Category Archives: Books

“A peep show of utter horror”

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death penalty2.jpgOn of my favorite books of 2003 was Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City (Crown 2003) (website here), the engaging tale of Chicago and the 1893 World’s Fair, which has just finished an astounding 124th straight week on the NY Times Bestseller List. A movie is currently being planned for the book, so the Chicago Sun-Times interviewed Larson and several other experts on the “White City” to determine the source of the fascination over the 1893 Fair:

On the one hand, Larson says, the White City was designed and built by the Gilded Age elite “as a way of demonstrating that America could come up with this level of sophistication. They went for drama at a time when architecture had very little relevance for most of the country, paving the way for things to come by inserting into the American psyche an appreciation for architecture. The sheer beauty in that array of buildings in the Court of Honor, ingeniously using the backdrop of the lake to stage the whole thing, was enough to knock anybody flat.”
But if the White City was a dream made real, much of the rest of Chicago was a nightmare.
“The fair gripped people,” [Chicago Architecture Foundation lecturer Christopher] Multhauf says, “partly because it was a vision of beauty in a place that was so squalid.” The streets were a quagmire of mud and manure, the air laced with soot and the rank aroma of stockyards and slaughterhouses. Poverty was widespread; labor unrest simmered and sometimes boiled. Prostitution flourished. Not far from the baronial mansions of Prairie Avenue, there were 31 brothels on Clark Street between Congress and Harrison, all of which were open at the time of the fair. The German writer Paul Lindau called Chicago “a peep show of utter horror, but extraordinarily to the point.”

Read the entire article and, if you have not already done so, pick up this fine book.

The Odd Couple — Ali and Cosell

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cosell and Ali.jpgIn this NY Times article, Boxing author Budd Schulberg reviews Dave Kindred’s new book about the fascinating relationship between Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell, Sound and Fury : Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship (Free Press 2006). Schulberg gives the book a hearty thumbs up, and notes that Kindred opens by describing the Ali-Cosell relationship in the context of Edith Wharton’s famous quotation about light:

“There are two sources of light, / The candle, / And the mirror that reflects it.” The homely kid from Brooklyn and the black Adonis from Louisville alter-egoed each other so perfectly that each seems both candle and mirror to the other.

Schulberg also notes in his review two of best lines about Cosell:

[T]the gifted columnist Jimmy Cannon skewered Cosell as the only guy who ever “changed his name and put on a toupee to ‘tell it like it is,’ ” and the boxing historian Bert Randolph Sugar said, “He demonstrated again and again that he knows very little about the game but is not afraid to describe it” . . .

The gift of a good book

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reading a bookpoint.gifIf you are looking for a holiday gift idea, check out The New York Times Book Review‘s 100 Notable Books of the Year 2005, along with its lists for 2004 and 2003. For a time, you can review the Times’ notable book lists from 1997 through 2002 here.

Why they hate us

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Faith at War.jpgYaroslav Trofimov is a Wall Street Journal reporter from the Ukraine who is fluent in Arabic. While carrying an Italian passport, Mr. Trofimov traveled through the Middle East recently interviewing Muslims for his new book, Faith at War : A Journey on the Frontlines of Islam, from Baghdad to Timbuktu (Henry Holt and Co. 2005).
In this NY Times Book Review, reviewer Philip Caputo notes that many of Mr. Trofimov’s encounters led him to the conclusion that poverty is not the root cause of Islamic extremism. More often than not, the most radical ideas regarding Western civilization came from the relatively wealthy and privileged who had experience with the West, not the downtrodden who are typically cast as the primary source of Muslim animus toward the West. One anecdotal experience is particularly telling:

On [Mr. Trofimov’s] first stop, Cairo, undergraduates dining in a McDonald’s a few days after 9/11 demonstrate that it’s possible to delight in a Big Mac and in the fiery deaths of 3,000 Americans at the same time. “Everyone celebrated,” an 18-year-old university student gushes as she dips her fries into ketchup, “cheering that America finally got what it deserved.”

Shelby Foote, R.I.P.

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shelby foote.jpgShelby Foote, the historian whose three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative took him 20 years to write and who became the star of Ken Burns’ 11-hour 1990 PBS documentary on the Civil War, died on Monday at a Memphis hospital at the age of 88.
Here is Mr. Foote’s description of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s slow ride home after surrendering at Appomattox:

Grief brought a sort of mass relaxation that let Traveller [Lee’s horse] proceed, and as he moved through the press of soldiers, bearing the gray commander on his back, they reached out to touch both horse and rider, withers and knees, flanks and thighs, in expression of their affection.

Squandered Victory

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squandered victory.jpgOver a year ago, this post noted Hoover fellow and former U.S. Iraqi advisor Larry Diamond‘s reservations the United States’ failure to provide adequate security for the Iraqi people who are willing to risk commitment to democratic principles.
Now, Mr. Diamond has written a book on his experiences in Iraq and, according to this New York Times book review, the book harshly criticizes the Bush Administration’s adoption of the Rumsfeld Policy of attempting to reconstruct Iraq with a relatively small fighting force:

Mr. Diamond believes that one of the “most ill-fated decisions of the postwar engagement” was President Bush’s acceptance of the plan designed by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld – “to go into Iraq with a relatively light force of about 150,000 coalition troops, despite the warnings of the United States Army and outside experts on post-conflict reconstruction that – whatever the needs of the war itself – securing the peace would require a force two to three times that size.” Committing more troops than the United States initially did, Mr. Diamond argues, “would have necessitated an immediate mobilization of the military reserves and National Guard (which would come later, in creeping fashion), and might have alarmed the public into questioning the costs and feasibility of the entire operation” – a development that might have slowed the gallop to war.
The lack of sufficient troops, Mr. Diamond goes on, would create a further set of problems: an inability to prevent looting and restore law and order, which would further undermine Iraqis’ trust in the United States; and inability to seal the country’s borders, which would allow foreign terrorists to enter and help foment further violence. “The first lesson,” Mr. Diamond writes, “is that we cannot get to Jefferson and Madison without going through Thomas Hobbes. You can’t build a democratic state unless you first have a state, and the essential condition for a state is that it must have an effective monopoly over the means of violence.”

