I received a free advance copy of this for review from NetGalley.
Wait a minute. This is the THIRTIETHPrey novel?!? That can’t be right because I remeI received a free advance copy of this for review from NetGalley.
Wait a minute. This is the THIRTIETHPrey novel?!? That can’t be right because I remember buying the first Prey book when I was about twenty so that would make me….
Damn.
I better get this review done before I drop dead of old age.
The teenage daughter of a US senator is running some internet photo searches to see if any pics from her Instagram account have been shared when she stumbles across a chilling discovery. Someone has posted secretly taken photos and of her and other children of prominent politicians on a web site featuring racist propaganda as well as providing personal details on the kids. While there are no overt threats the implications are clear, and the fear is that some nutjob with a rifle will take the hint.
Deputy US Marshal Lucas Davenport is brought in by some of his political pals to quickly and quietly try to pin down the source of the pictures. With few clues to go on Lucas has to start talking to members of organized alt-right groups, but since most them are armed and make no secret about their hatred of the government it’s hard to whittle down the list of suspects. As Davenport tries to figure out who was behind the whole thing, a quietly angry man inspired by the site starts to make plans including committing his first murders.
This one starts with an intriguing and timely premise, and for most of the book it's John Sandford delivering as usual so I had no complaints. However, some serious cracks show up in the third act that undermined the foundation of the book for me.
First off is the political angle. Sandford has long been carefully walking through the minefield of having his lead character linked to prominent politicians without Lucas being particularly political himself. That’s served the series well because it provides the story logic as to why this one cop/federal agent keeps being involved in all these high profile cases without Sandford alienating readers from one side or the other.
However, these days it’s getting increasingly hard to believe that Lucas can continue to dance between the raindrops while having powerful friends from both sides of the left/right divide. The idea that he doesn’t have any real political enemies coming after him while being able to solve the problems of other highly prominent people is getting increasingly hard to buy, especially because his cases usually make national news. Somebody would be trying to tar and feather him these days.
The other problem I had with this one is due to a shift in the ending. When the series started Lucas was more of a lone wolf who was more than willing to do some highly illegal stuff to get what he considered justice. That’s faded over time, and since he’s become a federal agent he’s much more of a team player so that we haven’t seen Davenport running a shady solo operation for a while now.
Without giving anything anyway… It seems like Sandford made a conscious decision to bring back some of the old Lucas for the climax of this one, and we once again see Davenport pulling sneaky and underhanded moves to get the outcome he wants. The difference this time is that in the previous books Lucas was always very careful about covering his tracks, and his manipulations were generally subtle. This time his scheme is glaringly obvious with none of the cleverness or caution that we’ve seen him use in the past in similar situations.
None of the shortcomings ruined the book for me. It’s still Sandford doing a Prey novel so it’s highly enjoyable to read, but tight plotting and thinking through ramifications of actions have long been a hallmark of this series so it’s jarring to feel like the ending of one was a little sloppy....more
They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. So maybe America should startThey say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. So maybe America should start questioning its ‘war on drugs’ which is almost 50 years old now?
Nah. Let’s just keep doing the same thing we always have. It’s gotta work eventually.
Art Keller’s story began in The Power of the Dog when he was a young DEA agent dispatched to Mexico in the ‘70s. There he got into a feud with Adán Barrera who becomes one of the most powerful cartel kingpins, and their bloody fight would go on for years. Keller’s efforts to bring him to justice were complicated by the US’s covert support of the drug trade to fund anti-communist operations in Central and South America. The war between Keller and Barrera goes on past the turn of the century in The Cartel when a power struggle in Mexico leads to stunning levels of violence and corruption.
Now America’s dependence on opioids has created an expanding market for heroin and fentanyl, and Keller has been appointed head of the DEA to try and stem the tide. Keller’s strategy is to adopt a more tolerant attitude to low-level users and dealers while going after the high level money men profiting from the trade. Unfortunately, a loud-mouthed presidential candidate accuses him of being soft on crime while pointing the finger at illegal immigration and Mexican government corruption, and Keller has to beware of right wingers in his own agency trying to sabotage him.
Then Keller gets evidence indicating that the candidate’s son-in-law is about to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in cartel money under the guise of a real estate deal, but just trying to investigate it will mean being smeared by the alt-right even as he fears that the cartels have just bought the White House. Meanwhile, there’s another vicious war for control of the drug trade going on in Mexico, and host of people like a small time junkie, an undercover cop, the son of a slain DEA agent, a young boy fleeing gang violence in his own country, and a retired hit man are all caught up in the chaos in various ways.
Don Winslow has been researching and writing about the Mexican drug trade for years now, and he’s got a lot to say about the ultimate futility of trying to stop it with cops. He’s also not shy about pointing out the hypocrisy of how America is the biggest customer of this trade while blaming other countries like Mexico for it. Winslow’s trilogy makes these social and political points while also delivering an epic crime tale with Art Keller at its center. These aren’t just entertaining books, they feel like important books.
Unfortunately, this one was a little hard for me to read because it all too accurately mirrors current events with the character of John Dennison, a liar/ racist/ fraud/ criminal/ asshole who somehow becomes president of the United States that was obviously created as a stand-in for the real thing. For the purposes of this book Winslow has shifted the dirty dealings from Russian oligarchs to Mexican drug lords, but honestly, if we found out that the orange shitbag had taken cartel money, would anyone really be surprised?
