Book Description
In the debut crime novel from the Booker-winning author, a Dublin pathologist follows the corpse of a mysterious woman into the heart of
a conspiracy among the city’s high Catholic society
It’s not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It’s the living.One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse—and concealing the cause of death.
It turns out the body belonged to a young woman named Christine Falls. And as Quirke reluctantly presses on toward the true facts behind her death, he comes up against some insidious—and very well-guarded—secrets of Dublin’s high Catholic society, among them members of his own family.
Set in Dublin and Boston in the 1950s, the first novel in the Quirke series brings all the vividness and psychological insight of Booker Prize winner John Banville’s fiction to a thrilling, atmospheric crime story. Quirke is a fascinating and subtly drawn hero, Christine Falls is a classic tale of suspense, and Benjamin Black’s debut marks him as a true master of the form.
Customer Reviews:
Plodding Melodrama.......2007-10-14
This foray by Booker Prize-winner John Banville into crime fiction under a pseudonym pretty much tanks, and I was surprised to read that it is the first in an intended series. Set in the oppressive 1950s Dublin, it revolves around a widowed pathologist named Quirke who stumbles across some funny business at the morgue involving the corpse of the titular young woman. Because his brother, Mal, may be somehow implicated, he decides to poke around a bit. Quirke's attempt to find out more about the dead woman eventually segues into a search for her baby -- which eventually leads him into the upper strata of society, including the Catholic church.
Unfortunately, pretty much every thing about the plot feels creaky and predictable, from a conspiracy to smuggle "unwanted" babies to America via orphanages, to the corruption at the highest levels, to Quirke's ultimate grail, the identity of the baby's father. Most readers will have figured this out quite early on in the book and will grow weary of waiting for Quirke to catch up. Indeed, the pacing of the entire book is far too slow and plodding. Black/Banville appears to enjoy trying to create rich psychological backgrounds to his characters, however he's much less assured when it comes to having them actually act. Given how much of the book is devoted to Quirke's brooding on the past, his relationships with Mal, his sister-in-law, his niece, and his adoptive father, this develops as more of a plodding family melodrama than a suspenseful read. Thing climax in a burst of violence that feels more convenient for the writer than actually organic to the characters involved. Whatever this book is, it's certainly not a thriller.
Tough Read.......2007-10-06
I gave it a hundred pages, just as I promised myself. Mostly, it was a chore to read. What annoyed me the most was that the author would switch to describing another scene with no transition other than a paragraph.
I truly hate this book.
Couldn't get into it.......2007-10-02
I tried to like this book, but I just couldn't get into it. I read about half of it. It just never seemed to take off. Plus it didn't place me in the period. Some good books you feel like you are in the time that they are placed. This didn't do that for me. A big disappointment.
The only thrills are in the prose........2007-09-27
The characters and the basic plotline are more than adequately summarized in many of the other reviews. John Banville (Benjamin Black) is an extremely talented writer and is, as reviewers have noted, quite adept at drawing characters and evoking setting. His talent as a writer of prose cannot, I think, be denied and this book is a fine example.
The problem, however, is that the plot is (a) not entirely plausible and (b) becomes obvious way too early to hold any real suspense.
As for the plot, again, there is no real suspense in discovering who is behind the various crimes. The motive is slower to emerge but, as it does, it does not ring true. My own opinion is that Benjamin Black has quite a bit to learn about this new genre. This book lacked any "aha!" moment, as revelations in the murder/mystery plot were never very mysterious. All opportunities for thrill were deflated before any real suspense could build.
On a minor issue and as others have pointed out, Black dispatched bad characters far too neatly to give any satisfaction.
Banville's skills have not yet translated to a satisfying Mystery/Thriller. At least, I was wholly unsatisfied when the book ended. Perhaps, my dissatisfaction was due to too high expectations.
The prose is worth the read, but the story comes up short.
And a lot else falls..........2007-08-12
Not being familiar with Banville, I was drawn to this book by the reviews and my ongoing desire for a good mystery. The novel's premise seemed appealing. A young woman is dead. Pathologist Quirke becomes curious when he finds his obstetrician brother, Mal, going through the file. Quirke's own investigation unleashes violence and ultimately involves his whole adopted family.
Certainly the writing meets the standard of literary fiction. The structural contrast of Quirke and Mal frames the book. Quirke deals in death, Mal in births. One won his love, the other didn't. And so on.
The first 50 pages of the book held my interest, as Quire began snooping around. The viewpoints shifts form one character to the other - very smoothly done. But I began to get a sense of deja vue. The reasons behind the woman's death...we've seen this before.
Ultimately, despite the writing, I think you'll enjoy this book if you like novel about convolutd, politely dysfunctional families. I did't find the character interesting or sympathetic. Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder was a more appealing drunk.
The ending falters. It's like one of those farces where nobody is they seem. I found the rationale for the solution unbelievable, even given the power of the Catholic church. Ultimately the fictional plot pales next to real Irish stories, like the Magdalene sisters.
Average customer rating:
- True to it's title
- Things Fall apart audio
- Things Fall Apart
- All you never wanted to know about yams... and other such things.
- It Drags
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Things Fall Apart: A Novel
Chinua Achebe
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ASIN: 0385474547
Release Date: 1994-09-01 |
Amazon.com
One of Chinua Achebe's many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming ne'er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father's weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy:
Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.
And yet Achebe manages to make this cruel man deeply sympathetic. He is fond of his eldest daughter, and also of Ikemefuna, a young boy sent from another village as compensation for the wrongful death of a young woman from Umuofia. He even begins to feel pride in his eldest son, in whom he has too often seen his own father. Unfortunately, a series of tragic events tests the mettle of this strong man, and it is his fear of weakness that ultimately undoes him.
Achebe does not introduce the theme of colonialism until the last 50 pages or so. By then, Okonkwo has lost everything and been driven into exile. And yet, within the traditions of his culture, he still has hope of redemption. The arrival of missionaries in Umuofia, however, followed by representatives of the colonial government, completely disrupts Ibo culture, and in the chasm between old ways and new, Okonkwo is lost forever. Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture. --Alix Wilber
Book Description
This is Chinua Achebe's classic novel, with more than two million copies sold since its first U.S. publication in 1969. Combining a richly African story with the author's keen awareness of the qualities common to all humanity, Achebe here shows that he is "gloriously gifted, with the magic of an ebullient, generous, great talent." -- Nadine Gordimer
Customer Reviews:
True to it's title.......2007-09-22
It is amazing how a novel first published in 1959 about a Nigerian village, pre-colonization, still has relevance today. Talk about transcending time as well as cultures! Chinua Achebe is a magnificent story teller. I love authors who have the ability to transport me to worlds that seem so different from my own.
Okonkwo was a man that was obsessed with masculinity and the "power" of being masculine. Although I could see how harsh, abusive, and unyielding Okonkwo was towards his family, oddly I felt sympathy for the man. He was the product of his environment and culture. Apparently his callousness was worsened because of his fear that he should become like his father ----- a man with no title, in his culture, the equivalent of being a woman.
How many of us struggle to balance the new with the old? And how often do we question or all out resist changing times.... be it attitudes or ideas, advancements in technology, religion, policies, music, etc. Most of us reach a certain age where we would prefer our traditions be left alone. In some instances there should be no room for compromise, but in other instances perhaps there truly is improvement/advancement to be gained.
