Like a lot of people I’ve been listening to the Hamilton musical album non-stop and read this because it was the source of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s inspirLike a lot of people I’ve been listening to the Hamilton musical album non-stop and read this because it was the source of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s inspiration to create the brilliant Broadway show. The idea that a dense biography of an American Founding Father who was probably best known to the general public as the guy on the the ten dollar bill and the subject of a pretty funny Got Milk? commercial would someday lead to the creation of an incredibly popular musical that blends show tunes with hip-hop is only a little less likely than the life of Alexander Hamilton himself.
(And if you’re interested in reading a great account of the impact the show has on people I highly recommend this article that sportswriter Joe Posnanski wrote about taking his daughter to see it.)
The circumstances of Hamilton’s birth on a Caribbean island as the illegitimate son of a divorced woman and a fortune seeking Scotsman were the first strike against him, and things only got worse when his father abandoned him and his mother died. As an orphan with no money and an embarrassing social status for the time young Alexander probably should have lived a short, hard life and been forgotten by history. However, he also had a brilliant mind, a talent for writing, and an enormous appetite for work that was fueled by relentless ambition. After a hurricane devastated his island Hamilton wrote an account of the tragedy so moving that a collection was taken up to send him to America to attend college.
Hamilton arrived in New York just as the American Revolution was about to start, and his talents landed him a pivotal position on George Washington’s staff as well leading troops in the field and playing a key role during the Battle of Yorktown that essentially won the war. Hamilton’s role in the writing of The Federalist with James Madison and John Jay along with his political maneuvering was critical in getting the Constitution ratified. HIs biggest contributions to the United States probably came from his bold actions as the first secretary of the treasury when he not only got the young nation on sound economic footing but also used money as a tool to link the fates of the frequently bickering states together as a way of achieving unity and promoting a strong federal government. As Washington’s most trusted advisor Hamilton was critical in shaping the future of the country he did so much to help create.
All of this should have meant that Hamilton would be remembered as one of the most important figures in American history but he also made powerful enemies including Thomas Jefferson. The struggle between those who believed power should reside in the federal government or with the states became a bitter fight in which Hamilton was the victim of relentless political attacks that slandered his reputation and made him a perpetual lightning rod of controversy. The conflict would lead to the creation of the two party political system as well as a constant tug of war between factions about how much authority the American government should have that continues today.
Hamilton frequently didn’t do himself any favors with his outspoken nature, and his insecurities about his illegitimacy caused him to be hypersensitive to insults. His basic cynicism and mistrust of people made him wary of popular trends and leaving the fate of America in the hands of the general public who he felt could be too easily swayed by a mob mentality and demagogues. (Geez, where could he have gotten that idea?) This left him vulnerable to attacks by his enemies who smeared him as an elitist at best or a schemer plotting to return America to English control or set up an American monarchy at worst. He badly hurt his own political party by feuding with President John Adams who became another enemy who would smear Hamilton long after his death. Hamilton also had the distinction of being one of the first American politicians to be caught up in a sex scandal, and his reaction to it by publishing a tell-all memoir called The Reynolds Pamphlet was a miscalculation that severely damaged his public image.
Propaganda from his enemies and his own combative nature and thin skin hurt his standing during his life and limited his political prospects. When his long and complex relationship with Aaron Burr ultimately led to Hamilton’s death after their infamous duel his enemies would continue to slander his reputation while his widow Eliza would spend the rest of her life defending it and try to make sure his accomplishments weren’t forgotten.
What Chernow has done with this sympathetic portrait of a brilliant but flawed man is illustrate how America owes so much to Hamilton’s genius. By detailing Hamilton’s collaborations and battles with the other Founding Fathers it shows that they weren’t saints with some glorious vision of what America should be. They engaged in compromises and accepted contradictions in the interests of getting things done, and they were consumed by the fears of all the ways the country could fail. They were also just as capable of acting in short-sighted, mean spirited, and despicable ways as any politician today, Thomas Jefferson in particular comes across as a hypocritical sneaky jerkface that I would never vote for.
After reading this it’s easy to understand how Hamilton the remarkable person inspired Hamilton the remarkable musical. ...more
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.
This should teach me to pay more attention when I ask for an ARCI received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.
This should teach me to pay more attention when I ask for an ARC.
I requested this from NetGalley on a whim when I saw the title, and I didn’t realize that I was getting a book that was almost a thousand pages.* I also didn’t consider that a kitten-squisher of a biography about a notorious Nazis wasn’t going to be ideal summer time reading. I’ve done my best to give it a fair review, but any critical comments I make should probably be taken with a grain of salt by anyone interested in it.
Peter Longerich uses Joseph Goebbels’ diary as a guide post from the time when he was a wannabe writer and radical through his rise through the Nazi party to become the chief architect of its propaganda. By contrasting what Goebells claimed in his journals against other documentation Longerich gives us the real history.
This portrayal shows that Goebbels was a raging narcissist that achieved the recognition he craved by dedicating himself to Adolf Hitler who Goebbels helped elevate to the supreme leader of Germany. (We all know how well that ended.) By making Hitler into an almost god-like figure, Goebbels could then validate himself as great by earning Hitler’s respect and praise. Hitler’s opinion was so important that Goebbels and his wife Magda (Who it seems Hitler had a bit of a thing for.) made him a de facto father figure that they treated like a member of the family and consulted on domestic decisions.
Perhaps what’s most interesting is how Longerich uses what Goebbels claims against other historical documents to show how much Hitler used him like a chump. While Goebbels liked to brag about his close relationship with Hitler and boast about his many accomplishments, the records show that in fact Hitler often kept him out of the loop, ignored his advice, and even occasionally used him as a diversion. If Goebbels had more self-awareness he might have realized that Hitler saw his value as a talented creator of propaganda but didn’t credit him as much more than that, at least until the end of the war left him with few other options.
After establishing what he believed about Goebbels' personality, Longerich is content to relay the facts of his life in chronological order while letting quotes from the diary clue us into what Goebbels was thinking and correcting the record with a minimum of commentary aside from occasionally pointing out patterns. This approach gives a remarkably detailed and rich portrait of Goebbels as well as the inner workings of the Nazi party.
