Minor Thoughts from me to you

Darkship Renegades
by Sarah A. Hoyt

My rating: ★★★☆☆
Read From: 22 July 2013 - 24 July 2013

Goodreads book summary:

Entry number two in Sarah A. Hoyt’s rollicking and popular Darkship series, sequel to Darkship Thieves,and winner of the Prometheus Award. After rescuing her star pilot husband and discovering the dark secret of her own past on Earth, Athena Hera Sinistra returns to space habitat Eden to start life anew. Not happening. Thena and Kit are placed under arrest for the crime of coming back alive. The only escape from a death sentence: return to Earth and bring back the lost method for creating the Powertrees, the energy source of both Eden and Earth whose technological origins have been lost to war. But that mission is secondary to a greater imperative. Above all else, Thena must not get caught. If she does, then suicide is to be the only option.

I had trouble reviewing Ms. Hoyt's previous entry in this series, Darkship Thieves. At the time, I ended the review by saying "It felt very uneven and not all that 'real'." After reading this book, I have a better understanding of what I don't like about this series.

Sarah Hoyt is a strong libertarian and an admirer of Robert Anson Heinlein. (She dedicated this book to her son, Robert Anson Hoyt.) I think these books are intended to be an imitation of, and homage to, Heinlein's more openly political novels.

Hoyt has her characters sharing political asides with each other and also shares their inner monologues and thoughts. In these novels though, it doesn't really work. Hoyt is not as good of a writer as Heinlein (but who is?) and isn't able to pull off what he can pull off. The political insertions feel awkward and contrived rather than natural. It makes the story limp along and is, in my opinion, what drags this down from being a 4-star adventure story.

Startide Rising
by David Brin

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 17 July - 21 July

This is the second entry in David Brin's Uplift series. The first book, Sundiver, was a mediocre story in a very interesting universe. This book is a very interesting story in the same very interesting universe.

All races in the Galaxy have been "uplifted" into sentience by a prior alien race, in a chain stretching back to the Progenitors. Humans have even uplifted dolphins and chimpanzees into sentience. But who uplifted humanity? This is a great mystery and the other races are antagonistic towards the "wolfing" human race, without patrons or lineage.

Startide Rising is the story of the first dolphin crewed spaceship. The Streaker made the find of the millenium and was rewarded by hot pursuit from most of the galaxy's inhabitants. After fleeing from a battle, the Streaker crash lands on the water world of Kithrup.

The neo-dolphins must hide from the aliens currently engaged in combat above the planet, attempt to repair their ship, and hope for an opportunity to sneak away again. The resulting adventure deals with dolphin psychology and features an intriguing version of a dolphin language. It also showcases the various alien races and their unique perspectives on the universe and the purpose of life.

This is both a fun read and a chilling one. It's a hostile universe, full of races that would like nothing more than the opportunity to gain power over humanity and tweak and twist our genetic code until they've turned us into something more to their liking. David Brin's universe is interesting but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to live in it.

The book ends on a delightfully unresolved note. We end the book still not knowing what the Streaker found, what its importance is, or what will ultimately happen to Earth and the human race. That's as it should be for a universe with this much scope.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: It Was Okay

Literary fiction. It's the one genre (if you can call it that) that the reviewer has studiously avoided. And, yet, here he is. Writing a review of a literary novel. And not just any literary novel. Joe's writing a review of a novel that was picked by Oprah, for her noted national book club.

The reviewer thinks it's worth reflecting on how Joe got here. There was definitely some overconfidence and hubris involved. There was a sense that Joe could read the tea leaves better than others. Joe bet on the outcome of an election and lost. The tide of events was stronger than the strength of his convictions. In losing, he temporarily sacrificed control of his reading time.

Joe's good friend Adam believed that Joe's loss reflected bigger things. (That, at least, is how the reviewer chooses to view matters.) Perhaps a view of culture that's too constricted. Maybe an unbalanced reading list. Or a narrowness of mind. Whatever the reason, Adam assigned him the task of reading and reviewing Freedom.

Joe immediately suspected that this book represented the heretofore avoided "literary fiction" shelf. Never having actually bothered to fully define literary fiction, he was forced to do so. Naturally, he consulted Wikipedia on the topic.

Literary fiction, in general, focuses on the subjects of the narrative to create "introspective, in-depth character studies" of "interesting, complex and developed" characters. This contrasts with paraliterary fiction where "generally speaking, the kind of attention that we pay to the subject in literature ... has to be paid to the social and material complexities of the object".

Literary fiction does not focus on plot as much as paraliterary fiction. Usually, the focus is on the "inner story" of the characters who drive the plot with detailed motivations to elicit "emotional involvement" in the reader.

The tone of literary fiction is usually serious and, therefore, often darker than paraliterary fiction.

The pacing of literary fiction is slower than paraliterary fiction. As Terrence Rafferty notes, "literary fiction, by its nature, allows itself to dawdle, to linger on stray beauties even at the risk of losing its way."

Neal Stephenson has suggested that while any definition will be simplistic there is a general cultural difference between literary and genre fiction, created by who the author is accountable to. Literary novelists are typically supported by patronage via employment at a university or similar institutions, with the continuation of such positions determined not by book sales but by critical acclaim by other established literary authors and critics. Genre fiction writers seek to support themselves by book sales and write to please a mass audience.

Joe found that this description captured what he'd always feared about literary fiction. The genre represents novelists, freed from the constraints of financial or popular success, writing slow, serious, dark, plotless novels about the inner lives of characters. It sounded like a recipe for a boring, depressing book. And his honor depended on him reading it, finishing it, and reviewing it.

The thought of this book filled Joe with dread. He had to spend nearly a week nerving himself to start it, expecting weeks of painful slogging. Reality was a pleasant surprise. (The last time in this narrative that it would be.) Freedom was easy to read and did give the reader some incentive to progress through the story. Once started, he didn't feel tortured by his continued progress through it. Nevertheless, his fears weren't groundless. It was slow, serious, dark, and mostly (but not entirely) plotless. It focused on the inner lives of its characters, for the purpose of revealing their flaws and selfish motivations. For this reason, Joe would never consider it a page turner or book that he was eager to pick up.

