wildbill ROOT's in 2013

About 3 years ago I went through my library and counted the number of books I had read that I owned. I discovered that I had read about 30%. This year I picked out about 120 books and put them in a tbr 2013 collection. I usually try to read 50 books a year so that will give me plenty to choose from. I took all the books I had picked out and put them on a separate bookshelf. That way after I finish a book it will be easy to pick out a new one from the tbr 2013 collection. My goal is to read a minimum of 25 books from the collection.

Welcome Wildbill! 25 books is a nice goal! It leaves enough room for new books! Good luck to you.

Welcome - averaging about 2 a months sounds like a good goal!

Select Epigrams of Martial
This is a book I found in a used book store years ago. It tickled my curiosity and has been sitting on my shelves gathering dust. There were a lot of giggles in this book and a few groans. The giggles are for Martial's wit, the groans are for his over the top obscenity. The editor of this book made a point of putting in a lot of poetry of Martial that had not been printed before for that very reason. Martial was the master of the epigram; concise, precise and insightful. It just so happens that as Freud proved sex is a big part of human behavior and Martial didn't leave anything out. In his own words;

Not all my poems are meant
for cocktail parties-----
a few are fit for morning tea.

Still he does have a way of getting right to the point in a few words and his style of epigrams set the tone for many writers. The editor mentions quite a few poets that followed Martial's style and has a quote from Byron who paying his respects to the Roman poet.

And then what proper person can be partial
to all those nauseous epigrams of Martial

Don Juan Canto I
stanza xliii, 11. 343-44


Considering that he was writing in 100 c.e. Martial's comments seem very timely. The editor put it nicely in saying," When we look at the nature of man, strip man down to his bare self, today's man versus yesterday's, we find that progress amounts to little more than toilet paper, tin cans and atom bombs." Except for the Latin name the following could easily have been written by Dorothy Parker.

Saenia swore that she
was robbed of her virtue.
So how can a girl be robbed
of what she hasn't got?

There don't seem to be a lot of copies around but I am glad I have this book on my shelf for those moments when I want a laugh or a reason not to take life so seriously.

Nice work, WB. You make people want to go and search for a copy.

Happy New Year!

Interesting read. I had never heard of it before.

Happy New Year BJ. Here I am at my new thread open for business. Good to hear from you.

The Search for Modern China
I first read about this topic in a college textbook and have found it fascinating ever since. I have always felt that because the history of China is so different from the U.S. it had a lot to tell me. Now that I have got around to reading this book it is one of my favorites on this subject. The book covers the history of China from about 1600-1989. During that time China changed from an Imperial state to a totalitarian bureaucracy. The book begins with the conquest of China by the Manchus and ends just after TiananMen Square, which I consider to be the end of the Chinese Revolution and the beginning of modern China. Along the way China underwent great changes brought on by it's conflict with the Western powers in the 19th century and internal changes which ended with the fall of the Imperial system. The 20th century saw the Chinese Civil War and the growth of China into a modern nation shaped by the Chinese Revolution. After 1949 Mao Zedong oversaw the modernization of China with a series of destructive movements that ended with his death. Deng Xioaping fashioned a series of economic reforms which created the economic powerhouse which is modern day China. This is a series of generalizations about an era of history which Jonathan D. Spence has set forth in detail in his wonderful book.
I must begin with what I most like about the book and one item I really dislike. The book is filled with pictures and maps that provided a big plus to my understanding of what was happening. There is a great variety of illustrations from the Imperial age to Tiananmen Square that greatly enrich the story. Almost 50 maps made sure that I always knew where the events described in the text were happening. Maps are very important to me in reading history and this book definitely met my needs. All of the maps and pictures made the book a good cross between a seminar text and a coffee table book. I didn't like or understand the fact that all the way through to the end of the book the author referred to the capital of China as Peking. In my mind the city became Beijing in 1949 and I don't know why the author refused to change. It bothered me a little every time I read it.
Jonathan Spence is one of my favorite Chinese history authors and in this book he tells the complete story of the rise of modern China. He uses 750 pages to write a thorough and detailed story of the changes which took place in China during this time. He concentrates on the events more than the personalities of the people making the book read a lot like a textbook. My interest in the numerous events and the great changes that took place during this time and kept the reading from being dull and dry.
A few items that made an impact on me. I have never felt the same about the British since reading about their actions in the Opium Wars. Purely for the love of money they made drug addicts out of a vast segment of the Chinese and killed people for the right to do so. The Manchus who ruled China during this time were the conquerors of China and Westerners always seemed to think of them as the Chinese. I don't believe that Mao Zedong cared for any body in the world except for himself. From the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution he ruined the lives of the Chinese people to stay in power and because he wanted to and he could. Tiananmen proved to me that the attitude of the Chinese leadership is the same it has been since 216 b.c.e. when the First Emperor burned all the books so that no one could have any ideas contrary to his. I thank Jonathan Spence for reawakening my interest in this subject. I look forward to digging out some of my other books on the subject that have been gathering dust since college.