Since reality is such a bummer these days it made reading this even more depressing than the other books. It’s relevant and good, but it is tough to read a fictional version of America destroying itself in ways that are really happening....more
I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
Me in 2013: “I love John Sandford novels, but this Silken Prey seems a bit outlandishI received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
Me in 2013: “I love John Sandford novels, but this Silken Prey seems a bit outlandish. Could a rich person with a narcissistic personality disorder who engages in criminal behavior really hope to win an election to an important position in the US government? That seems highly unlikely.”
Me on Election Night 2016: “Why didn’t we heed John Sandford’s warning?!?”
Back in Silken Prey Lucas Davenport tangled with a crazy woman named Taryn Grant who was running for the Senate. She was capable of framing a rival for child pornography and then forming a conspiracy to commit murder to cover it all up. Since she was rich and this is America, (view spoiler)[ she got away with it. (hide spoiler)].
Now a rival of Grant’s is almost killed in a car accident which he is positive was an attempt to murder him, and Lucas Davenport is asked to check into the case. Davenport is off to D.C. and is quickly convinced that the accident was indeed a professional attempted hit. He suspects that Grant’s friends at a military contractor filled with ex-special forces members were responsible for it on her orders. Getting evidence on trained killers who know how to cover their tracks and are backed by a powerful rich woman with her eye on the White House won’t be easy though.
Despite the DC setting and Davenport facing off against a crew of bad ass ex-soldiers this all feels like pretty standard stuff for Sandford. Not that it’s a bad thing. Sandford at his worst can write circles around most of the thriller writers on the best seller list, and this has a lot of intriguing elements like figuring out how the bad guys could have rigged the car accident without leaving a trace. Davenport joined the US Marshals in the last book, and that change has enabled the series to do some interesting new stuff like this.
However, I think this one fell a little short of high potential in a few areas. For starters, even though this is set in DC and involves members of Congress it just doesn’t seem like the circus it would be. I also thought that Grant's response to being investigated would be more politically vicious and involve her trying to do more to smear Davenport in the media rather than going after him with more direct methods. It all just seems a little naïve and optimistic in that the system pretty much works and Davenport is free to investigate without having to worry about the press or the politics of it much at all.
And bear in mind that what I’m essentially saying here is the biggest problem with a plot that involves a member of the US Congress trying to assassinate a political rival and cover it up with the help of shady intelligence connections is that IT'S NOT CYNICAL ENOUGH!
Welcome to America 2018.
There’s a few other issues too, but most of them fall into the category of spoilers. (view spoiler)[ Grant really came across as a dangerous nut job in her first appearance, but she doesn’t seem to have the same evil energy here. Plus, it seems like a mistake that she and Lucas never come face-to-face. We’ve also seen the villains try to distract Davenport by going after his family or friends before so to have it happen yet again here seems kind of predictable. Again, I’d more expect Grant to use her political influence and media contacts to drop a world of hurt on Davenport as a way of neutralizing him rather than going to physical attacks against him and his wife as a first response. (hide spoiler)]
While I was a little let down by some of this it was still a solid page turner, and I very much enjoyed the ending which went a long way towards making me forget about some of my quibbles.
(I received a free copy of this from NetGalley in exchange for this review.)
I’ve read a lot of John Sandford novels so I was a little confused at firs(I received a free copy of this from NetGalley in exchange for this review.)
I’ve read a lot of John Sandford novels so I was a little confused at first when there wasn’t a serial killer on the spaceship.
In the year 2066 telescopes spot what can only be an alien ship near Saturn as it docks with a previously unknown object in orbit. The governments of the United States and China both want to get there first which leads to a rushed program to quickly put together ships capable of making the long journey. Political tension and potential sabotage make the voyage into space even more dangerous as crews from both nations race to Saturn.
Sandford (Real name John Camp.) regularly puts two new crime thrillers on the best seller’s list every year so it seems a little odd that he’d forgo one of them to team up with photo-artist Ctein to do a pure sci-fi novel. However, Sandford’s bio and his books have also highlighted his interest and knowledge of subjects like art, photography, archaeology, surgery, and computer technology so it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise that his mind might turn to this kind of book outside his normal genre.
There’s an authors’ note at the end in which they explain that the core of the idea was based on needing to get to Saturn in a certain time frame. From the details in that you can tell it was the focus of their thinking on how come up with some realistic near-future spaceship propulsion methods. By working up a couple of different ways to accomplish this they set up a kind of tortoise and the hare race between the Americans and Chinese which also helps set up the drama to the story. (The authors’ note also provides a very satisfactory answer as to why they decided to name the US ship after Richard Nixon.)
It also helps that Sandford has had a lot of practice at creating characters in familiar genre situations while still making them seem like real people who all work, bitch, commiserate, screw, take drugs, drink, scheme, and joke while risking their lives as part of a potentially disastrous contest with a rival nation to try and meet some aliens.
There are a few things here that make clear that Sandford’s not working on his usual turf. One of his strengths is writing scenes in which people have to act fast when things start going wrong, and generally his pacing is nearly flawless when it comes to building tension. However, the nature of this story requires a timeline in which months of boring traveling is involved, and while they do their best to use this downtime to set up story, build characters, develop the setting, and add humor, it just doesn’t have the sense of frantic momentum that Sandford can usually deliver except for a few scenes.
Plus, this is the only book of Sandford’s I’ve read which doesn’t focus on one single lead. While Sandy Darlington seems like he’s going to be the main character at first this actually turns into much more of an ensemble book, and that added to a sense that the story is drifting at times. I also question how much time and effort was spent describing the various cameras and the best way of using them, but that’s what happens when one of your authors is a photographer.