What did Joe read? He read the story of Walter and Patty Berglund, a socially aware couple, leading the gentrification of a neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. Outwardly, they were well matched and successful. They had two kids, a nice house and a secure income.

The reality was less pretty. Patty Berglund doted on her son, Joey, to the exclusion of both husband Walter and daughter Jessica. Walter, perhaps in reaction to Patty's weird indulgences of Joey, constantly fought with Joey and doted on Jessica (whom Patty nearly ignored). Patty always claimed (both to herself and to others) that Walter was the center of her life. But she really lusted after Walter's college friend, Richard Katz, being nearly unable to sexually resist him. Richard was a struggling, principled, indie rocker. Walter constantly competed with him, like the brother that he'd always wished he'd had. Patty constantly wished she could be with Richard but feared irretrievably damaging Walter's psyche.

Freedom starts with an overview of the Bergland's early life in their neighborhood, focusing on Patty's interactions with their neighbors. Then it suddenly detours into about 200 pages of Patty's therapeutic autobiography before jolting back to the main narrative. The reviewer had to read about the inner life of each Berglund, as well as the inner life of Richard Katz. The narrative showed how Patty's screwed up family life led to the screwed up way that she treated her own children. It showed how Walter's screwed up family life led to the screwed up way that he treated his own children. It showed how Katz just enjoyed screwing up everyone's life.

(The reviewer should mention, at this point, that there are no pleasant or sympathetic characters in this novel. At multiple points during each character's time on screen, he entertained fantasties of throttling each character and walking away. The reviewer cheerfully admits to avoiding "stupid" people and resents that Franzen thinks there is something to be gained by spending large quantities of time with said stupid people.)

(And, how is the reader supposed to interpret Franzen's portrayal of Patty? Does she really say "ha ha ha" in a pathetic attempt at sarcastic humor? Or is that merely Franzen's lame attempt at communicating the sound of laughter during those times in which he doesn't want to just say "she laughed"?)

Freedom is so named (so the reviewer thinks) because it portrays a modern American family, living a life full of "freedom". But, ultimately, that freedom doesn't really make them happy. Pretty much everyone is miserable in some way, at every point of the story.

Now that he has finished the book, the reviewer does have a trinitarian question. "So what? What's the point? Why does this book exist?" Are Americans really that oblivious to the life around them that they require a novelist to document it and point out its flaws? Does a certain, perhaps self-righteous, segment of society enjoy reading how about other portions of society go about ruining their lives?

At the risk of either boasting or appearing self congratulatory, the reviewer feels that he has a rich and detailed introspective view of his own life. His own inner narrative sounds remarkably like a literary fiction novel. No aspect of human nature, revealed by Freedom, was a revelation to him. It was ultimately dreary and uninteresting. If the reviewer wants a revealing view of human nature, he need only open the newspaper. (The sad story of General Petraeus and Patricia Broadwell teaches us that much.) He finds that literary fiction may be enlightening without being entertaining.

The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've been looking forward to this book, ever since I read Master of the Senate two years ago. I knew it would involve the Johnson presidency but not the entire thing. So, I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I finally picked it up.

The book covers Johnson's flawed and failed candidacy for the 1960 Democrat Presidential nomination and Johnson's experience on the Kennedy-Johnson ticket. It covers his 3 years, as Kennedy's Vice-President, and then his succession to the Presidency itself and what he did during his first 7 weeks in office—the time from Kennedy's assassination to the 1964 State of the Union address.

Telling you that doesn't really convey what the book is about though. Here, in Caro's words, is the center of the book.

[T]he succession of Lyndon Johnson deserves a better fate in history. For had it not been for his accomplishments during the transition, history might have been different. Because the headlines in that first blizzard of news—PRISONER LINKED TO CASTRO GROUP; SUSPECT LIVED IN SOVIET UNION—have long been proven false or exaggerated, it has been easy to forget that for several days after the assassination America was reading those headlines, easy to forget the extent of the suspicions that existed during those days not only about a conspiracy but about a conspiracy hatched in Cuba or Russia, two nations with whom, barely a year before, America had been on the brink of nuclear war.

... Nor should other aspects of the transition be passed over as lightly as they have been. Because he moved so swiftly and successfully to create the image of continuity that reassured the nation, it has been easy to overlook how the Kennedy men might simply have resigned. It has been easy to overlook the obstacles—the shock and mystery of the assassination, the mushroom cloud fears, the deep divisions in the country over his predecessor’s policies—that stood in the way of unifying America behind his Administration; easy to overlook how difficult to unify even his own party: to rally into line behind his Administration’s banner labor leaders, black leaders, liberals, many of whom had, for years, been deeply suspicious of him and who would have needed little excuse to fall irrevocably into line behind another, more familiar banner, the brother’s banner, that could so readily have been raised within party ranks; to fall into line behind a leader they knew, and were quickly beginning to love.

This book is the story of that transition. Everything else in the book is designed to set the stage for the transition. Caro wants you to understand, the man, the times, the place, and the history leading up to that transition.

In true Caro style, we get a mini-biography of President John F. Kennedy. We're treated to an up-close look at how Johnson lost his opportunity and 1960 and what he endured as Vice-President. But all of that is window dressing, to set the stage for the transition. Caro's focus on the transition is truly illuminating of both President Johnson and of how power is wielded in America.

This book was a shorter read than Master of the Senate and was truly engaging. I had trouble putting it down, once I started it, and was once again drawn into Caro's portrayal of this era of American history. Once again, I have to highly recommend Caro's work on Johnson. You won't regret reading it and you'll definitely learn from it.

Change.edu: Rebooting for the New Talent Economy by Andrew S. Rosen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Andrew Rosen is the CEO of Kaplan, Inc. Most people know of Kaplan through their SAT test preparation materials. Kaplan has been busy diversifying beyond test prep and is now also running Kaplan University, home to 50,000 online students. Andrew has written Change.Edu as an explanation of what he sees wrong with the traditional college experience and what he hopes to accomplish with Kaplan University. He also answers the most common criticisms of for-profit universities.