Really interesting review! I have always wanted to know more about how China moved from the Cultural Revolution to the world power it is today.

Island at the Center of the World
I have owned this book about five years so it is definitely a TOME. I bought it because I knew nothing about the topic and it piqued my curiosity.
There has been significant new research which helped the author tell his story in great detail. Since the 1970's the records of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam have been being translated and published. They figure prominently in the copious bibliography. The ample footnotes also attest to the amount of research that went into this book.
This was the beginning of the colonial era in the Americas. The Dutch had recently won their freedom from Spain and were getting wealthy from the spice trade. The colony was run by the West India Company and Peter Stuyvesant worked in Curacao before he took over New Amsterdam in 1647. There is a very striking portrait of him in the illustrations. He has dark eyes and a steely stare. His portrait is right above that of Adriaen van der Donck who led the opposition against Stuyvesant in a battle for self government by the colonists. That struggle is a large part of the story of the colony. In addition to self government the colonists fought for freedom of speech and dissent. The personalities of Stuyvesant and van der Donck and the political struggle dominated the narration. There was a foreshadowing of the American Revolution in the political struggle of the colonists.
I did not think that the writing gave justice to the story. At times the author seemed to just plod along filling in the narrative. It did seem to move better towards the end but I learned more from the book more than I enjoyed reading it. The one item that kept up my interest was the variety of items that this country inherited from the Dutch. Many of the boroughs of New York of course but odd items like the office of District Attorney which did not exist in English law. I did feel that I learned a lot. The Dutch were definitely a factor in American colonial life. They occupied all of New York and parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. To the extent the book satisfied my curiosity it was a worthwhile read. I don't think I would want to read it again.

Thank you, Wildbill, on behalf of all the Dutch. ;-))

The Prince
This is a book that has been sitting on the shelf of my set of Great Books of the Western World since before I started college. That and the fact that it was written in the 1500's surely qualify it as a TOME. It is a very short book which made great changes in the thinking about political statecraft. His book is a frank discussion of the use of immoral means to achieve the goals of The Prince.
For Machiavelli the sole goal of the Prince was to obtain power and hold it. Using historical models he sets out the most effective means to attain this end. The nobles and the people are the two forces that hold political power in the State as he sees it. Machiavelli goes into detail about how to deal with each of these. The nobles have their own bases of power and act in their pursuit of their own interests. For this reason it is important for the Prince that they fear him rather than love him.
In his discussion on fortresses he makes the statement that the best fortress is the love of the people. A state that is prosperous and ruled fairly is the best way to achieve the love of the people. The Prince must also cultivate the love of the people through great achievements building a charisma that draws them to him.
The art of war is a very important part of Machiavelli's discussion. Mercenaries are the most dangerous troops to use. They fight for their own reasons and are only loyal to the Prince as long as he is able to pay them. Auxiliary troops drawn from the people are more likely to remain loyal as long as their love for the Prince is constant.
Machiavelli's ideas inaugurated modern politics and statecraft. His was original and unencumbered by the ideas of the past. He established new rules for the practice of statecraft. He was excoriated for his immorality but his ideas quickly gained precedence. Last year I read The Thirty Years War. Many of the principles set forth by Machiavelli appeared in the actions of the rulers in that war. They used mercenaries to a great extent and were often ruined by them. Morality was absent in their dealings with each other. They practiced the code of attaining power that Machiavelli established.

Hi Bill. Long time........
Nice to be in the same bit of the world again.
And it's always interesting to me to see what you are reading and to read your reviews. They are always eye opening and give a true look at the book.
I like the system you have set up for your reads here. That should work nicely for you. I went through my shelves and tried to pick out books that I have had for a while & think won't want a reread although as I read them I am finding that: yes, this one might. I know that the one I am reading now, Byatt's The Children's Book will be getting read again. She has researched this one well and there is a lot of social commentary in it that is really pleasantly surprising to me. Anyway I guess one could say that I am ROOTing hand in hand with the 'Books Off the Shelf' challenge.
Good luck ROOTing.

