What to read this summer?

OK, so summer's almost over, but David Ignatius of the Washington Post asked that question of the readers and got a bunch of good answers, some that surprise me, and a couple I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.

Here's the Q&A, take a look! (Free Registration may be required)


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The Active Roster as of 16 August 2006

NEW ADDITIONS TO THE LIST

A Woman of Egypt
By: Jehan el Sadat
Publisher: Pocket (15 July 1990)
ISBN: 0671729969

The widow of former Egyptian Presiden Anwar Sadat wrote a compelling auto-biography detailing her life before, with, and after Sadat’s assassination. She is a strong, assertive woman and an advocate for women’s rights in Egypt and the greater Middle East. I read this book years ago and just swiped it off my dad’s shelves during my weekend visit in order to check it out again. I remember it being a moving and inspirational story. I’m not generally into those, so I’m not sure why I remember it so fondly, but I do.


Elementary Logic Revised Edition
By: Willard Van Orman Quine
Publisher: Harvard University Press (16 February 2005)
ISBN: 0674244516

The opposite of the “Introduction to Epistemology” below, this one jumps into excruciatingly complex language right off the bat, and the author seems to delight in using obscure or proaisic examples, further complicating the matter.

It is a book • It is educational • (I am reading slowly • I am reading the book)
~ I have complaints
~ (~ it is confusing • ~ it is fun)

I probably screwed that up, but I’m trying here!

STILL READING SINCE LAST TIME

The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism
By: Hernando de Soto and June Abbott

Still going strong on this one.


Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction
By: Robert Audi

Slower going lately as I haven’t been reliably doing my morning reading.

Technorati Tags: Book reviews Sparky reading A Woman of Egypt Jehan Sadat Egypt Epistemology reading Hernando de Soto

(the general and) THE JAGUAR

The General and The Jaguar
By: Eileen Welsome
Publisher: Little, Brown (2 June 2006)
ISBN: 0316715999


I finished this one up over the weekend, in much less time than I thought it would take. This entertaining history is quite a fast read, which can be good and/or bad. My straight up recommendation is to give this book a shot if you spot it at the store: if you’re a reader you can power through it on a trans-Atlantic flight or a weekend on the beach. Even if you don’t have much time, it’ll only take a week or so to digest if you can find an hour a day for it. Either way you’ll have fun and learn about a little known slice of American history, one that contains some intriguing parallels to what’s happening today in the world.

Eileen Welsome has the knack for turning history into a story, which is a good thing. She does this by introducing you to the figures involved, major and minor, through their own words from letters, diaries, interviews, books and such, which is a good thing. She avoids speculating about motives for the most part, and doesn’t give in to the urge to put thoughts in their heads or words in their mouths, which is a good thing. She goes into details of key events, never neglecting to include temporal and event context, which is good. She gives the story a broader context to play in as well, occasionally discussing the build up to the First War To End All Wars in Europe, which is both useful and good. In the end, Ms. Welsome has published a history both cogent and timely (I love that phrase), both educational and rather entertaining, which is obviously all to the good.

On the other hand…

Ms. Welsome devotes so much effort to introducing all the various personalities present in Columbus, NM before and during Pancho Villa’s inflammatory raid that a reader will rapidly be piled under the names of hotel guests, farmers, store owners, and cavalry officers, which is not a good thing. She gives us just enough backstory and follow-up on each of the personalities that I, for one, started to get interested in a number of them, but few receive the in-depth coverage I hoped to see given their introductions, which was not so good. She goes into great detail about environmental/social/political situations in camps, in town, in Mexico, for the Army, for Villa, but only once in a while, giving shapshots and not an evolving picture, which is not good. Overall she is prone to giving great detail about people, places, events, and environments at random times, then returning to her surface level story-telling for stretches, making for a very uneven understanding on the part of the reader, which is far from satisfying.

I would have liked to see less personal detail in some places, particularly with regards to victims of the raid and other bit players, in favor of more attention to the primary figures. Woodrow Wilson is a distant figure, but one who plays heavily in what happens. General Pershing doesn’t even appear until halfway through the book, despite his titular credit and photo on the dust jacket. Pancho Villa receives a romantic treatment in many ways (though Ms. Welsome does not shy away from reporting his dark side honestly and objectively) and is quite obviously the focus of the book. Her coverage of him, his actions and his impact on Mexico is comprhensive and should be duplicated for Pershing, at the very least.

The biggest gap, in my mind, is the post-Villa wrap-up. I didn’t get a feel for how this episode impacted the US or Mexico in the longer run (if it did). Ms. Welsome includes a “What Happened To Them?” section about many of the characters and the town of Columbus, a nice touch, but it is a very limited picture indeed.

In the end, this book suffers from a lack of depth but, to be honest, that lack is far from fatal. The book is eminently readable, objective, and focused. Would I like more from it? Sure. Am I fair in that request? Not entirely. Would I recommend it despite my personal irritation? Absolutely.

Technorati Tags: Book reviews Sparky reading The General and the Jaguar Eileen Welsome Bill and Olga Witting Pancho Villa

Away from home

I'm up in NoVA to see my Dad and Olga off to the airport this afternoon.

In the meantime I finished up The General and The Jaguar on Saturday. General Pershing made his first appearance on page 164, just fyi. Look for more on this one later, and I'll try to figure out what to add to the Active Roster while I'm driving home this afternoon.

Editorial Cartoon Redux

Seems like I'm not the only one lamenting the lack of originality in editorial cartoons. Rex Babin of the Sacramento Bee went ahead and turned his sketch pad on his fellow artists a couple of days ago. Way to go, Rex!

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What's On Tap?

I'm in a bit of a lull right now. I don't want to go through all of my favorite older books right off the bat, so I'm saving most of those for when work gets hectic and interferes with my reading outside of the restroom. I'll try and resist putting up any more books I've actually read before, at least for a week or so. Until then, I've got three going right now; two from the Big Shipment and one a gift:

The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism
By: Hernando de Soto and June Abbott

The book that essentially ruined the Shining Path guerillas. Hernando de Soto (the economist, not the explorer) and the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) in Lima essentially transformed the country over the period of 20 years solely through ideas and policy. I'm about 70 pages into this updated edition of the original and am learning more than I ever thought I'd want to know about legal and extralegal property rights in urban Perú. The strange thing is that this book has uncovered in me a heretofore concealed interest in Peruvian real-estate practices and policies. I know, I'm as surprised as you are, but I'm making the most of it! Anyway, I haven't gotten too far into the meat of the thing yet, but it's my primary focus right now and is sitting on my bedside table except when it's sitting on my porch with a beer.


The General And The Jaguar
By: Eileen Welsome

My father, step-mom and grandmother gave me this book when they braved I-95 and visited me a couple of weeks ago. I do have the best families ever: I haven't gotten a lousy gift pretty much since I learned to read (thanks, Dad and Olga!). The basic subject of the book is supposed to be the General Pershing vs. Pancho Villa campaigns. I'm about 50 pages in and General Pershing has yet to make an appearance, but I'm learning a lot about Mexican history between 1900 and 1914. I actually get confused and think I'm reading The Other Path occasionally when I'm in this one as the root causes of the series of Mexican Revolutions in the early 20th Century closely mirror the issues in Perú covered by Mr. de Soto (is that proper? Anyone familiar with Spanish language naming and reference conventions, please let me know how to refer to him in that context). Ms. Welsome, an accomplished historienne, has put together a very readable and entertaining story so far and I'm enjoying it. The General and The Jaguar lives in my car right now, and I read it over lunch, during work breaks, while I'm stuck in the Midtown Tunnel, and whenever I go out these days. This book has a great cover, so google it (or click on the link) and take a look.

Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction
By: Robert Audi

The problem I have with "An Introduction to XXXXX" books is that they always try to present the subject in the most accessible vocabulary possible. That's nice if you're writing a book for popular consumption, but no one can possibly believe that the populace is suddenly going to discover a craving for Epistemology. I'm going to have to use the Greek language vocabulary eventually, and reading a whole book that avoids the Greek as much as possible, well, that's just confusing. I'm going to have to create my own definition list I guess. This is rather dense, at least at the start, and the author is patiently beating every introductory idea into the reader's head with a dead horse, so I'm making slow progress (20 pages or so?). I've taken to reading this between about 0530 hrs and 0630 when I stop to get ready for work. For some reason I'm more patient (or less willing to expend the energy needed to be frustrated) first thing in the morning. I'm taking notes in the book [gasp!] and have to re-sharpen my pencil entirely too often.

Technorati Tags: Book reviews Epistemology Sparky reading The General and the Jaguar Hernando de Soto Eileen Welsome Bill and Olga Witting Pancho Villa

A week for Larry McMurtry and the Lonesome Dove series

Lonesome Dove
Publisher: Pocket (December 15, 1988)
ISBN: 067168390X

Streets of Laredo
Publisher: Pocket (November 1, 1995)
ISBN: 0671537466

Dead Man's Walk
Publisher: Pocket (June 1, 1996)
ISBN: 0671001167

Comanche Moon
Publisher: Pocket (June 1, 1998)
ISBN: 0671020641

(The series is presented in order of publication above. The chronological order of the narrative is: Dead Man's Walk, Comanche Moon, Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo. I am undecided as to the proper order to read them in, but more on that below.)


Larry McMurtry is a mainstay of modern American literature, author of a half-dozen classics. A number of his books have been turned into highly successful films (The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, among others), Lonesome Dove won him a Pulitzer Prize and turned into a TV miniseries starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones (winning 6 Emmys), and he himself won an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award as the co-writer of the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. I regard the four-book Lonesome Dove series as just about his best work, and include it as a series among the best novels I’ve ever read, irrespective of genre. Ignore the fact that they are historical novels set in the American West during the second half of the 19th Century as you don’t need to be a fan of Westerns to love these books (though I am a fan of Westerns, for the record).

I picked up fresh (used) copies of Lonesome Dove, as well as Comanche Moon and Streets of Laredo in my book buying binge 10 days ago and read the series in chronological order for the first time; I’d read the four novels in order of publication the first time through. It had been years since I’d read them all. I had the feeling that I was reading something fresh, but at the same time I was encountering old friends again. The series totals about 2,800 pages but I burned through them in about six days, staying up late, reading on the beach, and getting my house guest for the weekend hooked on Burnout: Revenge so I could read while he blew up cars for a few hours on Saturday afternoon in lieu of a nap. I was, in a word, happy.

I’m not going to get into the plot hardly at all. The story is important and beautifully told, but it is the characters, the setting, and the tone that make this series destined to become a classic. McMurtry follows two primary characters (Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call) and a host of secondary characters of varying importance and staying power through about 50 years of life. You’ll find love and gunfights, cowboys and Indians, heroes and villains, school marms and whores, deaths and births, humor and tears sufficient to satisfy any reader. Don’t confuse these books with your John Wayne movies, though (disclaimer: I love John Wayne movies), or with Louis L’Amour’s countless stories and novels (disclaimer: I love Louis L’Amour’s stories and novels): McMurtry has a style all his own.

In your traditional Westerns, be they books or movies, you follow the story of archetypes: white hats and black hats, spirited young ladies, evil ranchers, defenseless townspeople, all set against a stunning backdrop of Western countryside. Even the “shades of grey” examples (such as Unforgiven, The Searchers, or The Magnificent Seven né Shichinin no Samurai), still focus on the traditional ‘big picture’ elements of the traditional Western: honor, duty, love, hate, doing “what needs to be done”, and self-reliance. Clint Eastwood strives against a failing body and declining skills, but he faces a prototypical foe with the help of the doomed comrade and goofy youngster. John Wayne goes out to rescue his niece under the cloud of his blatant racism against Indians and the complex issues involved, but the story elements are fairly standard for a John Ford masterpiece. The Magnificent Seven defend a small town from evil banditos and go from fighting for money to fighting for a cause, men with checkered backgrounds getting a final chance to balance the books, but it’s still a bunch of cowboys fighting Mexican bandits and winning the girl in the end. I want to reiterate that I love that genre, and think that “traditional” Westerns are a valuable source of ideas and entertainment. The contrast with them, though, it what makes the Lonesome Dove series so stunning.

