Tag Archives: Book Review

BOOK REVIEW: The Lone Samurai by Wm. Scott Wilson

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The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto MusashiThe Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi by William Scott Wilson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

[Note: this was previously posted in my martial arts blog, Jissen Budōka.]

This is a concise and well-researched biography of one of Japan’s most famous swordsmen. Miyamoto Musashi, however, wasn’t just a swordsman, he was also a writer, a painter, a sculptor, a Zen Buddhist, a poet, a philosopher, and a strategist. In short, he was a renaissance man. While The Lone Samurai focuses heavily on Musashi’s many duels as a traveling warrior, it also describes his artwork as it paints a portrait of a complex and beguiling character.

Musashi holds a curious allure among figures in Japanese history. The Japanese tend to be strictly bound by societal conventions, and being respectful and well-mannered is valued above all else. Musashi flouted convention whenever it served him. He used irreverence for strategic advantage. He was an astute reader of men. He often showed disrespect in order to get into his opponent’s head. This is most famously exemplified in his Ganryu Island duel with Sasaki Kojiro.

Musashi adopted a life of musha shugyo, or warrior errantry, though he could have been much wealthier and more comfortable had he chosen to be. He enjoyed simplicity, and only owned a few possessions. In his travels, he engaged in over 60 duels, and is usually credited with being undefeated [Note: I’ve heard some dispute the outcome of his second duel with Muso Gonnosuke. Wilson calls it a draw, but I’ve heard it called Musashi’s only defeat as well.] He fought as a samurai in battle at Sekigahara as well, but his adulthood was a relatively peaceful time.

One fascinating, but controversial, claim is that Musashi had no teachers–neither in swordsmanship nor in any of the fine arts he practiced. Musashi said this himself, but some historians dispute it. If true, it really takes being an extraordinary person up a notch. It should be noted that Musashi was only 13 when he had his first duel.

There is much about Musashi that is lost to the ages, but this book does a great job of pulling together what is known and weaving it into a portrait of the man.

There is an extensive series of appendices providing background information, notes, a glossary, and even a collection of pop culture (e.g. movie and novel) depictions of Musashi.

It’s well worth the read if you’re interested in strategy, history, or the biographies of incredible people.

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BOOK REVIEW: Secret Weapons by Cheryl Hersha, et al.

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Secret WeaponsSecret Weapons by Cheryl Hersha

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazon page

Secret Weapons is about two sisters who are trained in an MKULTRA-style behavior modification program to become femme fatales. This book was a rare find. I hadn’t heard of it before or seen it in my local bookstores, but I came across a copy at the Strand bookstore in New York (the “miles of books” place) on a trip several years ago.

Like Whitley Strieber’s Communion, this book leaves one engrossed but wondering what exactly one is reading. It is written as non-fiction, and not creative non-fiction that admits to blending elements of fiction into the fact. The writers are eager to convince the reader that this is not a hoax. About a quarter of the book is supporting documents to lend the book credibility. However, while I’m well aware of the “mind control” programs sponsored by the American government, this story doesn’t ring true to me. (In large part this is because we know the programs that operated were not nearly so successful as the one in Secret Weapons would have had to have been.) [I wrote a post about such programs that is available here. If you’d like to read some primary documents on the subject, this page at the National Security Archives has many of them.]

One might think that there are two possibilities: either it’s a true story or it’s a hoax. However, it’s a third possibility that makes this book so thought-provoking. What if the two sisters believe that the story is absolutely true, when–in fact–it wasn’t? How could this be? Their father is presented as an unsavory character. One possibility is that the father abused these girls and they created an elaborate backstory in their minds to cope with the fact that the one man who should have loved them, that they should have been able to trust, neither loved them nor was worthy of their trust.

Of course, another possibility is that it’s all true. While a lot of information did come out about Projects ARTICHOKE, BLUEBIRD, and MKULTRA, a lot was also shredded. The person working the shredder might have gone after the documentation of activities involving pedophilia first. If there is any activity that would have rightfully taken the situation from one of CIA employees being sent to country club federal prisons to them being strung up on the Capitol steps, it’s what’s depicted in this book.

