5 comments about Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir.

1. It is interesting to consider how others choose to live. If I had never married, never had children my life
   might have been much more like hers.



2. I'd never heard of or read Diana Athill before this memoir. I'm savoring EVERY last word. Can't bear to reach the end. She's so lucid and lovely in her quiet acceptance of life as it is here and now.



3. I think what I liked best about this book is its absolute frankness. Athill has nothing to hide. She knows she has done certain things in her life that are perhaps less than admirable or honorable, and that she can be, and often is, quite selfish. So what? She cites the example of 103 year-old Alice Herz-Sommer, also a professed atheist, who said -
   
   "We are born half good and half bad - everybody, EVERY body. And there are situations where the good comes out and where the bad comes out. This is why people invented religion, I believe."
   
   Athill does admit to having some regrets, but refuses to dwell on them. She is simply grateful for the life she has had and amazed that she's lucky enough to still be here. Which makes sense to me.
   
   After more than fifty years as an editor in the publishing business, Athill became a successful memoirist in her seventies and eighties. And she makes no bones about her joy at this: "... easily the best part of my old age has been, and still is, a little less ordinary. It is entirely to do with having had the luck to discover that I can write."
   She goes on to tell how much enjoyment she has gotten from her late-found celebrity, however minor it might be. Having published my own first book at the age of sixty (and three more since then), I can relate. It's been a kick. This is a fascinating little book about growing old, and not at all sad or negative. I'm glad I found it, and plan to pass it along now to my mother, who at 93, is a year older than Diana Athill. I'm sure she'll like it too. Who knows, maybe it will nudge her into writing more about her own life. I hope so. Go for it, Mom. - author of the REED CITY BOY trilogy and LOVE, WAR & POLIO



4. Perhaps those Brits have a different idea of what a memoir is. This book, to me, is a collection of essays. It has no story, no narrative arc (or at least not one that appeared in the first half of the book, which is when I gave up on reading it). I wish the book had been billed as an essay collection, as it then wouldn't have set my expectations for a *story*.



5. When was the last time you encountered someone new and the word 'wisdom' popped into your head? Not very often lately? Me neither. Until last week. I read right through this book, "Somewhere Towards the End," as soon as I finished reading right through Diana Athill's earlier book, "Stet."
   
   I bought "Stet" because it was the memoir of a superb book editor, a job I had done once myself, though not superbly. She had been one of the founders of a small, elite British house and worked with Mailer, Vidal, and Updike to name but three of their stable.
   
   I bought "Somewhere Towards The End" because I was wondering what it is like to be old. I knew about arthritis, wrinkles and a sense of irrelevance. Who doesn't? I had been wondering if there was anything more appealing to be said for it. Diana Athill was close to 90 when she wrote this book, and the answer she personifies is 'Yes, there is.'
   
   You see from the first page that she herself is a wonderful writer, a very unusual writer, and she must have been hell on wheels as an editor. (Not in the way you may be thinking though; Gordon Liss she is not. Her insights are penetrating, but her touch is very light., just short of self- effacing.) She embodies more than a few paradoxes. She she did not bring the kind of clear, rational insights to her own personal and financial life that she invested in her authors' books. She is quite frank about it, but never self-pitying. Fortunately for the reader, she made interesting mistakes with interesting people. One of the things that charmed and fascinated me is how lucidly and candidly she writes about her misadventures.
   
   One minute she seems quite eccentric and the next you may realize that you've done the same thing for the same reason but never quite admitted the latter to yourself. She is extremely discrete about the affairs of others but not at all politically correct about her own sexual history. Nor does she romanticize the emotional history that went along with it. And outlives it.
   
   I hope I have done this book and this writer justice. She has had a real impact on the way I look at some things, and I hope many others will get the same opportunity.

5 comments about Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas.

1. This collection of Klosterman interviews of famous people in American culture, his speculative essays of pop philosophy, and one crazy hilarious unfinished-feeling novella were just plain fun to read. I love his style of writing, which I know many people have to hate, which makes me love it all the more. If you have every liked anything Klosterman has written, you will certainly love this. If you have never liked anything by Klosterman, you will certainly not like this. Fun and crazy. Read a sample of it, and you will find it is a fair and accurate representation of the whole work.



2. Why oh why did our generation waste so much ink lauding Hunter S Thompson when we have someone with true talent in our midst, with the gonzo ethic of Thompson and the talents of Gladwell? Not that Klosterman is truly overlooked (he makes a fine living I'm sure), but heavens you would think he would be mentioned in the same breath as the other coffeetable must-haves that are relentlessly rotated on the "'what white people like" lists (not that there's *anything* wrong with those writers, and, no, not only white people like them!)
   
   Chuck Klosterman IV is a must-read, as is nearly everything else he has ever written, whether on a stained cocktail napkin or on fine bond letterhead.



3. This is the first Chuck Klosterman book I have read and I loved it. I've since read Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs and Killing Yourself to Live and am just letting my eyes rest before getting my next fix. It's hilarious, thought-provoking and just a really great read.



4. This is the first book I've read by CK and I found it, for the most part, to be pretty funny. When I picked it up and thumbed through it I happened (apparently) among the more funny stories. After reading it, I will say that I enjoyed the book although the intellectualism gets a little heavy towards the middle. I remember thinking, "wasn't this book cracking me up the other day? Because right now, not so much." It was still interesting but more in a (begin finger quotes) lecture-y/think-y (end finger quotes) sort of way.
   
   I would recommend this book to most people. I think there are a few stories in here that most people will find pretty amusing. It's a nice book to read while you're waiting for stuff because each essay/article is reasonably short.
   
   I will admit, though, that I did not read the fiction piece at the end. I chose this book because I didn't want to read fiction! It wasn't bad but just not what I was up for plus I had read the previous 100 pages while I was stuck in the desert so I think maybe I overdid it.



5. This book collects about three dozen Chuck Klosterman essays, mostly reprints from SPIN and other US magazines, with new introductions from the author. The first and strongest half of the book "Things That Are True" centers on music and includes profiles of modern greats Radiohead and Jeff Tweedy as well as classic legends like Robert Plant and Billy Joel. He documents a week of eating nothing but McDonalds' McNuggets (eight years before the film "Supersize Me") and watching 24 hours of VH1 Classic (and learning it repeats every eight hours). The next 100 pages are "Things That Might Be True" and feature more subjective content. The final section is a 35 page novella. I enjoyed the majority of these segments but liked Klosterman's other books better than this collection.