Much Ado About Nothing
I enjoyed reading this play very much. I have only read about six of Shakespeare's plays and I plan to make reading them more of a priority. I once read words to the effect of "as much as people say Shakespeare was a great writer, he really was a great writer". He really was a great writer and a pleasure to read. His ability to mix verse and prose adds to the sheer beauty of his writing. This edition had a good number of footnotes on each page indexed by line that helped me a lot with the language. It made the play more accessible and added to my enjoyment.
This is an Italian comedy based on the story of two sets of lovers.
An enemy of Claudio has another women pose as Hero, Claudio's betrothed, the night before their wedding making Claudio think he is being betrayed. The next morning he breaks up their wedding with a powerful dramatic speech. Hero then fakes her death with the help of her father.
The other couple is Beatrice and Benedick. They trade caustic barbs like the couple in The Taming of the Shrew until their friends trick them through gossip and rumor, referred to as noting, into confessing their love for each other. It sounds crazy but Benedick ends up challenging Claudio to a duel at the demand of Beatrice. This is just the beginning of the plot which runs the full gamut of human emotion. Comedy means a happy ending and Shakespeare delivers a full dose of comic happiness at the end.
This book was very good and I think I would enjoy it more the second time. Perhaps the more I read Shakespeare it will get easier and I do plan to read more.

The Greek Way
I have always been fascinated by the beginning of Western Culture in the flowering of Athens. Somehow over the space of roughly a century or two there occurred a magnificent growth of culture and ideas in that city that has made the mind and spirit of the world today forever changed. This book is a description of the men and ideas that contributed to the changes that occurred and how they molded the Western Culture that grew out of that remarkable time.
Edith Hamilton was sixty-three when she wrote this book and she synthesized a lifetime of knowledge to bring to the reader the world of Athens during this time. Her chapter on Socrates and the growth of philosophy is a delight. Casual conversations become discussions on the nature of virtue. Socrates always asking questions, seeking after truth.
Her comparisons of Herodotus and Thucydides illustrate the different approaches that gave rise to Western history. Herodotus wrote down everything that came his way while Thucydides sought to provide a guide to the future through the story of the past.
The comedy of Aristophanes described by the author as the speaking picture of the follies and foibles of his day illustrates the impulse to make fun of all aspects of life. The concept of tragedy grew out of the ability to look calmly at the pain in life without fear. This grew through the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides developing ideas I cannot say I truly understand. She then moves forward to the works of Shakespeare to show how those beginnings grew.
Underlying this fantastic growth of ideas was the concept of freedom. The gift of the Greeks was that they felt free to think about anything that came to mind. Their thoughts were not constrained by religion or fear of the unknown. That was their great gift to Western Civilization. The ability to use their reason to think allowed them to question freely the world around them. It was their attempts to answer those questions that gave rise to the world we live in.
I feel this was a feeble attempt to bring to the reader some small glimpse of this classic book. I could read it time and again to gain a real understanding of the ideas the author has set forth. I do know that I now have a greater knowledge of who we are and the world we live in.

A Coney Island of the Mind
This is a very good book of poetry that I have had for decades and never read. ROOT gave me an excuse to read it and for that I am truly thankful. Ferlinghetti ran a publishing company which published Allan Ginsberg's Howl. He was tried and acquitted on obscenity charges in San Francisco for selling that book. Many people think of Ferlinghetti as a Beat poet but he prefers to call himself a bohemian. Whatever you call it he writes very good poetry and this book was translated into nine languages. I also own an LP where he reads many of the poems in this book and I easily found many videos of him reading his poetry on the internet.
He writes with a down to earth working class attitude and a wry sense of humor. Accompanying the humor his poems often include a cold splash of water in your face dose of reality. I prefer to give you some examples of his poetry and let you decide what his style is. The book is short but poetry gets a lot of meaning and impact out of a few words. I only started reading poetry regularly about seven years ago after getting some very good anthologies from my Library of America subscription. I have grown to enjoy the different way that language is used in poetry and I am working to make it a bigger part of my reading diet.
One of my favorite poems is titled "Dog" and has some lines that have a way of constantly going through my mind.

"The dog trots freely in the street
and has his own dog's life to live
and to think about
and to reflect upon
...........
a real realist
with a real tale to tell
and a real tail to tell it with"

How can you forget, a real tale to tell and a real tail to tell it with?

Ferlinghetti's description of the life of a poet.

"Constantly risking absurdity
and death
wherever he performs
above the heads
of his audience

the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making"

The cold splash of water in your face.

" Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter........
Him just hang there
on His Tree
looking real Petered out
and real cool
and also
according to a roundup
of late world news
from the usual unreliable sources
real dead"

This is the kind of book I save a five star rating for. I will keep this by my bed so I can read a poem or two when I feel the need.

I am not one to easily hand out five stars myself. So I can apriciate it when some one does do so! The poems you share are special!