This is a book that I highly recommend, if you're interested in where higher education is going and how we can improve educational quality while increasing the number of college graduates, while dealing with bloated government budgets.

The book is clearly laid out, with six main ideas.

1. Harvard Envy. Rosen calls this the "Ivory Tower Playbook" and says that most universities feel that "the only permissible strategy is to climb the prestige ladder". Schools are competing with each other to gain prestige, not to deliver an education. This strategy makes sense for the schools but not for society.

   Schools spend ever larger amounts of money on buildings, on attracting faculty, and on building better sports teams. Schools also compete for the best and brightest students. The result is that the school itself becomes more prestigious but doesn't increase the number of students receiving an education and doesn't even necessarily increase the quality of the education that the lucky students receive.

   The end result is that most schools are competing for the best and the brightest students. But no one is competing for the poor student or for the middle-class student that just wants to learn something, without breaking the bank.

2. Club College. In many ways, this chapter is a continuation of the criticisms of the first chapter. Many universities are focusing their attention—and their budgets—on non-academic areas. In this chapter, Rosen examines the lavish lifestyle that many universities offer to students. From dining options, to living options, to fitness facilities, to sports teams and more, many universities are competing to offer incoming students the most entertaining 4 years possible.

   All of these expenditures have nothing to do with academics and everything to do with attracting the most desirable students. Then, after those students graduate, the school can bask in the glow of their famous and accomplished alumni. The alumni, in turn, will look back on their college years with favor, leading to donations, prestige, and word of mouth marketing.

   Rosen is careful to point out that there's nothing wrong with schools wanting to be prestigious or wanting to attract top students. The problem is that schools are spending large amounts of federal, state, and local tax dollars to do so. American taxpayers are paying hundreds of billions of dollars annual to subsidize expenses that have nothing to do with actual learning.

3. Community Colleges. Theoretically, community colleges are supposed to be the solution to status obsessed or entertainment obsessed schools. They're supposed to be a low-cost alternative for the masses. Unfortunately, Rosen concludes, they're failing in their mission.

   They run their institutions based on a very different set of conventions—one I think of as the All-Access Playbook: They see their mission as providing an opportunity for everyone.

   ... Part of the problem with community colleges is the wide variety of goals and missions they are attempting to tackle. “If you visit a four-year college, you can predict what sort of student you are going to bump into,” writes New York Times columnist David Brooks. “If you visit a community college, you have no idea. You might see an immigrant kid hoping eventually to get a PhD, or another kid who messed up in high school and is looking for a second chance. You might meet a 35-year-old former meth addict trying to get some job training or a 50-year-old taking classes for fun.”

   The problem is that community colleges are dependent on state and local funding. Often, when students most want access to classes, funding is limited. Many governments can't afford to increase funding and most community colleges are unable or unwilling to raise tuition to compensate. As a result, community colleges are unable to meet the demand and students are left without options. The "All Access Model" has noble goals but is often unable to meet them.

4. Private Universities. Rosen presents private, for-profit, universities as the answer to America's education dilemma. ("How do we educate a large segment of the population efficiently and without bankrupting the nation?") Private universities are often mocked, but it's clear that they meet a need for a large number of students.

   The largest of the private-sector schools, the University of Phoenix, counted more than four hundred thousand students in 2010, an enrollment larger than the undergraduate enrollment of the entire Big Ten.

   He talks about why these schools are popular with both students and employers.

   Private-sector schools tend to align their curriculum around those skills that are most needed in the workforce. Many of these institutions have advisory boards that consult with employers to get feedback on what employers want from prospective employees in a given area, and they regularly update their curricula to teach to those skills.

   If a school is giving students the knowledge that employers most want to see, employers benefit by having an appropriately skilled workforce available and students benefit by being able to quickly and easily find jobs that utilize their new skills.

   He points out that for-profit schools are not a new institution, driven by modern greed.

   “The earliest universities in late medieval times were profit-making corporate associations, and the black gowns that professors still wear at graduations and special events have deep pockets into which students in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries deposited their fees,” writes George Keller, an educational historian.

   ... Viewed in this light, the surge of private-sector colleges over the last generation can be seen less as a new phenomenon taking hold, and more as a long-standing and successful educational model enjoying a renaissance—largely as a result of the unsustainable funding model relied upon by the public institutions that became dominant over the last century.

   He points out that for-profit schools receive all of their revenue from student tuition. The only way they can grow, thrive, and survive is to offer students a benefit that's worth the direct tuition cost. By contrast, "at public universities, where taxpayers bear most of the costs, money from students can account for only 13 percent of the revenue." As a result, private universities are very responsive to the direct needs of students while public universities can give the impression of being contemptuous of the needs of undergraduate students.

   He talks, at length, about the culture and characteristics of private universities. Example: they don't live on donations, so you'll never have to worry about being hassled for alumni donations. For another: they don't focus on the educational inputs (teachers, buildings, libraries, etc). Instead, they focus on the educational outputs (percentage of students who graduate, percentage of graduating students who find work in their major, etc). The result is a university that feels far more focused on education than most public universities do.

   He also talks about how the private universities work to standardize their curricula, to ensure that all students receive the same quality education. As a result, their able to identify which teachers need additional help, which teachers need to be fired, and which teachers need raises. They're also able to quickly identify which students need additional help and how they can best be helped. They can also see when the curriculum itself needs to be revised, in order to better meet the needs of the students and to teach the concepts more clearly.

   By standardizing the curriculum, it is possible to measure outcomes and make continuous improvements that will ensure that each term of students is getting a better learning experience than the term before it. Over time, the compounding effect of these steady improvements will be enormous.

5. Answering the Critics. This chapter was the main reason why I bought this book. Rosen offers an extremely compelling answer to all of the criticisms of for-profit education.

   Do for-profit schools waste taxpayer money by encouraging students to sign up for lots of financial aid dollars?

