Veteran of four wars, four enlistments, four branches: Air Force, Army, Army Reserve, Army National Guard. I am both an AF (Air Force) veteran and as Veteran AF (As Fuck)
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt
Monday, September 22, 2025
Ten Central Beliefs of Christian Nationalists
Ten Central Beliefs of Christian Nationalists
1. America is a Christian Nation – The U.S. was founded explicitly as a Christian country, and its laws should reflect biblical values.
2. The Constitution is Divinely Inspired – The Constitution is viewed as guided by God, almost on par with scripture.
3. Separation of Church and State is a Myth – Church and state should be integrated, not separate.
4. Christian Morality Should Shape Law – Government should enforce Christian teachings on issues like abortion and marriage.
5. Religious Liberty Is for Christians First – Freedom of religion mainly applies to Christians, not equally to all faiths.
6. Christianity Confers Cultural Authority – Christians (white, Protestant, conservative) should hold primary influence in society.
7. America Has a Divine Mission – The U.S. is chosen by God for a special role in history.
8. Decline in Christianity Equals National Decline – Secularization is seen as the cause of America’s problems.
9. National Identity and Religious Identity Are Bound Together – To be truly American is to be Christian.
10. Authoritarian Leadership Is Justified to Protect Christian Order – Strong rule is acceptable to enforce Christian dominance.
Monday, September 15, 2025
August 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A Novel of History and Conscience
At its core, August 1914 is a work of historical fiction that dramatizes the disastrous Russian campaign against Germany at the Battle of Tannenberg. Solzhenitsyn follows generals, ministers, and foot soldiers alike, weaving together their perspectives into a portrait of a society ill-prepared for war. The novel does not simply reconstruct events; it interrogates them. Why did Russia, a nation of immense size and resources, crumble so quickly? How did the incompetence of leaders and the blindness of institutions.
Solzhenitsyn’s method is almost documentary. He inserts archival material, official memos, and real speeches into his narrative, refusing to let the reader forget that these characters were not mere inventions but participants in a real historical collapse. The result is a hybrid form—part novel, part chronicle—that demands the reader confront history not as distant fact but as lived human tragedy.
The Figure of General Samsonov
One of the most haunting figures in August 1914 is General Aleksandr Samsonov, commander of the Russian Second Army. Samsonov is portrayed with compassion, not as a villain but as a man crushed by the weight of command, undone by poor communications, a divided staff, and his own hesitations. His tragic suicide after the defeat becomes emblematic of Russia’s humiliation.
Through Samsonov, Solzhenitsyn explores the tension between personal responsibility and systemic failure. Was Samsonov a poor general, or was he doomed by a larger structure of incompetence and corruption? Solzhenitsyn leaves the question open but insists that individuals matter—that decisions, mistakes, and moral weaknesses ripple outward into history.
The Theme of National Blindness
Just as In the First Circle exposes how Stalin’s Soviet Union normalized terror, August 1914 shows how Tsarist Russia normalized complacency. Bureaucrats ignored warnings, generals distrusted one another, and ministers jockeyed for power while soldiers starved at the front. The blindness was not merely strategic but moral: leaders refused to acknowledge the rot at the heart of their system.
Solzhenitsyn suggests that the seeds of 1917 were already present in 1914. The Revolution did not come from nowhere; it germinated in the failures of war, in the gap between the Russian people’s sacrifices and the state’s corruption. August 1914 is thus not only about a battle but about the unraveling of legitimacy.
Style and Structure
The novel is sprawling and demanding. Solzhenitsyn shifts rapidly from the trenches to the salons of St. Petersburg, from the thoughts of peasants to the intrigues of ministers. At times, the sheer detail can overwhelm; he includes staff orders, reports, and digressions that feel closer to history than fiction. Yet the density is deliberate. Solzhenitsyn is building an argument: history is not shaped by a few grand figures alone but by a swarm of documents, conversations, and decisions, each carrying its weight.
Amid this density, however, moments of piercing clarity emerge. A soldier’s death in a muddy field, a general’s paralyzing doubt, a politician’s cynical calculation—these scenes crystallize the human cost of institutional failure. Solzhenitsyn writes with the authority of someone who has lived through national disaster, and he insists that history must be understood not only through archives but through moral imagination.
Solzhenitsyn’s Vision
Although set decades before Stalin, August 1914 belongs to the same moral universe as In the First Circle and The Gulag Archipelago. All share the conviction that falsehood and cowardice corrode societies from within. The First World War becomes, in Solzhenitsyn’s vision, a kind of prelude to the greater horrors of the twentieth century. The blindness of 1914 paved the way for the brutality of 1917 and beyond.
What unites Solzhenitsyn’s works is the belief that truth, however painful, must be faced. Just as he stripped the illusions from the Soviet present, here he strips the myths from the Russian past. August 1914 refuses the easy consolations of patriotism or nostalgia. It shows instead a society collapsing under its own deceptions.
August 1914 is dense, sprawling, and often closer to a historical investigation than to traditional fiction. Solzhenitsyn compels the reader to see history as lived tragedy and to recognize how human weakness, bureaucratic inertia, and moral blindness can shape the destiny of nations.
If In the First Circle is a descent into Hell, August 1914 is the map of the road that led there. Both works are united by a single purpose: to bear witness, to insist on truth, and to remind us that history is not fate but the accumulation of choices. In confronting the disaster of 1914, Solzhenitsyn demands that we confront the disasters we inherit—and the ones we may yet create.
