No comments about The Lost Days of Agatha Christie.

5 comments about Be Sweet: A Conditional Love Story.

1. This is a very intimate book written with a great deal of courage and self-questioning. Roy Blount Jr. lays this book out in a stream-of-consciousness style which makes for compelling reading. He keeps coming back to questioning the unsettling aspects of his relationship with his mother. Child abuse is an unjust and toxic experience for a child that creates chronic stress past childhood into adulthood; Blount does an outstanding job of showing this to be the case, in spite of his well-deserved great successes including development of character and wisdom.
   
   Nowadays, inappropriate communication/intimacy from parent to child is identified as enmeshment, a form of sexual-emotional child abuse. A mother who has experienced neglect and/or violated boundaries as a child can without compunction abuse her power with her own children demanding pity for all her life's woes and make them into her caretaker(s). Parents with less than sturdy personalities, possibly due to childhood damage, (esp. without treatment or at least acknowledgement of their inadequacies, awareness of the need to respect other's boundaries, etc.) can be invasive in a very unhealthy way and wholly inconsistent; there is no abiding gratitude for the caretaking by the child - unnatural caretaking and pity created by the needy parent in the plastic brain of a child that could have gone in infinite directions - at the root of it, created because of a sense of entitlement by the parent. Not surprisingly, self-absorbed parents also resent their children's growing autonomy and fear abandonment adding more inappropriate behavior as they grow away. Additionally, this type of parent is capable of projecting profound resentment and rage at their own children - redirected from their feelings about their childhood and/or their abuser. This is the complicated legacy of past abuse or mental instability morphing into other forms of less easily defined abuse that Blount writes about.
   
   His anger toward his mother's behavior was almost always overridden (with hesitation on several occasions he writes "I hate my mother") by pity for her, the curse of enmeshment abuse; his anger was fiercely directed at historical family members who may have abused his mother, but that history was shown to be unclear (perhaps even unlikely to the extent this mother dramatically described her purported abuse with relish to her own children) as well; in fact, the reader is left to wonder how much physical abuse actually took place of the mother when she was a child and whether it was mostly neglect and a personality which may have been unstable, maybe histrionic, and self-indulgence.
   
   It is always difficult to ascertain what is immaturity and narcissism versus what is damage done in childhood which impaired normal functioning and reactions - especially historically. This author seeks understanding of his mother, but solid facts, analyses, definitions and understanding are illusive. A lot of people are inadequate parents, in one way or another, avoiding the real work of "sucking it up" as an adult and not just passing on damage and incurring pain upon children which they have to deal with for a lifetime. This is where Roy Blount Jr. is, I believe, is passing along an important message with his story.
   
   There was, during the time period he is writing about -roughly the 1950s- a profound societal pity for women, which gave a greater sense of entitlement to women in the home behaving self-indulgently and feeling like it was "their time" and they were going to get "their due." (During this time, women would be on complete bedrest with full assistance of the baby for weeks after they gave birth to a child; nowadays they are discharged with the baby within in a day and back to full-time jobs in a week even if they are a single parent.)In addition, there was a lot of praise for women in any sort of community or church involvement. For some women this overwrought societal praise and pity fueled their narcissism and sense of entitlement that they could use the family however they wished. I haven't seen this documented but rather it is an observation. With women having more opportunity nowadays (and of course with birth control established), that deep societal pity is gone and - please forgive the generality here -it seems that there is less unquestioned inappropriate behavior, women behave more responsibily in the home. Women behaving as competently in professional jobs as men nowadays also has eliminated the idea that they were to be automatically pitied and protected because of their incredibly complex neurological and endocrine systems, (part of the physiological dialogue of the 50s). Also, the 50s were also a time where it was not uncommon for children to be berated for just being there as in "you damned kids"; a lot of parents felt entitled to resent and rage at their children. For the most part, children were not treated as individuals with rights during this time period; it was a parent-centered time. TV has changed a lot too as it brought models of appropriateness and questioning of behavior into homes; even passive viewers absorbed knowledge. Not surprisingly, a lot of parents were capable of behaving immaturely and selfishly, and nowadays we would define that as abuse and inadequate parenting.
   
   It is unarguable that on this mother's part there was a lack of the hard work of growing up, a lack of self discipline, a lack of respect for boundaries; in general, there was a lack of genuine empathy for what she was doing to those in the immediate family and seeking what she needed from her children instead of the other way around. Enmeshment takes energy from the child to parent; the child gets drained by and used for companionship, attention and love;in the process the child is abandoned.
   
   Blount's frankness about determining his main job in life to rid the family of its' multigenerational "legacy" of abuse was thoughtful and moving. It was a fairly raw account of a man (an extremely intelligent and articulate -well published- man in his mid-50s) still struggling with a form abuse less obvious but more likely to cripple him and his sister in relationships than a straightforward whack against the head, making them more likely to bring old resentments from childhood into adult relationships. He continues to detox from the chronic stress created by his childhood by going back and looking at what happened and seeks a way to deal with issues of injustice in some way besides resentment and recycling old anger.
   