5 comments about Lucky.

1. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this or not - but I really was not convinced that this event actually happened by the books end. The personality that she presents in this book is weirdly self aggrandizing and manipulative - frankly, I think she's lying about the whole thing. I've met women like her (I've had a few friends like this, and one in particular) - an attention seeker, completely self absorbed, etc. - in other words, a narcissist. The whole thing seems utterly implausible, and I was particularly uncomfortable about the man (black, of course) who was latter convicted of the crime. If you ask me, she made it up to get some attention, and latter wrote a book about it to make a buck.



2. Sebold's memoir, Lucky, is an incredible book. It is also a blunt, honest book, graphically detailing her brutally violent rape as an 18 yr old young woman and the subsequent trial. It is not for the faint of heart. Also, since this is a memoir, events, encounters, and the conclusion aren't all as neat and tidy as one would find in a novel, but real life can be complicated and messy. Sebold begins Lucky with a detailed account of her rape when she was a freshman at Syracuse University, which is difficult to read, but essential to understanding the aftermath it caused in her personal relationships and her struggle for justice and recovery. Some reviewers have criticized Sebold for being self absorbed, but I didn't find Lucky to be any more self absorbed than any other memoir -after all, it is an account from her perspective. Sebold is an excellent writer and her story needed to be told. Young women need to know this: Rape is a reality; they need to be aware of their surroundings at all times. I am a few years older than Sebold, but I too, remember a girl who was raped on campus during my freshman year of college. I understood exactly what Sebold meant when the "news" spread and she became known as the girl who was raped. Even today there are alerts on campuses across the country about a rapist in the area. Knowledge can be power. Very Highly Recommended



3. This book was very interesting. I would recommend it. It was a required read for school.



4. Lucky by Alice Sebold, was amazing. Sure, at times it made me sick to my stomache; sure at times I wanted tot throw up, but the story was incredible. Alice's college best friend was raped. Alice felt like he was looking for her and settled. Alice lost a best friend.
   After her rape, Alice was afraid of the dark, the way she described how terrified she was frightened me. There is an incredible ammount of thought and passion, heart and soul in this book.
   HOWEVER, if I were to recomend this book, it would be to someone who i KNOW is mentally up for the challenge, because reading this book, one way or another, will change your life. It's definately on my Top 10 books of all time.



5. By now, most of you have heard of "The Lovely Bones" ... a movie which started as a book written by Alice Sebold. If not for her quick-thinking and clever strategy of getting into the mind of her attacker, Alice would never have had the chance to write The Lovely Bones ... instead she would have become them. This book is the story of her own brutal rape as a freshman at Syracuse University, an act she tried very hard to forget but which became her driving force for justice, and then for a spiraling descent into the lowest moments of her life. If you've ever wondered about the dirty little secrets entwined in this crime, Alice reveals them all ... even the bad side of justice as we learn about the revenge rape of her friend, whose friendship she ultimately loses. As someone who was nearly raped by a man with a knife, I have always wondered "what if" I hadn't maneuvered my way out of that incident. Alice's story gives me closure, and I now realize just how "lucky" I was.

5 comments about Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa.

1. Excellent book regarding what went on in South Africa during the ending of apartheid. Very educational and interesting.



2. Antjie Krog is a South African writer and poet who covered the South African Truth and Reconciliation commission hearings. She wrote this book about the experience, from the particular point of view of a South African of Afrikaner background.
   
   I found this book both difficult to read, and difficult to put down. Krog chooses extremely compelling stories to highlight, and the impact is visceral. She asks some very smart and difficult questions about what truth and reconciliation can possibly mean in a country burdened with such a history. The Country of My Skull does an excellent job in providing possible answers to these hard questions, while acknowledging that she may not be the person to either have an opinion or have an answer. She seems to continually ask who are judges and who are victims, given the situation.
   
   While I liked that she shared her own experience of the Commission honestly, there were times when I felt that the focus on her personal life weakened the book. Made it overly poetic, somehow. When she discusses the Death Fugue of Celan, she makes the point that there are some subjects that poetry cannot and perhaps should not touch. I sympathize with the desire to use that kind of precise and metaphoric language, but it increases the distance.
   
   This seems to me an important book. Four and a half stars.



3. A. Krog writes an amazing piece revolving around the events pertinent to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the emergence of the African National Congress in the politics of South Africa. Graphic descriptions of militant and counterinsurgent armed activity in the apartheid government, and first person testimony to the TRC of human rights violations from many parties. Krog's recollections are necessarily emotionally derived and sometimes difficult for this reason to follow analytically, particularly to one not immersed in South African history and cultures. Extensive use of indigenous languages with helpful translations and a glossary of common local parlance included, which makes the reading much more interpretable. The book is written assuming the reader is familiar with the political events immediately prior to the institution of the TRC and the dissolution of apartheid politics. An excellent piece for any world history or political science student.



4. Antjie Krog writes with a poet's power of observation both with inner feelings as well as to witness the outer complexities of people's pain and truth. Whose truth, which truth, and at what time? The Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings which she followed along with many other reporters, becomes a focal point for the process of hearing these complexities as well as offering the possibilityes for healing in a country struggling to understand the tensions between global change and the bonds of tribal and cultural loyalties and traditions. Krog offers us a chance to participate in this as well as to reflect on our own healing processes and sort out the complexities of many truths we live with.



5. A great book, telling a part of a nation's history, that must never been forgotten

5 comments about Someone Will Be with You Shortly: Notes from a Perfectly Imperfect Life.

1. I think I laughed with every line, or at least paragraph. This book is such a hoot! I will be passing in on and on and on....
   
   Lisa, hurry up and pen another.



2. About halfway through this book I gave up. Braving another chapter of annoyingly trite and cliche anecdotes was too much. I understand her intent to create a light and refreshing viewpoint on motherhood, working women and the timeless battle between the two- but this book lacks any coherent backbone. Like, where's the point? I felt like I was talking on the phone to a 17-year-old girl in high school- just when some meaningful topic surfaces that you can really connect with, Kogan breaks into a giggle and flits off onto another self-indulgent point about herself. In the end, (well- my end, not the end of the book since I didn't make it that far) I feel her writing is much more suited to a 300-word magazine article, as in Oprah's magazine. A book literally stretches her too thin.