Appendix One: A Personal Turning Point
I first read August 1914 in 2006. At the time, I was long removed from my earlier service in the U.S. Army during the 1970s and 80s, nearly a quarter century gone. Yet in Solzhenitsyn’s Vorotyntsev, the thoughtful officer who searches for truth amid confusion, I found something that spoke directly to my own life. Vorotyntsev embodied courage not as bravado, but as clarity—the ability to see through illusions, to recognize responsibility, and to act even when the path was uncertain.
That encounter with the novel stayed with me. The following year, at the age of 54, I re-enlisted in the Army. In 2009, I deployed to Iraq for a year. Many people thought such a choice was reckless, even impossible after so many years away. But Solzhenitsyn had shown me in August 1914 that history, whether of nations or individuals, is not fate. It is made by choices, by the willingness to take responsibility, and by the courage to step forward even when the odds are long.
Vorotyntsev helped me believe that it was not too late, that a return to service was not only possible but meaningful. In that sense, August 1914 was not just a novel I read; it was a turning point, a book that helped set the course of my life in a new direction. Like all of Solzhenitsyn’s work, it insists on truth, responsibility, and action. For me, it became more than literature—it became a call answered in the real world.
Appendix Two: My Family in August 1914
The date that is the title of Solzhenitsyn's book has huge significance in the history of my family. In that month my paternal grandfather, Hyman Gussman, began a year-long escape from service and certain death in the Russian army. The story of his escape is here.
Tuesday, September 9, 2025
Review of In the First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In the First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn sharpens the vast world of his Gulag Archipelago into the story of one vile aspect of a horrible system. The title refers to the First Circle of Hell from Dante’s Inferno: the outer ring of damnation where virtuous pagans reside. They are spared the flames and the grotesque punishments of deeper circles, but they are still in eternal Hell—and there is no hope of leaving it. Solzhenitsyn takes that metaphor shows it is the reality of the Soviet Union’s Gulag system, showing how intellectual prisoners, though treated better than the starving multitudes in labor camps, still inhabit an eternal inferno.
The First Circle as Metaphor
The sharashka—the special prison where engineers, linguists, and scientists work for the Soviet state—stands in for Dante’s First Circle. The inmates are granted privileges: they have beds, books, and food, and they are spared the freezing forests and death quotas of Kolyma or Vorkuta. Yet, as Solzhenitsyn makes clear, this is still Hell. They cannot see their families, their lives are suspended indefinitely, and they are harnessed to serve the same tyrannical system that destroyed them.
Solzhenitsyn’s metaphor is glaringly accurate when prisoners face the prospect of being transferred out of the sharashka into the “real” Gulag. Instead of relief, they feel terror—but also a strange certainty. In the harsher camps, stripped of privileges, there is no illusion: one knows beyond doubt that he is in Hell. In the First Circle, by contrast, the comforts deceive; they risk lulling the prisoner into thinking survival is enough. Solzhenitsyn exposes the cruelty of a system that even in its “mercies” is an instrument of damnation.
Humor and Torment
The inmates of the first circle can be very funny. Solzhenitsyn does not present unrelieved misery; he shows how men, even in bondage, share laughter as a means of survival. The dialogues among prisoners sparkle with irony and wit. They mock the absurdities of bureaucrats, trade jokes about Stalinist slogans, and puncture the pomposity of the officials who guard them. The gallows humor is often bitter, but it underscores how the human spirit resists even in chains.
At the same time, the novel is suffused with torment. The small humiliations—the inability to visit a wife, the forced participation in projects that strengthen the secret police, the betrayal of colleagues—create a steady rhythm of despair. Solzhenitsyn captures not only physical imprisonment but also moral torment. Many prisoners wrestle with the temptation to collaborate, to use their talents to build the machinery of repression. The novel insists that the Gulag was not just a site of suffering but also a test of conscience, where the stakes were one’s soul as much as one’s body.
The Portrait of Stalin’s Soviet Union
Beyond the prison walls, Solzhenitsyn paints a vivid picture of Soviet life under Stalin. The novel opens with an NKVD officer wrestling with whether to denounce a diplomat who confided doubts about the regime. That single act of conscience—or cowardice—carries life-or-death consequences. The arbitrariness of power, the climate of fear, and the suffocating surveillance of everyday life are all laid bare. The state is shown not as a distant apparatus but as an intimate presence in every household, every phone call, every whisper among friends.
What makes In the First Circle throb with pain is that it reveals how a society can normalize terror. Families live under the constant threat of arrest; neighbors inform on one another; bureaucrats follow orders without question. The prison is only the most visible symbol of a larger cage enclosing the entire nation. Solzhenitsyn’s mastery is in showing the continuum of oppression—from the First Circle to the labor camps to the ordinary citizen’s apartment block—each a cog in Stalin’s vast machinery of repression and death.
The End of Illusion
The novel’s conclusion brings the metaphor full circle. When some of the First Circle prisoners are slated to leave the sharashka, they realize with bitter clarity what awaits them: the true Gulag. Their dread is mingled with certainty. They will no longer be cushioned by privileges; they will no longer risk mistaking survival for freedom. In the harsher camps, the truth of Hell will be undeniable. Solzhenitsyn drives home the paradox: the First Circle is in some ways the best place in Hell, but because it is still Hell, its false mercies are the cruelest torment of all.