However, it’s also one of the problems with the book. Everyone has habits and routines. When you read something that covers 20+ years of a person’s life, it’s going to get repetitive no matter what they’re doing even if they’re Nazis perpetrating some of history’s greatest crimes. So whether it’s Goebbels kissing Hitler’s ass or Goebbels having some bureaucratic squabble with another Nazi or Goebbels feuding with his wife or Goebbels launching another anti-Semitic propaganda campaign, there comes a time when the point has been made so it seems like the same thing is being rehashed over and over.
In a weird way the strength of the book became one of its irritations for me, but I’m not sure what could have been done about it. It’s tempting to say that it could have used more analysis and less detail, but the details are what eventually give you such an understanding of what made Goebbels tick. It seems unfair to fault Longerich for being too thorough, but in the end that’s almost what it feels like.
If you’re looking for a seriously detailed in-depth biography of Joseph Goebbels that also provides a lot of behind the scenes history of the Nazis, then this is the book for you. If you’re in the mood for a lighter pop-history that tells you the basics about Goebbels, you should probably look elsewhere.
* About 40% of the book is its bibliography and notes....more
If you think that you had a busy summer, consider 1927:
Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic and became a national hero. Babe Ruth broke his own homeIf you think that you had a busy summer, consider 1927:
Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic and became a national hero. Babe Ruth broke his own home run record on a Yankees club that would be remembered as one of the best baseball teams ever assembled. The Midwest was devastated by extensive flooding and the Secretary of Commerce Hebert Hoover was in charge of recovery efforts. A routine murder trial in New York became a media sensation for reasons no one can explain. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed and sparked outrage around the world. Prohibition was still in effect but that didn’t stop Al Capone’s criminal empire from reaching the height of its power.
Capone also attended a boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney that would captivate the nation and still be controversial today. A young engineer with the awesome name of Philo T. Farnsworth made a critical breakthrough that would lead to the development of television, and another entertainment milestone occurred when the first full length motion picture with sound began filming. After building 15 million Model Ts, Henry Ford’s company ceased production and began creating the Model A. In South Dakota, the work of carving four president’s faces into Mount Rushmore began. Last but not least, four bankers had a meeting in which they made a decision that would eventually start the Great Depression.
And yet Bryan Adams picked another summer to immortalize in song…
Bill Bryson’s book is packed with the details of these events and many more along with plenty of related stories and anecdotes. It should read like a trivia book of 1927 factoids, but what makes it more than that is the deft way that Bryson establishes the history of what came before as well as the long term impact. For example, he doesn’t just tell the story of Lindbergh’s historic flight and of his subsequent fame, he also lays out in a succinct manner how America had been trailing the world in aviation up until that point as well as how it changed things afterwards.
It’s that context that makes this more than just a list of events, and he also goes to some effort to add depth in several places like describing how horrifyingly racist American society was in those days with the Ku Klux Klan enjoying a reemergence while even supposedly high-brow publications like The New Yorker would casually use ethnic slurs. By the time he tells the readers about how outlandish eugenics theories became influential which resulted in tens of thousands of people being legally sterilized in the United States, the reader can understand all too well how it could happen in that kind of environment.
In fact, one of the things that jumped out at me about this is that most of the popular figures of 1927 were basically assholes. Charles Lindbergh's boyish good lucks and piloting skill got the press to overlook that he was about as interesting as white bread, and he’d show a nasty streak of anti-Semitism later in his life that would severely tarnish his image. Henry Ford was also a notorious anti-Semite, and he was also the kind of ignoramus that despised people with educations or scientific background. His refusal to consult any types of experts led him to waste millions on schemes like trying to start a rubber plantation in South America and shutting down his assembly lines to retool for the Model A with no clear plan as to what exactly they’d build. (After reading about Ford‘s stubborn mistakes, I can’t believe the Ford Motor Company managed to survive long enough to make it to the Great Depression, let alone still be in business today.)
Herbert Hoover led a life that should have made him one of America’s most fascinating presidents. He was a self-made success story who had traveled the world as a mining consultant and was credited with a relief effort that fed millions in Europe during World War I. Yet he seemed to take no pleasure in anything other than work and one long time acquaintance noted that he never heard him laugh once in 30 years. Calvin Coolidge believed so much in limiting the role of government that he spent most of his presidency napping and would refuse to take even the most of innocuous of actions like endorsing a national week of recognition for the importance of education.
It’s funny that since the book describes so many people as either being unlikable, unethical or downright criminal that one of the few that seems decent was Babe Ruth. While all of the Babe’s bad habits are laid out here, he also comes across as one of the few that did what he was good at with an exuberant zest for life and generous spirit that was sadly lacking in many of his contemporaries. The guy may have enjoyed his food, liquor and women to excess, but he never hid who he was. Plus, he was fun at parties!
Bryson’s look at the events, large and small, that made up one pivotal summer is an interesting read that provides a clear window to the past while being highly entertaining. ...more
Maybe if more people would have listened to T.E. Lawrence after World War I then an American president wouldn’t be at the UN today speaking on the SyrMaybe if more people would have listened to T.E. Lawrence after World War I then an American president wouldn’t be at the UN today speaking on the Syrian crisis as I write this review.
It’s hard reading a history of lost opportunities because I always have an irrational hope that it will somehow end differently this time. (There’s a marketing ploy. Write up a non-fiction book, but then switch to alt-history fiction in the last chapter. “And they all lived happily ever after. The End.”) There are certainly no shortages of miscalculations and mistakes that have haunted the world since the ‘war to end all wars’.
As the title suggests, this is primarily about T.E. Lawrence (a/k/a Lawrence of Arabia) whose exploits in the Middle East during World War I became the stuff of legend. However, this is not just another biography, rather it examines all the political intrigue, double dealing, back stabbing, and outright espionage that went on in that region during the war. Then it digs into how all this plotting created a mess that we’re still dealing with today.
In addition to Lawrence several other people and their actions are detailed. There was William Yale who worked for an oil company that pulled all the kinds of sleazy maneuvers to secure future profits, and then he went on to be America’s chief intelligence officer in the region once the US entered the war. Curt Prufer was a German diplomat in Cairo that ran a variety of intelligence and propaganda operations. Aaron Aaronsohn was a Jewish agronomist who set up a spy ring as he supposedly worked for the Turks in the hope that he could use it to convince England to set up a Zionist nation after the war. Mark Sykes was a British diplomat who secretly negotiated a treaty to divvy up the area with France after the war, and then promised the Arab leaders independence if they’d revolt against Turkey.