   Perhaps the biggest fallacy in the debate over proprietary schools is the argument that the private sector is “wasting” taxpayer money because most of its students make use of federal financial aid programs. In fact, the truth is precisely the reverse: analyses show that private-sector colleges use substantially fewer taxpayer dollars per student than traditional institutions, a gap that widens even further when you measure them apples to apples based on the number of demographically comparable students who actually make it through to graduation. Only by comparing use of federal Title IV student aid dollars in isolation, and ignoring all other governmental contributions to higher education, can one plausibly make the case that private-sector colleges over consume taxpayer dollars.

   Do for-profit schools suck up large amounts of taxpayer money?

   ... And when it comes to direct support—government money contributed directly to institutions, as opposed to student financial aid that is based on where an individual student goes to school—the difference is even starker. “For every $1 in direct support for private for-profit institutions, per student, at federal, state and local levels, private not-for-profit institutions receive $8.69 per student and public institutions receive $19.38 per student.”

   Do for-profit schools lead students to amass large debts and then default on them?

   ... [S]tudies have shown that nonprofit schools that also serve nontraditional student populations have nearly identical default rates, and that students’ socioeconomic level is by far the dominant driver of defaults. There is a very high (91 percent) correlation between institutional default rates and the percentage of low-income, Pell Grant students at an institution.

   Do for-profit schools sucker students into taking classes that they won't benefit from?

   At Kaplan, we’ve gone a step further by making the first weeks of school “risk free.” Kaplan assesses students during the first month of each program and determines whether they evidence the ability and rigor to succeed; if not, they are asked to withdraw, without any tuition owed or debt incurred. And any student who finds that the real experience during that period does not match his or her expectations for any reason can choose to withdraw, similarly without tuition obligation. A large percentage of those who drop out do so in the first term; the “Kaplan Commitment” leaves most of these students with no debt at all.

6. The Learning Playbook. Rosen concludes with a look at how standardized curricula, online learning, and the lack of prestigious campuses could transform the face of American education. More students could receive a better education, at a lower cost. If he's right, the future is very bright. And I think he's right.

Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: Loads of Fun

I really should know better than to underestimate John Scalzi. After all, I still think Old Man's War was one of the best books I've read in the past 7 years. But, I did. I didn't expect Fuzzy Nation to be all that good.

I had my reasons too. Fuzzy Nation is a remake of H. Beam Piper's book Little Fuzzy. Movies are remade all of the time in Hollywood. And most of those remakes are poor imitations of the original. How often are books remade? Never? I should have taken a clue from Tyler Cowen and realized if something is done that's never done, that's likely to mean it's of higher than average quality. And, boy, is that ever true here.

Scalzi took a good but dated 1950's story and updated it into a very good, and fresh, story for the 2010's. The broad, general, structure of the original is still here. Jack Holloway is a prospector working on Zarathustra XXXIII, looking for sunstone gems. He discovers an immense cache of them, enough to make his fortune several times over. Then he meets a small, fuzzy (of course), cute creature. Then he meets the creature's family. Soon, he's involved in determining whether these cute creatures are super smart animals or sentient people.

Scalzi modifies the story a good bit too. His book is every bit as much of a page turner as the original was, just in different ways. He manages to make a series of court cases far more interesting than the original did. But I find the most interesting changes to be the way that the story revolves around Jack Holloway.

Scalzi's version of Little Fuzzy is really about Holloway. The fuzzys are there and central to that story, but Holloway is the focus. He's a complex character and Scalzi progressively reveals him to us. Is he merely the galaxy's biggest jerk? Or is there more to him than that? Scalzi continually gives us more insight into him as the story moves along, but still manages to keep his character ambiguous until the end. It's not character development, exactly, but it's character revelation, which I find just as interesting.

After reading this book, I've very definitely moved from "I'll read it because it's from Scalzi" to "I'd definitely recommend this book". If you're looking for an entertaining read, pick this up. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra by Poul Anderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book contains three complete Flandry novels. (Books were a lot shorter, in decades past.) Here, collected in one volume for the first time, is The Plague of Masters (aka Earthman, Go Home), Hunters of the Sky Cave and A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows.

The Plague of Masters had an enjoyable setup. Flandry lands on a planet where the air itself is deadly and prolonged exposure will lead to a torturous death. The only hope of a survival is to take a specific drug, every 30 days. It's not even enough to flee the planet—without a final dose of the drug, you'll die from the delayed effects of the air. Of course, the planet is under the thumb of a dictatorial group of scientists, who tightly control access to the drug. Anyone whoever stops playing along, stops getting doses. The setup and development of the story is wonderful. The ending is almost confusingly abrupt, lessening what would have otherwise been a very good story.

Hunters of the Sky Cave has Flandry confronting some invaders that he finds personally likable. Unfortunately, in order to complete his mission he has to smash not only their invasion but also their societal structure, just to keep the Terran Empire alive for a few more years. This was a well told story that showed Flandry doing what he does best but also recognizing that his efforts would have limited impact on the larger picture.

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows is the best story of the bunch. Flandry finds the son he didn't know he had as well as a woman he can actually love. In the end, he completes his mission but at a staggering personal cost. As the story ends, you know the Empire will live on but you wonder if Flandry, personally, sees any point to it anymore.

These stories are uniformly good because they feature an older, wiser Flandry. He still cracks wise, he still dresses well and loves fine women. He's still a staunch defender of the Terran Empire. However, he's increasingly more aware of how decadent, corrupt, and unworthy that Empire is. It's the best thing going, but it's failing fast and not even he can keep it together much longer. He does everything he can to push back the arrival of The Long Night, even knowing that everything he does will ultimately prove futile.

That underlying emotional tension drives the stories and forced me to sympathize with Flandry to a much greater degree than I have previously.

Means of Ascent by Robert Caro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: A Great Book

I loved the first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, The Path to Power. I'd ever read a better biography. I've still never read a better one but I've now read one that's just as good.

This book really succeeds because it's essentially four stories in one book.