In the First Circle is a novel of moral witness. Solzhenitsyn fuses humor and torment, narrative sweep and personal testimony, to create a vision of Stalin’s Soviet Union as an infernal landscape. The metaphor of the First Circle resonates because it captures the essential cruelty of the regime: even its kindnesses were poisoned, even its privileges a form of damnation. To read this novel is to descend into Hell—but with eyes opened by a writer who refused to let truth be extinguished.
In the end, Solzhenitsyn reminds us that there is no such thing as a humane Hell. The First Circle may offer bread, books, and laughter, but it is still eternal confinement, a parody of life under a system that devoured its own people. That is why In the First Circle is a clear, sad, and piercing indictment of totalitarianism. Like his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, this novel illustrates what Gulag Archipelago documents.
Wednesday, September 3, 2025
The Remains of the Day – Two Readings, Two Shadows
Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day is, on the surface, a beautifully restrained novel about a butler looking back on his life. Its prose is measured, elegant, and deceptively calm—much like Stevens himself, the narrator whose voice guides us through decades of service at Darlington Hall. On my first reading a decade ago, I was delighted with the irony of Stevens’s life: his unwavering devotion to a flawed master, his refusal to acknowledge love when it stood before him, his self-delusion disguised as dignity. The book struck me as quietly comic and deeply human. Ishiguro’s sentences glided, and Stevens’s missteps felt both tragic and oddly endearing.
When I returned to the book recently, however, I found it much darker. In the intervening years I have visited ten Nazi death camps in Poland, Germany, France, and Czechia. That experience pressed new weight onto Ishiguro’s novel, which is, among other things, a story about collaboration, denial, and the moral cost of misplaced loyalty. What once seemed like a sad but somewhat abstract tale of professional blindness now read as a chilling study in the ordinary mechanisms of evil.
Lord Darlington’s Shadow
On the earlier reading, Lord Darlington registered to me mainly as an aristocrat duped by history, a man too naïve to see through German diplomacy in the 1930s. His Nazi sympathies were embarrassing, even foolish, but I read them with a degree of detachment. This time, they chilled me. Darlington did not simply invite Herr von Ribbentrop for tea; he opened his estate to treasonous meetings where appeasement and collaboration were dressed in the garb of “gentlemanly understanding.” Knowing, now, what Auschwitz looks like, or Majdanek, or Ravensbrück, I could not skim past these episodes. They stood out like black stains across the otherwise polished wood of Ishiguro’s setting.
Ishiguro is too subtle to sermonize. Instead, he lets the horror seep through by contrast. The novel’s silences—its evasions, its unspoken acknowledgments—become thunderous. Darlington’s name, disgraced after the war, is defended by Stevens with painful loyalty, and each defense now reads like complicity. “Lord Darlington was a gentleman of great moral stature,” Stevens insists, and one feels the lie tightening like a noose.
The Choices Stevens Made
This darker emphasis recast Stevens for me as well. Before, I pitied him primarily for his personal failures: his inability to accept Miss Kenton’s affection, his cold dismissal of his father’s dying hours, his blindness to the possibility of a life beyond service. Those ironies still sting, but now they seem less like the gentle sadness of a missed romance and more like evidence of a man who gave away his humanity to serve a cause unworthy of him. Stevens’s professional pride, his endless rationalizations about “dignity,” become mechanisms of denial.
One moment that haunts me is Stevens’s absence at his father’s deathbed. He tells himself that duty requires him to attend to Lord Darlington’s important guests. Those guests, we later understand, include Nazi envoys. His choice is not only between filial love and professional duty; it is between human compassion and participation, however indirect, in the machinery of evil. On my first reading, I saw this as tragic misjudgment. Now it looks like moral blindness of the gravest kind.
The Machinery of Rationalization
Stevens’s narration, with its pauses and hedged justifications, is itself a case study in self-deception. Ishiguro crafts a voice that reveals by what it hides. Stevens insists, for instance, that “it is not my place” to question Lord Darlington’s political views, and in that deferential phrase lies the whole tragedy: the abdication of moral responsibility under cover of professionalism. He repeatedly reframes his life’s choices as minor sacrifices for the sake of dignity, yet the cumulative effect is devastating. The more he rationalizes, the more hollow his life becomes.
This rationalization felt poignant before; now it feels terrifyingly familiar. The history of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s is full of men and women who “just did their jobs,” who persuaded themselves that loyalty excused silence. Stevens, in his small way, becomes their mirror.
Beauty and Darkness
And yet, the book remains beautiful. Ishiguro’s prose is spare, controlled, almost like chamber music. The road trip frame, with Stevens driving through the English countryside, provides moments of pastoral calm that contrast with the storms beneath the surface. The understated style amplifies the darkness because it refuses melodrama. By the time Stevens realizes—too late—that he has given his life to a cause both ignoble and loveless, the quietness of the revelation is more devastating than any outburst could be.
The irony that first delighted me is still there, but now it feels less like a gentle smile and more like a knife’s edge. Stevens is both comic and tragic, both absurd and horrifying. Ishiguro allows us to see how an ordinary man, clinging to ideals of service and dignity, can waste his life in the service of betrayal.
Reading The Remains of the Day twice, ten years apart, shows how literature deepens with us. The book I first encountered was about lost love and misguided loyalty. The book I read now, after walking through Auschwitz and Dachau, is about moral blindness, the banality of evil, and the human cost of devotion to the wrong master. Both readings are true; the difference is in the shadow that history casts.