Seven Guitars by August Wilson.
This is part of a series of plays referred to as the Pittsburgh Cycle or the Century Cycle. Each play, except for one, is set in Pittsburgh in a different decade of the 20th century. This play, set in 1948, is the seventh one that I have read. They are all very powerful stories that provide a glimpse into the life of black Americans.
All of the scenes in this play are set in the back yard of a two story apartment building. The reader is an onlooker into the day to day lives of the characters, the seven guitars. They either live in the building or are constant visitors from the neighborhood. The central character is Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton. He is a blues guitarist whose latest record has just become a hit and is often heard in the background. He just finished 90 days in jail for vagrancy that being he didn't have any money in his pocket. When he got out there was a letter waiting for him inviting him back to Chicago to do some more recording. He is trying to get his girlfriend Vera to go with him but she is still angry because the last time he left her and took off with someone else. Hedley raises chickens in the basement and kills them and then sells chicken sandwiches around the neighborhood. He is always singing a song from his father about the money Buddy Bolden is bringing him. Canewell plays harmonica for Barton but it is in the pawn shop with Floyd's guitar right now. Red Carter, the drummer for Floyd, Louise and Ruby round out the cast. Louise and Red like to play whist and Ruby has come up from the South looking for a man.
The poverty in everyone's life is their constant enemy in the struggle for human dignity. The color of a person's skin is a circumstance beyond their control that gives them the hereditary status of an underling like a serf in the days of feudalism. This fuels a constant undertone of violence that builds into a tragic climax and at the end we are back at the funeral of a young man that was the opening of the play.

#16 I took a couple unread poetry collections off my shelf last night, and I mean to read some. I don't know why I can't seem to incorporate regular poetry-reading into my routine, because I'm always glad when I do.

#19 The more I read poetry the more I enjoy it. I just wish I didn't take so many years to get started on it.

Six by Suess: A Treasury of Dr. Suess Classics I was reminded recently that I should hang on to my child-part because it is too important to lose track of. Thinking of that I picked up this book which has been on my shelf for years. I had to take the wrap off before I read it. I bought it because one of the stories The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins was a favorite of mine before I turned ten. It is still a very good story. Bartholomew goes into town with some cranberries to sell and when the king comes by he takes off his hat but there is still one on his head. The king gets very upset but no matter how often Bartholomew takes off his hat he still has one on his head. He gets sent to the executioner, but he refuses to cut off Bartholomew's head because he can't get his hat off. As he takes off more hats each new one becomes more ornate with jewels and feathers. The 500th hat is so magnificent the king buys it for 500 pieces of gold. When Bartholomew hands the king that hat his head is finally bare.
The book also contains Horton Hatches the Egg, "I meant what I said and I said what I meant an elephant's faithful one hundred percent." Then the egg hatches and an elephant with wings comes out. How the Grinch Stole Christmas is probably the best known story because of the television show. The last story The Lorax was written in 1971 and is about the spoiling of the environment.
The book has all of the original drawings in full color and Dr. Seuss's verse is very entertaining. Reading these stories put a smile on my face and I will always have a place where I can enjoy the child in me.

A Confederacy of Dunces. An apt subtitle for this book would be Ignatius J. Reilly versus the world. When we first meet our hero he is waiting for his mother in a store wearing his green hunting hat with green ear flaps. He is a very large man subject to internal attacks from his pyloric valve that lead to Distinctive large, loud burps. In the store he gets into an altercation with the police in the form of Officer Mancuso, part of the menagerie of characters all vying for the title of the nuttiest human being on the planet and none of them any competition for Ignatius.
Reilly is 30 years old and lives with his mother. He spends his time in bed writing a magnum opus on Big Chief note books in pencil and crayon. He is forced to seek employment when his mother steers her old Plymouth into a building incurring a sizable bill for the damages done. First he finds work at Levy Pants, an old family business on it's last legs. The owner, Mr. Levy and his wife are engaged in a constant battle as he neglects the business and she berates him about anything she can think of the more personal, the better. Ignatius leads a revolution of the work force who figure out he is crazy, stop demonstrating and go back to work.
He then moves to a career as a hot dog vendor. The high point of this career is selling hot dogs on Bourbon Street dressed up as a pirate complete with ear ring and plastic cutlass. He is less than successful since he eats not just the profits but all of the product he he can carry around in his mobile hot dog stand. All through the book he carries on a relationship by mail with Myrna Minkoff which could be styled the Marxist and the Medievalist with Myrna as the Marxist. Another fun spot is the House of Joy a B-girl bar whose owner sells porn on the side and pays a black man named Jones $20.00 a week to sweep up while he cracks jokes about his mistreatment. I listened to an audio edition and the narrator did a great voice for this character.
I could go on a lot longer but I think you get the idea. The book goes from very amusing to laugh out loud funny as Ignatius goes through the world in his own reality in a contest struggle with the rest of the world. He loses a lot of the battles but refuses to give up the fight. He speaks of the whims of fortuna and forges ahead. He not only refuses to conform he is horrified and angered that he is expected to. I should have read this book long ago and I am very thankful to the ROOT group for getting it off my shelf. I recommend it highly and am only saddened by the fact that it was the only book completed by the author during his adult life. He wrote one other book when he was 16 but it was not a work of humor.

