Books Recommended...and Not
I'll add to this over the next few months, but to start, a few books I really liked:
- James Carroll's An American Requiem is a great memoir by an adult son, looking back on his relation with his father. Often these books fail because of their tone: the author falls into a stiff elegiac tone, or becomes ostentatiously deadpan. Carroll however is clear and honest throughout. And the story - of a son gradually breaking from his father's belief in the Vietnam war, only later (after the father's death) to realize the father had been against it all along, but was unable to say a word, for professional reasons: it's gripping stuff.
- Eleni, by Nicolas Gage, is another great mix of memory and history. It's about the Greek civil war of the late 1940s, as seen crushing down in a little village in the north of the country. Gage was a 10 year old boy in the village...and later, a New York Times foreign correspondent, going back and working out what really happened.
- The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston is simpler emotionally than either of those: it's a race of sheer terror about the Ebola virus getting loose. It's non-fiction, which makes it even more powerful (though fortunately, the outbreak he describes was contained before it spread too far).
- One book I would suggest you save your money on, and not buy, is Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. It's only merit is that it'll show future historians how a book can become a bestseller despite Having No Discernible Thesis. Gladwell gives a number of anecdotes showing first impressions that are really accurate; he then goes on and gives an equal number of anecdotes where first impressions are really inaccurate. This is what comes of The New Yorker letting him ramble on in their pages.
Bits And Bobs:
- steve jobs can be a pain to work with, but in 2005 he gave a commencement talk at stanford that reminds one why he's been involved with such great products over the years: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