Of course, it could all be a hoax as well. A story like this, if believed, elicits the publicity of the news media. That’s a powerful way to sell books.

I’ll leave the reader to decide which of the three possibilities they believe is most likely.

If you haven’t concluded this already, let me be explicit: This book contains disturbing descriptions (and even sketches.) It isn’t gratuitous to the story they are trying to convey, but if you have a weak stomach for such matters, I’d recommend you steer clear.

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BOOK REVIEW: Story of O by Pauline Réage

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Story of OStory of O by Pauline Réage

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazon page: See Here

I haven’t read 50 Shades of Grey, but was surprised to hear that it began as Twilight fan fiction. From the descriptions that I’d seen, it seemed much more like a relatively softcore, commercial-fiction version of Story of O. I don’t whether the Story of O fits into this recent genre development called “mommy porn,” because the book predates that terminology.

In Story of O a successful fashion photographer named “O” is in love with a man whose tastes run to the extreme. Her lover, René, asks her to come into this lifestyle, and she willingly submits to his wishes. Submission involves some harsh tests of her willingness to endure.

I expect the initiated will point out that one major difference exists between the two works. 50 Shades seems to involve a monogamous relationship, whereas– in the Story of O— O is handed off from René to a more senior dominant for her “training.” O then begins to fall for her new master. Moreover, there is no monogamy in Story of O–whatsoever. (i.e. O is passed around like a doobie at a Greatful Dead concert.) I’m not saying they are the same books, just that they seem similar. They are both books about women who willingly surrendering to men with exotic (re: freaky) desires.

There also seems to be a difference in endings between the two story lines (vis-á-vis who walks), but I will not go into that.

Actually, one major fault of Story of O is that there is not a proper ending (completion of a narrative arc.) The version I have has a brief annotation that says the ending was suppressed. It goes on to give a description of two alternate versions of a similar ending. I suspect the drafts of those endings were lost to the ages because I have a copy of the 1973 edition (the book came out in the 50’s) and to my knowledge there is no subsequent edition.

Those who are freaked out by kinkiness will find Story of O hard to stomach. In terms of language, I’ve read that it’s calmer than 50 Shades…, but in terms of the actions carried out I suspect it runs a bit more toward the exotic. Another group that will find this book to not be their cup of tea are those who have strong feelings about women’s empowerment. If that’s you, you will likely find it hard to relate to a woman who has power in her life, but who willingly–nay, eagerly– relinquishes it. Moreover, O seems to thrive on being dominated. That is, she falls hardest for the man who will most forcefully enslave her.

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BOOK REVIEW: Bones of the Master by George Crane

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Bones of the Master: A Journey to Secret MongoliaBones of the Master: A Journey to Secret Mongolia by George Crane

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m a sucker for a tale of the sage next door. In an unwise world, it’s nice to believe that the wise exist, and that they walk among us. That they are not relegated to secluded retreats, but live in suburban subdivisions. In Bones of the Master a quirky Asian man drops in on his neighbor. The neighbor turns out to be the author of this book, poet George Crane. The visitor is Tsung Tsai, a Cha’an monk who trekked from Inner Mongolia to Hong Kong in 1959 in order to ensure the teachings of his monastery would survive.

The two men strike up a friendship, collaborating on poetry translation and eventually making a journey together back to Tsung Tsai’s home. The first part of the book tells of their meeting and describes Tsung Tsai’s 1959 journey to freedom. The second part deals with the two men’s mid-1990’s return trip. The monk’s ambitious plan is to find the bones of his master, cremate them, and relocate them in accord with the dictates of his religious tradition. He also wants to rebuild the temple that was razed by the Red Guard during the cultural revolution. As this is nonfiction, it’s not all happy endings. Not everything works out as they’d like it to. A brief third part tells of their return to the states with an interesting stopover in Hong Kong.