Okonkwo's struggle is exactly that. He strives to leave behind a proud legacy. However, he makes bad decisions along the way. The more he tries to make things right the more it seems that misfortune comes his way. He's angered and confused about the changes that come upon his village but that combined with his pigheaded demeanor make for a disastrous result. It's a good book to take up beyond school required reading. Achebee gives his readers a great deal to consider.
Things Fall apart audio.......2007-09-11
My son had a senior project to do over the summer, he had to read this entire book and the first day back to school, he had a test on it, my son does not do well on reading, he can read great, but he has trouble remembering what he read, so I thought if he listened to it being read to him, he could follow along better, well he did, and he done well on his test and essay, I would recommend this product to anyone with similiar problems as my son has with reading.......
Things Fall Apart.......2007-09-10
My son needed this book for school and we received in time for school. Great service!
All you never wanted to know about yams... and other such things........2007-08-08
I had to read this for my high school advanced English class. I regret ever having picked it up. I feel very lucky that my brain was not fried after reading The-book-that-should-not-be-named. In short, if you want to read a bizarre book about African people and yams, then read this book. If not, go read something else.
It Drags.......2007-08-07
While the story itself is useful in giving a student the right mindset for African studies, the story itself lacks much of the marvel of other historically-based books. While the book is pointed towards lower-classmen in high school, the true audience should be college, where adults can completely analyze and idnetify the key points and emotions of the story.
Amazon.com
Lia Lee was born in 1981 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, overmedication, and culture clash: "What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance." The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes. People are presented as she saw them, in their humility and their frailty--and their nobility."
Book Description
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
When three-month-old Lia Lee Arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit and fiercely people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most immigrants, adhering steadfastly to the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. Lia's pediatricians, Neil Ernst and his wife, Peggy Philip, cleaved just as strongly to another tradition: that of Western medicine. When Lia Lee Entered the American medical system, diagnosed as an epileptic, her story became a tragic case history of cultural miscommunication.
Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their ideas about the causes of her illness and its treatment could hardly have been more different. The Hmong see illness aand healing as spiritual matters linked to virtually everything in the universe, while medical community marks a division between body and soul, and concerns itself almost exclusively with the former. Lia's doctors ascribed her seizures to the misfiring of her cerebral neurons; her parents called her illness, qaug dab peg--the spirit catches you and you fall down--and ascribed it to the wandering of her soul. The doctors prescribed anticonvulsants; her parents preferred animal sacrifices.
Download Description
When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their ideas about the causes of her illness and its treatment could hardly have been more different. The Hmong see illness and healing as spiritual matters linked to virtually everything in the universe, while the medical community marks a division between body and soul, and concerns itself almost exclusively with the former. Lia's doctors ascribed her seizures to the misfiring of her cerebral neurons; her parents called her illness qaug dab peg - the spirit catches you and you fall down - and ascribed it to the wandering of her soul. The doctors prescribed anticonvulsants; her parents preferred animal sacrifices. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down moves from hospital corridors to healing ceremonies, and from the hill country of Laos to the living rooms of Merced, uncovering in its path the complex sources and implications of two dramatically clashing worldviews.
Customer Reviews:
A Paradigm of the Complexities of Modern Medicine in Relation to Cuture and Ethnicity.......2007-09-30
I read "The Spirit Catches You, and You Fall Down" as a required reading for a Sociology course on Health and Ilnness in Society. This is simply put, an amazing piece of work, that not only is thorough, but has a great deal of emotion and you really are able to sense the pain, frustration, and joy, of both the Lee family and the medical community that cared for her. This work is also a testiment to the Hmong people and culture, who are often grealty overlooked in US Asian American culture. Anne Fadiman goes into great detail describing their culture, from it's language, history, and religion both here and in Loas, and to their unfortunate and tragic involvement in the US war in Vietnam which landed them in refugee camps in Thailand. My opinions vacillated at times from anger to empathy for her parents and their inability and refusal to follow the doctors advise, that could've saved their daughters life. I encourage this book to be read by anyone going into the medical field where you will encounter a myriad of ethnicities, that often fly in the face of conventional US medicine. This is nonfiction that reads with the excitement and personality of a well crafted novel.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down .......2007-09-26
exceptional book for those involved in anything dealing with human relationships. gives unbiased information from all sides of the issue (language & cultural barriers resulting in medical "errors")
this book smacks you in the face with your own preconceptions about what families know about their child, and what professionals know about their field, and how sometimes those two don't mesh, resulting in the child being put in the middle.
oh yeah, and every once in a while you will want to yell out about "the guy hiding behind the rock." because hindsight is so clear!
Great introduction to cross cultural communication.......2007-09-04
I was assigned this book as a supplement to a Cross Cultural Communication class. It's a very interesting read about a young girl who gets caught between Eastern and Western medicine. It makes a good read to see how CCC can be so important in our daily lives. It has a good lot of medical jargon and even more characters. There are a lot of doctors that are important for various reasons. It is certainly not a light beach read. Once you read it though you'll want someone else to read it to have someone to talk about. You can get in long discussions over who is "right" and if there is a right.
Oh so predictable..........2007-08-07
Detailed, researched look at the Hmong people of Vietnam in America through the experiences of one family in the medical/hospital system as they try to help their epileptic child. Although the action takes place in California, the story would probably have been similar no matter where the family lived. Non judgemental author keeps reader engaged. Structure of the book with alternating chapters detailing the history of the Hmong and then the specific family works well. Cross cultural misunderstandings seem inevitable given language and cultural differences. Sad without being depressing.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.......2007-08-01
An excellent book. A powerful and moving true story of a cultural east/west clash, especially concerning medical care. I couldn't put the book down. Enlightening also when it comes to the drugs used in treating status epilecticus, specifically in children under three. I also appreciated learning about some of the political history regarding the beautiful people of Laos. My heart goes out to the Hmong people.
Book Description
On a hazy November afternoon in Rangoon, 1862, a shrouded corpse was escorted by a small group of British soldiers to an anonymous grave in a prison enclosure. As the British Commissioner in charge insisted, “No vestige will remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Moghuls rests.”
Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal Emperor, was a mystic, an accomplished poet and a skilled calligrapher. But while his Mughal ancestors had controlled most of India, the aged Zafar was king in name only. Deprived of real political power by the East India Company, he nevertheless succeeded in creating a court of great brilliance, and presided over one of the great cultural renaissances of Indian history.
Then, in 1857, Zafar gave his blessing to a rebellion among the Company’s own Indian troops, thereby transforming an army mutiny into the largest uprising any empire had to face in the entire course of the nineteenth century. The Siege of Delhi was the Raj’s Stalingrad: one of the most horrific events in the history of Empire, in which thousands on both sides died. And when the British took the city—securing their hold on the subcontinent for the next ninety years—tens of thousands more Indians were executed, including all but two of Zafar’s sixteen sons. By the end of the four-month siege, Delhi was reduced to a battered, empty ruin, and Zafar was sentenced to exile in Burma. There he died, the last Mughal ruler in a line that stretched back to the sixteenth century.
Award-winning historian and travel writer William Dalrymple shapes his powerful retelling of this fateful course of events from groundbreaking material: previously unexamined Urdu and Persian manuscripts that include Indian eyewitness accounts and records of the Delhi courts, police and administration during the siege. The Last Mughal is a revelatory work—the first to present the Indian perspective on the fall of Delhi—and has as its heart both the dazzling capital personified by Zafar and the stories of the individuals tragically caught up in one of the bloodiest upheavals in history.