Ishiguro’s genius lies in writing a novel supple enough to contain both. Stevens remains one of the great unreliable narrators of modern fiction, and The Remains of the Day remains, for me, a masterpiece that only grows darker—and more necessary—with time.
Also, The Movie
A postscript: I have not and will not see the movie version of The Remains of the Day. My habit is not to see movie versions of novels I love. But in this case, I heard Ishiguro speak at the Philadelphia Free Library in 2015. He was talking about his just-released book (my second favorite of his novels) The Buried Giant. As soon as the host asked for questions, everyone wanted to talk about The Remains of the Day.
One of the first questions was about the movie. In answering the questions, Ishiguro talked about being a young novelist and all the excitement of having his novel made into a movie. He said, "I would not have chosen Anthony Hopkins as Stevens."
The man who could play a convincing Hannibal Lecter, Odin, Nixon and C.S. Lewis could not also be the sort of shallow martinet that is Stevens.
Saturday, August 30, 2025
Virgil Got Eternally Screwed: Review of Dante’s Purgatorio (Mark Musa Translation)
Dante’s Purgatorio, in contrast with the fire and fury of Inferno and Roman splendor of Paradiso, is the canticle of hope. It is the most human of the three canticles because the tormented souls know there is an end to their torment—which makes the fate of Virgil in this canticle all the more terrible.
Dante ascends Mount Purgatory in the company of Virgil, who guided him from the “dark wood” through the depths of Hell. Together, they climb terraces where the souls purge themselves of sin in anticipation of paradise. The climb is steady, less terrifying than Hell, less ecstatic than Heaven, full of longing, humility, and hope. The heart of the poem is not just Dante’s journey toward God but his relationship with his guide—a relationship that ends in silence, with Virgil dismissed back to Hell without acknowledgment.
The Human Shape of Purgatory
Mark Musa’s translation emphasizes the beauty and clarity of Dante’s verse. Musa avoids archaic heaviness, letting Dante’s voice speak in measured English in blank verse. (Of the seven translations I have read, I prefer Musa’s translation for the entire Commedia, but slightly prefer Robert Pinsky’s Inferno. Rhymed translations like those of Dorothy Sayers and John Ciardi distract me from the flow of the narrative.)
Souls on the mountain describe their sufferings with startling candor, often asking Dante to carry news of them back to the living world. Unlike in Hell, there is no pride in sin here. As Dante says, “Here let death’s sting be turned to joyful laughter” (Purgatorio II.75). Musa captures this tone of penitential optimism: the souls are burdened, but they know their suffering has an end.
The mountain’s structure reinforces the idea of progress. Whereas Hell spirals down into eternal stasis, Purgatory rises toward transformation. The climb itself is strenuous; Dante frequently struggles, needing Virgil’s guidance. Yet with each terrace, the air grows lighter. Musa’s English renders Dante’s sense of relief as he nears the summit, reminding us that this is a place of preparation, not damnation.
Virgil the Guide
From the beginning of Inferno, Virgil represents reason, human wisdom, and the legacy of classical civilization. Dante reveres him as “my master and my author” (Inferno I.85). In Musa’s translation, Dante’s words retain both awe and filial devotion. Virgil leads Dante with patience and authority, even when Dante falters in fear or fatigue. By the time they reach the top of Mount Purgatory, Virgil is more than a guide—he is a companion, almost a father figure. Their bond is the emotional thread of the first two canticles.
That makes Virgil’s fate all the more cruel. He has shepherded Dante from the bottomless pit of Hell to the threshold of Paradise, only to be dismissed at the decisive moment. As a virtuous pagan, Virgil is barred from Heaven; his lot is Limbo, where “there was no weeping here, except for sighs” (Inferno IV.25). He cannot share in the beatific vision. His role is to lead Dante to Beatrice, and once that role is complete, he vanishes.
The Silent Dismissal in Canto 30
The climax of this dismissal comes in Purgatorio XXX, when Beatrice appears in a procession of dazzling radiance. Dante, overcome, instinctively turns to Virgil for reassurance:
“I turned to the left with the confidence
of a little child running to his mama
when he is frightened or distressed,
to say to Virgil: ‘Not a single drop
of blood remains in me that does not tremble;
I recognize the signs of the old flame.’
But Virgil had left us deprived of himself,
Virgil, sweetest father, Virgil, to whom
I gave myself for my salvation.
And not all that our ancient mother lost
could keep my cheeks, though washed by dew,
from darkening again with tears.” (Purgatorio XXX.43–51, Musa)
This is one of the most devastating moments in Dante’s entire poem. After more than sixty cantos together, Virgil disappears “without a word,” sent back to his eternal confinement. Dante is left weeping, not only because Beatrice overwhelms him but because the companion he relied upon is gone forever. Musa’s phrasing—“Virgil, sweetest father”—emphasizes the intimacy of their bond, even as it underscores the finality of the loss.
What is striking is the lack of comment from Dante himself. The poet offers no reflection, no complaint against God’s justice. Virgil simply vanishes. This silence is its own commentary. Dante’s grief is immediate and human, but the narrative moves on. In the divine order, reason must yield to grace, and Virgil must yield to Beatrice. Yet for the reader, the abrupt dismissal of so faithful a guide feels both heartbreaking and unjust.