The Causes of the Civil War This book has been hanging around my library for a long time. It is a book of readings that I am sure was used for a lot of college classes. The readings are grouped under seven topics listed as possible causes of the war. After reading through the book my conclusion is that slavery and the maintaining of white supremacy were really the causes of the war. Slavery was the economic engine that made the South run after the invention of the cotton gin and also a social system justified by the belief in white supremacy. I think white supremacy was necessary to racial chattel slavery as a way to justify treating other human beings the way slaves were treated. It also gave the non-slaveholder a reason to support the system. No matter how poor and ignorant you were if you were white you were better than the African-American slaves. That gave the majority of the Southerners who didn't own slaves a very good reason to fight in the Civil War.
The articles vary from one-half of a page to five pages going from primary sources up to the time the book was written in 1959. They provide a very interesting look at the way attitudes to the Civil War changed over time. For example in an article from 1860 Alexander Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederacy, makes it clear that slavery was the cause of the war. In an article he wrote in 1868 he has joined the supporters of the "Lost Cause" theory and says that the war was all about state-rights. One author writing in 1923 analyzed the effects of the subtropical climate on Anglo-Saxons and came up with the idea of "Tropic Nordics". They came from the Deep South and developed a towering race pride and an inclination to ride over racial groups considered to be inferior. All of the inmates are not in the asylum.
The articles I found most interesting focused on the cultural differences between the North and South. They reminded me of The Mind of the Master Class a fascinating book on Southern intellectual history I read some years ago. All of the articles point to the fact that there were real differences between the North and South and the Civil War was in some ways an inevitable conflict. The book sets out a wide variety of points of view and lends some credence to the idea that the Civil War isn't really over yet. I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in American history.

The Analects of Confucius
The title of the book was the translation adopted by Western scholars in the late 19th century of the words Lun Yu. The editor of this edition translates Lun Yu to mean Ethical Dialogues but uses the standard title out of respect for the tradition that has grown up around it. The original meaning of Analects was "literary gleanings". Having read the book I think that Ethical Dialogues is a better description of it. The book contains 20 books with numerous chapters which are two to five paragraphs long.
Each chapter conveys a significant statement of ideas in very short phrases. This is partly a function of how the Chinese language works. In chapter 15.24 a disciple asks Confucius, " Is there a single word that one can practice throughout one's life? Confucius answer is "like-hearted considerateness" which is a translation of the Chinese word shu. Through the use of characters the Chinese language is able to express complicated ideas in one word. Reading the book made me wish that I could read it in Chinese. I remember just a very little bit of what I studied in college but enough to get a hint of the difference in how the language works. The pictographic aspects of the characters are another feature of the language that make the meanings of the characters very complex and subtle.
Confucius defines light-hearted considerateness as "What you do not wish for yourself, do not impose on others." This is referred to as the Chinese Golden Rule. While the spirit may be the same it is very different from "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." All through the chapters is a discussion of the same ideas. Humanity, righteousness, sage men, the way and virtue are concepts which are repeated over and over giving the reader different aspects of lessons in how to live properly.
Voltaire said of Confucius; "He was the first great teacher who did not require divine inspiration." While the term Heaven is used very often there is no concept of a personal God. The philosophy of Confucius was the bedrock of East Asian civilization for over two thousand years. The editor cites modern examples in the East and West of respect and admiration for Confucian ideas. The strict emphasis on the duties of obedience within the family and from the individual to the ruler were, for me, the most negative aspects of the ideas.
This is truly a great book. It carries a great deal of meaning in a small package. I am sure that with each reading I would find something different. It gave me some understanding of a philosophy of life that is very, very different from Western ideas.

Reading the book made me wish that I could read it in Chinese I get that---especially with a language with such complex characters as Chinese. Being able to express a concept like "Light-hearted considerateness" with a single "word" is brilliant. And I do like Confucius' version of the Golden Rule a bit better than the Christian one. I also know some people who need to internalize it, but never mind that now...

Great review, Bill. Thanks.

I appreciate the compliment Linda. I made an error it is "like-hearted considerateness".
I have the tools and I am going to try to spend some time practicing writing characters.