Customer Reviews:
A poisenous book.......2007-09-25
Exquisitely researched and well written, describing past lives and events that appear as real as if the reader had been a material witness, this book's quality of writing reminds me of Dalrymple's "White Mughals", dealing with British servants of the East India Company who "went native" by adopting Muslim customs in the early decades of the Raj. In "The Last Mughal", however, Dalrymple has gone native himself, by trumpeting Muslim culture as superior to all things Western at every turn. Especially irritating are the infrequent but none-too-subtle parallels he draws with the present : it seems America is the new Raj, whose "undisguised imperial arrogance" rose after the fall of the Berlin Wall - a gratuitous opinion lacking any bearing on this book's subject, the end of the Mughal Dynasty in India. Dalrymple rants between the lines, describing the West - then and now - as nothing but a bunch of rapacious pilferers and murderers, who uproot delicately balanced, refined, pacifist, tolerant, and multicultural Muslim societies, composed solely of courtiers, courtesans and poets. This was, to use a British understatement, a trifle at variance with reality, as both Hindu and Muslim ruling classes of the period wallowed in disgusting wealth while their subjects lived miserable lives in abject poverty. The imperialist, but now long gone Raj at least curbed the worst excesses of the Indian princes and laid the foundations of modern India, from the civil service to railroad infrastructure, but not a word of this is whispered here. One virtue of the book is that it shows the true character of the disciples of the Prophet, who managed to turn a Hindu mutiny into a jihad in no time. Also instructive is Dalrymple's enthousiastic, gushing descriptions of sword-wielding jihadis "duly dispatching" helpless British women and children during the "Uprising", in stark contrast with the "brutal killings" by British "psychopaths". No doubt atrocities were committed on both sides, but the double standard in describing them rankles, while references to present "Western arrogance and imperialism" reveals the bias of the author who, by the way, prefers living in the arrogant West over residing in a delicately balanced, refined, pacifist, tolerant, and multicultural Muslim society. This is a poisonous book, unworthy of being termed objective historical writing.
no dry history book.......2007-09-15
A surprisingly readable history of a dark and troubled time in India's history. Britain rode roughshod over thousands of years of civilisation on the sub-Continent seeking to impose Christianity on an unwilling populace. The invaders believed that their way of life was simply superior to that of that of the subjugated masses. History continues to repeat these terrble crimes into the 20th and 21st centuries.
Simply Magnificent.......2007-09-07
Live in the Delhi of 1857. Watch and feel the vibrancy of the sophisticated and cultured life of Delhi. Read the most understandable account of the whats and whys of the Indian Mutiny. Literally watch an entire city of 150,000 people destroyed. Move along the roads and alleys of Delhi as its citizens are slaughtered by the avenging British Army greatly assisted by Indians themselves with a substantial part of the genocide underwritten by Indian moneylenders. You will get a first hand view of the end of the 300 year old Mughal rule on the subcontinent, and understand why religious extremism (represented in this book largely by evangalical christians) has done the world no good for centuries. You will be reminded about how very thin is the veneer of civilization and tolerance and that when it comes to slaughtering their own species there is no parallel to us humans.
A book of great beauty based on immaculate research with great relevance to today's world.
The standard by which all books on this subject will henceforth be judged.
timely.......2007-08-29
a fascinating commentary on british colonialism. dalrymple makes a convincing case for the mutiny being a harbinger of the empire's collapse. there are some clear parallels with the united states' current embroglios in afghanistan and iraq.
this is a must read, and is made much more enjoyable by an abundance of newly presented (and translated) historical documents that provide insight to ongoings of zafar's court and east india company. such documentation sheds light on the diverse religious/social dynamics of both sides of the conflict. i was astounded to hear that 60 % of the soldiers used by the british to control the sepoys were of indian descent (mostly sikhs, if memory serves).
"The light has gone out of India. The land is lampless.".......2007-08-12
A great strength of 'The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857' by William Dalrymple (White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India) is its use not only of more familiar British sources, but also many Indian (Urdu and Persian) sources on one of pivotal events in the history of both India and the British Empire, the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 or the First War of Indian Independence as it is also sometimes called.
Dalrymple describes his excitement at discovering some 20,000 Persian and Urdu documents in the Indian national Archives. A particularly important source was the 'Dihli Urdu Akhbar' a principal Urdu newspaper that continued to publish during the revolt. These sources allow Dalrymple to give voice to the Indian as well the British point of view.
In 1857 the sepoys of the British Raj's Bengal Army mutinied (the reasons are explored in the book, but were at least partly due to a clash of newly arrived Christian evangelicals and adherents of Islam and Hindu). What began as mutiny became something larger at least in part because the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II endorsed it.
Dalrymple centers his telling of the tale on Zafar, the man destined to become the last Mughal emperor. By 1857 the Mughal Emperor possessed no real tangible power and was nothing more than the King of Delhi as he was derisively called. An aesthete himself, Zafar was singularly well-suited to his role as head of a court that elevated culture, poetry in particular, but wholly unsuited by temperament and age (he was 82 years old) to a role as leader of an armed revolt.
Delhi before 1857 was a remarkably tolerant mix of Hindu and Islam - roughly a 50/50 split - in part because of Zafar's manner of ruling. Zafar's acceptance of a titular leadership in the revolt meant that both Muslims and Hindi rallied to the cause. That symbolic role, however, was about all Zafar brought to the war.
The revolt began to flounder almost immediately due a lack of proper direction and discipline. The Sepoy regiments each acted independently and allowed a much smaller British force (ostensibly come to lay siege to the city) to survive repeated but serial attacks. The early stages of the revolt also saw horrific slaughter of noncombatant and unarmed British residents.
Eventually the British took the city and the revenge they took is described by Dalrymple in bloody detail. The killings were nothing short of mass murder and heartily endorsed by nearly every Britisher with any knowledge of it (William Howard Russell was one exception). Men who had lost family in the initial outbreak were allowed to massacre at will for months - Theo Metcalfe is the most notable example. Those locals not killed were left homeless and starving.
The British executed nearly the entire Mughal royal family and would have done so for Zafar, but for the promise that his life would be spared if he surrendered. It was a promise that the British determined they were bound to keep even though they didn't like it much.
One supposes this example represents Victorian attitudes about rectitude that the British somehow held in their heads at the same time that they authored unspeakable murdering sprees. In a somewhat lighter example, Dalrymple quotes a British soldier's letter written to his mum on the eve of battle in which the youth expresses his fear that engaging in the fight may cause him to swear!
As stated at the outset the rich sources give 'The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857' its strength, but Dalrymple's over-reliance on the raw materials makes the book drag to its conclusion. For the last 100+ pages, Dalrymple sometimes gives over the narrative to his primary sources as page after page consists substantially of quotes from letters, reports, or memoirs. Dalrymple also spends only the briefest time placing the events of 1857 in a larger historical framework.
Nonetheless, the book is a triumph of research and offers that rarity in historical writing, the truly fresh perspective. Dalrymple gives voice to the Indian perspective of the fall of Delhi. As the great court poet Ghalib so poignantly expressed it, "The light has gone out of India. The land is lampless."
Highly recommended.
Book Description
A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own.
This is the first volume in a bold new series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history.
Dozens of maps provide a clear geography of great events, while timelines give the reader an ongoing sense of the passage of years and cultural interconnection. This narrative history employs the methods of "history from beneath"—literature, epic traditions, private letters and accounts—to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled. The result is an engrossing tapestry of human behavior from which we may draw conclusions about the direction of world events and the causes behind them. 13 illustrations, 80 maps.
