Tuesday, July 29, 2008
books
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.: War and the American Presidency (2004)
A 150 page book with a 1000 page title. Revolves around George W. & is even more depressing four years after it was published. From the short last chapter "The Inscrutibility of History."
Jeff Pearlman: The Bad Guys Won! A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo-chasing, and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, The Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put on a New York Uniform--and Maybe the Best (2004)
Reread most of this one. Time softens. We forget what a bunch of jerks they were. They were our jerks. For one year the team to beat, the Mets, not the Yankees, were the most hated team in baseball. For all their arrogance & confidence, it still took two mystical interventions from beyond to rescue them from post-season defeats by the Astros & the Red Sox. Who knows what might have happened in Game 6 of the Series had a guy I know not chosen the precisely correct moment to uncap his small vial of 1969 Shea Stadium magic dirt.
Linda Greenlaw: The Hungry Ocean (1999)
Debut book by the captain of the Hannah Boden, sister boat of the doomed Andrea Gail, sunk in The Perfect Storm. One of the best swordfish boat captains on the East Coast, Greenlaw takes the reader through a typical & fairly successful month-long fishing trip. I knew nothing of what it involved except that it was physically demanding, tedious, & dangerous. This kind of long line fishing would be impossible without modern technology; GPS , radio buoys, faxes from the National Weather Service, radar, sonar, water temp gauges, even glow sticks exactly like the ones kids wave at fireworks. But the fishing itself is tough work, done in long shifts of playing out 40 mile long lines, hundreds of hooks individually baited, then sleeping for four hours while the boat returns to the starting point to haul in the line &, hopefully, a lot of big swordfish on the hooks, every one dangerous to bring aboard, & which must be immediately killed, gutted, & put on ice. Some of the hooks have sharks. Smooth teamwork is crucial, good crews difficult to find & keep. The captain & crew receive a percentage of the profits after the cost of the trip is deducted. No profit, no pay.
Also read Greenlaw's fine first novel, Slipknot (2007), a murder mystery starring a marine insurance investigator named Jane Bunker (apt name) in a small Maine fishing port. The scenery, characters, & action all feel authentic, with lots of Greenlaw's dry humor, good start for a series. A second novel has just been published. Did I say I like this writer very much?
I must belatedly mention the death of last April of William W. Warner, 88, author of Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay, a wonderful book about crab fishermen, their work, homes, history, culture, economy, & the lives of blue claw crabs. It won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. It was an important book for having opened my eyes to a less isolated bay culture that had existed in New Jersey, fragments of which I glimpsed as a child. When I looked for it again, that way of life had disappeared from every place I'd seen it.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
A 150 page book with a 1000 page title. Revolves around George W. & is even more depressing four years after it was published. From the short last chapter "The Inscrutibility of History."
One thing historical knowledge does rather well, and this is the cultivation of perspective. ... During the Soviet Blockade of Berlin in 1948, forebodings of a Third World War swept Washington. At a panicky staff meeting a young assistant secretary exclaimed to Secretary of State George C. Marshall: "How in the world. Mr. Secretary, can you remain so calm during this appalling crisis?" Marshall replied serenely, "I've seen worse."In the hours, weeks, & months after 9/11, nobody in the Bush Administration had seen or, incredibly, even remembered worse, or thought America had ever been in greater danger & yet survived. Forgotten were Valley Forge, the burning of Washington DC, Antietam, Gettysburg, The Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Jeff Pearlman: The Bad Guys Won! A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo-chasing, and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, The Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put on a New York Uniform--and Maybe the Best (2004)
Reread most of this one. Time softens. We forget what a bunch of jerks they were. They were our jerks. For one year the team to beat, the Mets, not the Yankees, were the most hated team in baseball. For all their arrogance & confidence, it still took two mystical interventions from beyond to rescue them from post-season defeats by the Astros & the Red Sox. Who knows what might have happened in Game 6 of the Series had a guy I know not chosen the precisely correct moment to uncap his small vial of 1969 Shea Stadium magic dirt.
Linda Greenlaw: The Hungry Ocean (1999)
Debut book by the captain of the Hannah Boden, sister boat of the doomed Andrea Gail, sunk in The Perfect Storm. One of the best swordfish boat captains on the East Coast, Greenlaw takes the reader through a typical & fairly successful month-long fishing trip. I knew nothing of what it involved except that it was physically demanding, tedious, & dangerous. This kind of long line fishing would be impossible without modern technology; GPS , radio buoys, faxes from the National Weather Service, radar, sonar, water temp gauges, even glow sticks exactly like the ones kids wave at fireworks. But the fishing itself is tough work, done in long shifts of playing out 40 mile long lines, hundreds of hooks individually baited, then sleeping for four hours while the boat returns to the starting point to haul in the line &, hopefully, a lot of big swordfish on the hooks, every one dangerous to bring aboard, & which must be immediately killed, gutted, & put on ice. Some of the hooks have sharks. Smooth teamwork is crucial, good crews difficult to find & keep. The captain & crew receive a percentage of the profits after the cost of the trip is deducted. No profit, no pay.
Also read Greenlaw's fine first novel, Slipknot (2007), a murder mystery starring a marine insurance investigator named Jane Bunker (apt name) in a small Maine fishing port. The scenery, characters, & action all feel authentic, with lots of Greenlaw's dry humor, good start for a series. A second novel has just been published. Did I say I like this writer very much?
I must belatedly mention the death of last April of William W. Warner, 88, author of Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay, a wonderful book about crab fishermen, their work, homes, history, culture, economy, & the lives of blue claw crabs. It won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. It was an important book for having opened my eyes to a less isolated bay culture that had existed in New Jersey, fragments of which I glimpsed as a child. When I looked for it again, that way of life had disappeared from every place I'd seen it.
Labels: what I'm reading