Two Years Before the Mast
This is a true life adventure of two years of the life of an American sailor in the 1830's. It had been sitting on my shelf for several years; an American classic that that I felt would be dull and monotonous. Instead it was a lively tale of travel and danger.
The author was a student in Boston who developed problems with his eyes and could not pursue his studies. He decided to sign on as a jack tar sailor on a ship bound for California round the horn. Living a sailor's life for two years.
The life of a sailor was hard labor day and night. The moments of adventure and drama were interspersed between long periods of the boring, confined life of a sailor aboard ship. Many of his diary entries read "The same." The author's ship, The Pilgrim, was engaged in the hide trade. A long trip around Cape Horn brought them to California. Once there they traveled up and down the coast from San Diego to San Francisco swapping trade goods for cattle hides. The reader is given a trip to a foreign country as he reads about the author's travels. In Mexican California status was based on the color of your skin. At the bottom were the Indians who provided the labor for the white skinned descendants of the Spanish conquerors. The Castilian dialect was cultivated as another sign of status. The coastline and the desert were the landscape of the author's travels. The author rode everywhere he went in California. They had very many horses and they would ride them at a gallop and when they were tired stop and pick up fresh horses. The rush of the wind atop a running horse with the smell of the sea in the air was one of many invigorating images contained in the book.
The author quickly learned the Spanish language and had many stories to tell of the people of California. As a sailor he mingled with the laboring class and became particularly attached to the kanakas. These were people from the Sandwich Islands/Hawaii. The kanakans were susceptible to illnesses common in the white population. The author helped to save the life of a kanakan friend by making sure he got medicines from the ship that another kanakan would not have been given.
Between the boring times were some vivid memories. The power of a Captain of the ship was made clear to the author in a brutal scene. One of the common sailors shot off his mouth to the Captain just at the wrong time. The Captain shouts his orders and the sailor is seized up. His shirt is ripped off and he is tied with his arms out face down on the bulkhead. The Captain takes a piece of thick rope and whips the sailor screaming at him that he will be his slave. Finally the sailor screams for the Captain to stop. The author thinks to himself that this is the way it is on ship. If you oppose the Captain, first it is mutiny then it is piracy and you swing for either one. The author later became involved in the anti-slavery movement.
Another moment was one of great beauty. When they went back around the horn it was winter in Antarctica and they got into the ice. In the pack was an iceberg of enormous size. It towered over them and the shape and color were a miracle of nature. The center of the iceberg was a deep indigo and as it got to the edges it was blue and then white. It moved slowly and great cracking sounds broke the quiet that hung in the air. A once in a lifetime experience for everyone there.
I could go on. I enjoyed the book very much. The author kept a diary of his trip and used that to write the book. There are dates scattered throughout the book. The writing was understated and moved with a good pace. The language has some interesting differences that reminded me of the difference in time. I recommend it as an interesting journey to another time and place.

Gulliver's Travels
This first time I started this book I was in my teens. This time I was able to get past the first fifty pages and found an enjoyable and at times disturbing book. The book contains elements of satire, science fiction and ends with a scathing indictment of the human race.
The best known tale is Gulliver's voyage to Lilliput. Lilliput is a miniature world on a scale of one inch to a foot compared to the world we live in. Gulliver lives with the king and in one episode puts out a fire in the palace by urinating, an event which does not endear him to the Queen. He becomes a hero by stopping an attempted invasion of Lilliput by the people of Blefuscu an island that lies close to Lilliput. The people of Lilliput and Blefuscu have an ongoing dispute over which end of the egg should be opened. This is a life and death matter to those involved and I took it for a satire on the religious disputes which were rampant during the author's life, (1667-1745). Gulliver leaves Lilliput when he learns they have decided to put out his eyes and imprison him.
He does not stay long in England and his next voyage finds him in Brobdingnag. In this land he is the Lilliputian and the average man is 72 feet tall. As in Lilliput he ends up living with the king and they spend time talking about the differences between their two countries. Gulliver's adventures in this land focus on the dangers he faces because of his size. Something akin to some of the episodes in The Incredible Shrinking Man. Gulliver's journey out of Brobdingnag is one of those adventures. When Gulliver went out he would be carried in a room size basket. On one occasion he he taken near the sea and left by himself in the basket. The basket is picked up by a large eagle and then dropped when the eagle was attacked by another bird. He is rescued from the sea and ends up back in England.
In one of his most interesting adventures he travels to the land of Laputa. It is a city in the clouds peopled by an unusual looking race whose interests are music and mathematics. The author showed a great deal of imagination in his description of how the world flew through the air propelled by magnetic power. This voyage is very brief and after several other brief voyages he comes to the land of the Houyhnhnms.
The Houyhnhnms have the shape and form of horses. They can speak and are the dominant race in their land. Living with the Houyhnhnms are a race called the Yahoos. The Yahoos resemble homo sapiens and they perform the functions of the beasts of burden in that country. The Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos find Gulliver very confusing. The Yahoos wear no clothes and for a long time Gulliver keeps his on so he will not be mistaken for an inferior Yahoo. Once he is seen without clothing he is labeled a Yahoo with all of the connotations of inferiority of those peoples. He is able to learn the Houyhnhnm language and convinces his master that he is a cut above the average Yahoo. When he tells his master that in his country the Yahoos ride the Houyhnhnms he is at first not believed. Gulliver then discourses on life in Europe and war and the use of weapons, the deceitful practices of diplomacy and business. His master is appalled and tells Gulliver that the Houyhnhnms do not know how to say that which is not true. He tells his master that in his country the Yahoos castrate the Houyhnhnms to control them and this starts a social revolution.
The Houyhnhnms periodically have a grand assembly of their wisest men. This time the topic of discussion is the information Gulliver has imparted. The Houyhnhnms decide that the Yahoos have some of the despicable qualities of greed and lust for power and thus are a danger to them. It is decided that all of the male Yahoos will be castrated so that the race will be eradicated. They will train mules to be their beasts of burden to take the place of the Yahoos.
Gulliver is told that he will have to go back to where he came from. By now Gulliver has decided that only the Houyhnhnms are truly civilized and the thought of leaving is heartbreaking. He returns to England a very unhappy man. He has to force himself to tolerate the presence of his wife briefly at dinner. He can no longer tolerate the practices of his nation in conquering other peoples and taking their land for colonies. The thought of any cruelty to horses puts him in a spasm of grief. I do not doubt the sincerity of the author's feelings. He once wrote a tract on the the practice of eating children as an answer to the food problem. To all those who may occasionally say, "People are no damn good", raise a glass to Jonathan Swift.