Customer Reviews:
Validating one's sources? Good idea........2007-10-07
As a friend of History and an individual with quite the affinity for the young Roman emperor Elagabalus, I feel it should be my partial duty to speak out when published works are grossly incorrect in regards to his meager 4-year-rule of the Empire. One main source cited for the information regarding Elagabalus in this text is the Augustan History, which has been debated by scholars for centuries and finally declared not a reliable source for any of the periods it is said to cover.
Almost every portion of the child emperor's life described in this work has been reported false, mislead, or biased by the lies of Rome itself; I feel if the author had done more dedicated research before writing that little portion it would have done her worlds more good than making herself look foolish.
It leads me to believe that perhaps many other subjects covered are covered incorrectly, or cited from previously discredited sources; be they primary or otherwise. I would suggest that one avoid this work altogether, but perhaps it holds some merit. I've been too turned away by just those few incorrect pages to read further.
strange flaw.......2007-09-04
So far, I'm finding the same strengths and limitations in this book pointed out by other readers. Overall, I think the book has a lot to offer, but I'm puzzled by the author's approach to the "Great Flood," and I'm wondering if anyone else found it problematic.
In Chapter Two, Bauer calls the Great Flood "the closest thing to a universal story that the human race possesses." She points to various stories of a massive, devastating deluge: three from Mesopotamia, one from China, one from India, and two from the Americas. Although she doesn't come right out and say it or explain it, her underlying assumption is that each of these stories refers to the same event. She uses this belief to discount the otherwise most plausible, current idea for how the Mesopotamian flood happened. (This is Ryan and Pitman's theory that in 7000 BC, the rising glacial-melt waters of the Mediterranean Sea broke through a land barrier into the Black Sea, creating the Bosphorus Strait and causing the Black Sea to flood south into Mesopotamia.) She dismisses this theory because, she suggests, the date is wrong. "How," she asks, "did stories of a universal flood make their way into the oral traditions of so many peoples who, by any reckoning, were far away from Mesopotamia by 7000 BC?" Pointing to the two flood stories found in Central and South America, she states that "the shared disaster must have taken place before 10,000 BC, when hunters migrated across the Bering Strait."
I wasn't expecting such a failure of logic from this author. There are, I believe, other possible explanations for the Asian and American flood stories. One need not assume that they each arose from the same, middle-eastern flood. A tsunami or category five hurricane could easily have wreaked havoc on an early, shore-hugging population, leaving only a handful of survivors to tell the tale. The giving-way of a glacial plug would have had a similar effect on inland people. It seems natural that later generations would explain these "Noahs" in terms of their own cosmologies and parochial horizons.
I appreciated the care Bauer took in her Preface to tell us why she approached this history the way she did. I found refreshing her self-awareness as an historian with choices to make. I wish she had exercised a little more of that care and self-awareness in her discussion of Flood stories.
An excellent, very readable introduction to ancient history........2007-07-24
This may be the finest general introduction to Ancient History for the non-specialist I've yet read. Ms Bauer impresses out of the gate by declaring that she will a) focus on personalities and their roles in ancient cultures and b) disregard any civilization's story from the pre-literate era. These are two EXCELLENT decisions for the writer of a general, introductory history to stick with, regardless of how much they may upset the modern specialists out there.
In choosing to simply accept that the vast majority of our available records cover the rulers of the ancient era at the expense of almost any documentation on the lives of the common man, Bauer weaves a narrative that covers that which we reasonably know in a lively, fast-moving fashion, pulling off the tricky feat of acknowledging the gaps in the historical record without getting bogged down in them. The primary movers of the ancient era come alive as the author takes us on a trip through the Sumerian List of Kings, the Bible as a historical document, the disappointing dearth of records of ancient Indian civilizations, and the wealth of Greek and Roman sources. The small, manageable chapters each cover a logically broken-up chunk of a given region's history, with helpful charts at the end of each showing the overlap in events between the current chapter's region and the same timeframe for the previous chapter's region.
Ms Bauer's style of writing is also commendable. She has a lively sense of phrasing that keeps the reader moving through the centuries at a fast clip. Some of her footnotes are actually chuckle-worthy, which helps to break up the overall slog of warfare, drought, famine, enslavement, et al.
While not chock-full of new interpretations, the book does precisely what it sets out today: a full overview of the ancient era of human history. As each culture discovers the ability to literately track its own history, it is folded into the wider scope of the book's narrative. By its end, when the Roman Empire goes Christian under Constantine, the reader will have absorbed a good, thorough if high-level overview of how humanity developed once each group began getting its letters.
Of course, this means that the entire Western Hemisphere and large swaths of Africa and Asia (Egypt, China and some of India excluded) simply don't feature in the story. Before the howls of Eurocentrism are let loose, please consider that this lies strongly within the author's own boundaries for the work: once a society became literate in a way we can understand today, it gets folded into the story. Otherwise, we're just guessing at the hows and whys of that society's motives, and that is work better left for specialists in other fields. To cram even a few pages on what we think the Native Americans or proto-Japanese were up to millennia before we actually have any sort of provable record would simply muddy the book up.
As this is just the debut volume of what is shaping up to be an excellent and comprehensive history of the world, everybody will get their due as their time comes, I am sure. For now, I'll simply give this book my highest recommendation for anyone looking to gain a knowledge of the ancient world that they may have never examined before, anyone looking to refresh the musty memories of Egypt, Greece and Rome from their high school history classes, or just anyone who enjoys the human story told well.
Political history of the Ancient World at its best.......2007-06-24
If political history is the narrative of political (and so often military) events and leaders, this is certainly a political history. It has got the advantage of presenting not only Mesopotamia and Egypt plus Greece and Rome, but also China and India,showing the progress of each part of the Ancient World in paralell. It is concise, interesting and highly readable.
Of course, the author's approach implies choosing a somehow narrow scope: no social or economic history is included, although some religious flavour is, for she masterly uses the myths of each civilization as clues to understand its politics. Taking that into account, I would reccomend also to read (as a complement to this book) "The History of Government. Volume I. Ancient Monarchies and Empires" by S.E. Finer, "Life after Death. A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion" by Alan F. Segal and "Gem in the Lotus.The Seeding of Indian Civilisation" by Abraham Eraly, to mention but a few.
Good Overview, Some Flaws.......2007-05-23
In the run-up to the Iraq War, I read several articles discussing the historical treasures at risk if the war went forward. Reading these, I realized that for a reasonably well-educated person I had very little understanding of ancient history. Since then I have, in addition to re-reading the college textbook I obviously had not paid enough attention to, read a number of popular histories about ancient subjects. This is one of them.
Bauer's book covers a lot of ground in fair but not overwhelming detail. It does a good job of giving the reader a basic outline of history, with the important dates and touchstones, as well as illuminating the vast amount of information that is simply unknown and lost. For this, it gets an easy three stars - really three and a half.
It fails to get four or five stars, however, for two reasons. First, as noted in another reader review, the book totally ignores as outside its scope artistic and social developments such as the flowering of Greek culture or the art of Egypt. Anyone who is interested can certainly get works that fill this gap, of course, but it seems that this is a subject that should have had more treatment.
Second, the book suffers from a serious editing problem. In addition to sloppy grammar errors that were missed and the odd misspelling, occaisional factual errors snuck through the editing process. At one point, Bauer states that the king of Assyria was "the undisputed king of Babylon" immediately after stating that Babylon was in rebellion. Obviously she meant Assyria, but just as obviously the reader shouldn't have to figure that out. Subsequent editions of this book will undoubtedly sort most of that out, so if you are looking at buying the second edition or later, this caution may no longer apply.