Chapters 1-5 are the story of Johnson's later years in Congress and what he did during World War II. (Johnson spent most of the war avoid danger and then flew into danger, literally, at the last minute in order to have some record to present to his increasingly restless constituents.) This first section of the book is crucial. It portrays the absolute desperation that Johnson felt both to get out of the House and to gain wealth.

I feel that this section of the book is the slowest and repeats the most information from The Path to Power. (Sometimes entire paragraphs are listed from the previous book.) Caro did this to remind the reader of crucial aspects of Johnson's character but, when reading the books back to bad, it really feels repetitive and slows the pace.

Chapter 6 is a terrific look at crony capitalism. This is where the book really begins to pick up, in my opinion. It's the story of how Lyndon Johnson acquired the KTBC radio station. He used the power of politics to turn a money-losing business into an insanely profitable business practically overnight. If you've ever wondered how crony capitalism works or how a politician can become wealthy just from "serving" in Congress, this is your chapter. After reading it, I don't think I'll ever look at the intersection of business and politics the same way again.

Chapter 8 is an utterly fascinating mini-biography of Coke Stevens, a forgotten figure in Texas politics. Prior to the 1948 Senate race, he was a living legend. During the race, Johnson and his partisans slimed him mercilessly. Today, he's remembered only as another reactionary conservative in a long-line of reactionary conservatives.

Robert Caro corrects the historical record and shows a man who lived an incredible life as a self-taught lawyer, accountant, architect, and rancher. He ran a one-man "freight line" when he was just 17, transporting goods in and out of the most inhospitable regions of Texas. He drove the horses during the day and taught himself law at night, by firelight. He scrimped and saved to buy his own books, always saving a a tiny amount for the ranch that he wanted to one day buy.

When he did finally start to buy land for his ranch, he did all of his own branding and shearing. He taught himself architecture so that he could build single handedly build his ranch house. He dug his own post holes and set his own fence posts. He nearly singlehandedly built the entire ranch, from the ground up.

He was a politician only reluctantly but was the most successful politician in Texas history. In his second gubernatorial election, he received 85 percent of the vote (the highest ever total in a contested Texas primary) and won all 254 Texas counties. "He was also the only man in the state's history who had held all three of the top political posts in state government: Speaker, Lieutenant Governor, Governor." And he served an unprecedented two consecutive terms as Speaker: the only man in Texas to ever succeed himself as Speaker.

This mini-biography alone is nearly worth the entire purchase of the entire book.

Chapters 9-16 chronicle the 1948 Senate election. Caro definitely investigates allegations that Johnson stole the election—and finds them to be true beyond a reasonable doubt. The fraud was breathtaking in both its sheer audacity and scope.

More than that though, he chronicles the entire election. Johnson, a mediocre vote getter, was running against Coke Stevenson, the most successful vote getter in Texas history. Johnson had very little hope of beating Stevenson in a fair fight. So, he did the only thing he could: he relentlessly slimed his opponent. He used an unlimited fund of money, coming from crony capitalists dependent on him, to blanket the radio airwaves, to cover newspapers, and to stuff voter mailboxes with dishonest rhetoric and accusations. It was the most rotten and contemptible form of campaigning imaginable and Caro reports on every aspect of it.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. It was a fascinating and enlightening look at modern American politics and a pivotal player in them.

The Peace War by Vernor Vinge

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: A Great Book

In 1997, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory developed a device that could generate a persistent, spherical force field of arbitrary size and project it almost anywhere. The resulting "bobble" will completely cut off whatever is inside the field from the rest of the world. These scientists quickly act to use the bobble to encase nuclear weapons, military bases, cities, and governments. They declare themselves the Peace Authority and enforce peace by threatening to bobble anyone who rejects their authority.

The Peace War starts 51 years later, in 2048. The world has been at peace for as long as most people can remember. Not everyone is happy with the Peace Authority's limitations on technology and freedom. Small bands of Tinkers have been clandestinely developing new technologies, in an attempt to overcome the Peace. And the original inventor of the Bobbler is still alive, a Tinker himself, and working hard to defeat the scientists who took his invention and used it to enslave the world.

Vernor Vinge does exactly what a good SF author should do: he poses a new technology and examines how it might change the world, for good and bad. I liked his depictions of how American society would change after the last year and enforced peace. I liked his depictions of how technology would progress in the face of severe restrictions against innovation. And I liked his depictions of how an insurrection might work when facing an enemy that not only had superior firepower but also had the ability to completely take pieces off of the map.

This was a very imaginative book and a great example of what "hard science fiction" should be. I highly recommend it.

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: A Solid Follow-Up

This is the second book in Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" series. After the events of the first book, PI Harry Dresden has found it hard to drum up work. Actually, it's been impossible. The police don't trust him and the underworld isn't certain it wants to work with him. That's true up until dead bodies start showing up. Dead bodies that look suspiciously like the result of werewolf killings.

This was a pretty solid follow-up to Storm Front. The first book in the series dealt the magic side of the supernatural world. This book dealt with the hairier side of the supernatural world. It was well written but I didn't think that it had as much tongue-in-cheek humor as the first book. I missed that.

Butcher incorporated many different variants of the werewolf legends. It made for a more complex story, as it involved a mix of characters, each with different motives, abilities, and weaknesses. On the other hand, it made the story more complex and I'm not entirely sure that that was such a good thing.

Overall, this was a solid, but not a great, follow-up to Storm Front. Dresden remains interesting as a character and his relationships with the people around him continue to evolve. Ultimately, any story is about people and this story, whatever minor flaws it may have, succeeded in making me continue to care about Dresden and to cheer the progress he's making in his relationships.

One Jump Ahead by Mark L. Van Name

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: I Loved It

Take one jaded, burn-out mercenary. Jon Moore. Give him an AI-enhanced Predator-Class Assault Vehicle. Lobo. One desparate to live a quiet life, in an out of the way spot. The other itching to leave the quiet, out of the way spot and get back into action. Mix in some corporations eager to gain an edge and some corporate officials willing to lie and cheat to gain an edge. The end result is an angry mercenary with a lot of weaponry and a burning desire to both gain revenge and set things right.