Musa’s translation avoids ornate flourishes that might soften the blow. He lets the loss to strike the reader with the same suddenness it strikes Dante. Musa also provides helpful notes that clarify Virgil’s status—honored, indispensable, but excluded from salvation. For modern readers, who sympathize with Virgil as the great poet of Rome, this exclusion is a profound tragedy. (I read Dante with a group of young soldiers at Camp Adder in Iraq. They were angry at Dante for betraying his “Battle Buddy” just as they reached the peak of Mount Purgatory.)
In the world Dante created, human reason, represented by Virgil, can guide us far, but it cannot bring us to God. Only divine grace, embodied by Beatrice, can do that. This moment lingers long after Dante moves on into Paradise. Virgil is the shadow haunting the poem’s final third, a reminder of what even the noblest human achievement cannot attain in the world of Medieval Catholic belief. The Divine Comedy is the theology of Aquinas in verse.
As Dante steps into eternity, Virgil returns to his sighs in Limbo. The hope of all the penitents in Purgatorio is inseparable from the bitterness which is Virgil’s fate.
Eternal Hell is deeply embedded in western culture seeming to be the mirror of eternal Heaven. Two years ago I read and re-read That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell and Eternal Salvation, in which the Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart asserts that there is no eternal Hell. He overturns the theology of Aquinas and shows the mistakes that led Augustine to put eternal Hell in Christian doctrine and through his influence into western thought.
Saturday, August 23, 2025
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
Saturday, August 16, 2025
A Man Called Intrepid: How Intelligence Kept Britain Alive in World War II
William Stevenson’s A Man Called Intrepid tells the story of Sir William Stephenson, the Canadian who became Britain’s intelligence chief in the United States during World War II. The book shows how espionage was not just an accessory to the war but a decisive factor in Britain’s survival against Nazi Germany.
By 1940, Britain was battered, nearly alone, and short on resources. What kept the country in the fight was a hidden network of intelligence and subversion. Stephenson’s British Security Coordination in New York linked MI6 with American counterparts, built support for Roosevelt’s pro-British policies, and paved the way for the OSS. Espionage provided more than information; it delivered influence.
Through deception and propaganda, Allied intelligence pushed Hitler into major errors. British support for a coup in Yugoslavia diverted German forces into the Balkans, forcing a delay in the invasion of Russia. Those lost weeks ensured the Wehrmacht ran into the Russian winter before reaching Moscow. Similarly, manipulation of German perceptions helped convince Hitler that Britain and the United States were weaker than they were. When Japan struck Pearl Harbor, Hitler rashly declared war on America—an act that sealed his fate.
The book makes clear that the war was fought as fiercely in safe houses, code rooms, and radio stations as on battlefields. Intelligence turned Britain’s weakness into time, time that allowed American industry and manpower to enter the war.
Stevenson’s account sometimes edges toward the dramatic, but the core argument holds: without Stephenson’s covert empire and the Allied ability to mislead Hitler, Britain might not have survived 1940–41. A Man Called Intrepid is a reminder that victory in World War II depended as much on deception and espionage as on tanks and planes.
I love this book. I would recommend it to anyone interested in World War II and espionage.
Thursday, February 6, 2025
New Friend, New List of Favorite Books
A new friend here in Panama, a cyclist, Yogi, and round-the-world-sailor named Roger, asked me for a list of books I would recommend. He is an avid reader and looking for new books he has not read.
Roger has read all the greats of 19th Century Russian literature. Today I found out why. Roger was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan in 1970. He took a
semester of creative writing with Joseph Brodsky, the Russian emigre poet who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987. Roger won the Russian lit. professor lottery!
I have a few books with me in Panama. Two are Blindness, the terrifying dystopian novel by Jose Saramago, and Tribe by the journalist and war correspondent Sebastian Junger. Both are excellent, so I gave them to Roger.
Now the list.
1. Kazuo Ishiguro. Remains of the Day and Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro are my favorites. I have read everything Ishiguro has written, most recently Klara and the Sun and seen his movie Living. His writing is brilliant. These two books are my favorite.
2. Hannah Arendt. Philosopher and historian and one of the most influential political writers of the 20th Century. Born in 1906, a German Jew, she earned a PhD at Heidelberg in 1929 and fled Germany in 1933 just after the Nazi takeover. She lived in France until WorldWar II began, then escaped to America in 1941. In 1951 She published The Origins of Totalitarianism, her best-known work defining the new tyranny of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. I have read all of her books. I most admire On Revolution a book that shows why nearly all revolutions devolve into tyranny, but America did not. I love The Human Condition for explaining living in our world. I am such a devoted fan, I am in a weekly reading group and go to Hannah Arendt Conferences.
3. George Orwell. I have read and re-read Orwell's novels. A decade ago I read the 1200-page volume of his collected essays, finding endless entertainment. His essay on brewing tea shows the utter snob that still lingered inside the Democratic Socialist writer. There is no better book explaining the rise of Stalin than Animal Farm. A decade ago, I became convinced that 1984 was not prophetic after all, until I read about life in Communist China.
4. Mark Helprin. I have been a devoted fan of Mark Helprin since read his novel Winters Tale in 1983. I have since read every one of his novels, most recently The Ocean and the Stars. His Paris in the Present Tense gave me a new and lovely view of my favorite city. I plan to read Winters Tale for the third time this year.
5. - 12. I love big books in which one author writes the entire history of humanity as in Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.
Or of recorded human history as in Why the West Rules--For Now by Ian Morris or another view Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.
