Roger's Selected Third Quarter Canon

It was a pretty good quarter for reading. I’ve mostly been slogging through my to-be-read shelves, and haven’t bought very many new volumes this past quarter.


&&&& Allen D. Spiegel - A. Lincoln, Esquire: A Shrewd, Sophisticated Lawyer in His Time
I loved this book. You would probably find it sooooo unbearably boring, so I cannot recommend it. This author goes through some historical and extensive courthouse records concerning Abraham Lincoln’s law practice in Springfield, Illinois, ranging from the late 1830's to 1860. Lincoln was a self-taught lawyer, never going to a law school per se. In those days, it was permitted to "read the law," and essentially apprentice in law offices. There is a lot to be said for an intensive academic preparation for lawyers. But an apprenticeship makes a lot of sense, too. Only now are the law schools extensively using "clinical law" programs, which pair teams of students with experienced lawyers (at least that’s supposed to be the way it works, sometimes they get paired with pure academics) who then represent real people. The best lawyer in America, Gerry Spence, has favored both academic study followed by an apprenticeship.
Lincoln practiced under the "common law pleading" system, which developed in England from 1066 right through today. Some familiarity with that system is helpful in reading Spiegel’s work. He has collected pleadings (the documents in the case that lawyers prepare) and court reporter notes and appellate records to reconstruct the kind of practice Lincoln had. It’s really remarkable. Lincoln was indeed a small town lawyer, and a damn good one. As late as 1860, he was representing individuals in small cases, but also was representing the large corporations of the day (e.g., railroads) in complicated corporate matters. It is difficult to really tell how Lincoln ascended to the presidency (at least it is for me) and Spiegel doesn’t go there at all. I’ve read somewhere that there are 16,000 books about Lincoln, and I would love to have them all.


&&&& James M. Strock - Theodore Roosevelt on Leadership: Executive Lessons from the Bully Pulpit

TR is a hero of mine. I firmly believe that we need heroes, and that the lowest common denominator dysfunctional jaded jackanapes featured on MTV, VH1 and various "reality" genre TV presentations are filling youth with warped values. And the trivial and useless activities so common on the web contribute to that. (I know that there are Second Life afficianados out there. Sorry, it just bothers the hell out of me.)

TR lived his philosophy. He didn’t just talk about the strenuous life, he lived it. Strock draws from mostly commonly-known writings of TR, and draws from them lessons of leadership. (TR left a lot of writings, and acknowledged that he was writing for posterity.) If you know nothing about TR, but are interested in social science, this book is still interesting. If you do know his writing, it will stimulate new ways to consider his lessons.

&&&&& Michael Flynn - In the Country of the Blind

This is damn fine "near" sci-fi. The thesis is that history is mathematically predictable and therefore manipulable, and postulates competing groups doing that. It has a remarkable "alternate reality" feel.

&&& Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex

Oprah recommended this, so I took my sweet time reading it. It is a peculiar family history, a history of reinforced bad genes which culminate in a difficult life for the protagonist. The title is a play on words, supposedly the name of a community, but also a comment on the protagonist dealing with being a pseudo-hermaphrodite. My mother hated the book.


&&&& Harry Turtledove - Settling Accounts: In at the Death

Here again, I highly rate something that most folks will abhor. Standing alone, this book would be total nonsense. It is the 11th volume of an alternate history series by Turtledove, who is the best-known writer of that sub-genre. In those 5,000 or so pages, he introduces a complicated cast and has time to really, really develop their lives. To me, they became friends and despite the underlying premise (the Confederacy won the American Civil War), it’s a very real world he creates.

&&&&& Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - The Wheel of Darkness
I don’t understand how writing teams can possibly cooperate. These guys do. They started several volumes ago in a fairly loose series talking about museums and curios (one of their books is Cabinet of Curiosity) with some macabre (if credible) touches. Early on, a minor character, Agent Pendergast of the FBI was introduced, and he has become the volume-to-volume continuity. I waited darn near a year for this to be published, and it was worth the wait. The best of the series is Still Life With Crows.

&&& Ben Bova - The Aftermath: Book Four of the Asteroid Wars

You have to be a sci-fi fan to appreciate this. It is not only the fourth book in a series, it is set in the near-future Solar system, and is consistent with many other books Bova has written. If you’re not really serious about sci-fi, don’t bother.

&&&& William Dietrich - Getting Back
This is another near-future work, based on the twin premises of a world-wide plague which has drastically reduced the human population (and in my dark hours, I can imagine that as a not-too-bad idea) and that large corporations control what’s left. (I’m not sure that’s such a far out premise.)

&&&&& David Von Drehle - Triangle: The Fire That Changed America

To me, this is a haunting work. It is pure history. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company occupied the three top floors of a 1911 New York highrise. It was a clothing factory, producing "shirtwaists," that is, women’s blouses. The conditions were sweatshop style, and the attention to worker health and safety were abominable. Fabric pieces and cotton particles, which are all highly flammable, were collected in bins beneath the cutting tables. (A key worker in a clothing factory is the fabric cutter, who must accurately cut panels of apparel without excess waste.) The only fire safety precaution was buckets of water spread around the room. In order to control the work force, some of the (inadequate) exits were locked. A fire started, probably from smoking, and spread extremely quickly through two floors of the factory, killing 146 workers, almost all of whom were immigrants. Von Drehle sets up the conditions accurately and in detail, and has a large knowledge of the physics of fire. The description of the response of FDNY is heartbreaking, because here were caring public servants who couldn’t get there in time to save many lives. There is a vivid description of a "gentleman" who helped ladies trapped by the fire escape being burned to death by helping them jump to their deaths – quite reminiscent of the choice that some of the WTC workers had in 2001.

The book documents the labor unrest which led to conditions which made the fire so deadly, and recounts the aftermath including the manslaughter trial of the owners in detail. The author analyzes the defense provided to the owners by Max Steuer (rhymes with "foyer"), who was one of the best trial lawyers of the 20th Century. (The owners were acquitted.)

This book brings to me very emotional images. One is a short scene in a movie about the fire made some years ago, where the first fire engine pulls out of the firehouse and responds to the call. In 1911, the engines were steam-powered pumps drawn by teams of horses, and the image of the engine plunging down the center of the street going to an incident which it will be wholly inadequate to fix is quite vivid.


&&&& James Dallesandro - 1906
This is a historical novel of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. It uses protagonists who are believable, but also major public players who did not exist in history. However, the descriptions of the damage, the progress of the fire, and the political considerations of the people managing the disaster are detailed and, so far as I know, accurate, as is the detail of life in 1906 San Francisco.


&&& Jeffrey Toobin - The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

I really don’t know if a non-lawyer will like or be disturbed about this book as much as I am. The public does not really appreciate the impact that the Supreme Court has on society, nor the cognitive disconnect between these justices (and judges in general) and the public. The selection process is an abomination, and it is not surprising in the least that it leads to an insulated political body which is at the same time grossly political and detached from real people. Justice Scalia, a conservative icon, is asked how he's different from Justice Thomas, the most famous recipient of affirmative action of all time. Scalia replies, "I'm not nuts."


&&&&& Michael Gates Gill - How Starbucks Saved My Life

This is the no. 2 pearl of this quarter, and it’s the best business book I’ve read. Gill was a high executive in the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency in New York, and was making an undisclosed yet fantastic amount of money doing so. At age 63, he was fired without fault, no doubt because of a more youthful corporate ideal. Around the same time, this married father of grown children got a girlfriend and had a baby with her. (The girlfriend turned out to be pretty crazy, and although he was very attentive to the baby, the romance fizzled.) (Been there, done that.) He worked as an independent advertising consultant without much success, owing partly to the youth-oriented corporate culture, the stigma of having been fired, and his own profound depression. He happened to be in New York City sitting in a Starbucks drinking some yuppie brew (and wondering how he’d continue to pay for them in the future) when he met a young black female manager who offered him a job. So, he began life as a "barrista," cleaning toilets, working the cash register and making coffee concoctions. Along the way, he discovered happiness and his own humanity.

Gill writes a triumphant look at the lives of real people, and the meaninglessness of great riches. I highly recommend this.

& Esther & Jerry Hicks - The Law of Attraction: The Basic Teachings of Abraham

Worthless New Age drivel. The authors think that they are in constant contact with some supernatural being who gives them wisdom to pass on to us poor ignorant slobs. The buffoonery is enjoyable for maybe 20 pages, and then the book is nothing but annoying.

&&&&& Tawni O’Dell - Coal Run

A woman author writes in the first person of a male character who is a former football star sidelined by a career-ending injury, the son of a coal miner killed in an explosion, who goes back to his small Pennsylvania hometown and works as a deputy sheriff. It has bad judgment, recrimination, redemption and reality, and is a really excellent work.

&&&&& Robert Morgan - Gap Creek

In counterpoint to Coal Run, Gap Creek is written by a male author who writes in the first person for a female narrator. The novel is about small farm life and poverty in southern Appalachia around 1900. The protagonist is a strong character who is handed unfair and crushing blows by life, and who perseveres. I highly recommend this one, too.


&&&&& Ken Follett - World Without End

And last, here is the gem of the quarter. Twenty years ago, Follett wrote The Pillars of the Earth, a novel about a town in England in the 1100's and the construction of the cathedral there. That book was richly researched in general history and particularly in the building trades.
World Without End is a sort of sequel, set in the same town 200 years after the cathedral was built. It, too, contains rich descriptions of life at that time, including familiar political and social maneuvering which differs only in time from what we see now. The book covers about 50 years, and a historical secret connects the beginning with the end. Three main characters plus four or five minor characters interact over decades and produce a great read.


Thus, the third quarter.


Mizpah.


R