Bob on Books Best of 2014

December 19, 2014December 19, 2014 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

This is the time of year when every review magazine (and blog!) releases its Best of 2014 book lists. Since I follow a number of these, I’ve seen many of these lists and gotten some interesting ideas of books to read for the future. One of the most amazing is a free download from Publishers Weekly with all their starred reviews for the year.

Most lists focus around books published in 2014 which makes sense for these outlets. Mine is a little different. I’m a reader first, and at best, an amateur book reviewer. I started writing reviews mostly to remember what was salient in the books I read, and I choose the books to read because of my own interests at the time. So my list includes both books published in the last year, and older books I’ve finally gotten around to reading which I think especially worthwhile to commend. So without further ado, here is the list, not in any particular order since I thought all outstanding. All of these are linked to my full reviews of the book.

1. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. This best-selling book argues that introverts are simply different, not inferior or superior but rather offering unique gifts to the world that arise from their temperament. Contradicting what I wrote above, this would probably be my “best” book of the year. She nails what it means to be an introvert without being whiny.

2. Journey Toward Justice, by Nicholas Wolterstorff. In short chapters Wolterstorff shares both his own ideas about justice and the personal encounters with victims of injustice in South Africa, Palestine, and the Honduras. And he contends that it was the personal encounters with those whose dignity was impaired and whose inherent rights were denied that informed his theory of justice centering around human dignity and inherent rights.

3. Destiny of the Republic, by Candice Millard. The author renders a fascinating account of the life, assassination attempt against, and subsequent death of James A Garfield, interwoven with sketches of his deluded assassin and benighted physician, James Bliss, whose methods introduced infection and probably were the real cause of Garfield’s death.

4. Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Spiritual Life, by Nancy Koester. Stowe did far more than just write Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She was a pioneer among women authors, the daughter and spouse of New School Calvinist pastors who moved away from these theological roots while not moving away from Christ, and contributed far more to the abolition of slavery than simply her novel. An outstanding biography.

5. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, by Samantha Power. From the story of Rafael Lemkin who gave us the word “genocide” to the tragedy of Rwanda, and our first real steps to intervene in the Balkans, Power tells a story of America’s studied avoidance for the most part, of using its power to prevent genocide, even while piously saying “never again” after the Holocaust.

6. Both-And: Living the Christ-Centered Life in an Either-Or World, by Rich Nathan with Insoo Kim. Pastors Nathan and Kim describe and narrate the vision of Vineyard Columbus to live as a both-and church that is both evangelical and charismatic, both united and racially diverse, both showing mercy and pursuing justice, and more. I chose this not simply because these were “home town favorites” but because they articulate a “Third Way” vision that transcends the polarities and divisiveness of our society.

7. To Change the World, by James Davison Hunter. Many organizations and movements in Christian circles have used the language of changing the world but have not been cognizant to the deeper dynamics of culture change nor its double-edged character. Hunter explores what is really involved in culture change and thinks Christians best achieve this through “faithful presence” throughout society.

8. Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri. This Pulitzer Prize winning collection of short stories by Bengali Indian Lahiri explores the intersection of traditional Bengali values with modernity, particularly in negotiating the immigrant experience. A number of the stories are set in Boston, where Lahiri was educated.

9. American Gods, Neil Gaiman. Shadow, a released prisoner gets caught up in a war between the old and new gods with which Gaiman populates the American landscape, and discovers his own identity in the process. This is something of a classic, but one that I think explores well the “gods” (idols?) of the American landscape.

10. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris. This is the first of a three volume biography on the life of Teddy Roosevelt, tracing his adventures from sickly childhood through young rancher, civil servant to the fateful day he learns he has become President at the death of McKinley. All of the volumes of this biography are a delight, but this one most of all in covering a period of Roosevelt’s life that is less familiar to most and which reveals his character in both its strengths and flaws.

These books afforded hours of good reading this year that amused, informed, and challenged me. I hope one or more of these might do the same for you. And if you missed these books when I first reviewed them, I’d encourage you to follow me either on WordPress or via emails delivered to your inbox whenever I post.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’s from Bob on Books!

Review: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

January 16, 2014January 16, 2014 / rtrube54 / 8 Comments

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

James A. Garfield is the president virtually no one knows. I didn’t and never visited his home when I lived in nearby Cleveland. Because of this book, I hope to make that pilgrimage and learn more about a figure who may have been the greatest president Ohio produced, had he lived through his term. Candace Millard’s account of Garfield’s life and death is that good.

This is not a full biography but she sketches the outline of his literal rise from a log cabin boyhood and the early loss of his father, to his presidency of what later became Hiram College, to his political career (he never sought office, including the presidency) and his brief presidency and his fight against corrupt political patronage.