All of these people and many more played a role in the ultimate outcome with their competing agendas, but it’s Lawrence who remains the fascinating pivotal figure in the story. As anyone who’s seen the classic movie about him knows, Lawrence was a conflicted man. As a scholar who knew the Middle East he started as a lowly mapmaker for the British, but eventually he became a critical part of convincing many Arabs to fight against the Turks. He was aware that he could be setting them up for betrayal and hated himself for it. At times he’d try to subvert the plans of men like Sykes while technically committing treason in the process by flat out telling his chief Arab ally Faisal that the British would double cross them for the French after the war, but he also risked his life countless times carrying out British war plans in the desert. By the end of the story Lawrence has become a tragic figure who was left shattered by the war and his failure to help the Arabs achieve a fairer deal.
It's an interesting account of the region during the war both in terms of the military and political machinations that every player was engaged in. Ironically, the Arabs so mistrusted Britain and France by war’s end that they would have preferred the Americans to step in as honest brokers, but Wilson’s administration squandered yet another chance to achieve stability by keeping the mess at a distance other than making sure the oil companies got what they wanted.
Anderson lays out how lies and greed wasted a prime opportunity to restructure the Middle East, but he’s realistic enough to note that there were far too many groups with differing motives involved to make everyone happy. That there would almost certainly have been major problems no matter who was in charge. Still, he paints a convincing picture of how things could have been better. More’s the pity....more
Super-heroes have gotten darker and more violent over the years, but compared to some of the people in charge of Marvel during that time Wolverine andSuper-heroes have gotten darker and more violent over the years, but compared to some of the people in charge of Marvel during that time Wolverine and the Punisher seem about as threatening as a glass of non-fat milk. Killers with razor sharp unbreakable claws and large guns are no match for the carnage a corporate executive worried about the stock price can create.
Sean Howe gives a comprehensive history of how the pulp publishing company founded by a Depression-era hobo named Martin Goodman eventually became a comic book empire that was bought by Disney for $4 billion in 2009. The book tells the familiar story of how Goodman’s nephew Stan Lee working with artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko saved the struggling company in 1961 by coming up with a line of new characters like the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, X-Men, and others that you can see at your local movie theater on a regular basis today. Then it details the many trials, tribulations and triumphs the company would have as its characters became iconic parts of pop culture.
As a perpetually cheerful and energetic editor and spokesman, Stan Lee built a myth via the Bullpen Bulletin and Stan’s Soapbox column that appeared in the comics that Marvel was a wacky wonderful place where the writers and artists worked in a happy state of constant brainstorming about their stories. In reality during these early years, Lee worked with a small staff in cramped offices while Jack Kirby drew in the basement of his home, and things were never as merry as Stan portrayed them to the fans. After Goodman sold the company Marvel would be bought and sold to various corporations and business people most of who had no interest in doing anything other than squeezing every dime possible out of the characters while denying any kind of ownership or royalties to the people who created them.
The stories of how creators were screwed out of rights have become legendary, and the constant law suits and bickering over who actually created the characters have become so common place as to not even be newsworthy any more. (A fun fact that I learned in this is that at one time Marvel put a boilerplate waiver on the backs of paychecks so that signing it to get the money became a forfeiture of potential royalties.) The battles over the rights between the company and the creative people would pale in comparison to the many financial and legal fiascos Marvel would get into over the years due to the many buy-outs and chronic mismanagement.
Howe does a nice job of showing how all the behind the scenes turmoil impacted the stories being churned out. The Secret Wars mini-series started out as a promotional tie-in for a new line of toys, but became the prototype for the crossovers that are all too frequent events today. The surprise success of rolling out a specialty cover on Todd McFarlane’s new Spider-Man book had the corporate execs and Wall Street demanding sales increases every year and forced the editors to come up with a parade of gimmick covers and new #1 issues constantly to hit those numbers. This led to the speculator bubble of the early ‘90s that nearly destroyed the industry when disgruntled fans stopped buying.
With the sale to Disney and huge success of movies like The Avengers, you might think this story has a happy ending, but Marvel still faces challenges today. In the digital age, the idea of buying pricey paper comics that can be read in minutes is a tough sell, and many question whether the money made in movies and merchandising has made the comic book obsolete. Aging fan boys grumble over the constant character deaths and crossovers, yet those remain the top selling books. Balancing the continuity demanded by long-time fans while still being accessible to new readers has become a nearly impossible task. (Dan and I have some great ideas on how to resolve this issue if anyone from DC or Marvel reads this and would like to pay us a consulting fee.)
Many of these individual stories have been told before, but Howe gives not only a history, but a detailed picture of the ways that all the creative, business and legal issues have had a profound impact on the characters and the industry. That’s what really makes it an informative and interesting read.
(Please forgive me resorting to a tired trick and leading off with a definition from the dictionary, but there is a point to it.)
pol-i-ti-cian
1: a per(Please forgive me resorting to a tired trick and leading off with a definition from the dictionary, but there is a point to it.)
pol-i-ti-cian
1: a person experienced in the art or science of government; especially : one actively engaged in conducting the business of a government
2A : a person engaged in party politics as a profession
2B: a person primarily interested in political office for selfish or other narrow usually short-sighted reasons
Americans these days seem to think that 2B is the only definition for the word, and even the first meaning is considered an insult because if you actually know how the government works, then you’re guilty by association. Hell, politicians now deny being politicians as they try to get reelected to political office while screaming about how all politicians suck. (Or the Tea Party just finds the angriest moron around to run.)
It’s weird that it’s become such a dirty word because one of the greatest Americans by almost any sane person’s standard was Abraham Lincoln. While the myth may be that he was just this humble log splitter and backwoods lawyer who bumbled into the White House during one of the country’s darkest hours and fortunately turned out to be the perfect leader for the time, the truth is that Abe was one super bad-ass politician in the sense of definitions #1 and #2A, but luckily 2B didn’t apply at all.
All American kids hear about Abe in school. We learn about the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address and the 13th Amendment, but they never really tell you how Abe managed to win a war that should have permanently split the country and end an evil institution that even the Founding Fathers had just left as some future generation’s problem.
Reading Team of Rivals gives you an understanding of how Lincoln accomplished this, and the simple answer is that he was a politician of uncanny skill. He had a great sense of timing as well as being empathetic enough to see the other side of any argument while never swaying once he had fully committed himself to a course of action he thought right or necessary. The thing that made him unique was the almost inhuman way he could put his own ego and anger aside to find ways to work with people he had every reason to distrust or even hate.