3. This was my first Kindle purchase, and Lisa Kogan did not disappoint. I found "Someone will be with you shortly" to be entertaining, smart, witty, light and laugh-out-loud hilarious! Though some may dislike the memoir style of random observations, I felt that I could relate to her voice, and her sense of humor. Please do not overlook this gem!



4. Someone Will Be with You Shortly: Notes from a Perfectly Imperfect Life
   
   Lisa Kogen, who brings life to O Magazine in her monthly column, has gathered some vignettes describing her life in the big city.
   As the occasionally single mom tries to navigate a demanding career, the pursuit of perfect parenting skills, the illusory quest for a perfect body and perhaps the ability to maintain some of her sanity... you will find yourself TOTALLY identifying with her plight.
   Each chapter calls another girlfriend, aunt, mother or cousin to mind as a co-conspirator who just HAS to read this book so you can laugh (and cry) together about it.
   When was the last time you laughed out loud and wanted to lock your self in the bathroom for a long well deserved soak, glass of wine and a delicious hardback?
   This summer throw the kids outside to play and treat yourself.
   You'll have a silly smirk on your face for days afterward...



5. Oh My God what a fun read . I loved this laugh out loud book. Just one quseton when the sequel comeing out ? I am so glad i baught this book. i laughed till i cryer .

5 comments about The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century.

1. Henry R. Luce, co-founder of Time Magazine, and founder of Life Magazine, Sports Illustrated, People magazine, and architect of the formidable Time-Life empire, arguably exercised more influence than any other media figure over US policy in the Twentieth Century. The question is how effective was the influence? Author Alan Brinkley (son of David Brinkley of the famous network news anchor team of Huntley and Brinkley), Professor of History at Columbia University, does an excellent job of defining the extent (and limits) of Luce's power.
   
   Luce's childhood as a son of an American Missionary in China defines his beliefs and missionary zeal. Luce's father found that the most effective method of winning converts to Christianity was to provide education, and dreams of future wealth. The Luce family's escape from the dangers of the Boxer Rebellion did nothing to sway Henry's belief that the Chinese longed for American wealth, freedom and democracy. The author utilizes an extensive array of historical materials to define the period, and uses Luce family correspondence and interviews to describe the family's escape to Korea from the revolutionaries.
   
   A prescient fourteen-year-old Henry traveled extensively through Europe - by himself - prior to arriving at Hotchkiss Preparatory School in the US. The school was primarily attended by the wealthy, but Henry benefitted from a wealthy benefactor who helped finance his education. Henry excelled in school and in extracurricular activities, especially writing for a school newspaper. He went to Yale, and became a member of the Skull and Bones. During WWI, while many of Henry's classmates went overseas, Henry stayed behind - and wrote angry editorials in the campus paper - criticizing those who chose not to fight.
   
   Luce's business acumen is self-evident. His partner Brit Hadden concentrated on editing, while Luce handled the business side. Hadden's alcohol abuse contributed to an early death - leaving Luce with full editorial control.
   
   The author's description of the most fascinating part of Luce's life - his increasing control over his publications' editorial content, draws the reader. In the early years, Luce's practice of hiring only talented Ivy League graduates acted as a buffer to his desire to control the editorial content of his publications. On multiple occasions Time Inc researchers threatened to walk out over editorial changes to their work. Luce was famous for writing memos pressuring his editors to support the Nationalist Chinese (Chiang Kai-shek appeared on the cover of Time more than Hoover, FDR and Truman combined). Luce's dislike of FDR was well-documented, as the author provides a litany of memos badgering editors to show the President in his worst light. After the war, Luce paid Winston Churchill to write a memoir for Life magazine. Luce wrote a letter to Churchill suggesting that Churchill write that any difficulties at Yalta were attributable to Roosevelt. Churchill ignored the letter. The author points out that Luce lifted Wendell Wilkie to the Republican nomination from non-contention - but no amount of support for Wilkie could defeat the popular Roosevelt. Luce blamed Truman and Secretary of State George Marshall for the loss of China to the communists. But, he was supportive of Eisenhower when he chose not to support the French at Dien Bien Phu. Luce constantly offered his advice to the American Presidents, but the advice was seldom taken.
   
   Those who are of the far-right may become defensive with the overall tone of the book. Those of the far-left may well dislike Luce. The author, however, provides deserved balance to the biography, noting that Luce was a leader in the movement toward civil rights, and found Joseph McCarthy's methods to be repugnant. The book is supported with a strong bibliography of Time Incorporated Archives, Luce personal correspondence, and interviews with family and associates of Mr. Luce. It is written in a clear, consistently interesting manner.
   
   To truly understand American publishing and politics in the 40's and 50's, one would be well-served to read this book. I recommend its consideration for any history/biography collection.



2. The book was interesting, but -- perhaps not unexpectedly -- more about Luce himself than about Time and Life. What was absolutely not worthwhile was ordering the book through Amazon-related pbshopus. Accidentally clicked to buy it and attempted within seconds to void the purchase; rejected. And then it took three weeks for delivery. What a ripoff! Never again.



3. It is hard to imagine in these days of the internet that news magazines were once a national center of information, but so it was in the age of Time, Life and other magazines created by the absorbing mind of its publisher, Henry Luce. For four decades Luce was both a contributor and a manipulator of public opinion... a man whose corporate triumphs were often matched by personal disappointments.
   It is said that Henry Luce had many friendships but few friends and Alan Brinkley brilliantly co-ordinates the two aspects of Luce's life. This is a biography that works extremely well on parallel levels. The author's narrative, steady and telling, begins with Luce's life as the son of a missionary in China and sweeps us into his American education leading to the founding of Time magazine in 1923. Brinkley outlines the ideas behind future publications well...the advent of Fortune, Life and Sports Illustrated...all with the company ups and downs of start-up publications.
   
   Luce's attempts to sway his magazines (especially Time) toward his own conservative views are nicely documented in "The Publisher". The reader learns much about Luce's loathing of Roosevelt and Truman and his close, if not overly-admiring, friendship with Eisenhower. Brinkley is quick to remind us that although Luce was a politically robust conservative, he was liberal on social matters...especially civil rights.
   
   The emotion and color enter this book while describing Luce's personal life. His marriage to Clare Boothe was fraught with internal upheavals as he fought to keep some semblance of their marriage together (even through their mutual discussions of divorce) meanwhile carrying on more than one affair. If few ever got personally close to Luce, Brinkley gets us as close as one can.
   
