Mr. Joel

Six Armies in Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris; June 6 - Aug. 5, 1944; Revised by John Keegan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked up this book because I was preparing to go on a trip to visit the D-Day beaches and my knowledge of the invasion was embarrassingly scant. I had only what I remembered from high school history (next to nothing) and what I gathered from watching Band of Brothers all the way through at least seven times (more than I realized). What drew me to this book was its length, I was going to be backpacking and couldn’t afford the weight of most surveys of the subject, and its perspective. I wanted a broader view of the invasion and this book delivered. Keegan gives and overview of the commanders in allied high command as well as highlighting each of the ‘armies’ that fought in Normandy. I write ‘armies’ because two of the forces he described, the free French and the Polish soldiers, were hardly full armies but did their duty to its fullest.

I enjoyed Keegan’s writing as well as his perspective. He was a child during the Second World War so he has some recollection of the war years, but not the harrowed memories of the soldier nor the removed historical perspective of the scholar. This is not a tight work of historical analysis, but an overview of how the armies functioned, the differences in their leadership, and how they worked together to achieve victory. This book begins with the formation of the allied high command and ends with the liberation of Paris. It also includes a chapter speculating on the future battlefields in Europe that will be created by the Cold War which in hindsight is an interesting, though thankfully incorrect, piece of speculation.

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The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Eric Weiner is a grump. Despite this, he sets out on a journey to find out what makes people happy in the most statistically happy places in the world. In each place he highlights what he thinks it is that makes that place so happy. In Iceland it’s the ability to fail without being ashamed, in Switzerland it’s the ability to enjoy boredom, and in Qatar it’s the fact that the country won the petroleum jackpot. Each anecdote is enjoyable and, though not earth shattering, gave me something to consider when I think about what my style of happiness is and how I can realize that in how I relate to the world.

My main problem with this book is that it is one of those ’studies show that’ kind of books. Although Weiner is cognizant of the difference between causation and correlation, which does give his book more solid footing than others, it is still the kind of book that lasts in the long term research wise or provides what I would consider an adequate number of footnotes. But nevermind that, because it is not that kind of book. It is the kind of book written so that anyone can learn a little about the study of happiness and, perhaps, learn a few things that will make them happier too.

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Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Middlesex is Jeffrey Eugenides’ second novel, his first was The Virgin Suicides. He won a Pulitzer for this novel. Middlesex is the coming of age story of Calliope Stephanides, an intersex person later called Cal. Cal narrates the story of his child and young adult hood as well as his family’s history and his grandparents’ journey from Greece to Detroit.

SPOILERS

I was particularly entranced by Cal’s interest in fate and determinism. Cal suffers from 5-alpha-reductase deficiency which lowers the level of testosterone in the body; effectively turning people who are genetically male into people who are outwardly female. Though Cal was raised as a girl and externally looks female in the end his male mind comes out, as it were, and he realizes that he is a man. Throughout the story Cal muses on the force of history, the possibility of other results, and destiny. The adventures of his parents and grandparents are narrated in a slow careful way that makes it seem as if the characters are buffeted by their surroundings, that what is is meant to be. That is all leads up to the invariability of his creation and his realization of who he is. How much are we who we choose to be and how much are we the results of our history and our genetics? In this story everything is inevitable. Cal is the way he is because of his family history. Even tough he was raised as a girl, he chooses to identify as male. Because that is what his mind is programed to do. There is no other way. This thinking even extends to Cal’s brother. Throughout the story he is known as Chapter Eleven because someday when he grows up he will bankrupt the family restaurant franchise. From his first appearance in the tale he is saddled with his future. There is no getting away from it. You are what you are born to be.