As this book details, Lincoln’s selection and handling of his own cabinet highlight what made him such a great president. He managed to convince some of the biggest power brokers and politicians of his day, many of whom he had beaten out for the presidency, to work for the common good as members of his administration. Even though this meant dealing with constant bickering and political intrigue, Lincoln still got outstanding achievements from all of them, and most of the men who once saw him as an overmatched fool eventually came to regard him as one of the smartest and most honorable men of the age.
Well researched and written in an entertaining style, this book also shows how little has changed in American politics. The tactics of the kind of people who would defend slavery and smear Lincoln seem familiar in many ways. They just used newspapers instead of a cable news channel and talk radio.
One odd thing: I started this after seeing the Spielberg movie, and I knew that only a small part of the book was actually about the passage of the 13th Amendment that the movie centers on. However, there’s not nearly as much as I thought there would be. It seems like only a few pages are spent on it, so it’s a little weird that the movie would cite it so heavily. On the other hand, the details of Lincoln's personality in here are all over Daniel Day-Lewis’s great performance. ...more
I always thought that James Ellroy was exaggerating the corrupt and scandalous nature of Los Angeles in his books. After reading this, I’m thinking thI always thought that James Ellroy was exaggerating the corrupt and scandalous nature of Los Angeles in his books. After reading this, I’m thinking that he may have actually toned it down.
This is essentially the parallel biographies of two men: Mickey Cohen and William Parker. Cohen was an illiterate small time thug who made a name for himself by working for the Capone mob before heading west and apprenticing under Bugsy Siegel and eventually becoming the head of organized crime from late ‘40s into the ‘60s. Parker joined a corrupt and highly politicized police force in the ‘20s and eventually worked his way up to the top position in 1950 through a mixture of incorruptibility and shrewd use of the bureaucracy
Buntin uses the lives of Cohen and Parker to tell the history of the city itself. Their combined story includes local politicians, Hollywood stars, presidents, gangsters and strippers just to name a few. The push and pull between the criminal element and the police would go on to shape the city in various ways. By the end of it, Buntin does a long section that details how Parker’s refusal to acknowledge the legitimate grievances that minorities had with the police department created a culture that got passed on and had a hand in the Rodney King riots and other image issues that haunt the LAPD to this day.
It was an interesting way to tell the history of a city and includes a lot of interesting anecdotes and trivia. For example, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was a LAPD officer in their public relations department who wrote speeches for Parker, and it was his work reviewing scripts for the TV show Dragnet as part of their deal with the department for access to police files that got him into television. ...more
Two thousand years ago a Roman named Lucretius wrote a poem that described a universe guided by physical laws rather than the whims of mystical deitieTwo thousand years ago a Roman named Lucretius wrote a poem that described a universe guided by physical laws rather than the whims of mystical deities and also advised that people should pursue happiness rather than spend their lives trying to appease gods who don’t exist . As I write this in 2012 certain parts of the world have been rioting and people are dying because some felt that a You Tube video insulted their religion. My own country has a constant political tug of war between the people who want to run things with that whole “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” part of the Constitution in mind while others think we should just throw that out and use the Bible as our rule book.
We are a race of slow learners.
Lucretius’s poem was apparently not only an extremely thorough explanation of Epicurean philosophy, it was also a well constructed and beautiful piece of writing that was almost lost to history. Greenblatt does an outstanding job of laying out the significance of Epicureanism, how it was almost stamped out by the rise of Christianity and why the poem rescued by chance by an Italian humanist and scholar was a spark that helped usher in the modern world.
I especially liked the section where Greenblatt describes how the Christian faith turned most of the public against one of the central principles of Epicureanism; seeking pleasure. ‘Seeking pleasure’ in the Epicurean sense doesn’t mean maxing out your credit cards in Vegas to hire a couple of hookers for a cocaine fueled weekend. It’s more in the ‘How about a nice cup of tea and a good book by a warm fire on a rainy day?’ kind of thing.
Yet the church managed to convince the faithful that it was more spiritual to seek punishment from an angry God, and they tagged Epicureans as a bunch of wild orgy types when in fact it’s not about hedonism, it’s about finding ways to avoid pain and making the most of your existence in this world because you’re gonna have a short shelf life and then you‘re done for good.
This is a fascinating history of how one piece of exceptional writing changed the world....more
What could make World War 2 even bloodier? Vampires!
There’s essentially two stories told in this volume. The secret group of vampire hunters called VaWhat could make World War 2 even bloodier? Vampires!
There’s essentially two stories told in this volume. The secret group of vampire hunters called Vassels of the Morning Star recruit aging human Henry to leave his vampire wife Pearl to try and root out a nest of bloodsuckers on the island of Taipan as the US tries to take it from the Japanese. Skinner Sweet shows up with his own agenda and as always the brutal vampire creates chaos and bloodshed wherever he goes.
In the second story, the Vassels send their agents Cash McCogan and Felicia Book to Europe on a secret mission to see if a Nazi scienctist has developed a cure for vampirism. And in a one off story, Skinner Sweet takes in a wild west show where he creates more mischief after coming across some old friends.
The series is just getting better and better as it goes. It’s now obvious that Snyder has a pretty well mapped out plot going on, and it’s getting more intriguing as the takes the characters deeper into the 20th century. We also get some more explanation and background as to the different vampire species.
It’s bloody, brutal and helluva a good comic. ...more
After I read Too Big to Fail, I just hadn’t gotten enough stories about greedy assholes so I figured I‘d read this to angry up my blood some more.
ActAfter I read Too Big to Fail, I just hadn’t gotten enough stories about greedy assholes so I figured I‘d read this to angry up my blood some more.
Actually, Too Big to Fail began after the Bear Stearns meltdown so even though there was some background there, I felt like I hadn’t gotten the whole story so I picked this up to try and complete the picture. The two books dovetail nicely with this one concentrating on the history of Bear Stearns and how it became the warning alarm that something bad was coming when it started circling the drain and had to be bought out by a joint deal between JP Morgan and the federal government.
It’s got kind of an odd structure in that the first third of the book details the collapse of the firm, and then the rest of the book gives the entire history of the company and how they got to that point. I get that Cohan wanted to lead with the disaster part everyone was interested in, but by saving the details on the history of the major players until the history in the rest of the book, you don’t really understand who the players were or the internal politics at play while they’re all scrambling around.
