wahistorian's Reviews (506)

A fun read that’s not quite going where you expect. Editor Susan Ryeland begins reading the latest manuscript by her publishing house’s star novelist Alan Conway, author of the Atticus Pund mysteries. Partway through she recognizes uncomfortable parallels between art and life, and concludes there’s more going on in the book than is immediately apparent. This story-within-a-story isn’t quite a page turner, but it’s fun to come back to.

Ronan Farrow traces the decline of diplomacy since 9/11, superseded, as he argues, by reliance on military force or the threat of it. There is no doubt that Farrow believes that the Trump Administration’s contempt for diplomacy has exponentially escalated the decline of American power and influence around the world, but the author also finds plenty of blame to go around in the Bush, Clinton, and Obama Administrations. Particularly poignant is his depiction of the generation gap between Pres. Obama and Vietnam War-era diplomats like Richard Holbrooke, but Farrow argues that even Pres. Obama grew into his role as diplomat-in-chief. There’s no evidence here that Pres. Trump has that capacity for growth; his ideologically driven withdrawal from the world—or outsourcing bits of diplomacy to businessmen, family members, or campaign hacks—has starved Trump diplomacy of experience, knowledge, and tact. It’s a bleak picture, especially given the prospect of Chinese predominance.

This book compiles the best gentleman-thief Arsene Lupin stories from Maurice Leblanc’s five Lupin short story collections, published between 1906 and 1922. Leblanc professed to love Poe and Conan Doyle, but chose to focus on the exploits of shape-shifting thief Lupin—at first. The appeal of the detective novel was irresistible, however, and the fact that Lupin (or Renine or Velmont or Barnett, his alter-egos) begins solving crimes later in his career rather than committing them suggests that the Lupin formula wasn’t quite right. These stories are a little dated, sure, but the fact that Lupin never really gels as a character is the bigger problem. It may be why Leblanc continually changed viewpoints and names and modus operandi; he was looking for a character he really wanted to spend time with. Never mind; the Arsene Lupin stories remains a fascinating experiment in genre fiction, and worth a read.

Sotomayor is a truly extraordinary person who has written an inspiring memoir about hard work, testing herself against challenges, overcoming adversity, always spurred on by her intellectual curiosity and her determination. This book is a tonic at a moment when core values and principles feel assailed and even powerless against angry partisan politics. She ends on a note of joy, and I suspect that is *still* how she lives her life in spite of everything.

Every woman should read this book, to remember how it was in the bad old days (and how it could be again), and how the law creates a structure within which we all live and how it cuts against women so often. The book is replete with insights into the two principals and, most importantly, how the Court works. The Court is in a sense the ultimate political body, but in a positive way: the nine justices share a common framework of legal understanding to which they bring to bear their own backgrounds, experiences, understandings of how the world works. Hirshman is convinced that life experiences count for a lot in the law and that they should, and therefore that O’Connor and Ginsburg (and later Kagan and Sotomayor) brought necessary perspectives to issues like abortion access, sexual harassment and gender discrimination, and workplace law. She demonstrated how Ginsburg and O’Connor used their sharp legal analysis (and political courage more so in Ginsburg’s case) *and* their interpersonal skills and political strategy (more so in O’Connor’s case) to prevail in some cases, or at least lay the foundation for another day. And they did all this while feminists debated whether equality lay in the fact women are the same as men or the fact that women have differences that ought to be brought to bear on public and private life. A fascinating story and becoming more important every day of the Trump Administration.

I knew this would be an important book, because Robert and I went to grad school together and he was always the smartest person in the room. The first 2/3 of the book represent a comprehensive review of global history since WWI (which we certainly need in the age of Trump) and which sets the stage for the policy analysis and prescriptions of the final 1/3. To Kagan’s credit he avoids the obvious name-calling that the current state of foreign policy deserves, with its Know-Nothingness, broken treaties, tariff wars, and jingoism. Instead he contextualizes the current president’s antics and Pres. Obama’s distaste for foreign policy in the current decline of respect for the liberal world order. He and I might disagree about the roots of that, but it’s a useful way to think about this administration and how to combat his wild swings of pique when dealing with the world. Kagan is clear-eyed about the threat of fascism—at home and abroad—and he concludes with a reminder of our responsibility to defend what we believe in. Bravo, Robert—the world is better for your book.

This was a lovely travel account of Raban’s 1982 journey around the coast of England in a boat, “coasting” from unknown town to remembered city. Raban meets up with friends and strangers and writerly mentors and competitors. For me it was an escape from Trumpism into Thatcherism, because Raban was a keen observer of England at the tipping point from Industrial Revolution to tourism and a global economy. The coal mines were closing, fishing grounds were being taken over by other North Sea countries, and mechanized container ships were taking over the docks. His account is equal parts sea / sky / weather and the mystifying customs of people on land. But it is his keen observations and lyrical descriptions—however sad—that compel the story and the reader on the tide of the book.

The title of this book, *From* Cape Wrath to Finisterre, is misleading, because it’s not a traditional travel account. Instead, the books is a collection of very short essays around topics related to Larson’s three years of freedom sailing the North Sea. His jumping off point is a the work of sailor-writer Harry Martinson; each chapter ends with a quote by Martinson. The puzzle is that Larson loves the Celtic people, but people don’t feature in the book at all.

I so enjoyed last year’s James collection, ‘The Mistletoe Murders,’ that I thought this one would be fun. But these stories lacked the fully developed characters and settings that I so appreciated, as well as the plot twists. The centerpiece, ‘The Murder of Santa Claus,’ was downright anticlimactic. Highly recommend Mistletoe, cannot recommend Santa.

Once I got through her childhood and young adulthood—which I never enjoy—I got so much out of Michele Obama’s memoir. She is candid about the choices that strong women still have to make, about the challenges of submerging her ambitions in her husband’s vision (at least temporarily) and in parenthood. It is reassuring to see how she crafts a satisfying life in public service, even if politics would not have been how she would have chosen to do that. (She writes several times that she “hates” politics, and who wouldn’t, the way it is now?) Aside from her struggles with infertility, there are no real revelations here, except for the dignified and respectful way she copes day after day with a life she might not have chosen for herself. She’s a role model for all women.