In one of the few commonalities with the rest of the genre, McMurtry describes the Great Plains and Texas with passion and accuracy, giving you broad sweeping horizons and the smallest details in turn. He respects the land and loves the land, but makes sure to show that it can be ugly as well as beautiful, deadly as well as fertile. A good Western includes the West as a primary character, and these books are good Westerns.

The unique part of the Lonesome Dove series is the descriptions and characters. Rarely is one moved by any of the “big picture” ideals above, and rarely does McMurtry touch on them specifically. Characters spend more time talking about the behavior and personality of pigs, for example, than they do discussing honor and duty. Honor is not really an issue, and duty is either taken for granted or shirked, depending on the character and situation. McMurtry takes us inside the heads of countless individuals, giving each a distinct flavor and thought process. It’s this that makes the series so good, and the books superior by far to a screen interpretation. You learn so much about the folks in the story: mostly uneducated, some Indians, some Mexican, some white. There are rich and poor, bold and meek (and most trend closer to meek), young and old, and each one’s thoughts and actions are a result of their situation and background. The conflicts between individuals and groups are so obvious and even predictable in a tragic way once McMurtry lets you inside their minds for a few minutes. I wish I could better describe how unique the experience is, but you’ll just have to see for yourself.

Characters come and go, in part because McMurtry shows no hesitation in killing them off (regardles of whether they are large or small), but you get to know them all as much as they deserve. The bitter, difficult life on the frontier gets driven home time after time with hard-fought victories that don’t matter much at all in the grand scheme of things, people who die due to the smallest of mistakes, or just bad luck. Animals are treated harshly (he documents the retreat and disappearance of the buffalo through the novels, so gently you hardly notice), as they were out there. The Indians are portrayed as noble savages or as barbarians at the gate: they are treated as individuals, just like all the other characters. Their struggle for primacy and then just survival isn’t offered as a parable, or as a lesson, it just happens and you feel badly about it for a time. Don’t expect climactic battles and a stirring climax to the books, that’s not how they work or how life works. There are lots of battles and lots of climaxes, but in the end life goes on. The bad fades just like the good, sometimes tomorrow comes to you, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s always there for someone else.

The nearest equivalent series I’ve seen is probably the John Sandford Lucas Davenport series of detective novels. Both authors conjure up the gritty feel, the attention to detail, the day-to-day life emphasis, and the scorn for big picture ideals discussed above. McMurtry, though, is writing for a different audience and for a different reason, and far surpasses Sandford’s books in terms of objective quality. (Disclaimer: I love the Sandford Prey series and read them constantly)

In the end, I can’t recommend these novels highly enough. They rank alongside the works of Guy Gavriel Kay, Pat Conroy, and Robert Heinlein as the most complete, entertaining, thought- and emotion-provoking books I’ve had the pleasure to read. If you only read five novels a year, make these four of them.

As a final note, remember that the published order of books is different from the chronology of the series (see top). No matter what order you read in, you’ll find disconnects. I believe that Lonesome Dove (1st published, 3rd chronologically) was originally intended to stand alone, or just with Comanche Moon (2nd published, 4th and last chronologically). It is the source of most of the inconsistencies you’ll find (and there are a fair number, none major, most having to do with timing of events, but some that will irritate you for a bit as you go). At this point I’d say do it in chronological order, but bear in mind that the first that way, Dead Man’s Walk, is my least favorite of the bunch. I like it, but it doesn’t resonate with me as much as the others for some reason. The series is much like a wave: the shallower rise leading the way with Dead Man’s Walk, the building wall of energy and motion in Comanche Moon, the frothing, crashing and peaking of Lonesome Dove, and the surge and ebb of Streets of Laredo. No matter what order you read in, just read them and enjoy them. Authors like McMurtry are all too rare, and books like these are rarer still.

Technorati Tags: Books reviews Larry McMurtry Sparky reading Lonesome Dove

New books!