All in all, a valuable book for the casual reader.
Book Description
As anticipation of the final Harry Potter book intensifies, a debate is raging among fans about what’s in store for Harry and the rest of the gang at Hogwart's. In this book, the experts at MuggleNet.com present a wide range of hard facts and bold predictions about the most popular storylines, favorite characters, and final outcome of the Harry Potter saga. Drawing on their intimate knowledge of the previous six books, as well as tips and suggestions made by millions of MuggleNet.com fans (not to mention a personal interview with J.K. Rowling), the authors offer answers to the burning questions of Harry Potter readers everywhere: Will Hogwart's School be open for Harry’s final year and will Harry even be in attendance? Will Harry’s quest for the remaining Horcruxes be rewarded? Where do Severus Snape’s true loyalties lie? And, most importantly, will Harry survive the final battle with Lord Voldemort?
Customer Reviews:
The right and wrong answers.......2007-09-03
Though admittedly few people see much point in reading this book now that the final istalment of Harry Potter has already been read and is now safely tucked in our book-shelves, I beg to differ. I read Deathly Hallows before reading this book, and so knew all the answers to (most) questions, what drove me to buy the book was my uncontrollable curiosity. Being a fan of the website, I thought I'd help them out by buying the book, but what intrested me the most was the arguments. I don't care whether they guessed right or wrong, but how they came to those conclusions! 9/10 times the right answer doesn't matter, as long as you can back it up with sound reason and judgment, which is why I liked this book, and would still recommend it.
No point in buying it now.......2007-08-30
Not only were the predictions incorrect, Now that book 7 is out who would want to read this?
Must Read!!.......2007-08-27
After reading the final installment of Harry Potter I would def. say this a must read. First, it is a quick summary and primer of important info in the past six books. Plus, unless you are super obsessed or a literary genius there are bound to be a few things you learn in the book.
very pratical.......2007-08-23
it really does help to understand some questions you could have or did not
remember why this is there. Good to have before reading Vol.7
Well Researched Book.......2007-07-31
I bought this book just before Book 7 came out and really enjoyed it. While many of the assumptions in this book turned out to be false once I had read Book 7, it was nonetheless a well-researched book. The arguments for each stance they took - both pro and con - were plausible and quite believable and convincing. You could tell the authors had done their homework and really knew the world of Harry Potter. I think I may go back and read it again now that I know what really happens to see where they were spoton and where their ideas missed the mark. In any case, it is a great resource whether you have been a Harry Potter fan or are just discovering his world.
Book Description
The bestselling Revenge of the Sisterhood series concludes -Yoko Akia has been hungering for revenge all her life, and now, finally, it is time. Yoko's mother was just fifteen when a rich American deceived her into a life of degradation in a twisted prostitution ring. She died aged seventeen after bearing her baby girl. Now a great movie star, he is long overdue some justice. Yoko, with the aid of her beloved friends, must punish her father.
Customer Reviews:
Another Great Addition To This Series!!!.......2007-10-14
This is another one of this Series (whom I found late in the game)....purchased them all and love them all. I was very concerned that this was the last in the series, but have now discovered Hide and Seek coming in January.
I really hated to see this series come to an end. It is well-written, believable and Oh SO RIGHT in allowing some one to come out on top and get revenge for the horrible wrongs committed against them.
I felt this last one " Free Fall " was just that....a Free Fall!! It was written to be much more haphazard than I would have liked...but at the same time it came thru as very believable, because there is no way you could seek revenge against someone and NOT have things go wrong!!
Please Ms. Michaels....Write Many More of this Series....it is my favorite of yours.
exciting thriller .......2007-10-08
The Sisterhood selects Michael "Mick" Lyons as their next target. In Japan over three decades ago, Michael purchased the mother of member Yoko Akia from her parents promising a good life for their offspring in America. Instead he used her as part of his prostitution ring; selling her as an exotic hooker until she became pregnant with his child. The irresponsible hedonistic movie mogul dumped her expecting her to die. That child Yoko survived and as an adult seeks vengeance for her mom.
The Sisters begin their diabolical plot of vengeance by exposing for the world especially his circle the sleazy dealings of Lyons and some of his cronies. As they carry out their scheme, the Sisters know they must be vigilant as the police seem to be closing in on them.
The latest Sisterhood SWEET REVENGE PAYBACK to bring LETHAL JUSTICE to those who have gotten away with crimes against women is an exciting thriller with this time being Yoko's VENDETTA. The story line is action-packed as the fearsome feminists plot to destroy Michael and his VIP male cohorts. The plot, as is the norm in this fun series, seems implausible, but no one will care as everyone will root for Yoko to destroy her biological father.
Harriet Klausner
Always and adventure.......2007-06-27
Loved the finale of this series. Fern Michaels never disappoints. Looking forward to a follow-up series.
awesome series.......2007-06-26
Fern Michales writes a great story. The Sisterhood series is one that I read while in Hawaii, yes all seven of them.
Free Fall.......2007-06-08
Free Fall is the last book of The Revenge of The Sisterhood.
I have enjoyed everyone of them and I'm sorry this one is the
last one.
Once you start reading you cant put the book down until you get to the end.
Book Description
Donald Rumsfeld, who as secretary of defense oversaw the army, navy, air force, and marines from 2001 to December 2006, is widely blamed for the catastrophic state of America's involvement in Iraq. In his groundbreaking book Rumsfeld, Washington insider Andrew Cockburn details Rumsfeld's decisions in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and also shows how his political legacy stretches back decades and will reach far into the future.
Relying on sources that include high-ranking officials in the Pentagon and the White House, Rumsfeld goes far beyond previous accounts to reveal a man consumed with the urge to dominate each and every human encounter, and whose aggressive ambition has long been matched by his inability to display genuine leadership or accept responsibility for egregious error. Cockburn exposes Rumsfeld's early career as an Illinois congressman, his rise to prominence as an official in the Nixon White House, his careful maneuvering to avoid the fallout of the Watergate scandal, and his skillful infighting as secretary of defense under President Ford. Cockburn also chronicles for the very first time Rumsfeld's subsequent tenure as CEO of G. D. Searle (and his devoted efforts to get governmental approval for the controversial artificial sweetener aspartame) as well as his interesting behavior in secret high-level government nuclear war games in the years he was out of power.
President George W. Bush's hasty elevation of Rumsfeld as his secretary of defense proved historic, for it was the triumvirate of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Rumsfeld who plunged America into the disastrous quagmire of the war in Iraq. Cockburn reveals how Rumsfeld's habits of intimidation, indecision, ignoring awkward realities, destructive micromanagement, and bureaucratic manipulation all helped doom America's military adventure. The book challenges the notion that Rumsfeld was an effective manager driven to transform the American military, examines the reasons that Rumsfeld was removed from office, and shows how his second appointment as secretary of defense reflects a deep conflict between President Bush and his father, former president George H. W. Bush.
Brimming with powerful revelations, Rumsfeld is sure to emerge as the must-have piece of investigative journalism as America grapples with its difficult involvement in Iraq and the uncertain path the country faces today.
Customer Reviews:
Rumsfeld.......2007-10-10
An excellent book describing the egomaniac called Donald Rumsfeld, he is just one of the crimminals that have taken over control of the United States and should be tried for being a war crimminal. America wake up you are ruled by gangsters-he is just one of them. Does RICCO apply here?