   This idea that no matter what his successes were in this life that his main goal was to overcome the family legacy made for compelling reading. Writing it as he did, extensive humorous analyses typical of his other writing mixed with reflection upon successes and then intermittently coming back to disturbing elements of the parental -mother- relationship that could not be resolved, that there can never be closure to the experience of a toxic childhood, was just plain brilliant.



2. I was lucky enough to stumble across Roy Blount reading from this book in a Vermont bookstore. I bought it on the spot, telling him that it was the first one of his books that I had paid full price for. He thought this was pretty fun, the store employee sitting next to him didn't. This book is worth its full price.

   Be Sweet in no way sets out to "make fun of the mother-son relationship". I suppose because Blount is such an irreverent goof-ball on the radio and in print, it seems fair to have that preconception. However, Blount has always let us know that some things are sacred and after you get a short way into this book you realize that family is one of them. He desperately does not want to cast aspersions on his own mother's character, but he has to acknowledge that she did drive him to distraction throughout his life.

   There were several points in this book were Blount seems to be going off on a tangent. To be honest I began to wonder if he was just filling the space between the covers. Oh me of little faith! In the last third of the book I was progressively more amazed and impressed as I discovered that his seemingly unconnected threads were actually germane to the resolution of his mid-life psychic wrestling match with himself.

   Bill Bryson's recent A Walk In the Woods similarly surprised me. I don't expect journalists to write deeply personal prose. Roy Blount beats Bryson hands down as far as the psychological depths that are plumbed and illuminated. If the presentation of the psychological dimension of things bores you or insults your sense of decorum, then don't read this Roy Blount book. If you want to know what is going on in the head of middle aged white Southern guys of above average emotional honesty, then this is a pretty good place to start.




3. Having roared at Roy Blount's humor on the Garrison Keillor show, I really looked forward to reading his book making fun of the mother-son relationship so aptly caught up in the title, "Be Sweet". I was terribly disappointed and found him not only lacking in humor but exhibiting a real dislike for females altogether. It was a book I easily gave away to the second hand shop.



4. I was very surprised by this book on a number of levels. I've thought Blount's past works were funny, but also quite well thought out. Blount is never "funny" in the sense that Dave Berry is funny. There is no silliness about Blount; he is firmly grounded in reality.

   This work is very serious. It is his attempt to displell his "family curse." He explores his relationships with his parents, sister, and ex-wives. He speculates on the nature of humor and humorists.

   I thought the book was brilliant. It's like Blount is willing to talk about things that no one else will because doing so would sound stupid, but it's still what you want to say.

   An added bonus is Blount's voice. He is not a particularly elegant reader. But it is hard to imagine any other voice reading this work. I compare it to Jean Shepard, who also has the perfect voice for his own work.




5. By the end of this book, I knew for certain that it was worth reading although I had many doubts until then. Blount made me laugh and made me marvel at his skill, but he also bored me with his self-loathing and longueurs. The chapter on the troubles of men named after their fathers (juniors) was excruciatingly dull, and forgot to make mention of Hank Williams Junior, one of the most grandiose sufferers from this syndrome. Worse, Blount junior never really explained what made his mother so maddening. Nevertheless, he tells very well how he finally came to value what she (and his father) gave to him.

1 comments about Memories and Adventures: Library Edition.

1. First of all let me give you a product description as not much is provided with the item.The book is about 415 pages,a big,black leather covered one.It doesn't have a cover photogaph and looks like the library editions of the victoria era novels.As it is a reprint of the 1924 edition it does not contain the last chapter "up to date",which doyle added later to the revised edition of 1930.But as it was an "addition",i don't think it matters much ,and had any organic link to the original edition.The book is expensive,but it looks so gorgeous that it is almost an event,and therefore a collector's item.
   Doyle lived a life of many adventures and this book chronicles all of them.Although it hesitates sometimes as it goes back it is still a fascinating account of the great man's life, in his own words.It gives us the magical charm of being able to know about sherlock holmes from the mouth of his own creator.The various adventures of doyles life are described with the usual storyteller's skill.The humourous prose of doyle makes it an unforgettable experience.
   Every autobiography is in a way or other biased.The reader can read Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyleby daniel stashower,the best biography in my opinion,for a more modern approach.

3 comments about Resident Alien: The New York Diaries (Penguin Audiobooks).

1. You cannot help being interested in Mr Crisp. Very eccentric and funny and I agree with wanting to be as far away from the UK as possible.! Viva NY!



2. If you have read the book with Mr. Crisps droll, flat voice in your head....you can begin to imagine how much fun the audio version of this book is. His dry wit is very much in evidence here as he shares his unique perspective on life in the "smile and nod racket".

   I think this recording belongs in the Smithsonian Archives.




3. Crisp has done it again! Just when you think you're a maven on things-BOOM- he publishes his diaries! What a scandal, although I am sure some blue nosed puritan proofreader somewhere omitted some of the more "Corrupting evidence", Mr. Crisps personality and always charming style and wit still manage to rise above the parchment at every turn. This is an ideal "Holiday" gift for a freind to take along when on a long flight or travel to make the time seem to "Fly by", as it did for me when I enjoyed it the first time...My Word!,...I think I shall go and read it again now. Mr. Crisp is timeless and indefatigable... and like "Miss Jean Brodie", still in his "Prime"time! Kudo's once again and, Bravo, Mr. Crisp, You are "La Divine'" indeed!

5 comments about Battle Ready.

1. 
   I listened to it, rather than turning pages. The first half was more interesting than the
   second half, which is more politics than personal or military history. That is not to deny
   value to the later portion of the book. It was interesting to compare Zinni's adventures in
   Somalia to the account in "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures -- A True Story From
   Hell On Earth" by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thompson. They can both be true.
   
   Zinni wins my admiration for his patient determination to improve things, a unit or a nation.
   He shows the Somalia warlords as human. It was a disappointment that he took so long to see
   through Yasser Arafat.
   
   Zinni makes much of his "tell it like it is" attitude, and his interest in how to fight effectively.
   I was surprised that he did not mention the statue of John Boyd in the center of the lobby at
   Marine headquarters. Boyd was an Air Force fighter pilot, that taught how to fight effectively,
   and told unpopular truths. Amazon has several books about him.
   
   Zinni did not support the Iraq war. He claims plans for after the battles were won were not done,
   or not done well. Could be. He claims 300,000 troops were needed. I wish he had supplied details
   of that estimate, similar to the detailed plans for the evacuation from Somalia.
   
   This is not one of Clancy's best, but it is still pretty good. I recommend it to those interested
   in military history, whatever their opinions on the current Iraq situation.



2. Mr Clancy is one of the best military writers and he is typically on his game in this biography of Marine General Tony Zinni who eventually rose to CINC at CENTCOM, the command that has the heart of the middle east at its core. Clancy deftly switches back and forth between a first-person narrative of his subject and his own overviews of the history and background of each period, whether it be Vietnam or Somalia, Turkey or Pakistan. The only issue I have with Tom Clancy is italics. Everything told verbally by General Zinni is presented in italics so that a 440-page narrative probably contains about 220 pages of italics. If only Mr. Clancy would consult the Chicago Manual which states that italics should be used sparingly and never for more than a paragraph! Tom, I get a different voice in my head when I read the italics and I don't necessarily like that voice.



3. This book, co written with General Tony Zinni, tells of the methods, means, and the reasons for our military. The last part, when General Zinni pulls no punches, about our approach to war, foreign relations, and when to use and how to use the military [with the help of the civilian authority] to fight smarter battles and when to fight, is an excellent assessment of our current problems in the U.S.. His approach to fight in a "smarter" way, reflecting the new realities of war, e.g., terrorism, and an ever changing world, is the way it should be-and not to declare "victory", if that is the objective, on an aircraft carrier as a photo-op [his words], and to support the ideas that are right and to criticize the ideas that are wrong, even if they are "politically" incorrect. A first rate book.



4. While 'In to the storm' elaborate detail of one big battle, and 'Shadow warrior' tells many big events, this 'Battle ready' tells us every single experience of General Zinni from O-2, O-3, O-4, everything till retired from O-10. I think I will be bored but with his sense of humor, General Zinni brings all his tought without make this book boring. (e.g. the HANDCON and took a bus in 'Nam).
   I learn how military and diplomat works in peacemaker process.



5. In the summer of 1994, I attended a change-of-command ceremony at Camp Pendleton for the I Marine Expeditionary Force. A new 3-star was about to take command prematurely for someone of his seniority. He hadn't even been a division commander, a 2-star billet. The fast-tracking general was Tony Zinni and the rest of his career continued to rocket. Other reviewers have commented on every aspect of his book, including his lack of support for the invasion of Iraq, so I will focus on two parts that impressed me deeply. I do agree with several others that having Tom Clancy as a co-author was distracting and unnecessary. The alternating first and third-person narratives were uneven at times. Thus the 4-stars. But then again, "Battle Ready" is not a literary selection.
   
   The first part was Zinni's 1967 tour as an adviser (called "co van" for "trusted friend" with the Vietnamese Marine Corps). Many accounts have been published about Marines in Vietnam but only handful has come from advisers; the very best Marine officers were selected for advisory duty. Other "co vans" include Gens. Boomer, Hoar, and Myatt--on the Army side, McCaffrey, Powell and Schwarzkopf. All of these men experienced a different Vietnam War than those who fought in American units.
   
   Why is Zinni's advisory experience relevant now? Marine advisers are mentoring Iraqis, and they could only dream their counterparts fought like the South Vietnamese. There's no hubris in Zinni's observations. He understood the Americans' lack of cultural knowledge, including his own early on: "The advisers' job was not to give the Vietnamese Marines tactical advice (they had more fighting experience than most Americans, and it was their country...American commanders were all in a hurry. They wanted to end the war on their one-year tour of duty. Vietnamese [Marine] commanders realized they would be in it for the duration."
   
   The last chapter, Chapter Eight titled "The Calling," is a classic leadership primer-observations made over the distinguished 40-year career of Zinni, a Marine warrior, scholar and leader. As a former Marine, I found his last paragraph most touching: "I have been all over this globe and exposed to most of the cultures on it. I am fascinated by them. I love the diversity. I want to understand them and embrace them. I could never understand prejudice or rejection or the sense of superiority that drive the hatemongers of the world. I lived through a tumultuous period of our history when our own minorities broke from second-class citizenship into full participation in this wonderful dream we call America. I have been proud of their accomplishments and contributions. They have proven the bigots wrong and made our nation greater. I hope the dream we have struggled to realize can be extended to the rest of the planet."
   
   General, it was my privilege to serve under commanders like you. Semper fi!

5 comments about As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl.

1. Wow!!! What a read, my friend Phil was raised as a girl for the first 25 years of his life and even after so many therpists, years of counselling & several operations to re-correct "himself" he still feels more comfortable keeping his long hair and still deliberates whether he can ever make that leap and have his breast implants removed. I am so glad I have found this book, now Phil my friend I truly have an insight into what life has dealt you. I only wish I could give this book 6 stars.



2. David took his own life in 2004 at the age of 38. His twin brother died a couple of years before (maybe) also of a suicide. The story of David did not end well, as much as we hoped it would.



3. This was an interesting book in that it told the story of the tragic childhood of David Reimer in addition to summarizing the background of John Money's theoretical underpinnings of his belief in early childhood reconstructive surgery. The fact that Reimer's childhood was being described as a total success by John Money when in fact the reality of the situation was the exact opposite is pretty shocking. Amazing how unethical this guy was. Your archetypal mad scientist.



4. Anyone who looked through a serious book on sex and gender in the 1970s was bound to come across the landmark John/Joan case. It seemed to indicate that children's sense of their sex (i.e., whether they were boys or girls) was soft and malleable. Counterintuitive and Marxian as that sounds now, it was presented as enlightened, forward-looking thinking.
   
   By the time John Colapinto published his expose of the John/Joan case in Rolling Stone in 1997, the jig was already up. Intersex advocates were loudly complaining that they had been mutiliated and tinkered with. The weight of evidence now suggested that for most people, one's mental sex was as fixed at birth as one's physical form.
   
   This book expanded on the original article by naming the actual principals in the tale and describing John/Joan's long and grueling experience of being a Johns Hopkins guinea pig: the transcontinental trips to the doctor once or twice a year, the psychological bullying, the constant reminder that you are some sort of freak.
   
   The article and the book are both heavily biased against John Money, the eminent New Zealander who supervised the experiment, and suspiciously eager to believe any scurrilous tales that his colleagues might offer (e.g., that Money had sexual relations with some of his students; the implication is that this sort of behavior is transgressive to an extreme, seldom encountered among academics and sex researchers!). To which I say--well, whether John Money was good or evil, he accomplished his main objective, which was to push back the frontiers of ignorance about sexual identity. We can now feel fairly confident in saying that you cannot just change someone's sex, willy-nilly, and force the mind to go along. More pertinently, if a child who appears to be female insists that she/he is really a boy, that child should not be regarded as delusional.
   
   Overall, the basic narrative of the Reimer family is not credible, and this is the basic weakness of the book. After all those trips to Baltimore, and the crushing awareness that "she" was some sort of sexual freak, Brenda/David Reimer certainly had some inkling of the truth long before she was 13. At the very least, Brenda and her twin brother must have had many intimate chats while they were growing up; surely there were some wild but accurate guesses in there. And it is inconceivable that the Reimer parents would never have alluded to Brenda's "accident." They probably discussed openly it all the time when the twins were two or three, the same way grown-ups often undress in front of their toddlers, regarding them as no more impressionable or sentient than the kitty-cat.
   
   The death of both twins a few years ago (one by overdose, the other by suicide) suggests that the family dynamics were far more messed up than we knew. I got the idea (from the book) that the twins were seriously lacking in ambition, social skills, and other incentives to get on in life. This is disturbing for me to contemplate, since it makes me wonder if the John/Joan experiment might have had a different outcome in a happier, less dysfunctional family. Would Brenda have adapted better, perhaps as a tomboy? Would she have decided to remain a girl if she'd been happier socially, with more friends and an intellectually stimulating envrionment? Perhaps not. But the sad dynamics of the Reimer family are an annoying variable, making me sometimes wonder whether the John/Joan case teaches us anything useful.



