Sunday, January 1, 2023

My Top Seven Books of 2022

Every year in the current century I made a list of the books I read. This year, I went further and wrote a blog post about every book as I completed it: except the last three that I have not yet written about. That list of essays is below the Top Seven List:

5. A Dance with Dragons: A Game of Thrones, Book Five by George R.R. Martin. I watched all eight seasons of Game of Thrones before the pandemic. I decided to read the books during the pandemic. Like two branches of a tree, the books and the series get farther apart the higher they go. The cliff-hanger ending of Book 5 (published in 2012) has been hanging for more than a decade waiting for the final (maybe) volume in the series. I really want to read the next one and am hoping the author stays healthy enough to finish it. Game of Thrones, Book 5 by George R.R. Martin

4. Unflattening by Nick Sousanis. A graphic book that is part science, part math, part philosophy and very entertaining. Sousanis said in presentation I watched that he wanted to explore how best to use words and images to present the world. The result is fun to read and a unique view of the dimensions in the world around us. Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

3. The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini and Hitler by David I. Kertzer. If I were ranking the books that made me feel the most sad, this book would be Number 1. It is based on Vatican archives opened in 2020 that reveal the church has been lying about Pope Pius XII and his reprehensible record since he became Pope in March 1939. The book is well-written, deeply researched and puts the opulence of theVatican in a dark shadow. Pope Pius XII never condemned the Nazis or the Fascists or even said the word Jew during the entire war. The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

2. (tie) QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman. The deeper that every science goes, the stranger the world is. This brief book explains that the interaction of light and electrons is the basis of all that we call reality except gravity and nuclear reactions. That's a lot. Feynman is fun, engaging and shows his readers a world where, on the atomic level, a Rocky Mountain is no more solid than a summer breeze.

2. (tie) 1776 by David McCullough. This book is amazing. The story of the that pivotal year, beginning in triumph, filled with military defeat in the middle, punctuated with the glory of the Declaration of Independence, then ending in Triumph in Trenton and Princeton. The story is all in this book. I loved reading it.

2. Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall. In the first paragraph of the preface this book, published in 2015, says Vladimir Putin will invade Ukraine. And if he is successful in Ukraine, Moldova is next. The book is fascinating, taking each region of the world in turn and saying what is good and bad from the perspective of geography. Marshall says the best place to live is in a country bordered by two oceans and two peaceful neighbors with half of the navigable rivers in the world. Read this book and understand the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the looming threat to Taiwan and many other active and potential conflicts around the world.

1. Cochrane: The Real Master and Commander by David Cordingly is my favorite book of 2022. I loved the Master and Commander series of novels and read all 21. Captain Cochrane was the inspiration of the series. Here is the full text of my blog post:

Life really can be stranger than fiction. In the case of Lord Thomas Cochrane, the actual man behind the Captain Jack Aubrey of the "Master and Commander" novels and the "Captain Horatio Hornblower" novels, real life is more dramatic and more tragic than the characters in the novels. Cochrane: The Real Master and Commander by David Cordingly, tells the real life of a truly great military commander.

I have not read the Hornblower series, but I read all 21 of the "Master and Commander" series. The real Cochrane had more wild and dangerous battles against incredible odds than Jack Aubrey did in all 21 novels. Aubrey has a lot of flaws, but is overall, a better man than the real Cochrane, who was, especially later in life, greedy, suspicious beyond all reason, conspiratorial, and vengeful.

But the great things he did are simply amazing. Brazil became a free country because of several audacious battles in which Cochrane defeated the Portuguese Navy--at the time, still a powerful European navy. He also won battles that led to independence for Chili, especially an amazing battle at Valpariso, and Peru.

The whole time I read this book, I was comparing the novels and the life in my mind. In the Epilogue, Cordingly wonders how Cochrane would be remembered if he had died at 34 years old, before all of the scandals that led to dismissal from the Navy and imprisonment. The real Cochrane lived till 84, declaring his innocence and making great claims of money due him from many battles for several nations. Anyone who goes into old age rehearsing grievances after a life of true greatness would certainly be better off dead.

Near the end of the book Cordingly describes the lives of Cochrane's children. His older sons ran up huge gambling debts. One was dismissed from the Army. Another went into hiding from his creditors under an assumed name. The sons of great men (I suppose the daughters of great women are similarly afflicted) are notorious for dissolute lives. In the history of Rome, the worst emperors were the sons of the greatest emperors.

But the accounts of Cochrane capturing a 50-gun Spanish warship with a 16-gun sloop made me want to go back and re-read Patrick O'Brian's wonderful novels. Or maybe I will give the Horatio Hornblower novels a try.

----------

The rest of the books I read this year: