What’s That on Your (Book) Shelf?
Or
What Eric’s Read Lately
This is a list of books I
have read since January 1, 2001. (Actually, some I may have read at the very
end of 2000, and in fact this list may be missing one or two books.) For each
book I provide a bit of commentary. From the list and the commentary you may
learn something about me. Then again, maybe not.
One day I may completely
describe the contents of my bookshelves. Then again, maybe not.
Robert A. Slayton, Empire
Statesman
The second biography I read this year, a fascinating account
of the life and times of Alfred E. Smith, governor of New York in the 1920s and
then the Democratic candidate for president in the 1928 election. As the first
major-party Catholic on a presidential ticket, Smith absorbed an incredible
amount of abuse, never really understanding how the rest of America differed
from the polyglot urban environment into which he was born and in which he
lived his entire life. “A poi-s’n can have a great career in the
public soi-vice,” he was known to have said in his heavy Noo Yawkese. A
New Yorker, a Catholic, and a wet (he favored the repeal of Prohibition), he
was steamrolled in ’28 by Hoover, thereafter to sink into semi-obscurity,
in the public eye only with the Empire State Building project, which was
architecturally amazing but an initial commercial failure on opening in 1931.
Even so, Smith chomped cigars to the end.
John A. Farrell, Tip
O’Neill
I bet Tip and Al Smith
would have gotten along like pals — consummate urban, machine, ethnic
politicians, all about helping the neighbors, pressing the flesh, slapping
backs. Good, honest men both. Tip O’Neill, who hailed from my
neighborhood, North Cambridge, actually lived on my street for some time early
in his career, which I think is pretty cool; I walk past his old house every
day on my way to work. It’s kind of odd that I would be sympathetic to
Smith and O’Neill, now that I think of it; I mean, what do I have in
common with blue-collar, Catholic, urban, machine politicians? Somehow the idea
appeals to me. I have Tip’s book, All Politics Is Local, which contains numerous amusing anecdotes. Maybe I
just like Tip for his stories.
David McCullough, John
Adams
The fourth biography to
come under my reading gun, completed in September. With all the war talk
circulating after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United
States, somehow this was an appropriate book to be reading. Adams’s story
is the story of the founding of America — and more; the old bastard lived
until July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of Independence. After living in
Massachusetts for a few years, I can understand a lot about Adams. Here was
another statesman, in his own way like O’Neill and Smith. An eloquent
writer, an underappreciated wit, a national treasure. I have heard that
McCullough has been criticized for getting some of his facts wrong. Maybe so,
but he spun a great yarn.
Vincent J. Cannato, The
Ungovernable City
Biography No. 3 this year,
the story of a young, handsome Kennedy-type mayor of New York
(1966–1974). Somehow I have developed the idea that certain figures
inevitably occupy certain times and places in history, and Lindsay is
definitely one of those figures. Especially after reading this book, I can’t
imagine alternatives to Lindsay’s mayoralty. Lindsay was a
public-spirited statesman who wanted to throw off the encumbrances of Tammany
politics that had crippled (?) New York; in the end, he was forced to come
around, but somehow he never sacrificed his liberalism. Lindsay walking the
streets is a classic image. He made enemies of the white working and middle
classes, of the police, the teachers’ unions, and many others, and his
TV-star image didn’t really survive his first term. But he did what he thought
was right, and although it came close a couple of times, New York didn’t
burn (as did Newark and Detroit). The photos of Lindsay over the ten-year
period 1965-1975 are incredible; in his drastically changed lapels can you
begin to grasp the immense forces rocking the country during that time. Author
Cannato grows, it seems, not to like his subject. Odd.
George Saunders, Pastoralia
and CivilWarLand in Bad
Decline
A friend introduced me to
this quirky fellow on my birthday, with presents of these two books. Saunders
has a light touch with the language that makes for effervescent reading; his
stories hop along so smoothly and elegantly that one must really pay attention
to realize his savage satire. Frankly, however, some of what he writes is downright
creepy, and made me wonder if he cackled, in full evil-scientist mode, while
writing it.
Alan Lightman, The
Diagnosis
I suppose Lightman seems a
lot more impressive to those in the mainstream, given his background and
credentials. I’ve never thought he was the best writer to walk the earth.
This book, in fact, was a bit on the hoity-toity side; now Lightman has
obviously gotten to the point where he can say, “Here’s the message
I’m going to say, and I’m going to go about it this way.” As
I read this, I couldn’t appreciate the story because I couldn’t see
it from any other perspective but Lightman’s. I imagined him nodding with
satisfaction as I turned every page. More ponderous than some of his earlier
stuff (particularly Einstein’s Dreams, which was lighter and cleverer without being
nearly so self-conscious).
Hadn’t read this
since high school, so I picked up a paper copy. Glad I did.
I’d read Kane many years ago; since about 1997 I have wondered
where my copy’d gone off to. Well, I finally bought a new one, and for
good measure I also picked up the sequel (Daughter). Kane
is enjoyable as well-done period pulp, especially for me, fond as I am of
period stuff. Daughter, eh.
Don’t tell me if there are more sequels.
Because I subscribe to Harper’s magazine, I’d read Ehrenreich’s
initial article on the topic, and so picked up the book. What is it like to be
a minimum-wage worker in America? Simultaneously uplifting and depressing, and
also annoying when Ehrenreich suddenly reverts to her sniffy author persona. In
the end, subduing; even Ehrenreich, after existing in minimum-wage-world, doesn’t
seem to know how to set things right. A fascinating look into things
(especially when bolstered by PBS’s splendid documentary, People Like
Us), but no prescription for
social change. That’s up to us.
I don’t think
I’ll read any more of Krugman’s books, although I do like most of
his economics columns in the New York Times. Boring. I don’t remember what he said.
Should I?
William H. Whyte, The
Organization Man
The first two, a pair of
the most feverishly hyped books of this type; the third, an absolute classic
that resonates at least as powerfully today as when it came out in the 1950s.
Taken together (most usefully, I think), the three clear-headedly describe what
the American adult life has come to be about and to mean. I have little to add,
except to note that in the summer of 1998 I was an intern at an organization
founded by Whyte (from which I snaffled a copy of his Social Life of Small
Urban Spaces, a classic in its own
right).
Geoffrey C. Bowker and
Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out
An academic book, far too
uncomfortably written for my taste. The idea of discussing classification
systems really appealed to me; I love lists and charts and organizing things.
This book, however, was as dry as blow-dried toast. I think I finished it, but
I can’t be sure.
Andrei Cherny, The
Next Deal
I think this will be one
of the last books of its type — at least, I hope so. This former
functionary of ex-Vice President Al Gore goes on and on about what fabulous
things technology has in store for our civic lives. More intelligently and
even-handedly written, it could have been a splendid complement to
Putnam’s Bowling Alone.
It isn’t.
Neil Postman, Building
a Bridge to the 18th Century
Postman must be one of the
great curmudgeons of our times. Here, as in Technopoly among others, he looks to the past for social
lessons that hold the promise of enlightening us, if only a tiny bit. Poor
Postman that none of it will happen — and poor us, too. At least Postman
is splendidly literate and a crafty writer, always thought-provoking, naggingly
fun to read.
An excellent discussion of
how public policy, over time, grows and mutates to have effects completely
different than those intended. The best example in the book is of welfare. Now,
welfare was originally conceived during the Depression to provide an income to
widowed mothers, the idea being that it was better for society as a whole to
ensure that children were properly brought up by a mother who didn’t have
to hold down a full-time job on top of everything. Well, this was enacted,
essentially, as ‘giving money to single mothers’ — after all,
in the 1930s, single mothers were almost all widows, as divorce was rare. Well,
as we know, divorce became common in ensuing decades, as did out-of-wedlock
pregnancies, and the women collecting welfare, suddenly, weren’t widows,
but teenagers with kids of their own. Hmm. Then, during the Republican
Congresses of the 1990s, welfare rules were changed so that recipients had to
find a job! Welfare programs are now being used for entirely different purposes
than in the 1930s. It’s understandable how it all changed over time…
but, still, you’re left shaking your head. A worthy book.
Paulina Borsook, Cyberselfish
Supposedly an account of
how the spread of the Internet has created a class of techno-libertarians;
really just a showcase for Borsook’s vomitously self-indulgent
“writing.” The mainstream press fawned over this book, and I can
just picture Borsook being fanned by adulatory reviewers. Um, am I missing
something? This woman can’t even complete a sentence, and instead of
picking out descriptive words she just fires off whole verbal fusillades. Is
that a red book, or a red/crimson/big/heavy/not-so-nice/vain/ugly book? Like,
gag me with a spoon.
Somehow instead of buying The
Overspent American, I bought this.
Was it cheaper? Anyway, interesting, but it’s only a collection of short
essays, so it’s not too coherent. Maybe I should read Overspent before saying anything. It is worth pointing out
in any case, though, that this sort of book, usually written by
super-left-wingers, tends to drop into the pond of society and vanish without a
trace. That is to say, whatever points the book makes, it goes as far toward
improving our lives as does a $2 income-tax rebate. Contains interesting ideas,
and is worthy of discussion among the types of people who would normally
discuss such things, but is curiously divorced from reality. Social critics
view the world through an authors’ window, yes — but can’t
they open the window sometimes?
Malcolm Gladwell, The
Tipping Point
A thoroughly readable but
slightly stuffy book on a rather abstract idea — that change, whatever
that is, builds up slowly for awhile and then, when it reaches critical mass,
suddenly happens all at once. Light reading, perhaps in part a consequence of
being written by someone named Malcolm.
Russell Jacoby, The
End of Utopia
Utopia, ah. “A
wonderful place, a perfect place which is noplace,” or however it was
defined by whoever that old guy was. (Forgive me; I’m a product of the
American public-school system.) In any case, this too is a readable if somewhat
light book, but let it here be said that I unequivocally prefer light,
accessible books to ponderous academic tomes weighed down by pomposity and
footnotes. Anyway, Jacoby goes on about social reform and social reformers,
mourning the death of wholesale radicalism; it seems that most people today,
even activists, don’t lobby for a whole new world order but mere
incrementalism. How shocking, an age of consensus! I don’t know if Jacoby
is a burned-out hippie, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Still, his book is
sober, pleasant, and printed on agreeable stock.
James Gleick, Faster
This is the first of
Gleick I’ve read, and I like it. Faster is a relatively lighthearted romp through our
modern world of speed — with head half-tilted, wondering and poking fun
at our obsession with time and velocity, but in a Schweppervescent way, keeping
the book from getting dragged into the ponderous or mundane. A pleasant
collection of vignettes from millennial America. Somehow I get the feeling that
this is how the world thinks Alan Lightman writes, but Gleick does it better.
Where you can feel Lightman standing over your shoulder, making sure
you’re reading his book correctly, here you hear Gleick chuckling softly
behind you. I may check out his Chaos or all the stuff he’s supposed to have written about Richard
Feynman, or something.
Richard Rhodes, Visions
of Technology
A collection of
twentieth-century essays and reflections on how technology and society have
gotten along since 1900. You’ve encountered most of this material before,
if you’re familiar with it; if not, this book is a pretty good place to
start. It’s pretty disjointed, though; Rhodes, who won the Pulitzer, I
think, for one of his earlier works, could at least have bothered himself to
provide some of his own narrative for between-chapter transitions (different
chapters cover different decades). Even so, this book reminds us of some of the
quippy things the century’s leading minds have had to say.
Susan Strasser, Waste
and Want
A history of garbage? An
intriguing idea, and an intriguing book on “the sociology of
trash.” Seems that trash, as we know it, is essentially a modern
phenomenon; all those goody-goody progressives around the turn of the century,
in pushing for municipal trash collection and processing, killed off a huge
industry in scavenging, rag-picking, and the like. A fascinating concept and a
worthy story for anyone interested in sustainable development (whatever that
means). In an odd way, complements that ~1990 classic 50 Simple Things You
Can Do to Save the Earth.
Now, this is an
interesting volume. Following in the tradition of Studs Terkel’s 1970s
classic Working, which I
decided to order after finishing Gig, this book is a compilation of interviews with a variety of different
Americans… talking about their jobs. White collar, blue collar, in a wide
cross-section of industries, from the minimum wage on up to
multi-million-dollar-a-year men and women. These people talk about their jobs
in their own words, usually leaving nothing out and keeping in their own
wonderfully descriptive (and often profane) patois. A modern classic? I
don’t know, but this is definitely worthwhile reading for anybody who
thinks he knows what working in America, at the turn of the millennium, is
like.
Joel Kotkin, The New
Geography
So you thought that
cyberspace was making geography obsolete, eh? Well, Joel Kotkin (among others)
can help to prove you wrong. Techno-suburbs, huge call-center office parks, and
other such things are beginning to redefine the American landscape. The effect
is similar to that of “edge cities,” quasi-metropoli that have
sprung up over the last couple of decades that are neither urban fish nor
suburban fowl. This book by itself is an unsatisfactory explanation of
everything, but it’s a good start, especially for the lay.
Peter Calthorpe, The
Next American Metropolis
This is a splendidly
illustrated book depicting Peter Calthorpe’s perfect world of
transit-oriented development, “pedestrian pockets,” and the like.
I’m as much a New Urbanist as the next guy — probably more, in fact
— but somehow Calthorpe lacks energy in his explanations. If the New
Urbanism is ever to come to be, we need energetic, youthful planners to make it
a reality, not starchy, sanitized books. Still, the pictures are pretty, and give a good sense of how we might go
about reshaping our disfigured automobile-centric land.
Peter Moore, The
Destruction of Penn Station
Ah, Pennsylvania Station;
built in 1910, demolished in 1963 (replaced by the nasty underground pit we
know today as Penn Station), currently undergoing reincarnation across the
street, in the body of its companion post-office building. The subject of my
master’s thesis in city planning; Penn Station’s rise and fall and
rebirth go to show how people have changed their attitudes toward historic
preservation over the last 40 years. Because Penn Station’s demolition in
1963 made so many realize what they were losing, historic preservation has
become an accepted part of American architectural and urban life. Imagine a
private developer knocking down Grand Central Station in the year 2001, just so
he could make more money! Well, that’s what happened to Penn Station in
’63. Read my thesis if you’re interested; I won’t prattle on
about it here. Suffice it to say that this book is a hauntingly beautiful
collection of photos of the grand old station as it was being torn limb from
concrete limb. Somehow the old lady retained her majesty even as she was being
brutally ripped apart.
Daniel A. Mazmanian and
Michael E. Kraft (eds.), Toward Sustainable Communities
(November) This collection
of academic essays on environmentalism and urban development contains two interesting
tidbits — a discussion on the precise meaning of “sustainable
development” and an analysis of how environmental policy has evolved from
command-and-control to market-based to community- and consensus-based. Some
interesting anecdotes about Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, among others, are
included, but most of this is pretty dry reading. Must worthy policy topics be
so dryly presented? What sort of popular literature exists on the topic of
sustainable development? How can the great unwashed masses educate themselves
if this is the only sort of material available? A great opportunity exists
here; if we are to change our urban planning practices to emphasize sustainable
development, or livable communities, or whatever you want to call it, the great
bulk of middle America will need to be brought along. Something like a cross
between this volume and an out-and-out environmental dog-and-pony show is what
is required, surely.
Thomas Beer, The
Mauve Decade
This is a bizarre book,
one I probably should have liked more than I did. The 1890s, a decade I
personally find quite fascinating, are chronicled in an absent, personal manner
by Beer, who must have been a completely insane fellow, but the sort that could
appear at a formal party in a tux and tails and look completely, elegantly at
ease, sipping a martini or something as he casually surveyed the other guests,
all of whom would be entirely unaware of his lunacy. Anyway, I spent too much
of the book wondering what was up with Beer. It turns out that his lunacy is a
bit different from mine, so I couldn’t fully get into the book.
Isn’t that the story of my life.
Barbara W. Tuchman, The
Guns of August
This book, a masterpiece,
is nonetheless cumbersome, weighed down by odd French and German names and
place-names. It is difficult to keep track of all the cockaded, cuckolded
generals and their underlings, and after a short while the French and German
armies tend to blend together into a shapeless mass, helped not at all by the
additionally confusing presence of the British, the Belgians, and the Russians.
Hmm. But what to take from this book is the terribly frightening idea that the
First World War happened mostly because it was impossible to avert. All the
major European powers had gotten so paranoid and suspicious and bellicose that
their war plans, once triggered, could not be canceled. JFK is said to have
considered this book’s lessons during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I can
see why. If a nuclear exchange had followed a course similar to the First World
War’s, I wouldn’t be here to write this. A timeless book.
Lyall Watson, The
Nature of Things
What sort of claptrap is
this I’m reading, you ask? Parapsychology, like the Ghostbusters? Well,
sort of. In this book, Watson tells some stories about objects (usually
possessions) and their personalities. Some of the stories — lost wedding
rings that “find” their owners after decades and thousands of
miles, for instance — may be frauds, but they’re nonetheless captivating.
If you have ever believed that there was more to the universe than the starch
of science, this book might intrigue you, especially if you are sometimes
convinced that your possessions, in their own, odd, inexplicable ways, have
minds and personalities of their own. If, however, you are inclined to give the
whole idea a snorting dismissal, best to skip it.
Rupert Sheldrake, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home
I was alerted to Sheldrake
by one of my friends; this is the third book of his I’ve bought and read
(after A New Science of Life
and The Presence of the Past),
and the only one really aimed at a popular audience. Telepathy, reincarnation,
ghosts — Sheldrake takes on all sorts of paranormal phenomena in an
attempt to explain them with what I think is a relatively simple theory. That
theory is called “morphic resonance”; it posits the existence of
so-called “morphic fields” that connect people, animals, and
sometimes possessions, allowing communications over distance, time, and death.
Sheldrake thinks that morphic resonance may be involved in biological evolution
as well as in extrasensory perceptive abilities often reported and, indeed,
often documented. Come on, haven’t you ever thought or felt something and
then seen or heard it happen? Don’t you believe, somewhere in a tiny,
dusty corner of your mind, that telepathy might, might be possible? Sheldrake
is a scientist and a skeptic, not a nut. He merely theorizes, and proposes
scientific experiments by which some of his theories might be tested. He is not
a wild-eyed shrieker. Dogs is
particularly interesting, as it explores the connections between pet owners and
their pets. Apparently experiments were conducted in a couple of cases with
dogs that were waiting by the door when their owners returned. No matter when
the owners came home, no matter how they varied their time or route, the dogs
would be waiting. Weird. The dogs wouldn’t just be sitting by the door
all day; hidden cameras captured them moving to the door about 15 minutes
before the owners arrived — again, no matter how the owner varied his
travel time or travel patterns! A worthy read, even — especially —
if you’re a skeptic about the whole business.