Much of the appeal of the book stems from how the monk’s worldview rubs off on the author. The monk assumes matter-of-factly that they will be able to sell the book for a sufficient advance to pay for the trip and a monument to his teacher. As one can imagine– particularly anyone who knows a bit about publishing– Crane is suitably skeptical, but ultimately buys into the plan. The monk often tells Crane that he worries too much. However, most of us would worry about these daunting challenges. For example, how to get a one ton statue from New York to Inner Mongolia, or–more importantly–whether the aged and ailing monk will be able to complete the trip alive.

There are tidbits of insight as well as poetry scattered throughout the book.

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BOOK REVIEW: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

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Into the WildInto the Wild by Jon Krakauer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nature is a harsh teacher. That was the last lesson Chris McCandless ever learned. A recent college graduate, McCandless struck out for the Alaskan wilderness with minimal resources, his body was found by a party of moose-hunters several months after he’d begun his Alaskan adventure.

Into the Wild gives us a well-researched explanation for how McCandless died, but it also tells us a great deal about how he lived– and that story is fascinating in its own right. Many thought McCandless must have been crazy, but refusing to acquiesce to the work-a-day world is often incorrectly diagnosed as insanity.

McCandless had an obsessive desire to find out whether he could make it on his own, not just separate from his parent’s wealth but from all the trappings of modern society. McCandless’s most iconic indicator of insanity-by-way-of-thwarting-convention was when he gave away the entirety of his $25,000 savings account and burnt all the money in his wallet. He wanted to know whether he could survive if he was returned to the state of nature from whence mankind came. Sadly, the answer was no.

It would be easy to dismiss McCandless as a dumb kid who got in over his head. Though he certainly was that. On his deathbed, in a bus carcass in the remote Alaskan wilderness, McCandless likely had a revelation that most teenagers pass into adulthood without ever realizing, that he was mortal.

However, McCandless was more than a kid with an underdeveloped sense of his own mortality. He was a kid with the courage to confront a question that most of us just let nag in the back of our minds. That question being,do we have what it takes to live not as a cog in a machine but as a human in the natural world.

I know many are intrigued by this question in part because there are entire TV channels that are practically devoted to survival shows. Yet most people don’t take it beyond sitting on a couch contemplating whether they could survive. Will thinking man (Homo sapiens) be replaced by doing man (Homo effectus)?

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There was a movie based on this book. I didn’t see it, but here is its trailer.

BOOK REVIEW: Eclipse of the Crescent Moon by Géza Gárdonyi

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Bas relief of Siege of Eger

Bas relief of Siege of Eger

Eclipse Of The Crescent MoonEclipse Of The Crescent Moon by Géza Gárdonyi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is the English translation of a volume originally written in Hungarian and titled Egri Csillagok, i.e. “Stars of Eger.”

Historical fiction works best when the event it’s built around requires no fictitious embellishment to fascinate the reader. Eclipse of the Crescent Moon takes place during the 1552 siege of Eger. During this siege, 2,000 Hungarians held off at least 40,000 Turkish invaders for over one month. (In the book the Turks have a two order of magnitude advantage.) The Turks retreated despite having had superior armaments as well as a massive numeric advantage. It’s the perfect underdog story.

Reading a purely historic account would be interesting enough, but Géza Gárdonyi creates value-added by imbuing his characters with depth, particularly his lead Gergely Bornemissza. There wasn’t much known about Bornemissza. He was a minor character in history compared to Eger’s commander, István Dobó. However, his expertise in explosives did play a role in this Hungarian success story.

The book begins when Bornemissza is a young boy. He and a girl named Éva are captured by a Turk. The couple escapes and manages to free others. They later elope to avert Éva’s arranged marriage. They have a child who is later captured by the same Turk who had captured them.

A major subplot is a trip made to Istanbul in the heart of enemy territory to attempt to aid in the escape of Bornemissza’s  adoptive father.