There’s also a slight letdown related to what they discover when they get to the alien object. It’s not a complete fumble, but it does show that Sandford and Ctein put more thought into how they’d get to Saturn rather than what the characters would find when they got there. (view spoiler)[While I thought the idea of the alien trading post managed by an AI was fairly clever, it really just existed to give the Chinese and Americans something to fight about on the way back to Earth. It was a bit disappointing that in a novel about people risking everything to make first contact that they essentially just end up getting an answering machine message. It gave me the impression that most of the creative juice was spent on propulsion systems and orbital mechanics which left me wishing that some of the same kind of care and effort was put into coming up with something equally well-thought out for an alien race. (hide spoiler)]
It’s still an entertaining read with some exciting fast paced parts, but those not interested in problems like how you vent excess heat from a spaceship engine might find it a bit dull at times.
3.64 stars.
(Also posted at Kemper's Book Blog. I also wrote a similar, but different, review for the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog for which I was paid after I had written and posted this.)...more
It’s amazing that a book called The Porkchoppers doesn’t have an ounce of fat.
Porkchopper is actually a slang term for a union official who is more inIt’s amazing that a book called The Porkchoppers doesn’t have an ounce of fat.
Porkchopper is actually a slang term for a union official who is more interested in helping himself than the labor he represents, and there’s a couple of them on display here. Don Cubbin is an aging president of a powerful national union who is facing a serious challenge in an upcoming election by his secretary-treasurer Sammy Hanks. Cubbin is an alcoholic who is bored with the job, and Hanks has a tendency to fly into tantrums that will literally have him pounding the floor and screaming gibberish. So neither one of them seems like the ideal guy to entrust with the livelihoods of thousands of workers.
Still, there’s big money and careers at stake so plenty of people have an interest in getting their guy elected. A wealthy glutton hires a fixer and his lackeys to make sure that Cubbin wins in the interest of continuity and stability. Hanks’ people are working overtime to steal the election in one critical city. Someone has even kicked things up to the next level by hiring a hitman to take out Cubbin.
I’ve got a soft spot for ‘70s sleaze, and it doesn’t get much sleazier than this story with a bunch of bagmen, fixers, and political tricksters working every angle they can think of to swing the election. There’s an enormous amount of money and influence involved so it’s no surprise that people are willing to play dirty, but the thing that makes it all so delightfully squalid is that it feels so cheap and small time at the same time. Even the hitman works at a grocery store as a produce manager as his day job.
Another factor that makes me love this story is that it’s just so well told. There’s a large cast of characters and Ross Thomas provides enough backstory and personality to make each one feel vivid and alive, and he accomplishes all that in a brief 216 pages. That’s writing tight enough to be used for a tourniquet.
This was published in 1972, the same year that the Watergate scandal was just beginning, but Ross Thomas was apparently ahead of the general public in knowing the kind of underhanded tactics can be used to great effect in a political campaign. It’s a look behind a stained curtain at what seedy people do to win, and I enjoyed all of its grimy glory. ...more
Even in a fictional book in which he’s supposed to be the hero Richard Nixon can't help but be an asshole.
The concept here is that when Nixon was an uEven in a fictional book in which he’s supposed to be the hero Richard Nixon can't help but be an asshole.
The concept here is that when Nixon was an underhanded congressman trying to prove that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy he inadvertently stumbled across a hidden occult world of Lovecratfian style horrors. This discovery and his ambition paves the way for him to become a reluctant KGB spy which in turn helps him become vice-president. He then learns that President Eisenhower has control of vast magical powers that he is using as part of a secret supernatural front of the Cold War as the Soviets try to harness these horrors to gain strategic advantages for themselves. As he moves through Eisenhower's administration to his own presidency Nixon becomes a pivotal figure in this underground war.
This book surprised me because I was thinking that it would be done in a tongue-in-cheek way that played off the idea of Richard Nixon being a hero after all, but in fact it’s the exact opposite. The portrayal of him here is still that of an insecure and bitter guy who seemed to lack the charisma and charm of a used car salesmen, but whose relentless drive and willingness to fight dirty enabled him to rise to power. This is more of a character study that just puts a supernatural coat of paint on the man rather than try to shine him up into something he wasn’t.
That’s an interesting way to go, to use this kind of a book to not tell us that what we knew about Nixon wasn’t wrong, it’s just that we didn’t know all of the story. Grossman is a good writer who actually manages to generate sympathy for Tricky Dick as he acknowledges his faults in his first person narration.
But that leaves me not sure what exactly the point of all this was. The idea that all these weird occult happenings have links embedded in the foundation of American government was interesting, and it seems like there was the potential for a good story there. However, we see this through Nixon’s eyes, and he doesn’t really know the full scope of what’s going on until late in the game. Since this is an outsider trying to look in telling us the story it seems like we’re only getting a glimpse of a secret history although some of the historical incidents have an interesting twist on them like the moon landing. It also feels like we don’t know the rules here because none of it is explained in detail as to what’s possible, and most of the book is spent with a confused Nixon trying to figure out what’s happening and never getting a great handle on it.
Essentially it just feels like the whole book was done to give us a supernatural excuse for the reasons behind Watergate. That might have made for an interesting short story, but by writing Nixon as Nixon with a few more secrets and not giving us a deep dive into the occult side of stuff, the book ends up feeling generally unsatisfying....more
I would like to have been in the room when Guy Gavriel Kay pitched this story to his publishers:
“It’s a historical fantasy novel based on the ByzantiI would like to have been in the room when Guy Gavriel Kay pitched this story to his publishers:
“It’s a historical fantasy novel based on the Byzantine Empire and the works of W.B. Yeats. The main character is an artist caught up in political schemes during a tumultuous time.”