Or a history of American from the view of those without power, These Truths by Jill Lepore.
Another delightful view of the past 500 years Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson.
I recently read Titans of History by Simon Sebag Montifiore. I plan to read his The World: A Family History of Humanity. But I also want to read his Jerusalem.
An aside on these books is that I believe recent histories are the best. The old histories did not have access to all the new data. That perspective here.
And another aside! If you read books in translation, read the newest translation available. The latest translation will be clearest and will correct the mistakes of predecessors. If you read Scriptures in translation, read a translation by one person. A committee compromises. One person may be wrong, but they won't be tepid.
Back to the list.
13. (for the unluckiest author on this list) The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer. Son of a German father and French mother from territory between the countries. Enlists in the German Army at 17 in 1941. Spends the entire war in Russia. Returns home. Home is now in France. He serves in the French Foreign Legion to avoid prison. A soldier under any flag can be a good soldier.
14. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli I re-read it for the tenth time last year, every Presidential election year since 1980. I will read it again in 2028. Machiavelli's advice remains brilliant, relevant and chilling 500 years after he wrote it.
15. Day of the Oprichnik by Vladimir Sorokin. A 2006 novel that imagines Russia in 2028 as a restored Tsarist empire, complete with Oprichniks, the assassins of Ivan the Terrible. It is a crazy, funny novel, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine showed it has a dark, prophetic side.
16. A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller Jr. shows us the world after a Soviet-American nuclear exchange kills 95% of the population. A Catholic monastery in the ruins of Utah preserves books after the survivors of the nuclear war burn books and scientists. The irony in this book is amazing.
17. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. In a nine-month trip beginning in1830, Tocqueville found the heart of American democracy and wrote a book that became the central description of America for the world--including every political scientist in America. He said in the 1830s that the 20th Century would be defined by the conflict between Russian and America.
18. C.S. Lewis. I have read all of the 39 books he wrote in his lifetime, plus posthumous collections. His novel Till We Have Faces is so good it is one of the books I read aloud to my daughters. The central characters look at the same thing at the same time and see two entirely different things. So much of the book looks at perception and reality in ways I have not read anywhere else. His book The Four Loves gave me a frame for seeing the different ways people express love...and reject love.
19. Vasily Grossman. Since Roger has read about and is very interested in the Battle of Stalingrad, my first recommendation is Life and Fate the novel of the Battle of Stalingrad and it's second volume titled Stalingrad. Grossman was a Soviet war correspondent who arrived the first day of the battle and reported then entire terrible fight.
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
"Never Eat With Dirty Hands" Advice I Didn't Follow
In the 10th grade at Stoneham High School near Boston our biology teacher, Sonia Jones, told us "Never eat with dirty hands!" She explained all of the germs we were learning about would sicken and kill if we ate with dirty hands. She was six feet tall and had a regal way of speaking. Her advice was memorable.
That class was in the 1968-69 school year. Nine years later in the fall of 1977, my tank blew its engine in the early morning in the woods near the east-west border in Germany. My crew and I got down in a hull full of oil and readied the tank to get a new engine. Then we waited for the M88 tank recovery vehicle to show up with our new 1750 cubic-inch, twin turbo, V12 power plant.
We also had no food except our emergency rations. We had been in the woods for more than a month and had eaten most of the extra food we brought with us.
Several hours later the M88 showed up and we got a new engine. We were covered in grease and oil from the broken V12 diesel engine. Just before dark, the first sergeant showed up in a Jeep with the last remnants of breakfast in a Mermite can.
He had bacon and eggs and white bread. We all grabbed bread, scooped eggs and bacon onto one slice bread, made a sandwich with the other slice and started eating. I looked at the black fingerprints on my white bread slices and thought of our tall, stern biology teacher and how horrified she would be at our sandwiches.
I kept eating.
NB: I asked my classmates about the name of the biology teacher. I got five suggestions before Steve Burke identified her as Sonia Jones. We were sure of the ID because she had a unique way of sneezing: she sneezed ten times ina row with a sound like "wheeeeeeetz!" Thansk Stoneham High SchoolClass of 1971.
Friday, December 27, 2024
For the Sweep of History, Read New Books First
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, charts the history of the species Sapiens including highs like civilization and medicine and lows like all the misery that ensued when we left hunter gatherer lives to settle down and become the servants of wheat. (Originally written in Hebrew, Sapiens was translated into English with the author working on it. Harari is multi-lingual and speaks and writes in English.)
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. He says geography is the reason western culture came to dominate the world in the past half millennium, along with as the title says, guns, germs and steel.
For the Christian Scripture, I suggest David Bentley Hart. Like Alter, his notes are brilliant. He is an Orthodox theologian who has pissed off most of Christendom with his opinions expressed in many books. He has even said Hell does not exist to make sure he has enmity from every direction. I read The Gospel of John and the letters of John in Greek recently. I used Hart's translation when I was stuck. Which happened a lot.
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Two Weeks of Fog Watch: There's No Boredom Like Army Boredom
In the spring of 1977, my tank unit, 1st Battalion, 70th Armor, went to Grafenwohr, West Germany, for annual gunnery training.
Tens of thousands of tanks fired their guns every year on the huge range at Grafenwohr. Wehrmacht tank crews trained there during World War II. NATO crews from many nations trained there during the Cold War.