The Thin Man
This novel has a distinctively different atmosphere and tone than the the other novels I have read by Dashiell Hammett. It has none of the dark noir quality of The Red Harvest and Sam Spade would be distinctly out of place at a party given by Nick and Nora Charles. Hammett's smooth transition to such a different style of writing is a master craftsman at work. Hammett gives Nick Charles the witty repartee you might hear from Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker at the Algonquin Round Table. He wakes up at 11:00 a.m. and his first words are a request for "Something to cut the phlegm." He has a slick self confidence and does not appear to be fooled by the emotional posing of the Jorgensen family. Nora possesses an insightful intelligence and gets her share of good lines poking fun at Nick. At the same time there is a suspenseful murder story playing out to keep the reader interested. The story is set in the 1930's but the Depression is never mentioned. Nick is an ex-detective who now works full-time managing his wife's money. The story begins with the murder of someone connected to an old client of Nick's.
The old client was Clyde Wynant. His ex-wife married a European gigolo and now they are the Jorgensen family. Mimi, the ex-wife, is still attractive and has a bubbly exterior. She can also be mean as a snake when protecting what she wants. Nick Charles explains that Mimi always lies and when she is caught she will just come up with a different lie until you get tired of asking her questions. Her 18 year old son walks around snooping on everybody and asking about the meaning life. His sister Dorothy is a little older, an attractive airhead who spends a lot of time in speakeasies.
Hammett rounds out the characters with Wynant's lawyer and the ubiquitous Police Detective. The detective has some depth but the lawyer seems the typical high money professional and not very likeable. The plot moves well and has a good share of interesting twists and turns. They all spend a lot of time drinking and there is another murder to keep the story going. The ending is well done, very quickly with a surprise that ties up a lot of loose ends.
I thought the book was very well written. The author is able to shift moods quickly and his characters leave vivid lasting memories. This was a good book and I recommend it as an intelligent enjoyable reading experience. Hammett's five novels certainly left quite an impact on American literature.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
Barbara Tuchman has been one of my favorite historians since the first time I read Guns of August. I have started A Distant Mirror several times and never got very far. I started this time listening to an audio book and liked it so much I took out my print edition. There is a difference between the two and listening to a book is not the same as reading it. Recently I listened to an audio book three times to get the feel that I had read it. Listening is a lot less taxing so sometimes it is all that I can do. For that I count on good narrators and the woman who narrated this book is one of the best.
The Black Death 1348-1350 killed an estimated one third of the population of humanity from Iceland to India. In the first paragraph of the foreword the author sets out this event as the primary theme of her book. Intertwined with that story is a biography of Enguerrand de Coucy VII. He was one of the most powerful barons of France in the mid to late 14th century and an important political and military leader. The chronicle of his very active life helped set the tone for the book. Society and government went through significant changes as the decay of feudalism was leading to the rise of the nation state. The Reformation was bubbling up in the teachings of Wycliffe and Hus. A shift in military technology took place as the armored knight was consistently defeated by the working class longbow men.
The author paints out all of these themes and many others with a broad brush and then fills in the picture with a myriad of details that fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The details tell of hours of research, the author sitting in the middle of stacks of open books with a notepad in her hand.
Descriptions of rich women wearing costumes that were so wide they had to go through a doorway sideways. Festivals and carnivals where the poor were in charge making bawdy fun of the rich and powerful. Churchmen who purchase their offices and then stumble and mumble trying to read a service.
The plague came in two forms, bubonic and pneumonic, and either one killed in a matter of days. There were numerous cures a few of which were as fatal as the plague. One city did keep the incidence down by a program of strict quarantine. Once one person in a house showed any symptoms all of the members of the house were locked inside to die. The drop in population meant that workers were scarce and could command higher wages. Whole villages went fallow because there was no one to work the fields. One response to the plague were the flagellants. They began to rival the church and were quickly put down.
The church still held great power. The schism of two Popes meant more venality was needed to support two Holy Sees. The schism did great damage to the legitimacy of the church as some rulers played off one Pope against the other.
France and England fought so much they called it the Hundred Year's War. England still ruled in Bordeaux and Calais and Guienne were ceded to England in 1360. The French lost a series of battles because they insisted on fighting in armor on muddy fields in constricted spaces. The English soldier used his longbow or a pike and defeated the flower of chivalry. The last great battle was Nicolopis where the Ottomans defeated the might of Europe with the help of their Balkan subjects.
I could go on and on but the author does a much better job. Barbara Tuchman was an historian to her fingernails. It was a career she chose and worked at for decades. She wrote good literature that made history interesting for millions. The fact that she was not an academic freed her from the specialization that is a requirement in academic life. She put a number of very good books on the shelf in her career and this was one of her best.