“Uh….The Byzantine Empire and poems? And the hero isn’t any kind of an archer or a sorcerer? Some kind of bad ass like we usually see in these books?”
“No, he’s just a mosaicist. That’s a guy who glues bits of colored glass or tiles to walls or ceiling to create images.”
“Uh….that’s great, Guy. Why don’t you go write that up and maybe we’ll take a look at it right after we get through this pile of manuscripts featuring groups of swordsman, thieves, elves and magicians on heroic quests as they battle orcs and goblins.”
Set in the same world as The Lions of Al Rassan but several centuries earlier, Caius Crispus a/k/a Crispin is a talented mosaicist with a fiery temper who is still mourning the family he lost to plague. An Imperial Courier arrives bearing a summons from the emperor for his partner Martinian to come to the capital, Sarantium. Martinian claims that he’s too old to travel and insists that Crispin take his place instead. Crispin is reluctantly pushed into making the hazardous road journey, and soon finds himself being used as a pawn by powerful people.
Wait a second. If he travels by land rather than sea than why is the book called Sailing to Sarantium? Kay explains it like this:
"To say of a man that he was sailing to Sarantium was to say that his life was on the cusp of change: poised for emergent greatness, brilliance, fortune--or else at the very precipice of a final and absolute fall as he met something too vast for his capacity."
Ah, so that explains it…
This is the first book of Kay’s two-part Sarantine Mosaic, and as with the other one I recently read by him, The Lions of Al Rassan, he does a masterful job of building an intricate world full of political and religious conflicts as well as enough day-in-the-life details to make it all feel authentic and realistic. Having his lead character be a smart artist with a tendency of speaking his mind and putting him into the middle of a palace intrigue plot when he’s in over his head made for some interesting scenes that are different that the usual kind of hack-n-slash stuff you’d expect to be driving a story like this. There is just enough action and violence to make it feel dangerous and not just a bunch of people standing around talking, and Crispin’s journey as a way to get over his grief is a nice personal hook.
A couple of points kept this from getting to four stars. One of the things that set The Lions of Al Rassan apart from other fantasies was its lack of any kind of magic or supernatural elements other than one supporting character having some very limited telepathy and precognition. Here there is a full-blown alchemist who has created something that he gives to Crispin as a gift, and then there’s an encounter with a pagan entity. I was far more interested in Crispin navigating the political and religious mine fields of dealing with the Emperor’s court than any of these elements. (Obviously this was a personal preference, and I’m sure some readers will feel the exact opposite.)
Also, there are several strong female characters in positions of power here, and that’s to the book’s credit. However, after the third or four time that Crispin finds himself in the presence of one of these women and finds himself flabbergasted by their intellect and beauty, the conversations took on a rinse-and-repeat flavor. Essentially they have so much in common that they start feeling like the same character and that’s too bad because the first couple of interactions really worked well.
All in all I liked this but didn’t love it. I’d read it before but remembered little of the plot, and I can’t remember how it ends in the next book either so it obviously didn’t blow my mind. I’ll probably move on to Lord of Emperors again at some point, but I’m not in any great hurry....more
(I received a free copy of this book from New Pulp Press for this review.)
This book starts out with infidelity, murder, more murder and political/poli(I received a free copy of this book from New Pulp Press for this review.)
This book starts out with infidelity, murder, more murder and political/police corruption.
Then things really get dark.
Robert Dell is a white South African journalist who protested apartheid. He’s a liberal, a committed pacifist and married to a black woman. His father, Bobby Goodbread, proves that sometimes the apple falls a long way from the tree. Goodbread is an American who got up to all kinds of evil deeds as part of his job as a CIA agent fighting communism in various hot spots. He worked with the right-wing whites in South Africa to keep apartheid in place and liked to brag that it was his information that led to the capture of Nelson Mandela. As you would expect, the two have little to talk about.
Dell is framed for a horrible crime by Inja Mazibuko, a brutal enforcer for a high ranking government official. As he’s about to be transferred to a prison where he’ll almost certainly be killed Dell is rescued by his estranged father. With no other options, Dell reluctantly joins Goodbread on a mission of revenge.
Mazibuko has returned to a remote region that he runs like a warlord so that he can marry his fourth wife. Sunday is a young girl who has essentially been sold to Mazibuko, and the prospect is terrifying since she witnessed him murdering her family when she was a child. Her desperate attempt to seek help in the form of a fax to an old phone number lands on the desk of Disaster Zondi, a police officer who just saw his department gutted by corruption. Zondi is from the area and used to be part of the same crew as Mazibuko before changing his ways. He also knew Sunday’s mother, and he returns to his old stomping grounds for reasons he doesn’t fully understand.
The opening chapters of this made me think that his was going to be a fast-paced violent thrill ride, and while the pace is brisk and there’s no shortage of carnage, there’s a lot more going on in this book than just a story about people trying to kill each other in the wilds of Africa. The poverty stricken area here is a mix of Zulu tribal rituals and superstitions mixed with bits of the modern world like BMWs, cell phones and AK-47s.
The major characters are all extremely well developed, and Smith makes you completely understand them all from the liberal and educated Dell to the teenaged Sunday who has never used a modern bathroom. Zondi’s return to the place he grew up stirs mixed emotions about the boy he used to be and the man he became once he left. Goodbread is fascinating as an aging Cold Warrior who thought he was doing the right thing at the time. Particularly disturbing is Mazibuko whose is almost a force of nature in his ruthlessness, and he makes for one spectacularly evil villain.
Just when you think you know where the story is going, there’ll be a surprising but logical twist and nothing goes as expected. It’s not a happy read, but it’s an intriguing one.