The book is well translated and an engaging read.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Journeys of Socrates by Dan Millman

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The Journeys of SocratesThe Journeys of Socrates by Dan Millman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Journeys of Socrates shines the spotlight on Dan Millman’s mysterious teacher from The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. We discover that Socrates was born Sergei in Russia to a Cossack father and a Jewish mother.

His youth is scarred by tragedy. His mother died in labor with him and his father died of alcohol poisoning while Sergei was away at military school. His only remaining relative that we know of, his grandfather, dies. He flees military school to avoid having to harass Jews as a soldier, and in the process he has to battle his arch-rival. He marries into a family, but that brings its own tragedy. His family by marriage are Jews living under false identities at a time when it is very dangerous to be a Russian Jew.

It is after this tragedy that Socrates’ search for warrior skills and revenge drive the narrative. In injecting so much tragedy into his life, Millman makes the main character’s transformation all the more impressive. At every turn, Socrates is faced with events that should fill him with bitterness and hatred, but he must keep going and learn to control his emotions to become the warrior that he wants to be.

He proceeds to train under a warrior trained in the way of Japanese swordsmanship, a man named Razin. Razin only reluctantly accepts him as a student. He then lives at a hermitage, learning to reign in his mind and to respond freely and appropriately to attacks. His teacher at the hermitage, Father Serafim, teaches him to fight, while encouraging him to give up his vendetta. Finally, he travels abroad to train with a convened collection of sages from various traditions (Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity,etc.)

Socrates narrative arc is well developed. He is pitted against a powerful enemy named Zakolyev, aka Gregor Stakkos, a military school rival who became an antisemitic Cossack gang leader. Socrates is reluctantly drawn into a final decisive battle with this nemesis, but there is a twist at the end to further complicate that event.

I’ll admit I’ve had mixed feelings about Millman’s work. I was a big fan of the original books Way of the Peaceful Warrior and to a lesser extent Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior. Those books provided great insight into mind-body development in a readable narrative form. However, I later picked up one of his subsequent books and found it to be some sort of numerology/astrology drivel. That was disconcerting not only because it offended my sensibilities as a Cartesian skeptic, but even more so because it seemed to fly in the face of the Peaceful Warrior message– which was one of self-empowerment, not passive acceptance of some randomly bestowed fate.

So I picked The Journeys of Socrates reluctantly. However, I found this book to be the most readable of all. It is written like a novel or the memoir of someone who led the rare novel-shaped life.

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BOOK REVIEW: Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

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Cat's CradleCat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Cat’s Cradle is Vonnegut at his most brilliant and witty.

The book follows a writer, John/Jonah, as he does research for a book on the Hiroshima A-bomb. To learn about the (fictitious) inventor of the bomb, the deceased Felix Hoenikker, he interviews  Hoenikker’s children and former supervisor. In the process he becomes entangled in global catastrophe in a way he couldn’t have imagined.

As it turns out, Hoenikker had invented another weapon of mass destruction, one that would make the H-bomb look like a firecracker. However, ice-9, as the weapon was designated, wasn’t intended as a weapon at all. Ice-9 turns all water into ice at temperatures below 114 degrees Fahrenheit. The idea was to make marshes crossable by Marine Corps units. It’s the failure to anticipate the ramifications of using such a chemical, i.e. the hydrologic cycle, that’s the central premise of this book.

A lot of the book deals with a fictitious religion called Bokononism. Bokononism is the cynical faith of the Island of San Lorenzo, and it perfectly reflects Vonnegut’s mildly misanthropic attitudes. The first sentence of the Book of Bokonon says it all, “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.”

At the beginning of Cat’s Cradle we find out that John is a Bokononist, but that he’d grown up a Christian. Bokononism is prohibited on the island by the dictator, Papa Manzano. The reader comes to discover that not only is the prohibition a fraud designed to give the religion more sex appeal, but also that Manzano is a practitioner himself. This is just one of the quirky oddities that defines life on San Lorenzo.