   "The Publisher" is a terrific book about one of the chief shapers of opinion of the early and mid-twentieth century. It is an engrossing and revealing account of Henry Luce's life and I highly recommend it.



4. Alan Brinkley's historical profile of Time magazine founder, Henry Luce, is as much a history of a titan of industry as it is an overview of the global and political times of what Luce himself referred to as Luce `the American Century.' Brinkley (who has written extensively on FDR and penned a series of American history books known as `The Unfinished Nation') assembles a thorough biography that runs parallel along three distinct tracks.
   
   The first, is the story of a man and his publishing empire, originally founded with his Hotchkiss and Yale student buddy and publishing co-conspirator Brit Hadden (who despite a heavy role in the business, died early in the empire - 1929) and the business machinations of taking a small-time newsweekly and building it into the leading American news magazine empire of the 20th century. (Time, then eventually Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated).
   
   The second, much like many news publishing scions (from W. R. Hearst to Murdoch) pertains to Luce's often failed attempts to influence political opinion in his support for both Republican front-runners as well as his desire to shape world events from China's battle with and eventual yielding to communism (much space in the second half of the book is devoted to Luce's obsession with Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek and the possibility, and failure of, sustained democracy throuout China - described by Brinkley as "the greatest disappoint of Luce's life") to the never-ending quagmire of Vietnam.
   
   The third track involves Luce's personal life through his two marriages, including his second to the high-profile Claire Booth Luce (nee Brokaw), and his distant and oft-times troubled personal relationships to associates, co-workers and others in his immediate circle.
   
   Brinkley's portrayal of Luce as a hard driving, sometimes reclusive, singularly focused media mogul is not unlike stories we hear of other power brokers of the post-industrial world. That the journey his publishing enterprise took him politically, socially and in the halls of power is not surprising given the prominence he was able to amass through his never ending work and mainstream ethos. In the end, and despite other works on the subject, the author renders a throughly detailed and complete assemblage of the story of the most important American magazine publisher of the last 100 years. On many levels it is a story that is well worth absorbing.



5. This is biography as it should be: - the story of an important American written beautifully, objectively and with interest understanding and sympathy by one of America's leading historians.
   
   To those readers to whom Henry R. Luce and Time, Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated were not part of daily life in the twentieth century this superb biography may come off as interesting history. However, to those of us to whom these magazines were weekly reading during those times it's a trip into the past. The Great Depression, World War II, the Truman years, Eisenhower, the Rise of the Middle Class, The American Century, the "Loss" of China, The Vietnam War and its aftermath were all reported by and pictured in these magazines through the mind and eye of their publisher - Henry R. Luce (1898-1967), the ambitious, bright, driven son of Presbyterian Missionaries in China who, although a bit of a prig and never comfortable with himself, brought his view of the American experience to the American people through the pages of these publications which were his - and his alone - with a missionary zeal and a brilliance unmatched in the media world by any one before or since.
   
   Alan Brinkley has beautifully and accurately recounted these years and Henry Luce's experience for us in this absolutely stunning and very readable biography where we get to know Luce who at 23 was already a skilled writer and was fathering Time along with his school chum Britton Hadden. Then we follow his career, his personal life with its many disappointments (including a disastrous and lengthy marriage to a dysfunctional and slightly goofy Clare Booth Luce) and his business life, his huge success, his enormous influence and his immense wealth. And at the end you have to wonder. If you were in Luce's shoes and having lived his life as he did would you say that it had been worth it? I felt sorry for him. But read the book. That's worth it.

5 comments about Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72.

1. This is certainly one of Thompson's more substantial (heavy) works--not the easy page-turner for those who've only read "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"--but those who take the time to read this book will find the same beautifully acidic wit and ingenious insight that Thompson brings to the craft of storytelling.
   
   Here, more so than in FaLiLV, Thompson's "Gonzo" journalistic-style becomes apparent--at one point Thompson reveals that one Democratic Presidential hopeful (Musky) is being seen regularly by a South American with doctor who's prescribing various questionable "medicines" for the politician, which explain his "strange" emotionally erratic behavior.
   
   Interestingly, Thompson, himself, would later note the power that a journalist's reporting of "the facts" can have in the political world when that politician rescinds their candidacy.
   
   If there's anyone who enjoys reading anything slightly heavier than Harry Potter left these days, I'd highly recommend they pick this up and give it a read--a truly curious and insightful look into American politics in the Seventies.



2. I just finished reading this book, and loved it. Thompson has a unique perspective on things -- cynical and hopeful at the same time. The amazing thing, as others have commented, is how similar the issues, debates, rhetoric, and tactics of the 1972 campaign are to both the 2008 campaign and the current debate on health care reform. Anyone who likes Thompson's writing style, is interested in American cultural history, and curious about how we, as a nation, have been arguing about the same things and in the same way since at least 1972 will enjoy this book.



3. I am fascinated by elections and campaigns, and the election of 1972 was especially interesting, and there is much to learn from it as many of the events in 1972 seemed to repeat themselves in 2004 and 2008. In 1972 and 2004, we were involved in a war that was beginning to lose support, scandals had broken (Watergate in 1972, Plamegate in 2004), and the Democratic candidate just couldn't seem to get his act together.
   
   In 1972 and 2008 we had Democratic campaigns that were described as "grass roots". Obama's victory is, in a way, McGovern's victory 36 years later. Obama did what McGovern did, but did it competently.
   
   So I really wanted to like this book. I already read Theodore White's "The Making of the President 1972", so I knew the facts, but I thought Hunter S. Thompson would provide more of the gritty details that White may have found too unappealing to describe.
   
   And, in a way, Thompson did that, but the book is so much more about Thompson and his drug habits than it is about the election. It could have taken place under any circumstances. Let's say Thompson went on a European vacation and got drunk and stoned . . . probably would end up being a pretty similar book.
   
   I got more than halfway through the book, and actually enjoyed how Thompson described his loathing for Muskie and Humphrey. I've never read such hateful prose about those two, and it was pretty funny.
   
   But I got frustrated by his stream-of-consciousness prose and complaints about how he couldn't meet his deadlines, so he'd just toss out some quick, unorganized thoughts. Very lazy. And yes, I'm aware that drink and drugs were involved, influencing his ability to write comprehensibly and timely.
   
   I think if you enjoy books like "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" you'll like this one. I don't.



4. I was very disappointed when I received my shipment from this bookseller. It took over two weeks to arrive, and was shipped in a cheap, cardboard envelope with no padding. On the outside, the cover was well-worn, with tears on the edges, and the page edges were marked on the top and bottom with a blue "palm tree." The first inside pages were torn, and the cover page had another blue palm tree! The rest of the inside pages were in fair condition, with a brown stain on some of the edges. I paid $30.00 for this book, and it was definitely overpriced. Most booksellers include contact information with their shipment, some even have a comment sheet. This shipment only contained one very beat-up book so that motivated me to write this review.



5. On C-Span's "In Depth" program, Brian Lamb interviewed Richard Norton Smith and Douglas Brinkley. Richard Norton Smith is probably the most notable living historian specializing on the American Presidency, having had a part in many of the presidential libraries and so forth. Douglas Brinkley is widely regarded as the most prominent living American historian.
   
   Smith cited this book as the best work ever written about the U.S. Elections process, and Brinkley concurred. For those of you who know Smith and Brinkley by reputation, that says far more than anything I could write here. It's not only some of the best political writing of all time, it's some of HST's best work, too. Fantastic.

5 comments about Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban.

1. This book is an interesting document from the front lines of the war Afghanistan, showing the messy reality of this conflict. (I like the way he notices he is in Pakistan is when the Taliban start driving on the right hand side of the road.) However captivity is dull, repetitive and scary, and that is reflected in the writing style. This would have been better as an article than a book. Dyk grows to dislike his companions, but he does not admit that he got them into that mess by paying them thousands of dollars to smuggle him into Pakistan, in order to satisfy his own desire to prove that he was still up to the challenge. Did he really think that he could pass as a Pushtun not speaking the language? Did he really think that the Pushtun code of protecting guests could protect him with all that money on the table? Dyk's own narrative shows that radical Islam was pushing aside traditional values, and that traditional Pushtun culture includes bloody rivalry between members of the same family.



2. I heard about the tragic news of the death of 10 aid workers killed in Afghanistan just as I was finishing journalist Jere van Dyk's book "Captive." "Captive" is the story of Mr. van Dyk's 2008 return visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan where he set out to conduct research on the northwest tribal areas. On the way to a chieftain's home, van Dyk and three Afghanis were captured and held prisoner for several weeks.
   
   With years of experience with the mighty pen, van Dyk is able to convey the gut-wrenching feeling psychological torture and possible death. Every day van Dyk wondered who might behead or shoot him as he pleads for his life with his captors. van Dyk repeatedly states that he wasn't physically tortured.
   
   van Dyk's descriptive writing puts the reader into a constant state of claustrophia as the events unfold in a barbaric Afghan "structure."
   
   "Captive" will bring you one step closer to gaining a better understanding of the Taliban and Pashtun mindset



3. This was a fantastic read. Van Dyk creates a vivid account of his imprisonment with the Taliban - his fears and emotions are expressed so realistically, you will believe you are sitting right beside him throughout his journey. The paranoia, the fear, everything he experiences is written so hauntingly real that it is hard to put this book down; you will need to know what happens next.
   
   It's not fair to point out particular scenes of interest, it's the kind of book one must experience for themselves and let the journey evolve as it does.
   
   While he was not able to write the book he came to Afghanistan to write, the story Van Dyk tells is about as intimate a portrayal of the Taliban and Afghan culture as you could ask for. It's terrifying, yet disturbingly fascinating to understand the inner workings of the disjointed group of men who call themselves the Taliban.



4. Found this book to be most interesting and enlightning. An inside look into an 'unknown world'.



5. I respect American journalist Jere Van Dyk for having the guts to go into the heart of Taliban territory on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. And I sympathize with him for having to endure a 45-day captivity.
   
   But Van Dyk's account of his ordeal is frustratingly difficult to read. There's a good story in this book, but it's tough to sift out.
   
   "Captive" begins with Van Dyk preparing to make a furtive trip into Taliban territory, a delicate process of shadowy negotiations. But shortly after the trip begins he and his companions are taken captive by men whose motives aren't entirely clear. After a month and half in which Van Dyk repeatedly fears his execution is imminent, they are mysteriously freed.
   
   Unfortunately, the book bogs down too often in Van Dyk's repetitive and circular emotional swings. He is distrustful of everyone (even those who help him after he is freed) and lurches between fears of death, suspicions about his companions, hopes for release, and, again, fears of death. Of course, these feelings are understandable under the circumstances, but detailing each mood change soon becomes tedious and advances the story nowhere.
   
   "Captive" is also hamstrung by Van Dyk's use of short sentences almost exclusively ("It was dark and silent. No one talked. I put my head down and pulled my quilt over my head. I wanted to be alone. I thought of my family.") As a reader, you feel like you're constantly starting and stopping.
   
   Van Dyk does succeed somewhat in putting a human face on the Taliban. He tries to understand his captors, and while they are often cold and exhibit a frightening religious fervor, they sometimes reveal a more compassionate side.
   
   The book could really use a second voice to explain efforts to win his release and to show how his family is reacting. Even at the end, many questions are left unanswered: Why did this trip go awry? Did his interpreter betray him? How did he get freed? Was a ransom paid?
   
   If you are interested in this sort of story, a much better book is "Buried Alive," by Roy Hallums, a contractor who was kidnapped and held for months in Iraq.

5 comments about Every Man in This Village is a Liar: An Education in War.

1. Ms.Stack has a truly remarkable command of the English language. It is a genuine joy to read her prose, particulatly in its descriptive mode.
   
   But the anecdotes she describes- - obviously chosen to paint a panaroma- -do not result in a "panorama" at all, but in a well-thought-out essay calculated to attack her country's policies in the Middle East. She admits as much when she opines on page 216, "I came to Iraq in a cloud of violence, part of an American plague."
   
   Her anecdotes are touching. They cause one to weep for the plight of her victims. They also serve to prove the notion that there is danger in being too close to the action- - not only physical danger but intellectual danger as well. One can be blinded when looking at a tree as if it were an entity unto itself rather that part of a forest. And it is this sort of blindness, beautifully and perhaps purposefully adopted in this book, that can be so tempting, cajolling and dispirtiing as to cause one to simply give up and succumb.
   
   That seems to be Ms. Stack's desideratum. While she condemns the cruelty, she encourages it by dutifully demonstrating that resisting it simply causes too much pain.
   
   And, no. This cruelty is not an "American plague." Ms. Stack is right when she calls it a "plague," but dreadfully wrong when she opines that it is of America's making.



2. Though not entirely shocking, Megan Stack's Every Man in this Village is a Liar, is at times surprising. Stack describes her most memorable escapades and antidotes, which she layers to form an essay style war collage vividly enlivening her enlightening experiences. Covering terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, and other Middle Eastern hot spots, Stack conversationally engages her readers as she examines some of the absurdities of war and politics. Stack offers both sides of the table auditing violence and war policy itself. Seeing the devastation of war to people and countries through a fresh perspective, a young female reporter, was overwhelmingly gritty and at the same time startling in its obvious intelligence. Through stark and awkward prose Stack explores the hypocritical policies of nations. And the one thing Stack can trust, is that everyone involved in the wars and the fighting that she has covered--are liars. While exposing everyone and excusing no one, Stack has crafts a highly readable, brilliant and possibly the most unforgettable book of the year.



3. I hated the book, from start to end. I hated it every time I picked it up, and I found excuses to put it down...and then I'd pick it up again and read more. And, having read it, I still hate it - and I find myself in the impossibly contradictory position of considering it important that a lot of people read this book that I hate, and therefore I'm giving five stars to a book that I reviled.
   
   Our writer is Megan K. Stack, who is a journalist for the Los Angeles Times. She happened to be in Paris on 9/11, and therefore, because of accident of position, was sent to the Middle East. She spent a lot of time in the Middle East, more, I think, than I probably could have stood.
   
   Megan tells about war from its filthy underbelly, from the viewpoint of absurdly unimaginable officials, from the point of view of drugged Yemeni philosophical apologists, and from Palestinians being abused by Israelis, and Israelis defending themselves from insane suicide bombers.
   
   Now I feel that there are some wars worth fighting. Some tyrants need to be taken down. Some freedoms are worth fighting for. Sometimes you need to fight to maintain commercial interests - simply because governments should not be allowed to rewrite their contracts with companies who pay taxes to your government just because they can, and when they do, they deserve protection - because their employees are likely also your citizens.
   
   The joke to me about the Jews and the Arabs is that when compared to the range of cultures that exist among humans on the earth, their cultures are almost identical. This is to be expected, since they really come from the same area, and the historical imperatives of the cultures are similar.
   
   But Megan does not spend much time concentrating on the Jewish-Arab conflict. She talks about the Middle East as a region that is a victim of war, as a whole - and this means the civil wars that they fight, the power struggles that stop them from having honest elections, and how this affects them.
   
   The Middle East is in a state of war. It has been, for a very, very long time. In many ways, the war started when Alexander the Great decided to try to make the area one big empire, and then the Greek city-states rolled over the area, and then the Romans rolled over them. They get short bursts of peace, but it seems like peace is the unnatural state and that constant war is the typical backdrop.
   Before Mohammed, the Arabs would not deal with a tribe that warred - they could plunder, but no one would trade their plunder for food.
   
   Mohammed said that he had a revelation - and the result of this revelation was that he had the god given right to break the traditional peace to spread the gospel of Allah.
   
   Then Europeans thought it was worth fighting to recapture the holy lands - they started crusades in the name of god, which involved Europeans fighting Muslims over Jerusalem and so forth.
   
   Finally, and more recently, Zionists decided to create a homeland - and recaptured lands that the Jews originally captured back when our current calendar was counting in negative numbers, and which capture and control is described in their holy writings. God meant them to have those lands because they are delivered to the Jews through divine intervention, which frequently involved killing all of the natives.
   
   I can think of three or four conflicts I left out - some of which are important to what is happening there today, like the Ottoman Empire, and the British Mandate over Palestine and Trans-Jordan. The point is that this area has been unlucky enough to be subject to almost continual warfare - the Mamlukes fought the Mongols, and they fought them not at the northern border of Mamluke control or in Egypt, but in Palestine.
   
   As I read Ms. Stack's writings, I got the feeling that there were a lot of things worth fighting for in the Middle East. The horrors of Saddam's mistreatment of the Shiites, and the Kurds, and almost anyone who disagreed with them would seem to call for the use arms in self defense. The mistreatment of the average Saudi woman seems to call for them to arm themselves in mass and shoot men randomly.
   
   The Jews are all fighting for their survival. The Palestinians are fighting for theirs. The Lebanese are fighting their neighbors. I am still not sure why the Lebanese fought...but I think they had to because they were used as a battlefield by the Syrians and Israel.
   
   In Yemen, the country is drugging itself into a stupor, and they are pretending that they have no disagreements. In Jordan, people are scared to say anything - I visited there between the gulf wars, and the fear of the average cabdriver talking to a foreigner was palpable - whenever the royal family was mentioned. Megan Stack captured this.
   
   There was a horribly corrupt election in Egypt - the results bore no reflection to the people's will at all - soldiers beat people who tried to vote in a way that was as bad as any third world election ever could be. Something like that would probably result in riots in the USA.
   
   In Lebanon fighting broke out - and Megan was there, telling the tales of the people at the bottom of the war, those abandoned in the hope that Hezbollah would get more civilian deaths for propaganda, and these were people who learned to hate Israel if they did not already.
   
   Megan made the acquaintance of a woman journalist, a Shiite, from Iraq, and then reported on her death - how she was killed by Sunni militiamen, hunted down because she had the nerve to speak at all. How the man who translated for Megan lost his son because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when a nearby armored vehicle was hit by an IED, and he took a bullet to the chest. He bled to death because the American army locked his neighborhood down for two hours, and he could not get to the hospital. And Megan tried to do a story on a boy and his girlfriend, and the wrong people recognized them having a meeting with a foreigner and she never heard from them again...his phone was disconnected, and it was likely they were killed, simply for talking to foreigners. Megan made it clear how risky it was to be an Iraqi policeman. And in the end, I think that all this represents freedom and it was worth fighting for.
   
   Megan Stack captured this all.
   
   In well written prose, she presents essays, one or more per country, sometimes one per incident, alternating between impossible seeming facts, feelings, observations, horror, and illogical situations with impossible results. Who wants what? Why were they doing what they did? What happened in Afghanistan? Why did we negotiate and perhaps give Osama time to escape - from the viewpoint of her source?
   
   Most importantly, Ms. Stack was there, and she took notes, and here they are...and, in a way, you can see that every country in the Middle East has something in common. From my secular, western viewpoint, every regime, every ruler, and many of the people have something in common. They are, well, insane. I consider people who pray as much as they do, who follow as many daily rituals as they do cultists. We'd consider people who tried to use the Old Testament as written, and who, for example, took teenagers out and stoned them to death for incorrigible behavior (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) as being criminals who should be punished - and the fact that their holy book specified this punishment would not allow their actions to be considered as justified.
   
   There are people in the US who believe that the Old Testament should be literally applied. And were they to do so, they would almost certainly be punished, if their actions came to light.
   
   Yet, in many parts of the Middle East, priests (qadis) who apply Sharia Law, which is based on the Koran, and on other sources, the older the better, are the law. The law of the land supports their actions, and disputes are decided the way Arabs would have decided them during Mohammed's life. The law is not free to change. Morals are frozen. Ms. Stack does a good job of explaining how this affects the places she lived, and how this affects the people she met - and how this makes them insane...insane enough to fight, insane enough to kill, insane enough to torture and to revel in the results of torture - and she explains what this is doing to them as a culture, if you read carefully.
   
   She points out one more important thing - it is the first parable in her book, and the last. You can't make war, can't participate in war, and can't even encourage war, without it affecting you. When Israel treats the Palestinians poorly, it makes the Israelis less moral. When the US makes war, it makes us less moral.
   
   But when the Baathists of Iraq torture and murder the Shiites and Kurds, does it make them less moral? Or have they already reached a level of immorality where torture and war does nothing to them, because they are already in rock bottom?
   
   It is clear to me that Ms. Stack missed one important thing. The United States changed in the months post 9/11, and by being out of the country, chasing facts for us in Afghanistan, she missed our change. Yes, the US was affected by being part of a war, by being attacked. Under Clinton, we had tried to ignore that we were being attacked - embassies, the Cole, all of the other attacks by extreme Islamists. Many people in the US recognized this post 9/11, and we decided to take a stand which was morally ambivalent but simple. No longer were we purely anti-dictator. There was a new litmus test, and it was the support of the regime for terrorism. A regime which supported terrorism outside of its borders would not be tolerated. End of story.
   
   She points out that we embraced Libya when they renounced support for terrorism and paid some cash to terrorism victims. But Bush had announced that we would do just that. Saddam, at the same time, was paying a stipend to families of suicide bombers.
   
   And this is what she missed - this litmus test was a chance for nations to rehabilitate themselves. And, yes, this hurt our morality as a country, just as she predicted, but it was a tradeoff that our leaders made, announced to the American people, announced to the world, and, in the post 9/11 atmosphere, it was embraced by a majority of the public. Then we acted on it - and Iraq was an example of one side of the coin, while Libya was on the other side.
   
   And this becomes a seminal work, a snapshot of the mid-east, a snapshot of a culture that can trust no one to do what they say, except for those who promise to hurt them. So they seek refuge in their religion, and their leaders say, "You are in this miserable state because you have not been religious enough. You must pray more, worship more, and stick to the fundamentals of your religion more. You must strive for an Islamist state, and god will be on your side!"
   
   And so they do, since they can imagine nothing else that might possibly help their situation. Myself, I can think of nothing worse for their situation. These Islamists may be so impossibly different from us that accommodation may simply not be possible. I know we have a lot in common...we love our children, and hope that they do better than we do, we love our little pleasures. We hate fear and war...and, well, I kept thinking about Megan's stint in the insane asylum, and how I felt more in common with the crazies than the people in the street.
   
   As I said, I hated the book, from start to end. I hated it every time I picked it up, and I found excuses to put it down...and then I'd pick it up again and read more. And, having read it, I still hate it - and I find myself in the impossibly contradictory position of considering it important that a lot of people read this book that I hate. It may be a quixotic hope that understanding can help the situation in the Middle East. And that is what this book has to offer - painful, blinding understanding. I believe that Ms. Stack kept her neutral viewpoint on a difficult subject, and the prose, itself, is good. I tried to come up with a reason not to give the book five stars, and in the end, I had to admit that it was worth the rating - and that you should consider reading the book. Everyone should read this book.
   
   War is horror. War damages the least able to defend themselves - it rips families apart, it snuffs out are brightest lights long before their time. And, even with all that, war is, sometimes, needful. Because if you never fight, you never defend yourself, and so you end up with people like Saddam Hussein (or Hitler, or Stalin), who are willing to fight and kill and who do fight and kill - destroying people by political party, or by tribal origin, or some other reason that has nothing to do with their antisocial actions.
   
   But anyone who accepts war without knowing how horrible it is, without knowing how much it does to people who are affected by it, is acting at an ignorance level that is immoral. This book has the advantage of allowing those of us who escaped the horror of war to reach some understanding of what it means to those who are affected by it.



4. The ability to see. And then to report what is truly seen, without the eyes being averted due to "editorial concerns." Can it be taught in journalism school, or is it an innate moral compass one is born with?
   
   Initially I was skeptical of this book; the title is a bit off-putting (that was before I learned that it refers to one of world's oldest logic problems; and has ample applications to all involved in the so-called war on terror). And then it was written by a journalist, a woman at that, who was unfamiliar with war when she started. Enough reasons for some justified unease. Fortunately a good friend recommended it; he even wanted to check out the validity of certain portions of the book, those on Saudi Arabia, with me. And so when it popped up on my Vine Newsletter, I had to say: "Yes, please." The best decision I made the entire week.
   
   Megan K. Stack is a remarkable person. She had been in Paris on September 11, 2001; soon thereafter she was on the Afghanistan - Pakistan frontier, reporting on the hunt for Bin Laden. She appears to have come to the so-called "War on Terror" unencumbered by theoretical models of the Islamic world formulated in America's various think-tanks and university "Middle East Studies Centers." She espoused none of the theories of the fictional "York Harding," as described in Graham Greene's The Quiet American (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). Her assignments thereafter carry her to Israel, Iraq, Libya, "Kurdistan," Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Lebanon and Egypt. When she gets "shut out," meaning that she really cannot cut through the government-imposed barriers on journalists, like in the Yemen, she says so. Thought her portrait of the madness in Qaddafi's Libya was on target. In Israel she learns that you cannot call Israelis from Morocco and Yemen "Jewish Arabs." She also commits the ultimate faux pas: "You humanized them. You're writing about suicide bombers as people who have corpses and families. They can't stand to see them written about like that." In Saudi Arabia I saw only one error; it was in assessment and judgment, understandably enough given her brief time in the Kingdom. She is yelled at by two guards for standing in front of the bank; told to go away because men might see her. Stack says: "Leave me alone!" And then she says: "This was a slip. In a land ruled by male ego, yelling at a man only deepens the crisis." Au contraire. In this situation, 98% of the time, the correct response is yelling loud and hard. The chauvinistic men don't know what to do, and slink off. My wife did it several times.
   