It’s a well documented book that gives you a pretty good idea of how a firm once known for being fairly conservative and one of the best at risk management became the first major domino to fall in the 2008 financial collapse. It mainly seems like the leadership of the firm, particularly CEO Jimmy Cayne, became far more concerned with bridge tournaments and playing golf than running an investment bank.
One of the things that made me scratch my head the most was the story of Ralph Cioffi. Considered a dynamic salesman but with no patience or head for details, Cioffi convinced Bear’s leadership to let him launch a couple of supposedly conservative hedge funds. At first, the funds did well before 2008 while Cioffi’s monthly statements always stressed that he was predicting a lot of future issues in the sub-prime mortgage market and that the fund had less than 6% of those types of investments while he prepared to make a fortune off the coming crisis. What this guy actually did was continue to buy sub-primes until they made up 60% of the funds while telling everyone that disaster was coming to anyone holding the exact shit he was buying at the same time. WTF?
I guess that’s why I’ll never be rich. I just don’t understand high finance.
Anyhow, of the two books, I’d say that Too Big To Fail gave a better and more complete picture of what happened during the meltdown, but people interested in the subject or Wall Street shenanigans will probably find this well worth their time, too....more
If fans of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire read this hoping just for more stories about corrupt politicians, gangsters, bootlegging, sex, violence, anIf fans of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire read this hoping just for more stories about corrupt politicians, gangsters, bootlegging, sex, violence, and a disfigured hit man, they’re probably going to be disappointed. However, anyone looking for an interesting history of Atlantic City from its humble beginnings of a second rate resort town through it’s glory days of as a popular destination point during Prohibition because of it’s total unwillingness to enforce anti-booze laws to it’s current state as a gambling town that is still plagued by urban decay would probably find this book interesting.
While the author spends plenty of time on the reign of political boss and part time racketeer Nucky Johnson, the inspiration for the Steve Buscemi’s character Nucky Thompson, and the way that the corrupt Republican machine built and ruled Atlantic City for decades, this is really a history and not a true crime book. While the links between organized crime and the politicians is documented extensively, the book centers on the political corruption instead of gangland shenanigans.
So while there’s no Martin Scorsese-style violence, it’s an interesting history of a unique city....more
Attention crazy people! If you are one of those poor souls who thinks that the Central Intelligence Agency is reading your thoughts and/or manipulatinAttention crazy people! If you are one of those poor souls who thinks that the Central Intelligence Agency is reading your thoughts and/or manipulating your brain waves I have good news for you. You can take off your aluminum foil hat and stop trying to pull out that tooth with the tracking device. Here it is:
The CIA is too incompetent to do any of the things you are worried about. Seriously.
After reading Legacy of Ashes, I’m amazed that we weren’t taken down by the Soviets during the Cold War or that China hasn’t invaded and turned the US into a giant sweatshop that sews cheap clothing for its citizens or that some terrorists haven’t reduced the country to pile of radioactive rubble.*
*Kind of odd timing to read a book that bashes the CIA this much shortly after Osama got his much deserved bullet to the brain, but this book outlined how the CIA muffed multiple opportunities to kill him before 9/11 during the Clinton and W. Bush years. After repeated stories of just how incredibly bad the CIA is at actually collecting human intelligence it’s really not that surprising that bin Ladin had been living in a posh neighborhood for years while American forces searched caves in Afghanistan.
If you read something like a Tom Clancy novel, you’ll get the idea that the CIA is really good at its job and that the occasional snafu like the Bay of Pigs or claiming that Iraq had WMD are just aberrations. Per Tim Weiner, the real story is that the for the CIA the Bay of Pigs and Iraq WMDs are the typical performance levels, we just only hear about the really big screw-ups.
After World War II and with the Cold War ramping up, America needed an intelligence service, but all Harry Truman really wanted was an agency to boil down all the information that the military and state department collected and summarize it for him daily. However, when a bunch of former OSS guys were put in charge, their brilliant idea of an intelligence service was parachuting half-trained dissidents behind the Iron Curtain to lead resistance groups and perform sabotage missions. Unfortunately, the people were so poorly prepared and the Soviets had already so thoroughly penetrated the Agency that they were almost all captured and/or killed. Oh, and they completely missed the Soviets developing their own atomic bomb thanks to stolen intelligence.
From the Korean War through Vietnam to missing the economic decay of the Soviet Union that caused it’s ultimate collapse, the CIA was so consistently bad at their supposed main job of gathering intelligence that it boggles the mind. Weathermen are jealous at how these guys were able to be so repeatedly and completely wrong yet somehow none of them lost their jobs over it.
The only thing that CIA seems to have been really good at was backing the most evil fucks around as long as they claimed to be anti-communist. If there was a strong arm dictator or leader of a military coup waiting to take over from a government with the slightest bit of left leanings the CIA was there with bags of cash and support for assholes to take over countries like Iran and Guatemala, and the result has been countless deaths of innocent people and the trashing of goodwill towards America in many parts of the world.
To be fair, there’s a few parts of the book where it seems that Weiner doesn’t give them credit for the few things they did right. Accurately predicating the outbreak of violence in Rwanda or running a successful operation to help convince Libya to ditch it’s WMD programs are barely mentioned. And despite documenting how the CIA has bowed to political pressure and repeatedly told several presidents exactly what they wanted to hear the Iraqi WMD claims are portrayed almost exclusively as an intelligence failure with little mention of poltical pressure from the Bush administration which is hard to believe.
Overall, Weiner used recently declassified internal CIA reports and histories to document a long history of spectacular failure. The book explores how a combination of politics and a bureaucratic nightmare has left America deaf and blind at the times it could least afford to be so even as the myth of an all-knowing intelligence agency has been perpetuated. Billions upon billions of dollars have been spent trying to keep tabs on America’s enemies. Frankly, we all would have been better off if the US would have used that cash to buy everyone in the world some cake and ice cream every now and then. At least maybe so many people wouldn’t hate us because how could you be mad at someone who gives you free cake and ice cream? ...more
How else can you explain a country that embraced a right wing philosophy after a devastating terrorist attack that lCall us America the Schizophrenic.
How else can you explain a country that embraced a right wing philosophy after a devastating terrorist attack that led to blindly following a moron for eight years, yet finally overwhelmingly rejected those politics by voting in the liberal opposition only to seemingly overnight turn into a nation of screaming maniacs who consider spending a dime on anything but guns and prisons a waste of tax payer money?