I'll be moving soon, so I tried to cut my book buying back because they're such a pain in the patootie to pack. My plan worked well for about six weeks until last Friday. Then, the dam just broke. Online retailers, the used book store, I just went into an orgy of book buying. 16 new books total. The ones I bought in person are now mostly read, but I'm very excited about the 10 coming by mail:


The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism
By: Hernando De Soto, June Abbott

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
By: Hernando De Soto

Elementary Logic: Revised Edition
By: W. V. Quine

Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction
By: Robert Audi

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology: Expanded Second Edition
By: Ayn Rand, et al

The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill
By: Jeremy Bentham

The Road since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993, with an Autobiographical Interview
By: Thomas S. Kuhn, et al

The Principles of Morals and Legislation
By: Jeremy Bentham

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
By: Thomas S. Kuhn

Conjectures and Refutations
By: Karl R. Popper

This is quite possible the best week ever for me mail-wise. I'm waiting on 10 books and my Washington Redskins Season Tickets. Whee!

Hmm, that picture looks familiar...

It's not just books at It's Fundamental! Here's a look at editorial cartoons for ya.

I'm a big fan of editorial cartoons. Tom Toles can reduce me to tears some mornings, and Herblock's passing almost did the same. My problem with them, as with so much of today's media, is that originality is sadly lacking. Here's a few examples:

-Fidel Castro gets sick, goes in for surgery and hands over power to his brother Raul who hasn't been seen since. Seems like great fodder for the cartoons, right? Absolutely! Tons of editorial cartoonists jumped on the opportunity. Here's the first bunch I spotted (all linked from Daryl Cagle's pro cartoonist emporium on MSNBC; one of my favorite places to visit):
Bill Day
Brookins
Wright
Ramirez
Bagley
Benson
Deering

Even a Bulgarian artist is chiming in:
Christo

Oooh, and here's a Canadian!
MacKay

That's 9 artists over two days. I'm sure there's no copy-catting going on, but isn't it a little weird that they could come up with only two ideas for how to represent this (there are more similar, some combining the two genres). The "US watching and waiting" theme is dull, but appropriate and timely. The other one, though, isn't even particularly meaningful. I mean, we know Mr. Castro is old. We know he's sick. We know he really can't keep going much longer. That's not an insightful thought on the situation, it's not a particularly meaningful approach to it, and it's certainly not unique. If I work in a field like that, I've gotta figure that the first two or three ideas that pop into my head are probably gonna be used other places. Most folks don't read many papers, so that's the justification for this appalling lack of originality I guess, but I must say: cartoonists, you disappoint me!

Thank goodness for Doug Marlette...


(For more examples of this unfortunate phenomenon, look at the number of "syringe puncturing bicyclist's tire" cartoons there are, or the "Hezbollah using Mel Gibson as weapon against Israeli troops" knee slappers)

Dying to Understand

Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
Robert A. Pape
Published by Random House, 2005
ISBN 1400063175 Hardcover
ISBN 0812973380 Paperback


This is another book that’s only been out a year or so, though the author did publish a monologue on the subject in 2003 in the American Political Science Review. Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago (Go Maroons!), has put together one of the most comprehensive studies of the causes of suicide terrorism. If you’ve ever uttered the phrase "They hate us for our freedoms!", "Islamofascists!" or anything along the lines of "They blow themselves up because they have nothing to live for!" then this book might do your slogan-embracing little mind some good. Here are a few of the teasers from the dust jacket, just to get you warmed up:

"FACT: Suicide terrorism is not primarily a product of Islamic fundamentalism.
FACT: The world’s leading practitioners of suicide terrorism as the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka – a secular, Marxist-Leninist group drawn from Hindu families.
FACT: Every suicide terrorist campaign has had a clear goal that is secular and political: to compel a modern democracy to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.
FACT: Al-Qaeda fits the above pattern.
FACT: Despite their rhetoric, democracies – including the United States – have routinely made concessions to suicide terrorists. Suicide terrorism is on the rise because terrorists have learned that it’s effective."