All of that by itself would make a decent military novel. What makes this novel really stand out, and what makes it a great SF novel, is Mark L. Van Name's use of nanotechnology and biotechnology. Jon Moore is loaded with nanotechnology that he can use to break in, break down, or confuse. Van Name, knowingly or not, keeps Sanderson's Second Law in mind. The nanotech doesn't make Moore invincible or omnipotent. It merely gives him a different set of tools. He still has to use his ingenuity to survive and win.

Moore also uses various bioengineered animals to achieve his goals. As with the nanotech, these animals are impressive for what they can do as well as what they can't do. It's a close look at another technology that's currently beyond our grasp but close enough to be convincingly portrayed.

This book was very well written and Van Name revealed some impressive worldbuilding skills. I especially liked the planet name of "Pinkelplonker" (named by the 5-year old son of the captain that discovered the planet) and the jump system used to travel between worlds. I very much look forward to reading the rest of the novels in the series.

A Rising Thunder by David Weber

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: I Shouldn’t Have Bothered

This is the 13th book in David Weber's Honor Harrington series. When the series started, back in 1992, it was pretty easy to follow. Sequel followed sequel and each book picked up where the last left off. More recently, in 2002, Weber approved the creation of two sub-series. The result is that the plotline and scope of the "Honorverse" expanded dramatically

The first sub-series was "The Wages of Sin", starting with Crown of Slaves, which follows book #10, War of Honor. The second sub-series was "Saganami Island", starting with The Shadow of Saganami, chronologically following both book #10 War of Honor and Crown of Slaves.

Later mainline novels, such as At All Costs and Mission of Honor, incorporated elements of both sub-series. The plotline of the sub-series's increasingly started to drive the plotline and direction of the main series. This book, A Rising Thunder, is Weber's attempt to fully tie the main series into the elements and events of the two sub-serieses.

The resulting book is a bit of a boring train wreck. It does include characters and plot elements from both sub-series. What it doesn't include is a lot of action. Given that all 3 serieses are built around action, this is a glaring omission. Mostly what we get is a lot of talking, as officials in 3 or 4 locations talk about how recent events will affect future events. I remember one main battle, out of 464 pages. Given how action packed the previous books have been, this was a major letdown.

In some respects, a slow book was almost inevitable. Given how much things have changed over the last several books, there needed to be an attempt to tie everything together and then to re-launch the series in its new direction. But I feel that the relaunching could have been achieved with a greater economy of words and a bit more action.

Perhaps the most damning indictment I have is that most fans would be best served by reading a plot summary of this book rather than reading the book itself.

Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: It Was Okay

I download this book for free, several years, ago as part of a Tor.com giveaway. I read it then and enjoyed it. I was always interested in the sequels but never quite got around to tracking them down. (There are a few series that I read but I'm generally pretty bad about tracking down sequels.)

Recently, I was visiting a used bookstore in preparation for air travel. I saw both this book and it's sequel, Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart. I really wanted to just pick up the sequel, to read on the airplane. But I discovered that I really couldn't remember anything about the first book. So I bought both and had to start by rereading this one.

Jane Lindskold plays with one idea: a child raised by wolves. But, just for fun, don't make this a Jack London story about a child raised by wild wolves. This is, after all, a fantasy novel. No, these wolves are Royal Wolves. They are bigger and stronger than normal wolves. Most importantly, they're smarter. They have a shared culture and language and are at least as intelligent as humans, even if it is in a very wolfian manner. Make the girl be the keeper of fire, leading the wolves to call her Firekeeper. And give her a friend: a Royal Falcon named Elation. Also bigger, stronger, and smarter than your average falcon.

Now, bring Firekeeper back to the kingdom of Hawk Haven. King Tedric is elderly, without a clear heir. Earl Kestrel believes that Firekeeper is the king's heir. The court, predictably, disagrees. Now, add in tensions with the neighboring kingdom of Bright Bay. Mix all of these ingredients together, stir, and simmer for the length of one novel.

Overall, I think this recipe works. True, it was slow moving. There was a lot of talking, as a girl accustomed to wolf society needed to have human society explained to her. There was a lot of political maneuvering too. While some of that is based in action most of it is also based in talking. But, after all, this books is titled "through wolf's eyes". It was all about depicting the kingdom of Hawk Haven from the perspective of a non-human outsider.

Yes, it was slow moving. But the book was entertaining nonetheless. Now that I know how the story starts, I can read Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart to see what happens to Firekeeper next. I see that the series has expanded to 6 books. I don't know yet whether or not I'll read all of them. A lot depends on what I think of the next book. And none of us will know how that turns out until I take my next trip by air.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: It Was Okay

I'm definitely not the target market for this book. Not if my general level of enthusiasm means something, at any rate. Still, it was a good novel and it deserves it's wide audience and fan base.

If you've been paying any attention to pop-culture at all, then you're familiar with the broad outlines of this book. (But I'm going to recap anyway.)

In the far future, America is gone. Panem, a totalitarian nation, now occupies North America. Panem is divided into 13 Districts plus the Capital. Years before the story begins, the Districts tried to rebel against the Capital. They lost and District 13 was destroyed.

As a result of the loss, the remaining Districts were forced to sign a treaty of unconditional surrender. But that wasn't enough. In a show of force and strength, the Capital instituted "The Hunger Games". Each year, each District is forced to send 2 teenage contestants to compete in a bloody arena battle, to the death. The winning contestant wins a year's supply of food and medicine, for his or her District.

This year, 16-year old Katniss will compete in the Hunger Games.

It's an interesting idea: how will a bunch of teenagers, still trying to grow into maturity, handle being flung into a life or death situation and forced to survive? What decisions will they make? What emotions will they feel? What lengths will they go to survive? And, even if they survive, will any of their humanity with them?

It's not only an interesting idea, it's a well-written book. Katniss is a very vivid character. The story is told from her perspective. As a result, some of the characters start out rather flat and then, as she interacts with them and gets to know them, they develop increasing depth and humanity. The book is full of action (especially the second half, once the games begin) and the action is well described. It was a very fun, fast, read.