Paul West, The
Secret Lives of Words
Because I’m
something of an old-fashioned grammatical stickler, I like reading about words
and language. This book, similar in its way to the chuckly book Technobabble (which limits itself to the lexicon of geeks),
explores the origin and evolution of an assortment of words and phrases West,
for one reason or another, finds interesting. Thoroughly enjoyable; West
obviously had fun writing it, and it’s always fun to read something where
the author’s own amusement successfully comes through.
Bill Bryson, Mother
Tongue
(November) I fell into
Bryson’s orbit with I’m a Stranger Here Myself, which I guess I read in 2000. He’s a dry
sort of writer who must sit at his keyboard with amused detachment as he
reflects on the odd world with which he must contend. In any case, this book
went very quickly; Bryson’s one of the few authors who uses words as
fishing line, and I was drawn in. I’ve got H.L. Mencken’s The
American Language sitting on my
shelf, where it’s been for years – maybe now I’ll be better
motivated to read it, if Mencken is anything like Bryson. I actually laughed
out loud at some of Bryson’s artistic sentences. Best of all is on page
99: “If you have a catch rather than play catch or stand on line rather
than in line clearly you are a New Yorker.” Judging from the copyright
date of the book, this thought evidently occurred to Bryson several years
before I explained the exact same concept to my friends at MIT. Truly a
non-coincidence that I found this book. I hear he has another book on the
English language. Coming soon to my shelf, no doubt.
Donald Mitchell et al.,
The 2000 Percent Solution
and The Irresistible Growth Enterprise
I don’t normally
read business books, as I’m not much of a businessman. Still, business
guru Don Mitchell made me gifts of these two and was kind enough to personally
inscribe them. It turns out that he (at least as of December 2000) was the no.
2 customer reviewer at online bookshop Amazon.com; this bit of notoriety was
enough to prompt me to invite him on my cable television program, Free
Transfer.
Miscellany
Bernie Chowdhury, The
Last Dive
My father was motivated to
learn how to scuba dive apparently after watching the 1960s TV series Sea
Hunt (starring Lloyd Bridges, who
passed up the role of Captain Kirk). So, during those mid-60s summers, on Coney
Island, where he was a lifeguard, my dad learned to dive, and he has dived
avidly since then, throughout the Caribbean and in various other warm-water
places; throughout my childhood, my family vacations were steered
appropriately. In any case, my dad eventually insisted that my brother and I
get certified as divers, which we did in the fall of 1994. I took my
certification dives in a 50-degree quarry (yes, the water’s temperature
was fifty degrees). Since then
the three of us have dived together several times, in the Turks and Caicos, the
Florida Keys, the Bahamas, and Puerto Rico. All this back story is necessary to
explain why my father gave me this book to read, about a father and son’s
fatal dive; I polished it off during July 2001’s family trip to Puerto
Rico. Moving, but a bit far removed from the sort of diving I have experienced.
I guess I’m a wimp. And yes, my ears usually hurt underwater.
R. Roger Remington
& Barbara J. Hodik (eds.), Nine Pioneers in American Graphic Design
Although I have served in
the past as a professional graphic designer, I consider myself something of an
amateur (although one of my impressively-credentialed designer friends tells me
I have a wonderful sense of typography!). This book, snicked off the MIT Press
sale rack during their semi-annual loading-dock extravaganza, contains some of
America’s most enduring graphics. We all know Willliam Golden’s CBS
“eye” and his Bodoni typography from the 1950s, Bradbury
Thompson’s 20-cent “Love” stamp, and Lester Beall’s
International Paper icon, just to name a few. This collection also includes
some stunning work by Mehemed Fehmy Agha, including the magnificent full-color
cover of the July 1934 issue of Vanity Fair. Graphic design is an odd mix of the precise and
the intuitive, and seeing the work of experts in a book like this is
alternately inspiring and vexing. Would that we all could so master space,
type, and color.
In the queue (as of
December 23, 2001)
Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full
(fiction)