The cold comfort I got from reading Nixonland was that America’s maddening division between left and right and the lack of a consistent philosophy isn’t anything new. Apparently we’ve always been this stupid.
After JFK was killed, Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats won landslide victories in 1964. The country’s economy was booming, and the elections seemed to signify a new unification of the public behind liberal policies. Many pundits thought conservative politics and the Republican party were as dead as Abraham Lincoln. LBJ seized the moment and began pushing legislation on civil rights for blacks and his plan to end poverty and create a ‘Great Society’.
Four years later, LBJ declined to run again knowing that he may not even be able to win his own party’s nomination, and the country was tearing itself apart along right wing/left wing battle lines. And Richard Nixon got voted in as a president leaving everyone to scratch their heads and wonder what the hell just happened.
What this book does brilliantly is examine how that split occurred and how Nixon, and other right wingers like Ronald Reagan, both took advantage of and did everything they could to widen that gulf. The standard history class will tell you that it was Vietnam, and it was certainly one of the major factors. However, it wasn’t just about the war. Working class whites were generally OK with Johnson pushing the South to end segregation, but when policies like open housing and forced bussing impacted them directly, they got angry with northern cities like Chicago showing a kind of racism that caused Martin Luther King Jr. to say it was worse than Mississippi. Black communities, angry after years of racism and repression and frustrated with slow progress, erupted in riots and militant groups began to form. The war caused a split within the Democratic party and led to the rise of the counter culture.
So when your average Joe Six-Pack and Susy Homemaker (who were a generation that had grown up during the Great Depression and World War II and just wanted a little peace and quiet) turned on their TV’s and saw the country seemingly ripping itself apart while their kids turned into dirty hippies, they got pissed.
That well of white rage and resentment is what Nixon tapped into and encouraged. Republicans like to point to Reagan as their patron saint, but the modern right wing resembles Nixon’s black soul much more than Reagan. Resentful, paranoid, and insecure, Nixon’s personality became the blueprint for Republican politics that’s still used today.
Nixon always felt snubbed by the east coast ‘intellectuals and elitists’, and he used that to tar the high ranking Democrats as limousine liberals who were completely out of touch with ‘real Americans’. Nixon also played up his hatred of the press to convince people that the media had a left wing agenda and was run by more liberals. (He was so successful in this that many people refused to believe the stories about the My Lai massacre even after the army convicted Lieutenant Calley.) Nixon hired his own media people (including a young Roger Ailes, the current president of Fox News) to carefully control and craft an image of reliable steadiness. All the while, he also engaged in back room political deals like promising former Democrat and all-around evil fuck Strom Thurmond that he’d have the government drag it’s feet on enforcing the end of school segregation in exchange for Southern support.
But Nixon’s most diabolical play was in doing everything he could to keep the Democratic party in disarray. Nixon used back channels to sabotage LBJ’s Paris peace talks to North Vietnam to keep the war going before the election while promising that he had a secret plan to end the war. Once in office, he regularly drew down ground troop levels and talked peace in public while escalating the bombing and still seeking a ‘knock out blow’ that would force North Vietnam to come to favorable terms.
Nixon was more than willing to reap the political benefits of the war. It was an on-going propaganda campaign for him where he could go on TV and seem reasonable while shaking his head at all those crazy hippies tearing up college campuses. He made sure that his public events always allowed a few protesters in so that cameras could show the crowd and security turning on them, and his secret ‘rat fuckers’ launched constant sabotage operations against Democratic campaigns to make them look chaotic and confused.
The Democrats helped by shooting themselves in the feet repeatedly. While the counter culture fought the old machine bosses for control of the party, they were so busy trying to include special interest groups that they effectively lost the white working class and union voters who had been their backbone for years. That started a shift that the Republicans continue to exploit to this day.
All in all, this was a fascinating book that deeply explores the issues that led to the splitting of America into factions that has made it nearly impossible for politicians to just provide reasonable public policies. It also does a lot to debunk some of the favorite myths of the Baby Boomers about how they claim to have changed the country. If you buy into the book’s well made argument, the counter culture played right into Nixon’s hands and gave him the White House and led to the rise of the current right wing nuts. Thanks for that, you ole damn dirty hippies....more
“If you don’t mind me saying so, Kemper, your clothes look kind of odd.”
“WeAmerica 1954
“Howdy there stranger. I’m Chester.”
“Hey, Chester. I’m Kemper.”
“If you don’t mind me saying so, Kemper, your clothes look kind of odd.”
“Well, you’re certainly styling in your overalls. I’ll tell you a secret, Chester. I’m from the future. The year 2011.”
“Son, have you been drinking?”
“Well, yeah. But I’m not lying. I know it’s crazy, but I’ve got a time machine. A time mower, actually. It’s a long story. I haven’t used it lately after a bad experience running into some absolute morons during the Blitz in England, but I thought I’d give it another try. So I dialed up the ‘50s, and here I am.”
“Uh huh. So if you’re from 2011, who’s the president?”
“Barack O….Oh, you know what, Chester. If I told you that, you’d never believe me. Plus, there’s a big chance you might have a complete shit fit so we’ll file that under secrets of the future and move on.”
“Well, whatever stranger. I think you’re a little crazy, but who am I to judge? I spend every night dreaming that I’m bayoneting Germans at Bastogne again.”
“Uh….OK. So anyhow…. What’s going on here, Chester? What’s with all the gasoline? And what’s in those boxes?”
“Comic books.”
Comic books? I love comic books! I’ve got tons of them from the ‘70s through the ‘90s and graphic novels, too. Oh, wow! Check these out! Old Batman and Supermans….There’s some of the pulp crime ones… Oh shit! There’s a ton of the old EC horror comics… This is great! Hey, why are these all boxed up out….Jesus, Chester! Why the hell are you pointing that shotgun at me?”
“First you show up here talking about how you’re from the future? Then you tell me that you like comic books? What kind of sick bastard are you? You’re like Hitler! Or are you a damn commie?”
“Did you just ask me if I’m a commie? That’s as quaint as one of my grandma’s quilts, Chester.”
“Shut up! I don’t know where you’re from, but around here, no decent person will admit liking comic books. Everyone knows that they’re filthy rags just designed by perverts to turn kids into juvenile delinquents. Hell, comic books are worse than Hitler! And you sit there and say you like them? You’re a grown man. Why would any adult read comics? As soon as the bus shows up with the kids from the school, we’re going to have a bonfire.”