Sadly Accurate.......2007-09-11
What have we become as a nation, when a man as insidious as Rumsfeld can attain such power and cause such damage and harm? It is perhaps time that we as a people pay closer attention to the politics of the day, and not concern ourselves with Brittany's paunch. Democracy requires a well informed, literate, and discriminating citizenry. We do not live on ANIMAL FARM, and we do not have to mindlessly accept and bleat the mantra of the Neo-Cons.
Rumsfeld = Nazi by another name.......2007-09-07
Rumsfeld would have made Hitler so proud. America is much less of a nation thanks to him and the other malicious pirates in the Oval Office.
Republocrat zombies on the march
Heil Bush! they chant with glassy eyes
Subvert the Constitution for their corporate masters
Force their fascist god-book down everybody's throats
Stare at the tv, it'll all be ok they say
Turn off your mind and be a good zombie
Become infantile like us
Soulless neo-con automatons
Mindless Flag wavers
Hypnotized by the endless drone of propaganda
Memetic slaves of the Dark Lord Bush
Fine study of a 'ruthless little b******' and failure.......2007-07-20
Investigative journalist Andrew Cockburn shows how Rumsfeld has helped to push the US state into political and military disaster.
Cockburn introduces us to Rumsfeld's business career, which depended on promoting aspartame, a sweetener suspected of causing brain tumours. He swung a compliant Food and Drug Administration into approving it anyway and bought enough Senators to amend the Drug Act to extend its patent, yielding the company $3 billion extra revenue.
Rumsfeld played a key role in fixing the intelligence to fit the policy of attacking Iraq. Saddam's son-in-law Hussein Kamel told US officials about Iraq's arms build-up in the 1980s and also told them that in 1991 "all weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear - were destroyed." The US state shouted worldwide about the build-up, but hid the destruction.
Bush appointed Rumsfeld the US Secretary for Defense in January 2001. Cockburn details Rumsfeld's catastrophic decisions in the disastrous wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. The US state has failed to focus on defeating Al Qa'ida, widening the wars into attacks on the Iraqi and Afghan peoples. So Iraq lost to the invader but is defeating the occupier. The Taliban lost Kabul but is winning the war.
Rumsfeld claimed that he could occupy Iraq with a small force. He apparently believed the crook Chalabi who told him there would be no postwar guerrilla resistance and that Iraq would quickly become a stable capitalist ally.
The US has the largest military spending ever and has spent $500 billion so far on the Iraq war, yet US soldiers' families have to buy them body armour and the soldiers try to protect their unarmoured Humvees with salvaged bits of plywood. No wonder the US army is at breaking point.
What was Secretary for Defense Rumsfeld doing meanwhile? He was calling Guantanamo Bay every week for reports on the torture of Mohammed al-Qahtani. He was personally specifying the torture techniques at Abu Ghraib - the use of dogs, stress positions, and deprivation of food and sleep.
Throughout his squalid career, Rumsfeld bullied, lied and cheated to get his own way. Richard Nixon, no mean judge, called him `a ruthless little bastard'. But as with all reactionaries, his scheming has brought only disaster to his cause.
It Proved It Was Worse Than Thought........2007-07-08
I'm sure the publisher blanched with the use of the word "Catastrophic" in the title, but it is a true description of the legacy, as noted and well-laid out in the book.
A definite keeper to help bridge gaps of other writings about the Bush Administration and its concept of what "Republic" and "Government" mean.
Rumsfeld was there from the beginning of the "Neo-Con Coupe" and following his many "snowflakes" in life will definitely bring the whole "grand plan" to light of public scrutiny.
It leaves the feeling of knowing you know now definitely what you really know you now don't know.
Book Description
The definitive history of the cigarette, the product that shaped twentieth-century America--from modern advertising to science, from regulatory politics to our sense of glamour and style.
The industrial manufacture of cigarettes began in the late nineteenth century, but it wasn't until the invention of the modern consumer, advertising campaign--pioneered by cigarette brands--that the product really took off at the turn of the century. The cigarette became an indispensable accessory of glamour and sex appeal: from Marlene Dietrich to Humphrey Bogart to Anne Bancroft, we have imagined stars with cigarettes in their mouths, and imitated them.
The cigarette--the ultimate icon of our consumer culture--serves as a vehicle for historian Allan Brandt to explore critical aspects of American life. From agriculture to big business, from medicine to politics, The Cigarette Century shows how smoking came to be so deeply implicated in our culture, science, policy, and law. In this magisterial book, Brandt demonstrates how the cigarette reflects the most powerful debates of our time about risk, responsibility, and human health. The Cigarette Century reaches across many disciplines to form a broad and compelling synthesis, showing how one humble (and largely useless) product came to play such a dominant role in our lives and deaths.
Customer Reviews:
An Ominous Precursor.......2007-09-08
Given the size of the book, I was sure I was going to be perusing it only. However, the similarity to what I have seen with the wireless industry made me go back and read it in detail...disturbingly familiar detail. Read this to get a preview of its inevitable sequel...The Cell Phone Century.
death by smoking.......2007-08-19
This is the story of how smoking, once a socially acceptable, pleasurable behavior, became a disgusting habit for the smoker, a danger to non-smokers, a crime for cigarette makers and a financial windfall for some smokers, lawyers, and state governments. The book is well written, well documented and very readable but we know where the author stands. He tells us that 400,000 or 500,000 people are "killed" every year from smoking. Death by gunshot is instant and violent. This happens to about 30,000 people a year and no manufacturer is criminally responsible. Death by smoking can occur 20 to 45 years after smoking begins during which time the smoker could have abused his body in other ways but if not, aging and genetics contribute to death. Even though smokers choose cigarettes for pleasure with full knowledge of long term health consequences, the author concludes that abusive smoking that leads to disease is the criminal responsibility of tobacco companies.
A consequence of education, litigation, and the high cost of cigarettes is that fewer people smoke today. However, there has been a surge in obesity and obesity related health costs and shortened life spans. Mr. Brandt, if people are addicted to fatty foods and feed fatty foods to their children should Krispe Kreme and McDonalds be held criminally responsible as more and more people are diagnosed with diabetes and other diseases related to abusive eating? I wonder how many people are "killed" every year from abusive eating?
Completely unbiased masterpiece! Five stars.......2007-08-08
This book provided a completely unbiased look at this demon weed that has been plaguing this evil nation from its advent! Tobacco! This may seem strange to hear a liberal bashing a narcotic and crying for it to be made illegal, especially since they are so desperately pushing for legalization of marijuana, the products evil twin, but trust me it all makes sense when Mr. Brandt breaks it down for us.
Brandt begins with the first use of tobacco by our pilgrim ancestors. Brandt informs us that they got the Indians hooked on tobacco as kind of a way to enslave them and get land from them. They got them addicted so they would have to keep buying it.
How did America get those huge land grabs, like the Louisiana purchase, at such little money? They offered this deadly hallucinogenic tobacco weed to them and had them sign the papers under the influence!
They tried to get the hippies to smoke it, but the hippies had the very pure and healthy marijuana weed which made them smarter so they knew not to smoke it.
In short, I now realize that we have to, I mean it is imperative, that we get tobacco illegal and marijuana legal.
Excellent, readable, and more widely applicable beyond tobacco.......2007-06-20
This is an excellent book, and not just about cigarettes. As evidence of the "persistence" part of the title, candy-flavored cigarettes have a clear target market (
<18 year-old). RJ Reynolds agreed in 2006 *not* to call them luscious names like "Twista Lime", "Mandarin Mint" ... but they can still *sell* them.
So, 40+ years after "The Surgeon General has determined..." in 1964, this is still an issue. SG Luther Terry's political skillfulness in getting that report to happen added him to my list of heroes.
