies and the teams he fielded reflected that. He was also a brilliant recruiter; this was probably his most outstanding characteristic.
Barra has written a wonderfully conversational biography, with lots of juicy quotes from Bryant, his peers, and his players. He doesn’t shy away from pointing out some of the more controversial aspects of Bryant’s career (including the issue of whether he could have done more to make the University of Alabama integrate its atheletic teams), but he does so in a fair-minded way. Ultimately, I found the book to be uplifting, not least because of Barra’s inclusion of the devotional Bryant carried in his wallet:

This is the beginning of a new day.
God has given me this day to use as I will.
I can waste it or use it for good.
What I do today is very important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it.
When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever,
Leaving something in its place I have traded for it.
I want it to be a gain, not a loss–good, not evil.
Success, not failure in order that I shall not forget the price I paid for it.

Highly recommended, even if you’re not much of a football fan.

I need to take the time to write up the next installment of our cruise experience, but I’ve just been too busy doing other stuff. To wit, this has been a big week for the ol’ Xbox 360:

• NBA 2K 06: fun if you like sports games; I got bored with it pretty quickly. Great graphics (except for the player faces!)
• Fight Night Round 3: unbelievable. It’s like watching ESPN. The body motion, voiceovers, and environmental effects are perfect. The only thing missing is the smell of liniment. I made a boxer named Smokey Boudin anhd had a great time getting pummeled, since I couldn’t quite get the hang of the interface. I may pick this up when its price goes down some, but I’ll definitely rent it again.
• Burnout Revenge: yep, it’s a Burnout game. Lots of crashing, only now in high definition! The game’s sense of speed is excellent– far better than Need for Speed or even Project Gotham 3. When you’re doing 200mph down a freeway, it feels like you’re going that fast. Great fun.

Speak of the Devil : A Novel

by Richard Hawke

Fritz Malone is a former cop and the illegitimate son of the former police commissioner of New York City. WIth that background, you’d expect him to be a super gumshoe; when he casually stops to watch a Thanksgiving parade and sees a gunman firing into a crowd, he gets dragged into a duel of wits (or wills, really) between someone calling himself Nightmare and the mayor of New York.
Malone is a likable character, in part because he’s a sort of Everyman PI. He’s not blessed with the physique of Lee Child’s Reacher or Robert Parker’s Hawk, and he makes some critical mistakes as he tries to get to the bottom of Nightmare’s plan. The supporting characters (including Malone’s girlfriend, his highly dysfunctional family, and a couple of NYPD beat cops) are well-enough drawn, and Hawke moves the plot along rapidly. Unfortunately, the denouement was unbelievable, at least to me; it wasn’t plausible to me, and that undid a lot of the work that Hawke had done to build a credible story. Not a bad read, though.
(Note: this is billed as a “debut novel” but it’s not. Richard Hawke is a pen name for Tim Cockey, an accomplished mystery writer. For that reason, I guess I expected a bit more.)

There’s an interesting article in last week’s InfoWorld that compares four Exchange management tools: the MS MOM Exchange management pack, DYS Analytics, Quest Spotlight on Exchange, and Zenprise. Zenprise came out on top because of its powerful troubleshooting engine, which is about to be expanded (look for an announcement later today).

Disclaimer: I’m on Zenprise’s advisory board, though I don’t claim (or deserve) any credit for their troubleshooting engine.