Being a member of this site has led me to read some exceptionally good books this year. I must proffer my thanks and give a tip of the hat to cyderry for all of the work that goes into keeping the site doing so well. Thank you cyderry.

Chiming in to agree that A Distant Mirror is one of my favourite history books. And to join in on your thanks to cyderry. The group has helped me read 39 books that otherwise may have remained unread on my shelves.

The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies
This was a fascinating book that is definitely in my top five for 2013. It was written by research scientists about the natural history of social insects and how they evolved. If you don't "believe" in evolution you will hate this book it is a constant theme in the book. I learned a lot. The book is mostly about ants with some about bees and a little about wasps. I call it my "Ant" book. Ants are incredible. It didn't seem that hard to read. I just accepted the facts that some of the bio-chemistry I didn't understand. I still got a lot out of it.
It's the size of a coffee table book with photos and drawings appropriate to that genre. There were about seventy photographs and each one of them was excellent. Many showed the insects as if you were looking at them under a low power microscope. A majority of the line drawings were done in a series of four to six drawings to illustrate specific behavior patterns discussed in the text. They were also used to focus on anatomical details such as glands inside the insects. I would enjoy going through to look at the pictures.

A superorganism is defined as a society such as an insect colony that possesses features of
organization analogous to the physiological properties of a single organism.

There are three basic behavioral mechanisms discussed that allow the ants to develop into a superorganism.
The first is altruism. The vast majority of the insects in the colony do not reproduce but instead spend their lives raising someone else's offspring. This runs contrary to the basic drive to reproduce. It is the first step down the evolutionary path to the development of a superorganism.
Altruism allows for the development of division of labor which allows some of the insects in the colony to function as a separate physiological process within the superorganism. Some of the insects do nothing but gather food for the colony. They bring in the food in a raw state and then another group of insects turn the raw food into something edible for the members of the colony. The foragers needs for shelter, food and protection are met by other specialized insects within the colony. In some species the division of labor changes as the needs of the colony change. If there is too much raw food some foragers may adopt another role necessary for the colony such as processing the food. The adoption of another role may require the insect to change some of their physical characteristics to those required by their new role. Often these changes are triggered by some method of communication between the individual insect and other members of the colony.
Communication is the third requirement for the development of the superorganism. Much of the communication is chemical. The insects have incredible sensitivity to a large variety of chemical markers produced by the other insects. Once a forager finds a food source they will put down a chemical trail for other foragers to follow. The chemical trail may let other insects know what type of food there is, the quantity or how far away it is. This is a simplistic example that is multiplied by the vast number of operations necessary to keep the colony going. There is also a lot of physical communication. The variables involved in physical communication are only limited by the number of body parts each insect has and how many insects can be involved in the actions. Some foragers will lead other insects to a food source by maintaining physical contact as they walk down the trail. They also pass food and body fluids.
At the top level of complexity are the leaf cutter ants. The authors state that they are the second most complex society in the world and I will not argue with them. There are many different species of leaf cutters who all live by raising the same species of edible fungus. They cut up leaves to provide a growing medium for the fungus. Some species use the silk from larvae to hold pieces of cut up leaves together and build growing beds for the fungus. There is a photo of an ant holding a larvae above some leaf pieces and you can see a line of silk from the larvae down. Truly amazing were the species who have a symbiotic relationship with parasites that produces antibiotics for the fungus. These ants showed up about 45 million years ago.
Reading this book made being a scientist sound like a nice way to live. A lot of the research that was described seemed like play for grownups. In the chapter on colony architecture the scientists would fill a colony with plaster of paris or molten aluminum and them excavate the dirt to reveal the structure of the colony. Some of the photos had large groups of ants with colored dots on them so the scientists could follow their activities. I am really glad I took the time to read this book. Maybe I will get an ant farm.