   It is Iraq and Lebanon that are the essential core of the book, and she tells the story with a rising, Bolero-esque style; certainly not of pleasure, but of horror. The murder of the young female Iraqi journalist, Atwar Bahjat is particularly heart-rending. Call it what you may, incredible courage, sheer insanity, the ultimate in journalistic duty, but the climatic part of the book is in South Lebanon, where Stack raced, as the bombs fell around her from Israeli planes. Fittingly, in the madness around her, she visits a hospital for the mentally ill; and ponders the classic question: Are the people on the inside, or the outside, the ones who are the crazier? Stack HAD to document the horror done to civilians from the bombs dropped by planes; for as she said, she was drowning in shame. She knew that the bombs that had caused a tiny baby girl to be badly burned, and placed in a Tyre emergency room had come from, and been paid for, by Americans
   
   Another female journalist with long-term experience in the Middle East, Robin Wright, also wrote a book Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East on her experiences. I gave Ms. Wright's book a 3-star review; comparisons between the books are instructive. Wright's experience is longer; but, as she says, in October, 2006, she was on her fourth trip to Iraq with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Close association with power caused her to lose some of her ability to see, so it is no surprise that Abu Ghraib is never mentioned in her book, yet is a salient point in Stack's; the disillusionment of a young Jordanian women was the perfect vehicle to convey what Abu Ghraib represented to the Arab people. Both journalists covered the rigged election in the town of Damanhour, in Egypt, between the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Gamal Heshmat, and the government-sponsored candidate, Moustafa Fiqi, who "won." Stack was there, and interviewed the principals through interpreters. Wright reported from a secondary source, Noha al Zeiny, who told her what she needed to know.
   
   I've also read (and reviewed) Dexter Filkins' The Forever War (Vintage), Sebastian Junger's WAR and Steve Coll's The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century. Each of the books is strong, written by journalists who are generally thorough; at least two have clearly "paid their dues" in terms of being where the bullets were flying. Each book is a worthwhile read. Nonetheless, I felt that Junger practiced some self-censorship; Coll's book is almost perfect, factually, yet even he makes a major mistake in describing the terrorist attacks against upscale compounds in Riyadh in 2003. I didn't find any of these flaws in Stack's work.
   
   In 1994 I traveled for six days with one of the "big-name" journalist from the Vietnam War era. Serendipity had brought us together; both on our first return visits to Vietnam since the war. We had our agreements, and our (civil) disagreements, about the wars of the past, and the ones to come. Murray Fromson shared with me an experience from the very final days of the American war in Vietnam; he was still working in the Saigon bureau a few days before the fall of the city. The report came in that a C-5A Galaxy had crashed just after takeoff from Tan Son Nhut. He was the first on the scene, and reported the devastation; the babies and small children, the orphans of the war who were being evacuated, and now lay, scattered across the fields, dead. He cried while reporting the story, and almost 20 years later, he was still deeply rankled that he had been upbraided by the "brass" of CBS in NYC for being "unprofessional." After seeing the devastation of South Lebanon; the impact, particularly on the old, the crazies, and the babies who suffered under the bombs, Megan Stack also cried. We need more such "unprofessional" journalists; those who can see, and be moved by it; who know that nothing justifies such suffering. Ms. Stack has performed the essential journalist function: she has helped us all to see, if we are willing. An important, 5 ½ star book that should be read in all our schools, but particularly in the think tanks that construct the reasons why all of this is justified by America's `security needs.'
   
   A final piece of gratuitous advice that I hope finds its way to Ms. Stack: You've paid your dues; never let the siren song of the adrenalin rush of war call you back. You've done enough to help the rest of us see; go peacefully among the many countries that still have a tenuous hold on that marvelous state.



5. Without a doubt this is the best writing on a war zone I have ever read. Ms. Stack is a American hero. Her time spent and her knowledge of the people is outstanding. She has written in a way that people that have never seen the horrors of war can come to understand. This should be a required reading for anyone that serves in a Political postition. The civilians of any country involved are always the losers. Have been and always will be. Just as Viet Nam now enjoys employment by many American firms,I.E. Ford and Gm and all that go around them in the international world, so will Iran, Iraq and all the rest in the future. They surely know this, history tells them this is factual. America fights to avenge 9/11 and to win so we are told. Will you believe it after you read this book? Don't miss reading this book the facts are tremendous and she is a very good writer.

5 comments about Three in Death.

1. I enjoyed this book because there were three short stories. All the stories were great. I like J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts). I have been reading her stories for years and these three are right up there with all of her others.



2. As usual, Nora Roberts is up to snuff. Her Dallas policewoman is sharp, lovely, and gets her man (perp).



3. Eve Dallas isn't a great detective. What she is is an arrogant behind. I hate real cops who think that because they wear a badge they get to do what they want. She thinks nothing of destroying an individual's life in the course of an investigation. Why? Because that person may have been guilty. Give me a break. It seems that she "lucks up" on the correct suspect when another crime occurs while she's battering the individual she's decided was guilty. The only saving grace in any of these stories are the supporting characters, Rourke, Sommerset, Mavis, Dr. Mira et. al.



4. I love J.D. Robb and her Eve Dallas. Whenever a new one comes out, I can not wait to get my hands on it.



5. This book isn't listed in the list of books included in the front of each book in the "In Death" series so when I discovered it I was thrilled to order it. I was surprised to find that it was really 3 novelettes which were complete in themselves. "Midnight" was quite good and actually was an extension of Roarke and Dallas's first Christmas together. The mystery is good and it's worth the read. The second and third are not as tightly written as her novels and so were a bit disappointing. This is still a fun read as the ideas and mysteries are very novel (as always).