The schedule of firing was full from January 2 until the end of the year. Tanks fire cannon and machine guns every day, year round, until German weather throws a wrench in the huge scheduling machine.
My crew and the rest of Bravo Company had zeroed our guns, fired on a stationary range and were ready for Table VIII--the annual test of individual crews firing at multiple targets while moving down range.
We rolled to the start area, loaded our ammo and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
For two weeks we ate breakfast, climbed aboard tank Bravo 1-3 and waited. Fog shrouded eastern Germany near the Czech border. We could fire in rain or snow, heat or cold, but not fog.
So we sat in the tank.
And sat.
We joked about being on Fog Watch.
We could not leave the tank--what if the fog suddenly cleared? We had to be ready.
The fog did not move.
I am reading a book called The Comfort Crisis which talks about the many virtues of boredom as well as cold, heat, hunger, exhaustion and other stresses in life. Day after day of thick fog gave me boredom at a level I have experienced few other times in life.
In the 20-man tent where we slept there was a green Bible. I thought it was some kind of Army Bible with its green cover.
But it was a Living Bible, and on Amazon right now, it is still sold in green. It was not a special Army Bible. I had never read the Bible cover to cover so I decided to relieve the days of boredom with reading the entire Bible--from Genesis to Revelation.
It turns out, the Living Bible is a translation by Kenneth Taylor in 1971. It is labeled a "paraphrase" rather than a translation and was supposed to be more readable. It gets a lot of criticism from people who prefer a more direct translation, but every translation of every book, not just the Bible, is an interpretation. Looking down at a paraphrase by people who can't read the original languages is sadly funny.
And no one could ever make the insane collection of rules and tent-making instructions in Torah readable in any paraphrase, translation or interpretation.
I plowed through it day after day. Twelve days and 1,184 pages later there was a new heaven and a new earth at the end of the book, but there was still fog at Grafenwohr. The day after that, the fog finally cleared. I stopped thinking about scallops as an abomination and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and got ready to fire.
Boredom, according to Michael Easter, author of The Comfort Crisis is a spark of creativity. Boredom can leave our minds open to creative thinking. Within a year after that boring two weeks, I left the tank company and worked as a writer on the base newspaper. Maybe boredom can lead to creativity.
Sunday, October 13, 2024
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: Beauty and Deep Irony Unlocked by Hannah Arendt
Irony can be lovely in literature. The current living master of irony in my reading is Kazuo Ishiguro especially in his book The Remains of the Day. Another sad and beautiful master of irony is Walter Miller Jr. in his book A Canticle for Liebowitz. Miller and Ishiguro intend irony.
Natality, in Arendt's description, brings unique possibilities into the world in the life of every individual. After reading Arendt, reading Tolstoy's philosophy gave me the same feeling I have when reading Sam Harris and other determinists. I understand why they believe what they do, but cannot agree. Natality gives me billions of reasons to know that something new could come into the world begin by one person and change the world, for good or ill.
In the first epilogue of War and Peace Tolstoy says his book is not a novel. It's his book, so he can say whatever he wants. But the story itself is wonderful on its own terms. The philosophy underneath it does not affect the intricate beauty of the story Tolstoy tells. If I read it again, I will skip the philosophy and enjoy the story.
Friday, August 30, 2024
The (Pot)Hole Story -- Panama is a tough place to ride
Friday, August 16, 2024
Buy or Rent? I Bought a Bike Right Next to the Panama Canal
My second day in Panama, I bought a Giant SCR 16-speed aluminum road bike. I bought the bike for $500 at a used bike shop in a residential neighborhood near the canal called ReCyclingPTY. They had road and mountain bikes of many vintages. They also rent bikes for $50 per day or $200 per week so $500 to buy for 6 to 9 months is a much better deal for me.
Andre, the owner, will also sell the bike on consignment when I leave.
Right after I bought the bike I rode to the first lock on the Panama Canal. Soon I hope to ride the length of the canal continuing on the same road.
Sunday, June 30, 2024
In Terror of Ducatis on Sestriere: My First Climb in the Italian Alps
In 2000, I made the first several climbs up to the Sestriere ski resort. It was a beautiful September day as I toiled the seven-mile climb. At several point on the way up, I was riding through avalanche tunnels--they are a roof over the road, open on the cliff side.
It's dark inside the tunnels, not totally but dark compared to ride in bright sun. As I rode through first tunnel I could hear the roar of Ducati race-replica motorcycles climbing between the turns, then the odd silence as they coast through the hairpins and roar to life again out of the turns.
I have this experience before on Mount Palomar in San Diego county. But there are no tunnels on Mount Palomar. As the bikes got closer I pedaled faster, not that it would make any difference, but I wanted to get out of the tunnel. I had a sudden vision of the bike at the back of the group moving right to pass one of his mates then slamming into me.
The roar went from deep rumble to deafening howl as the pack swung out of a hairpin and accelerated into the tunnel. The tunnel had about a six percent grade so the roar swelled as they approached, throttles wide open. I put my head down and kept pedaling. I could see the end of the tunnel. I hoped the roaring bikes could see me.
Then it was over. The bikes flew past me in a line. Clearly they had passed many bicyclists on this mountain. They shot from the tunnel into the light and disappeared. I continued to pedal, a little more slowly.
Mount Palomar has many more motorcycles than any alpine climb I have ridden, but they are almost always single or in pairs. They also are mostly four-cylinder high-revving Hondas, Kawasakis and Suzikis. When they were near me in a turn, I could hear the best riders dragging the hockey-puck pad on their knee as they leaned into the turn at 45 degrees or more.