I was skeptical going in, but Prof. Pape makes a convincing case. He has had Chicago grad students combing reports the world over and compiling as much information about each and every suicide terrorist as is possible. Nowhere else have I seen a discussion of this topic backed by such comprehensive data. Even the respected experts on today’s terrorists such as Steve Sloan, Bruce Hoffman and Rohan Gunaratna, have not tackled the question of why suicide terrorism persists with such vigor and such resources. Prof. Sloan has spoken at length over the years about his desire for a comprehensive database of terrorism, and uses the question of how to design one as a standard puzzle for his classes. A terrorism database is far larger than a suicide terrorism database, but Prof. Pape and the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism have achieved at least a small part of Prof. Sloan's dream.

The book is broken down into three major parts. The first discusses the strategic logic of suicide terrorism. Here, Prof. Pape discusses the widely accepted premise that terrorism in general, and suicide terrorism specifically, are weapons used by the weak against the strong. He points out that suicide terrorism occurs in campaigns, not isolated incidents, and so the threat of continued suicide attacks is as effective a weapon as the attacks themselves. His second major point in this section, and the most relevant, is that suicide terrorism campaigns occur only against democracies, or reasonable facsimiles thereof. India, the US, Israel, modern Russia, France, terrorists have realized that autocratic states are not susceptible to the kinds of fears and pressures that democracies feel, and thus choose other methods to attack them (see the USSR in Afghanistan compared with the US/NATO in Afghanistan and democratic Russia in Chechnya). Finally, Prof. Pape offers proof that suicide terrorism pays. Those who use it tend to get what they want and, if they do not, they tend to abandon the tactic. [As a topical aside, I’m applying his thoughts to the current situation in Lebanon. Hezbollah was a regular user of suicide terrorists in the past, but have not chosen to go down that road (yet) in the current round of hostilities. Why? My take is that they are capable of damaging Israel using more conventional rockets and guerilla warfare; they feel that Israel is being led by emotion and the military, not democratic principles in this case, and they feel that Israel’s invasion of Southern Lebanon will result in Israel being perceived as the bad guy. Why spoil that through suicide terrorism?]

Moving on, Prof. Pape looks at the social logic of suicide terrorism. This section features in depth examinations of groups such as the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), the Tamil Tigers, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas. Each study is meticulously researched and emphasizes not just the group dynamics, but the operational context of each group. The most important part of Section II, though, is the thorough categorization and analysis of the common and dissimilar factors surrounding each suicide terrorist campaign. Prof. Pape determines that nationalism and "national liberation" from occupation perceived or real, are the wellsprings of suicide terrorism, rather than religion. Religion plays a role, but it is secondary to the nationalist side. He also shows that up until now, terrorist campaigns are not a "spiral" of death, as commonly portrayed by frustrated foreign ministers and media experts, but logical and linear military campaigns with specific motivations and goals. A corollary argument, again well documented, is that these groups (of all creeds) do not seek world domination, no matter what the PR says: they have mostly local goals.

Finally, Prof. Pape presents his data on the individual logic of suicide terrorism. He discusses suicide as a societal phenomenon, drawing heavily on Émile Durkheim’s seminal theories on the topic. He combines the accepted theories on individual logic for suicide with the data available on who suicide terrorists were and what motivated them to choose that course of action. The results are somewhat surprising: the majority of suicide terrorists were not maladjusted, depressed, fanatical teenaged loners, but rather people with a strong connection to their society, with secular and political motivations that fall firmly in the "altruistic" category of suicides. They tend to be from the middle class, in their 20s, and well educated. Hezbollah suicide bombers during the 1982-86 campaign, for example, were Christians or Communists/Socialists (and thus prone to atheism) 92% of the time, and only 8% Islamist. He shows his demographic data, broken out admirably by group, conflict and opponent, and finishes with a detailed look at three specific cases: Mohammed Atta from the Al-Qaeda attacks on 11 September 2001, a young woman named Dhanu of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and Saeed Hotari who blew up a Tel Aviv disco in June of 2001 at the behest of Hamas.