This book is much more widely applicable, because it ably chronicles distortion and obfuscation of science by economic and political interests.
Some kinds of scientific proof depend on long efforts to accumulate evidence, need good statistical analysis. Such are not amenable to simple lab experiments, and even when they are, may well not be ethical. ("Here: try this: we want to see if you get cancer" is properly not done.) Topics whose science is of this sort can be prone to long, drawn-out fights, especially when the scientific results threaten strong interests whose best approach is controversy and confusion.
The conflicts over sulfates:acid rain and CFCs:ozone depletion resemble smoking:disease, but the clearest parallel with the latter is the battle over CO2: human-induced global warming.
In both cases, there were:
A) people who believed something (and sometimes exaggerated) well in advance of the science (anti-tobacco moralists, global warming alarmists), and sometimes irritated others by their stridency.
B) people who had economic interests (tobacco companies, oil companies), who took very strong (but opposing) positions. These were sometimes joined by people with ideological reasons for minimizing government regulation.
C) Scientists, who take years to collect good evidence, are careful in their conclusions, but who struggle to be heard though masses of disinformation generated by B), and sometimes wince at exaggerations from A), even as scientific results starts to approach A)'s views.
In both cases, industry funded think-tanks, lobbyists, and a tiny handful of scientists to cast doubt on the science, using similar tactics, and often, employed by the same organizations and people.
As a result Brandt's book is a dandy case study on the twisty interactions of science, economics, and politics, and its lessons may help us analyze other contentious issues as well.
One of the best books of the year.......2007-06-17
Allan Brandt's new book, "The Cigarette Century", is as comprehensive a study on one subject as I've seen in a long time. Written crisply and authoritatively, Brandt covers the tobacco industry from the end of the nineteenth century through today with cigarettes as his main focus. What he has researched, uncovered and passed onto the reader in an expansive (yet truly condensed) form is terrific. His book is a blockbuster.
Cigarettes have been around for a long while in the United States but not until James Bonsack's rolling machine came into play in 1881 (churning out 200 cigarettes per minute) could they be distributed on a wide-scale basis. It wasn't until World War I, however, that the national demand for the product really took off, and did it ever! Brandt's book is a parallel study of American sociological history of the twentieth century as cigarettes have been at the center of so much of our cultural life. Women began smoking in earnest in the 1920s and Hollywood added its own weight with countless movie stars puffing away in countless films to remind the public of the "joys" of smoking. Advertisements abounded and cigarettes were here to stay.
Along came the 1950s and things began to change. This is where Brandt's book really takes off as he begins to shape the "controversy" between the industry and those determined to warn Americans of the risks of smoking. The Surgeon General's report of 1964 declaring smoking to be hazardous to one's health (later packaging warnings reminded the smoker of the same) was a big first step as the public was beginning to question the safety of cigarettes. While more and more research on the dangers of cigarette smoking was made public, the tobacco companies fought tooth and nail to assure Americans that all was well. Lawsuits began to be filed on an increasing level yet the industry was always one step ahead of its detractors. Tobacco companies insisted that safety was a primary concern, but being "remarkably effective in resisting serious health initiatives", they were not. Brandt concludes "we now know a good deal about how this goal was achieved: a careful mixture of reassurance, half-truths, innovative public relations, disinformation, and deception." Calling their actions "the crime of the century", (the title of his epilogue) the author has, by this point, made a careful and compelling argument for that chapter's title.
In my lifetime there have been three major social changes that I've noticed, one being that there are many fewer smokers today in the United States than when I was being raised. Yet, as Brandt points out, tobacco companies learned that if they can't sell as many cigarettes at home they'll export them...with no regard to the health of other nations' citizens. The industry seems to be winning again at the expense of those whose health fails after using their product, creating a pandemic just under the radar screen.
I highly recommend Allan Brandt's "The Cigarette Century". It's an eye-opener, extremely well-written and well-paced, and will either give you a new angle at which to look at cigarettes or reinforce the thoughts you may have had already. I think it is one of the best books of the year.
Amazon.com
On September 23, 1998, the boardroom of the New York Fed was a tense place. Around the table sat the heads of every major Wall Street bank, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, and representatives from numerous European banks, each of whom had been summoned to discuss a highly unusual prospect: rescuing what had, until then, been the envy of them all, the extraordinarily successful bond-trading firm of Long-Term Capital Management. Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed is the gripping story of the Fed's unprecedented move, the incredible heights reached by LTCM, and the firm's eventual dramatic demise.
Lowenstein, a financial journalist and author of Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, examines the personalities, academic experts, and professional relationships at LTCM and uncovers the layers of numbers behind its roller-coaster ride with the precision of a skilled surgeon. The fund's enigmatic founder, John Meriwether, spent almost 20 years at Salomon Brothers, where he formed its renowned Arbitrage Group by hiring academia's top financial economists. Though Meriwether left Salomon under a cloud of the SEC's wrath, he leapt into his next venture with ease and enticed most of his former Salomon hires--and eventually even David Mullins, the former vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve--to join him in starting a hedge fund that would beat all hedge funds.
LTCM began trading in 1994, after completing a road show that, despite the Ph.D.-touting partners' lack of social skills and their disdainful condescension of potential investors who couldn't rise to their intellectual level, netted a whopping $1.25 billion. The fund would seek to earn a tiny spread on thousands of trades, "as if it were vacuuming nickels that others couldn't see," in the words of one of its Nobel laureate partners, Myron Scholes. And nickels it found. In its first two years, LTCM earned $1.6 billion, profits that exceeded 40 percent even after the partners' hefty cuts. By the spring of 1996, it was holding $140 billion in assets. But the end was soon in sight, and Lowenstein's detailed account of each successively worse month of 1998, culminating in a disastrous August and the partners' subsequent panicked moves, is riveting.
The arbitrageur's world is a complicated one, and it might have served Lowenstein well to slow down and explain in greater detail the complex terms of the more exotic species of investment flora that cram the book's pages. However, much of the intrigue of the Long-Term story lies in its dizzying pace (not to mention the dizzying amounts of money won and lost in the fund's short lifespan). Lowenstein's smooth, conversational but equally urgent tone carries it along well. The book is a compelling read for those who've always wondered what lay behind the Fed's controversial involvement with the LTCM hedge-fund debacle. --S. Ketchum
Book Description
John Meriwether, a famously successful Wall Street trader, spent the 1980s as a partner at Salomon Brothers, establishing the best--and the brainiest--bond arbitrage group in the world. A mysterious and shy midwesterner, he knitted together a group of Ph.D.-certified arbitrageurs who rewarded him with filial devotion and fabulous profits. Then, in 1991, in the wake of a scandal involving one of his traders, Meriwether abruptly resigned. For two years, his fiercely loyal team--convinced that the chief had been unfairly victimized--plotted their boss's return. Then, in 1993, Meriwether made a historic offer. He gathered together his former disciples and a handful of supereconomists from academia and proposed that they become partners in a new hedge fund different from any Wall Street had ever seen. And so Long-Term Capital Management was born.
In a decade that had seen the longest and most rewarding bull market in history, hedge funds were the ne plus ultra of investments: discreet, private clubs limited to those rich enough to pony up millions. They promised that the investors' money would be placed in a variety of trades simultaneously--a "hedging" strategy designed to minimize the possibility of loss. At Long-Term, Meriwether & Co. truly believed that their finely tuned computer models had tamed the genie of risk, and would allow them to bet on the future with near mathematical certainty. And thanks to their cast--which included a pair of future Nobel Prize winners--investors believed them.