“Oh, come on, Chester. You can’t burn them. That’s crazy. Comics don’t make kids into criminals. I’ve read thousands of them, and I’m a respectable member of society.”
“You’re out here talking about time machines and presidents named Barack. You’re obviously deranged. That‘s why good Americans are going to burn all the comics we can, and we‘re going to make the politicians pass laws to outlaw them. I‘m not going to let any of these kids turn into Hitler.”
“Damn, Chester, you bring up Hitler more than Glenn Beck.”
“Who’s Glenn Beck?”
“Just this asshat I’m going to keep from being born on my way back to 2011.”
“Well, I don’t know about this Beck, but you stand right there and don’t cause no problems.”
“You can't seriously be considering burning books. That’s what the Nazis did. You fought the Nazis so you don’t want to be like them, do you?”
“It’s completely different. These are just comic books. Not real books.”
“OK, I’ll admit that there’s a lot of lurid trash here, Chester, but this is the early stages of a great art form. You can’t just burn them because you don’t like them.”
“We gotta protect the kids.”
“Oh, come on. The claims that kids became criminals because of reading some comics is complete crap. All of it was done by half-assed opportunistic researchers and politicians. And then all you post-war conformists who were terrified of looking un-American jumped on the bandwagon and decided you could make kids good by getting rid of comics. As a matter of fact, you all have so terrified and hurt the comic industry already that they’re going to start their own self-censorship board, and it’ll be a thousand times more strict than what the movies or TV has to go through. It’ll stifle comics for decades. Hell, it nearly kills the industry.”
“I don’t want to hear anymore of your crazy future talk. Now, I don’t want to scare the kids so I want you to leave before they get here. Go on.”
“OK, but it’s just…Chester, where I come from, those comics are worth a fortune.”
“Bullshit. They sold for a dime each.”
“I know, but they’re really rare and valuable in the future. Probably because assholes burned so many of them…Sorry!…Put the gun down, please. Since you’re going to burn them anyhow, why not let me take a box?”
“Nope. You’re already crazier than a shithouse rat. You don’t need any more bad influences.”
This is a great account of a dark little corner of history that’s not well known outside of comic book fans. During the post-war years comics were at the height of their popularity but looked at with scorn by most of society. When some do-gooders decided that the wild stories were warping children’s minds, America collectively rose up and curb stomped the comic industry.
Sadly, almost no one defended them on constitutional grounds or against the shaky anecdotal evidence about how kids were being harmed. Comics were low brow trash and no one would miss them. Except for the kids who read them and the hundreds of people who lost their careers when the industry was hobbled by censorship.
Comic fans should read this to get a detailed view of the history and non-comic fans should read it to get an inside view of how mobs can be whipped into frenzies in the name of doing ’good’.
But I guess that it was worth it since juvenile delinquency was wiped out in 1954 once the comic code was adopted. Oh, wait…. Well, maybe it’s the video games… ...more
I was cleaning up after the wife and I had dinner last night and there was a small amount of green beans left. There weren’t nearly enough for anotherI was cleaning up after the wife and I had dinner last night and there was a small amount of green beans left. There weren’t nearly enough for another serving to make them worth saving so I dumped them in the sink, but just as I was about to turn on the garbage disposal, I realized that to the POWs described in Unbroken those few green beans I was about to mulch would have been a feast they would have risked torture and beatings for. I was disgusted with myself for the rest of the night. You know the book you’re reading is hitting you hard when you feel that much shame for letting a tiny bit of food go to waste.
Louie Zamperini is one of those guys who definitely earned that Greatest Generation label. The son of Italian immigrant parents, Louie was a rebellious kid who was constantly into one form of mischief or another, but when he finally channeled his energy into running, he became a high school track star in California. Louie was so good that he made the 1936 Olympics in Berlin at the age of 19, and even though he didn’t medal, he ran one lap of a race so quickly that he electrified the crowd and even caught Hitler’s attention.
As a college runner, Louie held several national records and many thought that he’d be the man to eventually break the four minute mile. He was poised to do well in the 1940 Olympics, but then World War II cancelled the games. Louie left college and ended up in the air corps even though he was scared of planes. He became a bombardier and went to the Pacific after Pearl Harbor. Louie survived several missions, including one where their B-24 barely made it back with over 500 holes in it.
While on a search and rescue mission, Louie’s plane crashed in the ocean, and only he and two others survived. With few supplies on two tiny life rafts, they’d endure exposure, starvation, thirst and sharks.
However, after finally reaching an island and being captured by the Japanese, Louie’s hellish experience as a POW would make him miss the raft and the sharks. Starved, beaten, tortured and degraded, Louie also faces extra punishment at the hands of a brutally sadistic guard who singled him out. Louie and the other prisoners desperately try to hang on long enough for America to win the war and free them.
I didn’t care anything about race horses, but found Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit an incredibly interesting read. She’s surpassed that book here with this well researched story. Hillenbrand creates vivid descriptions of Louie’s childhood, the Berlin Olympics, the life of an air man in the Pacific, and a Japanese POW camp while also telling the stories of the people around Louie.
She also does a superior job of describing a phase of World War II that tends to get overlooked, Japanese war crimes against prisoners. The number of prisoners killed by the Japanese through starvation, beatings and forced labor are staggering, but Hillenbrand also shines a light on the Japanese policy of killing all POWs if that area was about to be invaded. Per her research, they were preparing to begin slaughtering prisoners in Japan in late August and September of 1945, but the dropping of the atomic bombs and the surrender of the emperor probably saved those POWs lives. If the war would have carried on or a conventional invasion done, then mostly likely those prisoners would have been killed.*
*(Do not take this as my personal feelings about whether nuclear weapons should have been used or not. I’m just relaying a part of the book here, and Hillenbrand makes no argument as to whether dropping the bombs was justified. She writes that many of the POWs believed that the bombings probably saved their lives and leaves it at that. And if you feel like trying to start a comment fight about it, I’m just going to delete it so don’t bother. I left my sword and shield at home today and don’t feel like battling trolls.)