Professor Pape, in his recommendations, accepts that the United States is involved in the Middle East and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. He advocates combating suicide terrorism in two ways. The first is military and diplomatic action against existing terrorist groups, eliminating or marginalizing as many of their members as possible. The second recommendation is to prevent a new generation of terrorists from appearing by slowly reducing our contributions to the conditions that spawn them. This means withdrawing our military from the region as much as possible, particularly the very visible elements of the armed forces. We must encourage and support local solutions to the problems and work through alliances and proxies rather than directly. The question of Israel is one for which he has no concrete solution, though US support for Israel (our proxy occupation of Jerusalem) is a prime cause for terrorism in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In the end, this book seems to prove that terrorists, specifically suicide terrorists, are both more complex and more easily understood than most people like to believe. Politicians, the media, academics and the military take comfort in describing terrorists as being completely foreign, people we don’t understand and could never understand. As in all wars, we try to de-humanize our opponents. In reality, though, the groups studied are working for goals we can all associate with: freedom from oppression, freedom from foreign rule, and national identity. It is not particularly pleasant to realize that suicide bombers are not that different from any of us, but it is a realization that we must all come to if we are to have a hope of slipping out of the crosshairs of these groups. Criminals and murderers they may be, but while we can and must condemn their means, we must also accept that we can understand their goals, and perhaps even sympathize with their plight to a certain extent.

Puck Math

The Physics of Hockey
Alain Haché
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002
ISBN 0801870712


I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of a math geek. I’ll also admit that I’m a bit of a sports geek. One look at the URL you’re at now should confirm that. One brief visit to the parent site of this blog, WashingtonHockey, will confirm that I don’t have the slightest shame about combining the two interests either. If I spot a chance to include a bit of regression analysis, or some economic theory to a hockey story, well, my day is made. Imagine my excitement, then, when my lovely girlfriend’s father sends me a book as a gift. Getting any book is a treat, but when it’s got the words "Physics" and "Hockey" both in the title, well, I almost made an honest woman out of her just to show him my appreciation!

Since I’m being honest here, I’ll flat out say that if you don’t like either physics or hockey you’ll hate the book. If you like hockey but can’t tell sin θ from Sins of the Father, you’ll struggle (unless you’re a young, hockey playing Canadian male in which case you’ll be glad to know that your chance of making it to the NHL is about 1 in 6,000). If you like physics but can’t tell a check from a Slovak, it’ll be interesting but nothing spectacular (unless you’re a young, non-hockey playing Canadian male in which case you need to consider the odds of making an NHL-equivalent salary if you stick with physics as a career). If you like both, though, this is a treat, and this review is for you.

You know physics, and you know hockey, so you’ve got a good understanding of the shooting motion. The wind-up, the swing, the release, the curvature of the stick, that’s all familiar. This book, however, explains all the motions and interactions involved in the process and there’s more than you might think. The same goes for goalie positioning, skating, accuracy, checking, and player quality. You can see how the author determines that Ray Bourque’s window of opportunity for a goal on a slapper from just inside the blue line, through traffic, with a screened goalie in a partial butterfly was 0.3° (aperture from 70 feet using Δθx = 2arctan (Δx/2d) as the determining formula for horizontal margin of error). Speaking of the butterfly, Haché uses Felix Potvin and Patrick Roy to demonstrate why that particular stance is so popular, while choosing Marty Brodeur for reaction times. He explains salaries as a function of probability, not relative or absolute quality (though I’d like to see him address that now that we’ve got a cap). Bobby Hull is the model in the discussion of shot selection in the crease. Jaromir Jagr shows off his skating power. The list goes on and on and on.

This book lives on my bedside table, with occasional forays to the bathroom bookshelf. I don’t pick it up every day, or even every week, but I never go very long without re-reading a chapter. I don’t play hockey, but I love to apply this kind of knowledge of physics to day to day activities, be it carrying things or playing golf. If you’ve got a puck-crazy friend who did pretty well in high school physics, get ‘em this book, they really don’t need yet another collection of crazy quotes from the penalty box.