More on “Conspiracy of Fools”

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Conspiracy of Fools.jpgFollowing this earlier excerpt, The New York Sunday Times is running this second excerpt from Kurt Eichenwald’s new book on the Enron scandal, Conspiracy of Fools.
I am about halfway through Conspiracy of Fools and it is excellent. With more information and the benefit of more hindsight, Mr. Eichenwald’s book will likely replace the earlier Smartest Guys in the Room as the best book on the Enron scandal.

The real economics of Hollywood

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This Jonathon V. Last-Daily Standard article reviews Edward Jay Epstein’s new book, The Big Picture (Random House 2005), which examines the fascinating and ever-changing economics of moviemaking. To give you an idea of what’s going on in Hollywood economics, consider this:

In 1947, Hollywood sold 4.7 billion movie tickets. The studios were hugely profitable movie factories.
Times have changed. . . Television came to compete with the movies, as did home video. And despite a population boom, movie-going fell out of favor. In 2003, only 1.57 billion tickets were sold, a third the number 56 years earlier, while the real cost of making movies increased some 1,600 percent.
It wasn’t just production costs that exploded. Today the average movie costs $4.2 million to distribute and nearly $35 million just to advertise. (The comparable 1947 figures, adjusted for inflation, were $550,000 and $300,000.) Such peripheral costs, Epstein explains, have grown so large that “even if the studios had somehow managed to obtain all their movies for free, they would still have lost money on their American releases.”

How did Hollywood respond? Epstein observes that Hollywood transformed itself from a factory for making movies into a clearinghouse for intellectual property, which is at least as profitable as making movies used to be. The result?

The truth is that, even with terrible movies, the studios have to try hard not to make money. In this way, today’s Hollywood is very much like the studio system of old. The two business models are so favorable that the quality of the product is beside the point. The difference, of course, is that the movies from the studio era were often quite good.

Read the entire review. Hat tip to EconoLog for the link to this review.

Disneywar

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First it was the battle to fight off the Comcast bid.
Then, it was the trial of the corporate case of the decade.
Now, it’s the book — Disneywar: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom (Simon & Schuster; 2005) by James B. Stewart, the former Pulitizer Prize winning Wall Street Journal reporter and the author of Den of Thieves, which chronicled the insider trading scandals of the 1980’s. According to this NY Times article, Mr. Stewart’s new book is not going to be particularly complimentary of Disney CEO, Michael D. Eisner.
Regardless of one’s opinion of Mr. Eisner’s performance in running Disney from a business standpoint, everyone must concede that he does have a knack for keeping the company in the news.
Alas, yet another epitaph that few CEO’s envision: “Kept company in the news.”

Galveston’s Jack Johnson

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In this NY Times Book Review, David Margolick reviews Geoffrey C. Ward‘s new biography on Galveston’s Jack Johnson, who was the first black heavyweight champion of the world. Johnson’s story is an enthralling and important tale.
When Johnson first won the heavyweight championship at the relatively advanced age (for a boxer) of 30 in 1908, it was one of the most important dates for African-Americans between Emancipation and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. At the time, the mere idea of a black man being the heavyweight champ sent many people into a panic, including more than a few in the press corps. When retired heavyweight champ Jim Jeffries was persuaded to make an unwise comeback to take on Johnson late in 1908, Johnson’s throttling of the over-the-hill Jeffries triggered some of the nation’s worst race riots of the early 20th century.
Inasmuch as Johnson endured a substantial risk of being lynched at some of his fights, his prominence and feats staked new ground for many black Americans, who were still just a half century removed from slavery. During this week in which the modern news media has been expressing outrage at Randy Moss‘ touchdown celebration last Sunday at Green Bay, it is important to remember that such silliness likely would have prompted far worse consequences in America less than a century ago.
Stylistically, Johnson was the precursor of Muhammad Ali. He developed artful footwork and movement to avoid the bull charges of the other heavyweights of the era, which was dominated by brawlers. Although the media of the era acknowledged Johnson’s physical strength, standard racial stereotypes of those times held that black fighters lacked substance and would wilt when truly tested. The fearless and provocative Johnson took that stereotype and stood it on its head.
After he lost the title, Johnson — who died in a car crash in 1946 at the age of 68 — became a frustrated and embittered man, who in his later years even turned on the American legend, Joe Louis. As a result, Johnson alienated himself from even the generally supportive African-American community of the times, which was much more comfortable with the soothing presence of Mr. Louis. It was not until after Ali took a page from Johnson’s free-spirited ways in promoting his boxing career that historians began to reassess the meaning of Johnson’s life and societal impact. That process continues with Mr. Ward’s new book, as well as Ken Burns’ new documentary, The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson: Unforgivable Blackness, which premieres on PBS on January 17 (next Monday).
Check out this fascinating story about a remarkable Houston-area native. You will not be disappointed.