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
It’s probably a bad idea for the US military to allow the troops overseas to get the news from back home. I have this fear that someday the service meIt’s probably a bad idea for the US military to allow the troops overseas to get the news from back home. I have this fear that someday the service men and women in places like Iraq and Afghanistan will finally snap after seeing the people they’ve pledged to defend are less interested in what they’re doing than TV reality shows and celebrity gossip. If the military ever decides that the pack of assholes back in America isn’t worth fighting and dying for, we could find all that hardware aiming back at us someday. I really wouldn’t blame them.
Billy Lynn is a young soldier who was serving in Iraq with Bravo squad. After Bravo got into a hellacious firefight with a band of insurgents that was captured on camera by an embedded Fox News crew, the members of Bravo become national heroes. To capitalize on their popularity, the Bush administration has Bravo brought back to the US and sent them on a ‘Victory Tour’ (Which just so happens to run through critical electoral states for the next election.) to drum up support for the war.
The Victory Tour culminates at a Thanksgiving Day pro football game at Texas Stadium in which Bravo is supposed to play a part in the half-time show. While Billy and the other Bravo members have been enjoying some of the perks of being heroes on tour, it also means putting up with the people who want to prove their support of the troops by fawning over them as well as being used as PR props by anyone with an agenda like the owner of the Cowboys.* Bravo would also like to sign a film deal before they have to deploy back to Iraq in a few days so they can at least get a nice payday for their efforts, but the producer they’re working with is having problems getting Hollywood interested in a war movie set in Iraq.
(*Ben Fountain avoids a lawsuit by creating a fictional asshole owner of the Cowboys instead of naming Jerry Jones, the actual asshole owner of the Cowboys.)
I started noting passages I wanted to quote in this review, but I hit a point where I was finding something on every page so I gave up on that plan. There was so much about this one that I loved, that I don’t really know where to start.
Young Billy Lynn is one of the best and most sympathetic characters I’ve read in a long while. He’s a 19-year-old virgin who can’t legally drink, but he’s gone to war and had more experience with death than most would have in a lifetime. Billy is nervous when dealing with the older, wealthier good old boys who want to glad-hand Bravo at the game, and he has a somewhat naive belief that there is someone wiser than him that can explain all the feelings that combat and the aftermath have stirred in him. However, he also has a grunt's hyper-awareness of hypocrisy and bullshit.
As Bravo endures a long day of being used as props for photo ops and a half-time show, Billy’s musings and observations about the people and events in the stadium showcase a society that will spend billions on sports but pays it’s soldiers a pittance while patting themselves on the back for the way they support the troops by offering them applause and trinkets before sending them back to war.
That’s a powerful point, but what makes this so great is that the message is delivered so deftly and without the heavy handed political left or right wing political manifesto that is part of almost any writing done about these kinds of subjects. It’s also funny and absolutely nails many things that are great and ridiculous about America.
It’s only March, but I think I may have an early winner for Best Book I Read This Year....more
On September 10, 2001, I was on an American Airlines flight to Puerto Rico for work. Flying home several days later was a vastly different experience On September 10, 2001, I was on an American Airlines flight to Puerto Rico for work. Flying home several days later was a vastly different experience from the plane ride there. I had a bunch of paperbacks I’d bought for the trip, and I finished one and got another one out of my bag. It was Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down. I didn’t much feel like reading about the deaths of American soldiers at that moment so I picked another one and only read that book months later. So there was a certain grim satisfaction and symmetry for me in reading Bowden’s account of the death of Osama Bin Laden.
Those who read Black Hawk Down and expecting a blow by blow account of the manhunt and the military operation are probably going to be disappointed because the classified nature of it only gives Bowden enough material for summaries that aren’t much deeper then the media accounts. Instead, Bowden focuses on how a decade of war had honed the US’s tactics to find and target al Qaeda’s leadership, and how President Obama came to the decision to use those abilities.
Bowden lays out how the US military and intelligence agencies had developed hardware like drones to gather data and then linked that sophisticated databases that make it seem like The Machine in the TV show Person of Interest isn’t that far fetched. Bowden credits this evolving system with the eventual decrease in insurgency attacks in Iraq as well as being a key tool that has severely hurt al Qaeda.
Perhaps what will surprise most readers is how willing President Obama has been to use these methods. Anyone who thinks that he’s some kind egghead liberal peacenik should probably reevaluate that stance because he’s personally authorized the use of this system to target and kill al Qaeda’s leadership at a rate four times that of President Bush. One gets the distinct impression that you don't want Obama deciding that you're a clear and present danger to the United States.
The story of how this process developed is interesting and fairly scary. (After reading Kill Decision and this, I’m worried that the evil robot apocalypse will soon be upon us.) Bowden does a nice job of laying out how the changing US tactics and increases in the use of highly experienced special forces groups like SEAL Team Six contributed to the decision to risk going into Pakistan after bin Laden when the intelligence that he was actually there was not certain.
However, while this story is intriguing, it also feels a bit like filler because Bowden didn’t have enough declassified material about the manhunt and final raid to fill out an entire book. There’s a telling lapse in which the courier who was the final link to bin Laden is discovered. Bowden describes how that courier’s alias had come up several times in various interrogations over the years, but he doesn’t know how the US ultimately tracked him down. Bowden notes that one analyst told him that story would make a book in itself so it’s frustrating to be left hanging. Plus, it seems entirely possible that bin Laden was actually discovered by someone ratting him out for the $25 million reward and that this talk of tracking the courier is a story to cover for whoever dropped a dime on him.