Note: I am disappointed that, with all the academic vigor and attention to mathematical accuracy the author devotes, he described Mark Recchi giving "110% at every shift." That’s blatantly impossible. Dale Hunter, sure, but Recchi never gave more than 102% when I’ve seen him…

My Battle Of Algiers is just that

My Battle Of Algiers: A Memoir
Ted Morgan
Published by Collins, 31 January 2006
ISBN 0060852240


I received a dated pre-release copy of Ted Morgan’s My Battle Of Algiers as a free bonus when I recently dropped $20.00 at the local used book store. Intrigued and delighted by a Free Bonus Book I picked it up and raced through it before even touching the other four in the bag; Mr. McMurtry’s westerns and Mr. Kierkegaard’s laboured prose could wait a few more days. I finished the 270-page work in little more than an afternoon on the beach; despite the serious subject matter and attention to detail the book never drags and never bogs down.

Mr. Morgan’s memoir starts with his reasons for publication (more on that preface later), followed by what I consider to be the most important part of the book from an American perspective: the Introduction. Titled “A Child’s History of Algeria”, it is actually a 25 page, concise, incisive, comprehensive introduction to colonial Algeria from a sometimes-French, sometimes-Algerian, sometimes-objective mix of perspectives that somehow never gets confusing. Skimming briefly through the centuries in a page or two, Mr. Morgan seems eager to run through the history, damn the context style, until 29 April, 1827 when the slap of a fly whisk against the cheek of French consul Pierre Duval brings him to a sudden halt. From this point on, Mr. Morgan dances through the following 130 years, briefly pulling key events, people and ideas out of the crowd of history for us to see, then turning to the next with hardly a pause, keeping the swirl of events intact without ever losing the beat. His pace slows as the situation grows ever more complex after the Second World War, eventually coming to a deliberate halt in October of 1956 when France hijacked a plane carrying four leaders of the rebellious Front de Libération Nationale (FLN – National Liberation Front of Algeria, the main rebel group in Algeria). Wistfully and with the air of fatalism pervading the memoir, Mr. Morgan sets aside his historian’s pen and turns to his own story. In his words, “It was at this point, in the fall of 1956, that Algeria entered my life.”

With the body of the memoir we see Mr. Morgan’s intentions in writing and publishing. He made it clear in the preface, but I’d forgotten those three pages halfway through the marvelous introduction. Mr. Morgan plainly sees parallels between the French colonial history in Algeria and the U.S. occupation of Iraq, between the FLN and the Iraqi resistence groups, between the brutal behavior of the French paras and Légion Étrangère, and the behavior of American and British Soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo. Make no mistake, this book is intended as a glimpse into the pit and seems to serve as a sort of confessional for the author (he beat a captive to death early in his tour while trying to get information). It is a protest and a warning, one man’s wake-up call to the reader. It was, unfortunately, not particularly successful in my case.

Mr. Morgan tells much of the story as a first-person account of life as a young French officer in the bleds of Algeria and the teeming streets of Algiers and the country collapses into chaos. He intersperses the narrative with occasional anecdotes, additional context, or brief paragraphs describing the greater impact of events. In this way he confines himself to an intensely personal account, and not one I find particularly convincing as a political lesson. He offers example after example of the brutality of the French troops, colons, and government while treating the FLN with kid gloves. I do not question the justice of the Algerian rebels, but jus ad bellum does not give either side a pass on jus in bello, nor does the lack of one justify the lack of the other. What struck me most vividly from his account is the casual brutality on both sides, the glimpses behind the scenes at some of the demonized and iconized figures of the conflict, and the view of Algiers as a city trying to carry on business as usual while engulfed in bitter, bloody strife. His personal experiences do not lend themselves to making wide-reaching geo-political judgements, but they do offer a rarely seen glimpse of the details, the day-to-day insanity of a city engulfed by guerilla warfare against a foreign occupier.

I recommend this book rather strongly, particularly for those who are sick and tired of big-picture coverage of Iraq and broad histories of prior wars. You will learn something, and you will enjoy doing so.

Mr. Morgan, né Sanche de Gramont, is a noted biographer and the only French citizen to win a Pulitzer (he took the name "Ted Morgan" later when he received his American citizenship). When drafted he returned to France from Worcester, MA where he worked as a fledgling journalist for the Worcester Telegram. Mr. Morgan went through the hierarchy of French military schooling, eventually receiving his 2nd Lieuenant’s bars and a billet in Algeria upon graduation in the fall of 1956.