She interweaves her account of Garfield’s life and sufferings with the story of his insane assassin, Charles Guiteau, and his benighted physician, Dr. D. Willard Bliss, whose refusal to use the antiseptic procedures introduced by Joseph Lister and his repeated probing of Garfield’s wound introduced the infections that killed him. Left alone, Garfield would probably have recovered. We also see the efforts of Alexander Graham Bell to perfect a device to detect the bullet’s location (he would have had Bliss permitted him to search the left side of Garfield’s body.

As she concludes the books she looks at the way Garfield’s death transformed American politics. In some ways, it re-united a country still suffering the divisions of the Civil War. It motivated a crusade against political corruption and the introduction of the Civil Service, led by Chester Arthur, a product of Roscoe Conkling’s political machine, whose life and presidency was turned around by the letters of a mysterious correspondent, Julia Sand, who urged him to heed his better angels.

All in all, even though the subject was somber, Millard’s deftly written account was an engaging read and sparked my interest to know more about President Garfield, described after death by a friend as “a man who loved to play croquet and romp with his boys upon his lawn at Mentor, who read Tennyson and Longfellow at fifty with as much enthusiastic pleasure as at twenty, who walked at evening with his arm around the neck of a friend in affectionate conversation, and whose sweet, sunny, loving nature not even twenty years of political strife could warp.”

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That’s Insane!

January 14, 2014 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

That was the conclusion most people reached in trying to figure out why Charles Guiteau assassinated President James A Garfield. I’ve been reading Candace Millard’s Destiny of the Republic, which is a fascinating and well-paced account of Guiteau’s assassination attempt upon James A Garfield and the botched medical care that resulted in his death. There is much in Guiteau’s life that seems to parallel many of the contemporary “shooters” who are also mentally unstable.

James A Garfield

Guiteau was know to be unstable by family, friends, and the Oneida community of which he was a part for some time. He was a frustrated job seeker with associates of Garfield who all recognized him as unstable and ultimately barred him from the White House. Family members who knew him sought to institutionalize him without success. Part of the trouble was that he was not only unstable–he was wily as well. He took up lodgings but left just ahead of the rent collector. He proposed fantastic business schemes and borrowed from friends but nothing paid out and no one got paid back.

Like some shooters, he had never before acted out violently. After his frustrations with job-seeking in the Garfield administration and seeing Garfield’s friendship with Secretary of State James Blaine, who he considered evil, he concluded that God was telling him that Garfield must be removed. Even still, he wrote letters to the Garfield administration, which might have been a tip off. Barred from the White House, he learned that Garfield was leaving Washington on a train, and ambushed him in the train station. (These were the days when presidents still walked unaccompanied by Secret Service, who only pursued counterfeiting, something they still do.)

Guiteau thought the would be rescued from prison by a grateful country. His case was one of the first to use an insanity defense, unsuccessfully. Awaiting a verdict, he planned a lecture tour. He reputedly danced on the way to the gallows and recited a poem he wrote, I am Going to the Lordy as he awaited hanging.

Charles J Guiteau

What Guiteau illustrates for me is that we have yet, 130 years later to figure out how to care for our mentally ill. He never sought help nor thought he was ill, and he was functional enough that no one else could institutionalize him. He was an unrecognized threat until after the fact. As a country, we are loathe to impair civil liberties short of a criminal act. And we have very few facilities to care for the mentally ill who need more than outpatient treatment. Several things I wonder about though:

1. For those who cannot function well in society and need some type of ongoing care, often they end up living on the streets, if there are no family able or willing to care for them. Can’t we do better than that. And if government can’t, I wonder if the churches and other religious institutions can provide some kind of group housing and compassionate care.

2. I do wonder if there is also some way to require those who refuse care to be subject to some form of electronic surveillance that would include an alert feature to all gun sellers that would disqualify them from purchasing weapons. Such could also be used for screening in public settings to alert those protecting movie stars, political figures, and school children from harm. The challenge would be that there needs to be some kind of due process even here–two unrelated people and a medical professional attesting to their instability, for example. This would still allow such persons to be at liberty in society if they refuse treatment, and yet provide some degree of protection to the public.

I can hear the protests to such an idea, and it feels “big brother-ish” to me as well. There would need to be strong protections against using such technology against a whole class of people (an ethnic or religious group, for example). Except the fact is, big brother is watching via NSA surveillance, traffic cams and other closed circuit TV systems, and we voluntarily have given Google, Amazon, and others massive amounts of our personal data. Could this not be used to provide some measure of protection to society and even to the person themselves. In some ways this seems as great and present a danger as those who would engaged in acts of terror.

3. Finally, we do need to find ways to provide treatment to those who seek it, including war veterans with brain injuries. There are still mysteries in treatment of these things, but what a tragedy when those who need help can’t receive what help is needed.