The story of the attack itself as Obama and several of his key advisors watched in real time via drone cameras is a vivid account, but again, there’s nothing there that hasn’t been reported already. Plus, since SEAL Team Six couldn't be identified or interviewed, Bowden has to stick with bland descriptions instead of sketching out some background to give us an idea of who they are or what they were thinking during the attack.*
*My library copy of the book included a loose card with a note from Bowden noting that a member of the SEAL team released a different account of bin Laden’s final moments after his book went to press, and that he’ll research and note it in later editions.
There’s some fascinating stuff here like how the US has adapted its methods over the course of the war on terror, and there’s a very nice account of how the plan came together as well as how President Obama arrived at the decision to risk the raid. We also get some insight into how bin Laden spent his last years isolated in hiding and increasingly seeming like Hitler in the bunker ordering phantom armies into battle. Still, this feels like a good magazine feature article that’s had a fair amount of filler added to pad it out since there weren’t enough classified details released yet to make it a thorough and definitive telling of the death of bin Laden....more
(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
Imagine an America where the wealthy people in power rule a system in which they are free to reap enormous profits through unregulated businesses whilImagine an America where the wealthy people in power rule a system in which they are free to reap enormous profits through unregulated businesses while every privilege that society can offer is given to them. These titans of capitalism underpay their employees for hard labor that lasts at least twelve hours a day in unsafe conditions with no overtime or benefits. If any of these workers dare complain, then the government will happily label them as dangerous socialist terrorists who threaten the American way of life and do anything within its power to crush any attempts to organize the labor.
Ah, it’s enough to make a right wing conservative weep with joy.
Danny Coughlin is a Boston patrolman at the end of World War I. Since his father is a legendary and politically connected police captain, it seems like Danny’s got a bright future ahead of him with the department. Danny’s father and some other power brokers offer him a chance to make detective by going undercover in various subversive groups including the social club of the Boston Police Department which is looking more and more like a union.
Danny doesn’t want to cause problems for his fellow police men who have been shafted by the city. Working a minimum of almost 80 hours a week at a wage below the poverty level and forced to pay for their own uniforms and equipment, the men of the BPD literally can’t feed their families but when their grievances are brought up, the men in charge insist that the cops are vital government personnel and therefore can’t strike so they can safely be told to go fuck themselves. When the men complain about this treatment, the politicians are shocked and insist that anybody who wants to make enough money to buy his kids some food is nothing but a damn Bolshevik. Danny eventually finds an actual danger to the public in the form of a bomb happy anarchist, but his superiors continue to be more concerned with those who might force change on the economic system.
Meanwhile, a black man named Luther Laurence, who is on the run following a messy incident with a local kingpin in Tulsa, is trying to lay low in Boston and ends up working for Danny’s family. Luther has a hard enough time just working around the racism that runs through all aspects of life, but things get worse when he runs afoul of a psychotic police crony of Danny’s father. Danny and Luther eventually strike up a friendship that defies the odds as they get caught up in the conflict between the old world and the changes being forced upon it.
Lehane’s books have often a crime oriented social component to it, and it seems like his time working for HBO’s The Wire encouraged him to add a depth and complexity to his work in this historical fiction. This is the story of a bygone era, but it seems familiar since the tactics employed by the powerful are still in use. One of their favorites is getting half of the working class to turn on itself by claiming that anyone who questions the fairness of the economic system is an American hating socialist as well as probably being a secret terrorist. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The only parts that really didn’t work for me were the interludes with Babe Ruth. It seems like Lehane was trying to point out some things regarding a common guy who could barely read becoming rich and famous as a city ripped itself apart while refusing to pay its police a living wage, but those segments just didn’t seem to sync up with the other action.
Still, it’s one of Lehane’s best and most ambitious books yet. ...more
As children we’re all told that there are no such thing as ghosts. However, when a former hitman for the IRA starts seeing the victims of his murders As children we’re all told that there are no such thing as ghosts. However, when a former hitman for the IRA starts seeing the victims of his murders and seeking revenge for them, it doesn’t much matter whether they’re real or not because if he decides that someone is responsible for their demise, that person will get a chance to investigate the after-life first hand in the very near future.
Gerry Fegan was once a feared and respected killer for the Irish cause, but while serving a long stretch in prison, he started seeing twelve ghosts of people that he killed at the command of others. After getting out of jail, Fegan turns into a hard drinking loner who avoids his old IRA pals. With peace at hand and his old bosses now part of the new government, there isn’t much demand for the services he used to provide any so they’re content to pay him off and let him drink himself into oblivion.
When the ghosts start indicating that they want Fegan to kill off the people who had ordered their deaths, Fegan obeys in an attempt to finally get some peace. However, in the politically delicate climate, the murders of powerful former IRA leaders kicks off a new wave of violence and could derail the peace process.
I enjoyed this as a dark story about the consequences of murder and how some men use causes to further their own agendas. While some of the internal government stuff went over my head, I could usually figure out what the major players were scheming about.
My only complaint was that I found the story of Fegan turning into an instant protector for a young mother and her daughter who has gotten on the bad side of the old IRA leadership as being too quick and easy a way to make Fegan the ‘good’ guy in this story. I would have been more intrigued if it would have just stuck with him being a broken and damaged guy taking a twisted kind of revenge on behalf of people that he killed himself. ...more
I never realized this before but when the machines finally become self-aware and Skynet launches its attack on humanity, I’ve got the perfect place toI never realized this before but when the machines finally become self-aware and Skynet launches its attack on humanity, I’ve got the perfect place to hole up nearby. So while you all are being enslaved by robots, I’ll be safe in SubTropolis with a lifetime supply of liquor and books. Don’t bother knocking. I won’t let you in, and I’ll just turn up the music to drown out your screams.