Only on Sestriere did I have packs of motorcycles fly past. In 2005, three different packs flew past me on my way up.
Usually, the excitement on these rides is descending and feeling the rush of speeding around the hairpin turns. On this ride, the biggest rush was the pack of Ducati race-replica motorcycles that shot past me on the way to the summit.
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On Tuesday, July 2, 2024, the Tour de France will climb to Sestriere then to Col de Montgenevre, through Briancon, up to Col du Lauteret on the way to Col du Galibier then downhill to the finish in Valloire.
Wednesday, November 1, 2023
How to Tell If You're a Left Anti-Semite: A Checklist by Ben Wittes of Lawfare
The last few weeks have been rough. Your Jewish friends have been extra needy. It’s not enough that you support their right to own land and enter the professions, that you don’t keep them out of clubs and universities, that you accept their citizenship, and that you don’t describe them as “rootless cosmopolitans” or “international banking conspirators.”
Now it feels like you’re walking on eggshells around them every time you comment on the news. They have you suddenly wondering: Am I actually an anti-Semite? It’s a painful question. You want to be a good person. You believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion—including of Jews.
And we all know that antisemitism is not a thing that good people do. And it’s not inclusive. And yet you keep saying things that create what seems to be a stricken look on the faces of Jews of your acquaintance. But then when you ask them whether it was okay to say that thing you just said, they all sound reassuring. But you’re not sure. Is that because it was innocuous? Or is it because they are just being polite and are secretly judging you? It can be hard to tell.
So as a public service, I thought I would create an “Am I a Left Anti-Semite?” checklist. The checklist consists of ten probing yes-or-no questions, each with an assigned point value of associated with the anti-Semitism of the left. Go through the checklist, add up your score, and see where you rank on the scale of 0 to Pogrom. I have added explanatory notes as needed to each question. By the way, this is an official publication of the entire Jewish community, for which I speak.
Question #1: Have you ever referred to Hamas fighters as “our martyrs”? If so, give yourself ten points. If not, have you ever referred to Palestinians killed in the Israeli fight against Hamas as “our martyrs” in a context in which a reasonable person might understand you as referring to Hamas fighters as martyrs? If so, give yourself two points.
Question #2: Have you ever expressed the sentiment that Palestine must be free “from the river to the sea” or any similar slogan that calls for the destruction of any Jewish sovereign presence in Israel proper and that might reasonably be construed as a call to remove or kill Jews from that region? If so, give yourself ten points. Deduct two points if you cannot identify the river in the slogan. Deduct another three if you can’t identify the sea in question. If either or both of these two conditions are met, you might be less of an anti-Semite than an ignorant idiot who has no idea what you’re saying.
Question #3: Do you find yourself radically more engaged by the plight of Palestinians displaced, injured, or killed in Gaza in response to a massacre of Israeli civilians than by the millions of Syrians displaced, wounded or killed in the murderous war by the Syrian government against its own people; by the millions of Ukrainians who have been killed or made refugees by Russia; or by the brutality of the Taliban? If so, give yourself ten points.
Question #4: Do you have an urge to shout at or harass Orthodox Jews or others who are visibly Jewish—or to protest at Jewish or kosher institutions—because of your objections to Israeli policy? Give yourself ten points if you have this urge. Give yourself 50 points if you have ever acted on it.
Question #5: More generally, do you believe the rise in antisemitic incidents, on college campuses and elsewhere, around the country is understandable under the circumstances? Give yourself five to fifteen points depending on how understandable you think it is.
Question #6: When 1,400 Israeli civilians were massacred, did you have a strong urge to add a “but” to any statement of condemnation you may have issued on social media or elsewhere? Give yourself three points if you had the instinct. Give yourself five points if you, in fact, qualified whatever public statement you made.
Question #7: Have you ever secretly wondered whether there is such a thing as an Israeli civilian? If so, give yourself ten points; that’s some dark shit. Give yourself an extra ten points if you’ve had this thought about Israelis but never had a similar thought about the nationals of any other country.
Questions #8: Was any part of you secretly relieved by the speed and ferocity of the Israeli response to the October 7 massacre, as it allowed you to stop talking about the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and instead talk about Israeli policies and actions you could condemn? If so, give yourself five points. Give yourself an extra five if you never seriously contemplated what realistic alternative options Israel might have to protect its people than the course it is taking. Give yourself an extra five still if the first statement you made or protest you attended took place in response to Israeli action, rather than the Hamas action.
Question #9: When you heard about the riot that broke out in an airport in Dagestan the other day, in which rioters looked to attack passengers on a flight from Tel Aviv, did you instinctively want more “context” or to understand the rioters’ point of view? If so, give yourself five points.
Question #10: Do you interpret the Biden administration’s support for Israel principally as evidence of Jewish political power in the United States? Give yourself five points for a soft yes, ten points for a more emphatic yes.
Scorecard
0-to-10 points: Not an anti-semite. I absolve you of sin.
11-to-30 points: You have been infected with left antisemitism, but it’s nothing a little reading on the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the history of the left won’t cure.
31-to-50 points: You’re dabbling in some serious antisemitic ideation. You clearly don’t mind violence against Jews very much.
51-to-75 points: You’ve got a serious problem.
76-and above: You’re a member of the Raging Bigot Club.
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