5. Horrifying story of a little baby boy, who suffered, firstly, during a circumcision accident and then every day of his life as he is forced to live as a girl.
   The description of his treatment and the treatment of his brother at the hands of the supervising doctor is beyond horrific. To show small children pornography and to make them simular sex with each other just curdled my mind. And the total lack of listening to the patient is truely unbelievable that it was permitted for so long.
   The book is well written and a realy page turner. Your heart goes out to the boy and his family and you can't help but looking at the photos in the middle. Don't be afraid that the book may be too dry, it is written with the lay person in mind. Sympathetic to David and the choices his parents made in 1967.
   A must read and extremely thought provoking.

5 comments about JFK: Reckless Youth.

1. In the description of this book it says, "-a book that will astonish, entertain, and inform all those interesed in the life of America's thirty-sixth president." John F. Kennedy was the 35th president not the 36th. I was doing a report on JFK and when i saw this i decided i obviously should not use this book!



2. Excellent book...Still waiting for Mr. Hamilton to come out with his second volume. I highly recommend the movie starring Patrick Dempsey. Mr. Hamilton we are still waiting for volume 2...



3. Our fascination with JFK continues. Even now, there are still aspects of his life and career which remain hidden from public view.
   
   This book relies on meticulous research and avoids speculation. It acquaints us with a brutal and psychotically competitive family, an aloof and cold mother of too many children who accomodates her husband's self-centeredness by a peculiarly Catholic form of emotional abandonment. This remove, however, strikes her own children as collateral damage from her intended assault on her husband.
   
   A family of highly competitive people, with singular ambition. The theory is not hard to establish: the ambition is to attain mom's love (which is unattainable) and to impress dad.
   
   The story is archetypal of American in the mid-20th century. We achieved so much because of qualities of competition, ruthlessness and self-interest. We also learned to worship glamour and celebrity. Wasn't Kennedy the best-looking president by far?
   
   I never understood him better than after reading this book. I also believe that he was addicted to sex, and that we knew way too little about how to treat that addiction back then.



4. Anyone who truly loves John Kennedy (as I do) owes it to themselves to delve deeper into the formation of the character of this fabulously flawed human being. Nigel Hamilton's minutely-detailed "JFK: Reckless Youth," which recounts Kennedy's early through his first run for Congress, is one helluva place to start.
   
   The myth of Camelot has suffered death by a thousand cuts -- shredded by the disclosure of presidential affairs, murder plots and political machinations. But while other celebrities have generated renewed interest and sympathy by openly airing dirt and scandal, the Kennedys have endlessly recycled the Camelot myth of the heroic young president slain before his time. Hamilton's book is the antidote to this pious tripe, serving up a John Kennedy fighting against (and sometimes embracing) forces that should have destroyed him. Young John Kennedy suffered from a mystery ailment that landed him in the hospital countless times. He courted disaster and scandal with a string of amours. He chose to fight the Japanese on a "plywood coffin" known as a PT boat rather than sit out the war in a safer place. He was saddled with a father whose pre-WWII appeasement policies undercut the national interest. Kennedy, from a young age, was one familiar with the knife's edge between life and death, learning to skate the blade with grace and aplomb. Hamilton exhaustively chronicles these episodes using interview material and an extraordinary trove of personal letters to and from Kennedy himself.
   
   It's a shame that the Kennedy family blocked Hamilton's access to additional JFK material. The next volumes would no doubt have shown the moral excesses and almost suicidal risk-taking increasing as JFK grew older. While this material might have threatened the maudlin serenity of Camelot, I would have welcomed the change. Paradoxically, my love and admiration for John Kennedy did not wane as I read the incredible details of his life. Instead, I was amazed that such an extraordinary, compassionate and visionary man arose from the chaos of a life lived as a constant roll of the dice.



5. JFK RECKLESS YOUTH has only one drawback: It covers only the part of his life up to his election to Congress. Hamilton has promised two more volumes, but they have so far not appeared. That said, it is the only negative that can be said for this remarkable volume, for my money the best JFK bio anywhere (including the new but hardly impressive JFK: AN UNFINISHED LIFE by Robert Dallek). There isn't an aspect of Kennedy's life that goes unexplored. Hamilton, however, did not have the access to JFK's medical records that Dallek did -- therefore he probably did not realize how very serious JFK's health issues were. (Of course, he is writing about JFK's early life, when he was obviously a lot healthier than he was later.)

   What is made painfully clear here is that JFK became president not because of his parents, but frankly, in spite of them. It was the force of his intellect and personality, more than his father's money, that made him who he was. Hamilton spends a lot of time in comparisons between Joe Jr. (the heir apparent) and Jack, the second son. According to him, Joe Jr. was ponderous, prejudiced, hardworking but abrasive and often nasty, and in general, simply did not attract people to him as Jack did. Jack, on the other hand, for all his natural rebelliousness (almost certainly fed by his parents' endless hectoring and marital issues), had enormous charm, warmth and endless humor. Hamilton even uncovers evidence of a surprisingly tender heart and his attempts to hide his concern for his friends with sarcasm and wit. His friends note that he constantly looked for new friendships and never lost a friend, even when the friends treated him with less than kindness and respect. He was loyal to a fault.

   Hamilton does reserve tremendous ire (and who can blame him?) for JFK's parents, two of really the most awful parents it's possible to imagine. Rose was a mother who constantly went off and left her children with the help, never home even when her oldest children were babies, and was never, never affectionate or even perhaps very interested in them, due to her unending though silent opposition to her husband's abuse and philandering. While she inspected them daily for missing buttons or loose threads, she was completely uninvolved in their interests, games and problems. Their father Joe was, as Hamilton makes clear, good at only one thing: manipulating stocks in order to steal himself a fortune. Every other thing he tried, including banking, shipping, movies, politics and diplomacy, was a failure. (Joe was so unscrupulous that even during his stint as Ambassador to the Court of St. James, he had people buying stocks he had inside information about. It says something that when FDR appointed him the first chairman of the newly formed Securities and Exchange Commission, and FDR's cabinet protested vigorously, FDR's answer was, "Set a thief to catch a thief.") What made Joe rather insidious (and this only in comparison to Rose) is that if he did have a good point, it was his genuine love for his children, misguided as his childrearing experience was. Unfortunately, he taught them to win at any cost and that women were to be treated with contempt and used like tissue. But because he expressed affection and care for them, even dropping his own work schedule to appear at their schools when Rose wrote letters but never bothered to visit her sons even when Jack was deathly ill in boarding school, Joe comes off as, ironically, the much better parent. He was loving and affectionate, though his affection came with a price: That they think as he thought and do as he did, which Jack simply rebelled against.

   Hamilton has to be commended for his sense of balance. While never shirking his responsibility to point out Jack's flaws, he is careful also to show from where they sprang -- the terrible, dysfunctional union of his parents and their awful sense of what raising a family meant. The children were socially isolated (partially because of his parents' desperation to enter Boston's WASP society while being Irish Catholics themselves), turning to each other for comfort and thus becoming close, but then separated when Rose decided she couldn't handle them anymore and sent them to boarding school, some as young as age eight.

   There is so much in this book that has value, but what I personally appreciate the most is Hamilton's constant underlying (though silent) thesis that Jack's gifts were so many that had he been born to different parents, he still would have been remarkably successful, yet probably been a less tormented and far less complex personality. For Hamilton sees his sexual yearnings as nothing less than looking for the love he missed in his mother, yet unable to express his need for it because of her coldness during his formative years and what that coldness did to his ability to express and receive affection.

   I could go on and go (actually, I have), but I do heartily recommend this. It's an absorbing read about the formation of a remarkable and pivotal personality in American history. I'd love to see the next volume -- imagine what he'd do with the marriage of Jack and Jackie? -- but must wait till he gets there. Meanwhile, this volume is a five-star, fifty-carat gem. Don't miss it.

5 comments about A Simple Path.

1. Most excellent writing. Use the steps in my daily spiritual life. Have used the book for workshops/meetings/sermons...she is a true spiritual guide! I often give this book to a number of friends. Mother Teresa truly exemplifies the life of Our Savior!



2. I am a devotee of Mother Teresa. I am not catholic. But I have been intrigued and drawn to her compassion, her mission and her determination. I have watched her move in the hightest political circles without compromising her mission and her message. This book has removed the rhetoric of all religions and exposed the essence of being a "Christ"ian.
   The message is truly Simple. Our entrapments are what get in our way but she shows us ways to lighten our load and take the simple path.
   This book is for anyone who wants to enrich their spiritual life and celebrate in action the words of their faith, regardless of your faith base.



3. Mother Teresa's mission and how she answered her calling shine through this as a great example for us to follow. What is revealed in this book is how we can each follow the simple path to peace in our own lives. Not having to sell all we possess and serve the poorest of the poor as she did, but in our own lives with those we meet. A few of the writings, including The Simple Path, are so moving to me, that I bought many copies of this book to give to others. What better gift could we offer someone than a path to peace? Hope you find it too.



4. I bought this book about 6 years ago. It's one of those books that you pick up and cannot put down. I was totally enthralled with it from the first few pages and every chapter became more and more inspiring. I was not a Christian when I read this book, so it's not just for believers. Rather it is a book for those who long for something more in their lfe, to walk in a deeper yet more 'simple' way. All of the chapters such as the ones on prayer, love, faith etc touched me deeply and even though it's been several years since I read it, I would read it again most definately. I lent it to someone and have never been given it back. I may just have to buy it again! --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.



5. The book is perfectly titled. Mother Teresa's biographical information is minimal and the book does not canonize her. Apart from introducing the thoughts of volunteers who work with the Missionaries of Charity, her own words are few. What we find are simple views of a simple path, and beauty in simplicity. This is not the story of a famous nun, it is the story of a way of seeing ones world and of living without self-focus. Mother Teresa, and those who work in the missions that she and others have established and conducted, convey an attractive invitation to service to others. The path has been set before us in the Gospels of Matthew (25:34-40) and Luke (10:30-37). This small volume contains no rancorous sectarian, philosophical, or theological arguments. The themes are peace, love, joy, and fearless devotion to the welfare of others. The simple path is well summarized in the words of St Francis of Assisi:
   "Lord grant that I seek rather to comfort than to be comforted,
   To understand than to be understood;
   To love than to be loved . . ."
   The book makes little mention of the opposing worldview, but I briefly will. The opposite worldview is the ever-popular celebration of slavery to self. There are, of course, many variations on this theme. One notices how offended, even angered, the culture of self can be when it is rejected, in this case by Mother Teresa. Articles and books have been published which denigrate her, and she has been called a hypocrite. I doubt she terribly cared. A sign on the wall of Shishu Bhavan children's home in Calcutta reads in part:
   "People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered,
   Love them anyway
   If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives,
   Do good anyway . . .
   The good you do will be forgotten tomorrow,
   Do good anyway . . ."

5 comments about Galileo's Daughter: A Historic Memoir of Science, Faith and Love.

1. I had expected a fictionalized narrative following the daughter of the famous astronomer. What I got was a detailed biography of Galileo himself. However, I still continued reading to the end.
   With more warmth and humanity than your average historical account, Sobel's story weaves the life and family of its subject in among the facts of his life. Such things as his recurring illnesses and his struggles with the church authorities are brought to life and made more interesting.
   I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the life of Galileo, or anyone who is interested in the day-to-day activities of Italy in the 17th Century.



2. I've got a secret. This book is not really about Galileo's daughter, Virginia. It is about Galileo and his life and times as seen through letters from his daughter to him (the letters from him to his daughter were destroyed). As a book about Virginia, it is largely uninteresting and unenlightening. As a book about Galileo, it is terrific. Dava Sobel captures the essence of Galileo's work and his fight with the religious authorities. My emotions as I read the book were: enlightenment in that it shows Galileo to be a far better person than I had given him credit for; sadness because of how he was mistreated; amazement for the honor he showed in all his dealings; and frustration at how much science was held back by religious authorities. And it puts into perspective how little my own daughter actually demands from me. I strongly recommend this book and I look forward to reading other of Sobel's works, including Longitude.