That is what gets me about this story. Eugenides glosses over the exact point that I found most interesting. Cal’s realization of his maleness. When Calliope discovers the true meaning and implication of her condition, she runs away and re-identifies as male. Why? Why a man and not a lesbian? There isn’t even a ‘then I realized that I had always felt slightly manly but never knew what that feeling was until now’ moment. There was a ‘and then I decided to get a haircut’ moment, perhaps that was it. Perhaps Eugenides didn’t go into it because within this story the choice was the only one because it didn’t need to be explained and justified. You are what you are born to be, BAM you’re a dude. Perhaps that’s how it works for some people, but from a story telling perspective it was weak. It should have been one of the main points of the story, not nothing.

/SPOILERS

But I enjoyed the book anyway, despite it’s flaws. I found the Stephanides family history intriguing and illuminating. I thought that it was fascinating to see how something that really seems like strange and wild adventure just happens to people. People as normal as our grandparents and us.

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India with Sanjeev Bhaskar by Sanjeev Bhaskar

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a fun read. Sanjeev Bhaskar is the man who was both behind and fronting The Kumars at No. 42, a talk show featuring a fictitious (cast and scripted) Indian family that aired on BBC one and two in the 2000s. This is important background information if you are an American and have no idea who Sanjeev Bhaskar is (which is a distinct possibility if you happened to pick this book up on a bookshelf in a hostel rather than in a bookstore and are an American). Now that pedigree suggests that this book is funny, and it is, but it is not the kind of laugh out loud funny that many people probably expected it to be. In the end it is exactly what it is, a companion book printed to go along with one of the BBC’s celebrity hosted travel programs.

But don’t let that get you down. This is a fascinating survey of India with a man who is entertaining and curious to know more about what the country of his heritage has become. This is a difficult topic to get a hold of because not only is India such a diverse country, his family is from a village that ended up in Pakistan after the partition. Because of this, the book has a sort of surface level feel to it, but I suppose that really cannot be helped, except to write a tome on each region of India with several follow up volumes on the partition and a subsequent life spent in England. And that is not what this book is going for. This is about a man trying to learn as much as possible about as many places as possible and he wants to share it with you. And I for one and willing to tag along on visits to maharajas, Mumbai, funerals in the Ganges, and ex-colonial get away spots. The story of his journey back to his ancestral village to look for his family’s old house is, of course, particularly touching in it’s difficulty and ultimate outcome.

If you do not know much about India and are thinking of learning more, this might be the book for you. I would even suggest that you put it near the top if your list. It’s a good way in, and gives you lots of names, places, and events to write down and learn more about as well as being a lovely contemporary portrait of the Indian diaspora looking back, learning more, and taking long train rides.

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Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Doris Kearns Goodwin absolutely deserved the pulitzer prize that this book won her. As an non-history student come history buff, I enjoyed it immensely. The amount of research that went into this book is staggering. There must be over 3,000 separate quotes in this book, but I did not find that they made the book any less readable; all notes were kept to the end rather than jumbling up the chapters. I wish more books were formatted in this way.

Team of rivals also showed me a side of a historical figure that I did not think existed. While I’m familiar with Lincoln’s particular historical apotheosis, the Lincoln Memorial even calls itself a temple, but am still quite surprised to read how well he was regarded within his lifetime. While I know that there will always be people who think that a political figure is doing God’s work, I always assumed that this was something more or less invented by our over the top talking head news pundits and their mighty new beast. Not so. That said I was disappointed by how much this seemed to focus on the positive aspects of Lincoln’s presidency. Goodwin is a fervent Lincoln supporter and spends most of her time enumerating Lincoln’s remarkable qualities. Now, I do not doubt that Lincoln’s talents were many, but surely there must have been some things that he was bad at. However, in this book it does not seem like it.

Regardless, there were many lessons in leadership to learned in this book. I think the most important was about the ability to admit that one does not know something and trusting in someone else’s better learning. This was something that also comes through strongly in Barack Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope. In fact I was surprised how much Obama seems to be drawing his larger game plan from Lincoln’s school of thought and it is a real insight his qualities as a thinker and leader that he regards this book so highly.

Overall I was stunned by how much I learned from this book and how much I enjoyed it. I would read it again as well as anything else she wrote, and probably any other tomes about Lincoln that I come across as well.

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