I knew from Daniel Suarez’s previous books, Daemon and Freedom (TM), that he gives good techno-thriller with some very cool ideas, and he continues that in this story where America’s use of remote controlled drones comes back to bite us in the ass when someone develops their own private air force of pilot-less aircraft and starts using them against targets on U.S. soil. Even scarier, these aren’t just remote controlled killing machines, someone is starting to use software and tech to allow them to act autonomously.
A shadowy special forces operative who leads a covert team and has a pair of trained ravens saves a female scientist who studies behavior patterns in ants when she’s targeted by the mysterious enemy. (Just go with it.) As they desperately try to track the increasingly sophisticated drones back to their source, a campaign is being mounted to scare the American public into drastic measures.
This could have been just sci-fi with a Tom Clancy twist, but Suarez does an exceptionally nice job of looking at what’s possible with today’s technology and then comes up with some terrifyingly plausible thoughts on what comes next. I also liked a sub-plot involving a couple of PR experts who use a variety of methods involving both mass and social media to herd the public into the direction they want it to go. (Enjoy this election year, my fellow cattle!)
While the characters are pretty much thriller archetypes, they’re relatable enough, and the action is fast and furious. If you’re looking for something that will make you think while getting your pulse rate up, this will fill the bill nicely....more
“I haven’t taken the time-mower out for a spin lately. I’ll just fire it up and ….Hey, who are you? How did you get in my garage? And why are you poin“I haven’t taken the time-mower out for a spin lately. I’ll just fire it up and ….Hey, who are you? How did you get in my garage? And why are you pointing that gun at me? If you need a weed-eater that bad, just take it.”
“Don’t play dumb with me, hag.”
“Hag? Why are you calling me a female witch?”
“You’re going to pretend that you belong in this timeline with your time machine sitting right there, hag?”
“Again with the hag? Look, my name is Kemper and this is my timeline. I’ve got a time-mower because of a freak accident involving a lightning strike fusing my laptop to my lawn mower.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, hag.”
“I can’t disagree with you there, but it’s true. I got his time machine by accident and sometimes I go traveling like a half-assed version of Doctor Who.”
“Hmmmmm.. My files are telling me that there is indeed a Kemper from this time in this area so I guess you’re not a hag after all.”
“Why are you acting like you've checked some files? You’re just standing there with a gun. And I‘m guessing you‘re a time traveler, too? And what’s with this ‘hag’ business? You can tell me because I think we’re part of the same club.”
“Very well. My name is Zed, but I’m operating under the name Troy Jones in this time. I’m from the future, and I’ve been sent back into the past by my government to prevent historical agitators, that we call ‘hags’, from changing events in our past.”
“Wow. So these hags are back here causing a bunch of trouble and you’re like some kind of time-cop that stops them?”
“Not exactly. You see, there are some dark times ahead for the world during a period we call the Great Conflagration.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like much fun. These hags cause it?”
“No, the hags are trying to stop it. I’m here to make sure it happens by killing the hags before they can change events.”
“Uh….you’re not really sounding like the good guy in this story, Zed.”
“The world does suffer mightily in the Great Conflagration, but eventually humanity rebuilds and forms the Perfect Present that I come from. We’ve eliminated war, hunger, racism and all the other problems that have caused conflicts in the past.”
“Damn, how did they manage that?”
“Mainly by wiping out the historical records. With no history, there are no old grudges of one group against another. Plus, all the different ethnic groups that you have today will eventually breed into one homogenous people.”
“If it’s so awesome in the Perfect Present, why do the hags come back to the past to destroy it?”
“They think of all the death and destruction as preventable with no regard as to what it would do to the future. So they’ll come back and try to stop an event like 9/11 because they think that saving those lives will somehow build a better future. Plus, they are delusional and think that our government is somehow restrictive.”
“And what are you doing in this timeline now?”
“I was in the Washington DC area. Events are occurring that are critical to the Great Conflagration. There’s a disgraced former CIA officer who now works for one of the private intelligence firms that have become so prevalent during America’s war on terror. He’s trying to help an Indonesian maid who is essentially a slave to a South Korean diplomat as well as use her to get intelligence. I’ve also met a young woman whose brother was recently killed in Iraq, and she is conflicted about spending her days as a lawyer for companies profiting from the war. All of these people seem to have some kind of role to play in events. However, I received a blow to the head while stopping a hag plot and the files and hardware loaded into me seem to be malfunctioning so I’m having a hard time sorting it out. There seems to be a great deal of confusion among these people about American society and the roles they play in it. Then I got a reading that someone was prepping a time machine of some kind so I came here.”
“Yeah, that was me.”
“Mr. Kemper, I must insist that you do nothing to stop the coming Great Conflagration.”
Oh, you don’t have to worry about me, Zed. I just like playing tourist in history. I got no interest in changing it. Thinking about that stuff gives me a headache. But now that you’ve told me all this, I think I’ve met some of these hags during my time travels.”
“You think you know of some hag activity? When and where did his happen?”
“It was London during the Blitz in World War II. I bumped into these three asshats….er.. I mean suspicious people who admitted to being time travelers from the future.”
“World War II is an era when the hags like to disrupt the timeline. This sounds like a real threat. I should check it out and deal with them immediately.”
“Yeah, you do that, Zed. They seemed pretty dangerous so you should probably just whack them as soon as you get the chance.”
“Thank you for your concern and the information. I hope your upcoming death in the Great Conflagration isn’t too painful.”