3. GALILEO'S DAUGHTER
   By
   Dava Sobel
   (Penguin Books 2000)
   Sour Marie Celeste was the illegitimate daughter of Galileo Galelei - the eldest of his three, and only, children At the age of 13 her father had her admitted to the convent of San Mateo in Arcetri, where she would remain until her death at the age of 34 in 1634. Once admitted, or shortly thereafter, she started writing letters to her father - the most loving, beautiful, intelligent letters I have ever read. There aren't too many of them, but they have been preserved and form the excuse (if that is the right word) for this book - which is a part history of the life of Galileo, part comment on his times and a setting to publish the letters chronologically along with and in tune with events in his life.
   Every school child knows something about Galileo - whether it was his "invention" of the telescope (he didn't invent it; he improved it immeasurably) or his "discovery" of the fact that it was the earth which revolved around the sun rather than vice versa - and this too was wrong, He didn't "discover" this. The sun-centered universe (heliocentered) had been discovered and described by Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) in 1543, 21 years before Galileo was born in 1564. Using Copernican theory Tycho Brahe (1545-61) had fixed the positions of may stars both as to distance and location and Johannes Kepler (1591-1630) had established the planetary motion of the planets - or most of them. So it wasn't what he invented or what he "discovered" that eventually got him into trouble with the Catholic Church, it was the fact that he was by far the most gifted and the most prominent man to have advocated - or thought to advocate - the heresy of a heliocentered universe.
   He had been a star from the start, one of the most gifted mathematicians of his age or any other, one of the few who, instead of taking things as they are said to be, tried to find out how they really are. And thus was one of the first true scientists, a man who dropped balls of different weights from the tower of Pisa, who rolled balls of different weight and different sizes down inclines of different pitches, who measured the tides, floating bodies - always studying motion and/or the laws of motion - and almost all of modern physics is the study of motion whether it's string theory - action at a distance - or general relativity or the measurement of the effect of a collision of protons in the CORE tunnel in Switzerland this summer.
   He was always an academician, teaching mathematics at the University of Pisa or Padua or being the resident mathematician and experimenter for one of the Medici's. And on retainer to the same. He was always ill. He never married. His work was his spouse. However, he recognized his three children by his liaison with the beautiful Marina Gamba of Venice. Domestic life was not for him. To the end he worked and thought, living as a guest or retainer in many ducal palaces in Tuscany and Rome. He lived as an untitled man at the highest level of worldly or ecclesiastical aristocracy. He made enemies - many of them - but he persevered and died in a kind of house arrest at the age of 72, still working and under banishment for daring to support the idea that the earth moved about the sun which the Catholic Church, relying on Aristotelian and Pythagorean thought and on the literal word of Holy Scripter believed as holy writ that it was the sun which revolved about the earth.
   I have just spoken of his many enemies and of the ducal residences in which he often made his abode: and the book is full of this detail - too full in my opinion. It would have been better if much of this had either been omitted or if Ms. Sobel had taken the time to tell us something about the governance of his time, I would have been much better informed had I known something of the Medici's or the Doges of Venice or the politics of the Popes who were involved in his life. And I would like to have known more about how people lived in his time.
   Similarly I would have liked to know more about convent life. There is enough in the book to indicate that it was perfectly dreadful -cruel, inhuman by our standards. Hared work, cold water, bad food, no rest, small quarters, iron discipline and no sleep. The Hanoi Hilton in San Matteo. Why would anybody lived this way? And why did Galileo put his daughters "away" at age 13. He robbed them of a life! (The excuse given by Sobel is that he learned he had known enemies in court because of his success and wanted to protect them; but this doesn't wash with me. All he had to do was to acknowledge them and, as his heirs, they would have properly evaded his enemy's attempts to take his property. I think he put them away because he was selfish. He didn't want three illegitimate children to be staining his record as he surged his way upward, buoyed by talent and reputation.)
   As Galileo stepped through his professional life he wrote to Sour Marie Celeste, but his letters did not survive. Her replies and her spontaneous letters to him did survive, however, and manly of them are quoted here. Would that all children would love their father so much. Would that any one of us would have a child as intelligent, as articulate as she. Would that she were here today - or those like her - to call our attention to enduring love as contrasted to the conditions in which we live.
   There are a couple of other comments I want to get down here on paper before I quit. First - about Galileo's "Trial". It is covered accurately and well in the book. In brief Galileo had published in Dialogues the essence of Copernican thought spoken through the mouth of a neutral that was just saying what it was. Then there were two characters, one of which was Galileo under a false name, who discussed it. Thus he never on paper espoused the Copernican heresy. He just said what it was. He thought he had a deal with Cardinal Bellarmino (later Saint Bellarmine) that as long as he didn't teach or espouse it he was not in conflict with Church teaching. However, 15 years later he fell out of favor with Pope Urban VIII. His enemies in the Vatican called on the Inquisition to question him and it was as the result of this that he was sentenced to house arrests.
   The trial is well covered in the book, but I wish Sobel had told us more about the Inquisition, how long it lasted, what it did, what procedures were followed, how it was independent (if it was) of the Vatican. What was the Index? What happened to people who wrote things that made their way to the Index of banned books? What kind of books? How many?
   I also wish she had told us more about the thirty Years War because it is frequently mentioned and apparently played a direct role in the attitude of the Catholic Church at the time.
   Woven through out this history of Galileo's life and the beautiful love expressed by his daughter (who was every bit as bright as he was) is the conflict between science and religion. Sobel never addresses it. But it's pretty clear to me. Religious belief cannot overrule, change or ignore true scientific discovery. And the greatest conflicts in this area have been the Galileo incident with respect to the heliocentered universe and Darwinism. God made the world and He made the rules of nature and God doesn't bend, break or ignore His rules because they are contrary to the ideas of His people



4. This book must be read if not for the depth of the actual telling, then for the elegant writing itself. The intertwining of primary source material and the author's own pen is done beautifully. The story's theme of the supposed clash between faith and reason/ science is as relevant today as it was in Galileo's time. Food for thought.



5. My real issue with this book is that Sobel's writing leaves me cold. I had avoided reading this for a long time because I had not really enjoyed Longitude. But countless critical raves and the response from friends caused me to decide to give Galileo's Daughter a try.
   
   The subject matter is interesting enough. The book is very little about Galileo's daughter and is more a book about the man himself. That is not really a bad thing, since there is sadly not very much to know about Suor Maria Celeste. The episodes Sobel chooses to highlight are interesting, and I believe she succeeds in making Galileo human to the readers.
   
   I would be hard pressed to say what exactly it is that I do not like about Sobel as a writer. It is not something that I can easily articulate. I think that it has something to do with the fact that her prose feels like an overextended magazine article. Both in Longitude and in this book, I felt as though the material were too thin for the weight that she was trying to hang on the pages. I am not sure that this is true, and suspect it may have something to do with the structure. In any case, with both books I had the experience that I was quite impatient with the prose even as I was interested in the material.
   
   If you are interested in scientific history and in the mood for some reasonably light reading, then my review should not discourage you from picking up Galileo's Daughter. Myself, I am probably going to avoid Sobel in the future.

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