From the moment Long-Term opened their offices in posh Greenwich, Connecticut, miles from the pandemonium of Wall Street, it was clear that this would be a hedge fund apart from all others. Though they viewed the big Wall Street investment banks with disdain, so great was Long-Term's aura that these very banks lined up to provide the firm with financing, and on the very sweetest of terms. So self-certain were Long-Term's traders that they borrowed with little concern about the leverage. At first, Long-Term's models stayed on script, and this new gold standard in hedge funds boasted such incredible returns that private investors and even central banks clamored to invest more money. It seemed the geniuses in Greenwich couldn't lose.
Four years later, when a default in Russia set off a global storm that Long-Term's models hadn't anticipated, its supposedly safe portfolios imploded. In five weeks, the professors went from mega-rich geniuses to discredited failures. With the firm about to go under, its staggering $100 billion balance sheet threatened to drag down markets around the world. At the eleventh hour, fearing that the financial system of the world was in peril, the Federal Reserve Bank hastily summoned Wall Street's leading banks to underwrite a bailout.
Roger Lowenstein, the bestselling author of Buffett, captures Long-Term's roller-coaster ride in gripping detail. Drawing on confidential internal memos and interviews with dozens of key players, Lowenstein crafts a story that reads like a first-rate thriller from beginning to end. He explains not just how the fund made and lost its money, but what it was about the personalities of Long-Term's partners, the arrogance of their mathematical certainties, and the late-nineties culture of Wall Street that made it all possible.
When Genius Failed is the cautionary financial tale of our time, the gripping saga of what happened when an elite group of investors believed they could actually deconstruct risk and use virtually limitless leverage to create limitless wealth. In Roger Lowenstein's hands, it is a brilliant tale peppered with fast money, vivid characters, and high drama.
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John Meriwether, a famously successful Wall Street trader, spent the 1980s as a partner at Salomon Brothers, establishing the best--and the brainiest--bond arbitrage group in the world. A mysterious and shy midwesterner, he knitted together a group of Ph.D.-certified arbitrageurs who rewarded him with filial devotion and fabulous profits. Then, in 1991, in the wake of a scandal involving one of his traders, Meriwether abruptly resigned. For two years, his fiercely loyal team--convinced that the chief had been unfairly victimized--plotted their boss's return. Then, in 1993, Meriwether made a historic offer. He gathered together his former disciples and a handful of supereconomists from academia and proposed that they become partners in a new hedge fund different from any Wall Street had ever seen. And so Long-Term Capital Management was born.
Customer Reviews:
Illuminating and Fascinating Business Classic.......2007-10-07
Roger Lowenstein's 'When Genius Failed' has been justly acclaimed as a business classic. In the wake of the 2007 credit crunch, Lowenstein's riveting study of the 1998 collapse of Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) retains its relevance and has much to teach market observers.
Ironically, LTCM had much going for it. The firm was founded by savvy Salomon Brothers veterans, and its luminaries included Nobel Prize winner Myron Scholes, the creator of the acclaimed Black-Scholes options pricing model. LTCM was also established on the premise of hedging risk and thereby minimizing financial loss.
The unraveling of LTCM, lucidly and compelling depicted by Lowenstein, has many parallels with the subprime mortgage meltdown of 2007:
--An unwavering faith in financial engineering, coupled with the erroneous belief that financial structures will protect against substantial losses.
--The insatiable search for higher yields in crowded markets, which ultimately drives even savvy managers to investments with unfortunate risk profiles.
--The use of significant amounts of borrowed capital to boost returns. Sadly, the use of leverage forces the rapid liquidation of positions to repay lenders during declining market conditions, excarbating market slides and the withdrawal of credit.
--Hubris. Hedge fund managers and successful traders tend to get overconfident after a run of good luck, leading them to take riskier positions with borrowed capital.
Together, these factors led to the downfall of LTCM and to the 2007 subprime meltdown.
Kudos to Roger Lowenstein for demystifying the arcana of derivatives trading and the Black-Scholes model-- if you want an account that describes these subjects lucidly, this is your book. As well, Lowenstein offers a riveting depiction of the 1998 market slide that sent LTCM reeling toward insolvency, and the rescue events coordinated by the Federal Reserve and undertaken by an international capital consortium.
Bottom line: a five star financial read that maintains its relevance.
Incredible story.......2007-10-06
Two things make this a great book: a riveting story (losing hundreds of millions a day is mind-boggling) and excellent writing. Roger Lowenstein, first of all, is a master of using analogies explain complex things, like financial derivaties and how the big investment banks operate. Long Term Capital Management was a gang of complex gamblers (including a couple of Nobel Prize winners to boot) that employed equations and theories from the academic world of finance to build an enormously successful hedge fund that sucked in the big banks of Wall Street. Lowenstein details the rise of LTCM (it seems it had to have taken place with an interesting mixture of Luck, Smarts, and Arrogance) and their massive and rapid failure with a cadence that makes it difficult to put the book down. When Genius Failed offers a glimpse into the world of big-time finance and the unrepentant and bizarre characters that it attracts (the money these guys rake it in and how they do it will stun you if you aren't familiar with Wall Street). Highly recommended - even a decade after the collapse of LTCM!
great book.......2007-09-20
Great read. Didn't want to put it down and finished it in a few days. Great to read how these smart guys lost all their money by being too greedy. Thumbs up for sure.
A fantastic tale of risk, reward and rue.......2007-09-20
It's a wonderfully written account of a remarkable risk taking adventrue crafted by the best of wall street's arbitrage mavens and acclaimed academic laureates. Author has done a supreb job as a slueth who followed the trail that aparantly divulged very little about its journey into the financial debacle that could've brought the whole financial world down. Throughout the work of the author, one can perceive the vastness of his research into this matter, his depth of knowledge in the world of arbitrage and his exquisite story telling skill.
He portrayed each character with great care that went above and beyond what I expected. Though at times the deatils seemed a bit overwhelming and unnecessary, it was enjoyable nonetheless.
Besides gaining a great deal of knowledge about bond trading, risk arbitrage and about all the parties associated with it, it also gave me a good picture about the human inter-relations that plays into the rise and fall of such wall street ventures. One thing I wanted to see in this book is Greenspan's involvement and opinion on this. But, not sure why his role in the shoring up of LTCM wasn't covered. I earlier read a book on Greenspan where his rebuttal on the criticism of Fed's involvement with the bail out LTCM was deatiled. I expected Lowenstein to cover this as well.
I first came across the story of LTCM from Taleb's "Black Swan", then went to wikipedia to know more about it, and finally got a hold of this book and I'm glad that I did. I love real life stories where turns of events and drama unfold from the work of an invisible hand, not from that of a gifted writer. I would love to see the story of LTCM on big screen one of these days. I caught a glimse of the NOVA's episode "The Trillion Dollar Bet [2000]" which covered LTCM, but I couldn't get a hold of the full content.
It's a must read for anyone who has interest in wall street, business, risk and how they all work. Lowenstein is a great writer in my opinion and I will move on to reading his pervious work on Buffet.
Great insight into market movements.......2007-09-12
The LTCM story is fascinating, and Lowenstein makes clear enough what kind of 'hedging' they were doing. The most valuable details to me were the intertwining of instituions and trades. I thought it illuminated how forced trading and fear can spread. Also captures the mood of the nineties well, I'd like to find detailed history of other market eras.
And from an academic viewpoint, his discussion of 'fat tails' was great.
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