I didn't enjoy the book as much as I could have though. While Ms.. Collins created interesting characters and engaging action, she failed to create a fully develop the world of Panem. To give just one example, the Capital is located in Denver and District 12 is located in the mountains of Appalachia. District 12 is desperately poor and most of the people there live on the edge of starvation. That's part of why the games are called the "Hunger Games" and why winning is such a big deal.

Some of the other Districts are fabulously wealthy though and don't have to worry about food. Why? The book portrays the Capital as sucking up nearly 100% of District 12's resources. The book also portrays the Capital lifestyle as tremendously decadent and lavish. It would seem that it would suck up most of the resources of all of the other Districts too. So why are some wealthy and some poor? What makes the world of Panem go around?

There is very little about the world of Panem that is explained. Much of it doesn't make sense and the book seems to just rush through the world building. Everything related to Katniss is in sharp focus and a pleasure to read. Everything else is distinctly fuzzy and out of focus, even the things that should be basic, background, knowledge for Katniss. That's certainly the author's prerogative but it turns what could have been a great book into merely a good book.

Still, I'll probably read the next book in the series, just to see where things go next.

Dune by Frank Herbert

My rating: 6 of 5 stars

Brian Herbert, on Dune.

Dune is a modern-day conglomeration of familiar myths, a tale in which great sandworms guard a precious treasure of melange, the geriatric spice that represents, among other things, the finite resource of oil. The planet Arrakis features immense, ferocious worms that are like dragons of lore, with “great teeth” and a “bellows breath of cinnamon.”

It’s hard to find something to say about Dune that hasn’t already been said. It raised for the bar for the entire genre of science fiction. It won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. It combined elements of ecology, politics, philosophy, history, evolution, religion, psychology, adventure, revenge, and more. It’s fantastically layered, lending itself to many different interpretations and explanations. It gave us a world complex enough, with a history rich enough to support 15 sequels, a movie, and 2 TV mini-series.

It can be a slow read at times, demanding close attention from the reader. Herbert introduces a dizzying array of characters, concepts, terms, languages, histories, and peoples. You are, in essence, dropped into a story already in progress and trusted to keep up as events unfold. But, in spite of its occasional flaws, it’s a worthwhile read. From start to finish, the book rewards the reader with an all-engaging universe.

If you have already read Dune, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, you should probably give it a try. It’s a true classic of the genre for many very good reasons.

Glory Season by David Brin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: Loads of Fun

The best science fiction is, at its heart, speculative fiction. These books start with a single big idea—a single question—and develop it. The great books take that idea and develop it superbly. Glory Season is a great book. It starts with a single idea: what if humans could clone themselves when times are good and revert to sexual reproduction when times are bad and genetic diversity is at a premium?

David Brin explains how his idea developed, from that single root.

The idea of cloning has been explored widely in fiction, but always in terms of medical technology involving complex machinery, a dilettante obsession for the very rich. This may serve a pampered, self-obsessed class for a while, but it’s hardly a process any species could rely on over the long haul, through bad times as well as good. Not a way of life, machine-assisted cloning is the biosocial counterpart of a hobby.

What if, instead, self-cloning were just another of the many startling capabilities of the human womb? An interesting premise. But then, only female humans have wombs, so a contemplation of cloning became a novel about drastically altered relations between the sexes. Most aspects to the society of planet Stratos arose out of this one idea.

David Brin relentlessly develops this big idea, to see exactly where it takes him. He follows it through the sciences, to see where it takes him: biology, sociology, psychology, and more. By pursuing this idea so relentlessly, he constructs a society that is very alien to our own (uncomfortably so, in cases) but yet is still very recognizable.

Glory Season is a tale of a largely static society, where women hold the upper hand. Men are kept around primarily for their ability to "spark" clone births. It's a society largely dominated by extended clans of female clones. It's a society where being unique is very uncomfortable and where "var" is a derisive slur.

But David Brin didn't allow these big, well developed ideas to get in the way of telling a story. Glory Season is an adventure tale, a coming of age tale, and a tale of radicals seeking to remake society. It was both thought provoking and thoroughly entertaining. I highly recommend it.

Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1) by Jim Butcher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: Loads of Fun

I ripped through this book in one day. In less than 12 hours, really. I loved it.

I have a real weakness for what I call “popcorn books”. These are books that can be appreciated much like a summer blockbuster movie can be appreciated: sit back, relax, grab a bag of popcorn, don’t think too hard, and just enjoy yourself. I love reading them whenever I’m too tired to appreciate an emotionally moving book or to learn from an educational book or when I just need a break from more serious fare.

Storm Front is a fantastic popcorn book. It’s the first-person narrative of Hard Dresden, warlock.

Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, or Other Entertainment.

He’s a hard bitten, Chicago P.I., trying to stay on the right side of both the White Council (Wizard law) and the Chicago P.D. He’s usually successful, and usually down on his luck, until the day when everything starts happening at once…

This book is a cross between the hard boiled detective fiction of the early 1900’s and modern fantasy. It reminded me of reading Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, crossed with a bit of the absurdist humor of Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams. The story was grimly dark and somewhat horrifying but told with a deft, light touch that made the experience more entertaining than depressing. Butcher peppers the story with fast-moving action pieces and witty asides that do a lot to move things along.

Highly recommended.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: It Was Okay

Since I've started reviewing books, I've been trying to force myself to review a book based on what it's meant to be rather than on what I wish it was. After all, that's the only way to be fair to the author. So it was with this book. I was hoping for a narrative of the life of Andrew Jackson. Instead, I got an analysis of the man and the times he lived in. I was annoyed at first but I forced myself to evaluate it fairly. I think I'm glad that I did.

The title of this book was deliberately chosen. Jackson was an orphan who felt alone much of his life. In reaction to that (as the book makes clear), he valued family highly and would go to any length to protect and defend family. For Jackson, the nation was but an extension of his own family. He loved his country and would go to any length (including invading Florida, risking war with France, evicting the Indian tribes, and suppressing free speech) to protect and defend it. He was very much the "American Lion", defending his pride.