Ultimately, while this is a book about people enduring incredible hardship and cruelty during war, it's a hopeful book, not a depressing one. Great writing and the care that Hillenbrand took with the people and places make this compelling reading. ...more
The Kansas City Massacre occurred over 75 years ago, but you can still go to the renovated Union Station and see chips in the front of the building thThe Kansas City Massacre occurred over 75 years ago, but you can still go to the renovated Union Station and see chips in the front of the building that were supposedly made by some of the bullets flying around that day. If you buy into the premise of Public Enemies, this is where the modern FBI was born. I like to imagine that years later, J. Edgar Hoover slipped into town late one night, put on one his best evening gowns and burnt some old illegal wire tap tapes on this spot as an offering to the fates that turned him from a fussy minor bureaucrat into one of the of the most powerful men in America.
In June of 1933, an escaped convict named Frank Nash had been captured in Hot Springs, Arkansas, by a couple of agents of the then mostly unknown Bureau of Investigation. They brought him by train to K.C.’s Union Station, where they met members of the local police who were going to help drive him back to Leavenworth. As they got into the cars, they were attacked by armed men trying to free Nash. After a brief but intense gunfight, two feds and two of the KCPD men were dead, several others were wounded, and Nash was also killed in the carnage. All of the attackers managed to escape.
The event occurred as a new wave of armed robbers had been rampaging across the Midwest. John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Babyface Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelley and the Barker gang were making headlines with high profile kidnappings or by pulling a robbery in one area, then using fast cars and new automatic weapons to outrace and outgun the local law enforcement. Once in another county or state, they were very unlikely to ever be captured.
With Roosevelt’s administration rolling out his New Deal and looking for ways to boost federal power, Attorney General Homer Cummings declared a war on crime and pushed for a federal police force. (Ironically, it was a liberal public policy that gave power to Hoover, who would then spend most of his career investigating and persecuting harmless leftist groups while ignoring the growth of the Mafia.) The K.C. Massacre gave Hoover’s small Bureau of Investigation their chance to be that national police force when the KC cops, in an effort to pin all the blame for the massacre on the feds, gave them total responsibility for solving the case despite the fact that murdering a federal agent wasn’t even a federal crime then so they technically had no jurisdiction.
Hoover’s clean cut college boys were initially no match for the criminals. FBI agents weren’t officially allowed to carry weapons until after the massacre and most of its employees were college graduates looking for a job during the Great Depression and hadn’t signed up to be gun men. They made a lot of mistakes and missed a lot of arrest opportunities while a whole lotta money got stolen and many people were killed as the feds worked through their growing pains.
After all the prominent criminals had been captured or killed (many without Bureau involvement), it was the movie industry that embraced the ‘G-Men’ and turned them and Hoover into American heroes. Burroughs has obviously done a lot or research, and I think this book has to be one of the most accurate and thorough accounts of the Depression-era crime wave that swept the country. It’s filled with amazing stories and anecdotes and does a lot to try and break up the myths of the era. For example, Ma Barker was not the leader of the Barker gang. She was a cranky old lady who happened to get shot and killed while the FBI tried to bring in one of her boys. Hoover declared her the brains of the operation to deflect criticism about why an unarmed old woman got killed by his agents.
The only flaw in the book isn’t Burroughs’ fault. It’s just that history got repetitive. The criminals rob banks. The inept FBI can’t catch them. The criminals rob more banks. FBI still can’t catch them. Rinse and repeat. So while I got a little bored with some sections, it was only because Burroughs did such a great job of documenting all the history of it. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the true-crime of this era.
*I’m going to digress a moment about the movie version of this book. I enjoyed the movie and thought Johnny Depp did a great job as Dillinger. However, I find it kind of sad that a book that prides itself on historical accuracy and debunking many of the myths that the movies gave us about these people was itself turned into a movie that was wildly inaccurate and tries to create a whole new set of legends. It’s extra funny when you read about how incompetent Melvin Purvis actually was and how he was turned into a hero by the media after Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd were killed. This infuriated Hoover, and led him to trash Purvis’s career. In the film, Christian Bale plays Purvis as the straight arrow hero who personally kills Pretty Boy Floyd and Babyface Nelson. Hoover has to be spinning in his grave. ...more
I don’t know why publishers feel the need to put huge subtitles on non-fiction books. Take The Poisoner’s Handbook, for example. To me, that’s a greatI don’t know why publishers feel the need to put huge subtitles on non-fiction books. Take The Poisoner’s Handbook, for example. To me, that’s a great title that would probably intrigue most potential readers. But the full title is The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. While accurate, it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?
Think about The Devil and the White City. Even if you knew nothing about that book, if you saw it while trolling through a bookstore, wouldn’t you at least give it a look based on that title? But then you see that the whole thing is actually The Devil and the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America which makes you feel like you just got eye strain so you drop the book and stagger out of Barnes & Noble to go get a beer.
The trend isn’t getting any better either. There’s a new book out called Hellhound On His Trail. That sounds cool. But wait for it! The whole title is Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin. It’s like you just read the whole Wikipedia entry about James Earl Ray.
Thank goodness that Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood before this trend started. Because the title these days would be In Cold Blood: Murder and Fear On the Kansas Plains & The Two Dipshit Losers Who Killed An Innocent Family .
But back to The Poisoner’s Handbook, as we will refer to it from now on because I am not typing all that shit out again. This is a mix of science, crime, politics and history. It tells the story of how two men, Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler, worked tirelessly to bring scientific methods to the New York City coroner’s office and laid the groundwork for much of modern forensics. So I guess we can blame them for all those goddamn CSI shows.
America used to be just as poison crazy as it is gun crazy, and before there were documented methods to prove the existence of poisons in a body, it was tough to get a conviction. Plus, the old New York coroner’s office was corrupt and incompetent so it was an uphill battle for Norris and Gettler to gain respectability.
There’s detailed, but easy to understand, explanations of the chemical nature of the various toxins they dealt with as well as a sometimes hilarious account of the political in-fighting that happened to even get a qualified coroner appointed. There’s also a ton of stories about how the American public was routinely poisoned by harmful products or misunderstood chemicals.
One of the more interesting parts is about the work done during Prohibition. Norris and Gettler considered Prohibition a lethal joke that was killing people who were drinking almost anything to get a buzz and they did a lot of research into alcohol and intoxication levels to show that people were drinking more when it was illegal. And the fun fact that I didn’t know before reading this was that the U.S. government actually had companies add things to industrial alcohol to make it MORE poisonous in a vain attempt to keep bootleggers from using it. And if a few thousand boozehounds went blind or died from drinking it, then they shouldn’t have been breaking the law anyhow.
Interesting book, but I would have liked a bit more history about Norris and Gettler and a little less of a chemistry lesson. ...more
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