“Me too. Good luck.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Kemper.”
“Goodbye, Zed.”
Thank goodness, he’s gone. That guy was a crazy as a shithouse rat. Or at least I hope he was. This Great Conflagration sounds pretty grim. On the other hand, if he really was a time traveler, I might have just settled up with those three nitwits in London. That would almost be worth the destruction of society....more
Notorious prankster Richard Nixon and his wacky pals pull a practical joke on their political rivals. Hilarity ensues.
Watergate has been examined backNotorious prankster Richard Nixon and his wacky pals pull a practical joke on their political rivals. Hilarity ensues.
Watergate has been examined backwards and forwards, but Thomas Mallon attempts to put a new spin on it here by telling the story as historical fiction from the viewpoints of several people and examining the damage done to those involved or close to Nixon. Among the key players are E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent and author of spy thrillers who was one of the key planners of the break-in. Fred LaRue worked off-the-books for the president’s reelection campaign and becomes the bagman for pay-offs to try and keep everyone’s mouth shut. Elliot Richardson is a rising star in the Republican party who keeps getting promoted to high profile government jobs and who has his eye on eventually making it to the Oval Office.
Rosemary Woods is Nixon’s personal secretary and so fiercely loyal to her boss that she has a hard time controlling her anger towards anyone she feels has crossed him. Pat Nixon hopes to fade into the background during Nixon’s second term and is quietly pining for the lover she had to leave when Nixon ran for president in 1968. One of the most intriguing and funniest characters is the ancient daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, Alice Longworth. Washington players still have to pay tribute to her and fear her sharp tongue. She has a soft spot for Richard Nixon and watches the Watergate scandal play out with the critical eye of someone who knows how the game is played better than anyone. And there’s Nixon himself who swings between self-pity and anger as presidency is consumed by the scandal.
One of the big questions that’s always hung over the break-in is why they did it in the first place. Nixon was crushing McGovern in the polls and everyone knew that the Republicans would cruise to victory. (I think it’s because Nixon and his group of rat fuckers were so used to conducting their business this way that it didn’t occur to them that it wasn’t necessary and a stupid risk.) The twist here is that the characters don’t really know themselves, and when Mallon provides a fictional answer, it’s more of a comedy of errors than a vast conspiracy. A lot of the reasons for why things happened are mundane enough to seem plausible like the way Mallon provides a simple excuse for the infamous 18 minute gap on one of the Oval Office tapes.
All in all, it was a well written and interesting take on the scandal, and I learned some bits of trivia. (It’s crazy how many of the people involved actually lived at Watergate like Rosemary Woods and Fred LaRue.) However, by trying to portray the break-in as being caused by an odd set of circumstances, it almost seems to be trying to excuse Nixon for it. Even if Watergate was the result of some kind of mixed signals, it was still possible because the likes of Gordon Liddy had been working for the White House and cooking up a variety of dirty tricks that all the top dogs, including Nixon, encouraged.
While Mallon came up with some interesting causes for events, he never delves into why so many people were so loyal to a charm-impaired paranoid power-grubber like Richard Nixon, and in a story that explores the psychology of Watergate that feels like a fairly big oversight....more
Read it quick before North Korea decides you can't.
If I wasn’t glad that Kim Jong Il is dead before reading this book, I certainly am now.
Pak Jun Do nRead it quick before North Korea decides you can't.
If I wasn’t glad that Kim Jong Il is dead before reading this book, I certainly am now.
Pak Jun Do never knew his mother and is raised in the orphanage his father runs. Because of this, he is constantly mistaken for an orphan for the rest of his life. Eventually Jun Do winds up as one of the tunnel fighters who work in secret passages under the DMZ into South Korea, but he’s recruited to be part of a team that goes out in boats and snatches random citizens from Japanese or South Korean beaches. From there he goes to being a radio operator on fishing boat where an elaborate lie the crew is forced to cook up to save their skins turns him into an unlikely national hero and gets put on a delegation going to Texas to visit an American senator. Eventually Jun Do’s fortunes take an odd turn that will eventually bring him face to face with the greatest actress in the world (According to North Korean propaganda.) Sun-moon, and The Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.
Propaganda plays a big part in this story. That fits since this is a country where the leader supposedly shot the lowest round of golf in history the first time he played and where the citizens are expected to proclaim North Korea is the greatest nation on earth even as they’re starving to death or being sent to prison mines. One of the pieces I liked most was how much of the second half is told to us via third person narration and then we get the North Korean loud speaker version of what occurred.
I also liked the character of Jun Do quite a bit. From the beginning, he’s a guy who finds himself constantly trying to survive by doing terrible things while saying that he has no choice, but he still finds himself sucked into more and more trouble.
Unfortunately, I didn’t buy the developments with the actress Sun-moon or the wilder plot twists late in the book. Another character, an interrogation expert, gets involved, but his first person narration didn’t do much for me. I would have preferred more stuff with Kim Jong Il because those scenes were alternately hilarious and terrifying.
There was a lot to like here, but in the end I felt it was too drawn out, and the author got too cute for his own good in places. And one part really bugged me. (view spoiler)[ The wife of the American senator who has shown incredible warmth and intelligence to Jun Do on his visit to Texas insists that he take one of her puppies back to North Korea. Why would any dog lover think that sending one to goddamn North Korea of all places is a good idea? (hide spoiler)]
It’s one of those books that will make almost anyone appreciate what they have, though. Like now I’m grateful that I live far from any beaches or national borders so that I don’t have to worry about being snatched by one of those secret Canadian kidnapping teams. ...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
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