Meacham’s intent with this book was not to exhaustively document Jackson’s life. Nor was it even to exhaustively document Jackson’s years as President. Instead, Meacham drew on newly available letters and papers to sketch a potrait of Jackson’s personal life and his relationships with his closest friends and family members.

While this approach has some advantages in humanizing “The General”, it also has some downfalls. Meacham does provide a thumbnail sketch of Jackson’s early years and his path to the White House. Regrettably, I feel that it’s cursory enough that it fails to fully setup the drama that was to follow.

For instance, I was really hoping for a look at the actual events of Jackson's life. For instance, how did he campaign for the Presidency? How did Presidential campaigns work, day to day, during the early 1800's? The book just glossed right over those details, mentioning only that Jackson won or lost a given election.

This became important when you consider that a central battle of the first two years of Jackson’s presidency involved Major Eaton, the Secretary of War. Jackson staked his entire Presidency on the question of whether or not people around him were loyal to Major Eaton. Eventually, the entire Cabinet was sacked over the question: the first time that had happened in American history.

I spent much of this portion of the book wondering why Jackson was being so incredibly loyal to Eaton. I later grew to realize that Eaton had been quite a central figure in Jackson’s earlier life and in winning the Presidency. Because Meacham passed over those years so quickly, I failed to understand (until much later) just how important Major Eaton was to General Jackson.

This flaw weakened the book, in my opinion.

I did learn quite a bit from this book (and may write more later on my impressions of Jackson and his age) but I felt that it would have benefited from more detail and more background information, both about Jackson and about the age Jackson lived in.

The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: Loads of Fun

This book was a ton of fun to read. It's a heist mystery, that's almost steam punk, set in the Mistborn universe. If you're a Brandon Sanderson fan that's pretty much all you need to know. If you're not a Brandon Sanderson fan, well, you're in for a real treat. I've been waiting for this book since mid-summer and I'm happy to say that I wasn't at all disappointed.

The best part of the Mistborn universe is the magical system that Sanderson created for these stories: allomancy, feruchemy. Allomancers can "burn" various metals (which they've swallowed in trace amounts), to get various powers: increased strength, speed, ability to influence emotions, the ability to Push or Pull on steel, etc. Feruchemists can store various attributes (speed, weight, knowledge) in metal and then retrieve it as needed.

The stories are very character driven and resemble super hero stories, in the way that the characters creatively use their allomantic or feruchemic powers. This particular book is filled with a few great puns, interesting characters, mysterious heists, detective work, and some incredible fight scenes.

This book wasn't perfect. I felt like the main villain took a bit too much inspiration from Batman Begins and Renard (the Bond villain). This is still a very good book, if that's the only weakness (and I thought it was).

How does this book fit into the rest of the Mistborn universe? I'll let Sanderson explain.

I pitched my editor a series where the first trilogy is an epic fantasy series, and then years later an urban fantasy series, and then years after that a science fiction series, all set in the same world. And the magic exists all through, and it is treated differently in each of these time periods. And that’s what Alloy of Law is: looking at the Mistborn world, hundreds of years later, where society has been rebuilt following the events of the third book.

... This is actually a sort of side story I decided to start telling. ... With this one I decided to do something a little more action/adventure and a little more self-contained. So Alloy of Law is not the start of a trilogy, though I may do a little more with the characters, but in general the story I wanted to tell is told.

Now. Go forth, buy, and read.

Update (11/29): Esther Bochner, a publicist at Macmillan Audio, emailed me yesterday with a nice offer.

I saw your great review of ALLOY OF LAW by Brandon Sanderson and I wanted to make sure that you are aware that the book is also available as an audiobook from Macmillan Audio. I’d love to offer you a clip from the audiobook to post on your site alongside the review as multimedia content.

So, here's a nice preview both of the style of the book and of the sound of the audiobook.

Download the audio clip.

TARDIS Eruditorum - A Critical History of Doctor Who Volume 1: William Hartnell by Philip Sandifer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: Loads of Fun

I started watching Doctor Who about 2 years ago. It was a vivid awakening for me. I had been very dimly aware that the show existed but had never been exposed to it. Once I started watching it, I loved it but I always wanted to know more about it. It is a story with a rich and complex history. One that I knew nothing about it.

One can, of course, try using Google to do research. With something as complex as Doctor Who, the results are rather … confusing. So, I just suffered in ignorance, merely enjoying what was on TV in front of me.

Last week, randomly, I became aware that a new book had just been published through Amazon. It was a collection of essays from the blog TARDIS Eruditorum: A Psychochronography in Blue. Up until this point, I hadn’t even known that the blog existed. But, I clicked over and decided to take a look.

This is the story of a story that can never end. This is the story of how a daft idea from the bowels of the BBC in the 1960s changed everything. This is the story of an impossible man, and his magic box, and everything that happened after.

Because there's something you'd better understand about me. Because it's important, and one day, your life may depend on it.

I am definitely a mad man with a blog.

Okay, so Philip Sandifer (“a hopeless geek with a PhD in English focusing on media studies”) is an entertaining writer. After a few hours of reading through blog entries, I was also convinced that he knew Doctor Who, he knew British culture, and he knew literary criticism. So I bought the book.

From the book’s description:

TARDIS Eruditorum is a sprawling and very possibly completely mad critical history of Doctor Who from its first episode in 1963 to the present. In this first volume, we look at topics like how acid-fueled occultism influenced the development of the Cybermen, whether The Celestial Toymaker is irredeemably racist, and whether Barbara Wright was the greatest companion of all time. This book aims to be the most staggeringly thorough look at the evolution of Doctor Who, Great Britain, and the world from 1963 to 1966 ever published.

Revised and expanded versions of every entry from the acclaimed blog TARDIS Eruditorum from the start to finish of William Hartnell's tenure as the Doctor.

It was utterly fascinating and has already given me a lot of insight into the show and how it works. I’m eagerly awaiting the publication of future volumes and have every intention of purchasing them as they’re released. Why not? I’m a sucker for really good literary criticism and a sucker for Doctor Who.