It’s when John and all the Hoenikker children are assembled in San Lorenzo that the action really unfolds. Manzano is dying and turns the presidency over to Franklin Hoenikker (the non-midget son of the father of the bomb); Manzano later commits suicide in the oddest imaginable way. Franklin convinces John to take the presidency, but it becomes moot as the book approaches climax.

I’ll leave you with my favorite piece of Bokononist wisdom, “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.” By the way, you should go to San Felix island off the coast of Chile. [Picked via a spinning globe.]

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BOOK REVIEW: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

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Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and SpiritIshmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A man answers an ad that says, “Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.” Expecting to find a charlatan, the man is surprised to find his new teacher is, in fact, a gorilla.

Like Socrates, this gorilla, Ishmael, uses questions to guide his pupil toward crucial knowledge. Ismael teaches his student to challenge some of his most deep-seated beliefs such as, the world was made for humans, humans are the ultimate culmination of biology, humans are inherently separate from (and above) nature, and that humans are fundamentally flawed in such a way as to make ruination of the planet inevitable.

The core of the book differentiates two human cultures. The author calls them the “takers” and the “leavers,” but they correspond to what we might call “us” and the “aboriginal peoples.” Takers are specialized, agricultural, and technologically advanced (if you’re reading this review on a computer and not chiseled on a cave wall, you, my friend, are a taker.)

The lives of “Leavers” aren’t that different from those of humans 10,000 years ago. They are tribal as opposed to (to borrow Desmond Morris’s term) super-tribal. [In a tribe everyone knows everyone else. Morris suggests that things go to shit –re: war, crime, and deviant behavior– in super-tribal societies.] Leavers live like animals in that they tend towards equilibrium within their ecosystem. Takers do not.

If you long for thrillers or potboilers, this isn’t the book for you. It’s a thinking person’s book. The nice thing about Ishmael’s use of the Socratic method is that one can think through the questions in parallel to the narrator’s discovery. In this way, the reader can install himself or herself into the conversation.

At the most generic level, the book’s value is in showing one how much one takes for granted. We can’t see forests for trees.

One may agree or disagree with the author, but either way one will be subjected to powerful food for thought. Some of the discussion may evoke a visceral emotional reaction that one may have trouble reconciling with logic, such as the discussion of the morality of feeding the starving.

The downside of the book is that the dialogue can be strained in places and it can get a bit repetitive. The latter serves to reinforce key concepts, but some of them feel as though they are reinforced inordinately. In making the narrating protagonist struggle, Quinn creates a lead who seems a bit dense sometimes. Also, as I indicated, the journey is by-and-large in the mind, and so the tension is limited. There is some drama when the narrator shows up one day to find that Ishmael has been evicted. However, this is resolved without too great a difficulty and they resume lessons with  Ishmael’s irritability being the only change to be seen. There is drama at the end that will remain unspoiled herein.

I’d recommend this book as a thought-provoking exercise for the mind.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway

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The Sun Also RisesThe Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Get Speechify to make any book an audiobook

Whatever the blurbs or critics might say, this book is about the raft of men left in the friend-zone after brief dalliances with Lady Brett Ashley. One may have been led to believe it’s about the life of Jake Barnes. Barnes is the lead character, but he’s not the most influential character.

Besides Barnes, the list of men who fall hard for Lady Brett Ashley include, boxer Robert Cohn, the bankrupt Michael Campbell, and the bullfighter Pedro Romero. Oddly enough, the physically toughest, Cohn, is the one who falls the hardest. Barnes may be the strongest in this sense; perhaps because his relationship with Ashley is over before the novel begins. Barnes comes off as likable with a pragmatic “live and let live” nature. (He can maintain a friendship with a woman that he loves, a feat that seems beyond Cohn’s ability. Campbell is used to having lost everything, and so seems to bob comfortably in Ashley’s wake. We don’t reliably learn about how Romero takes it.)

As the blurb says, The Sun Also Rises is about a journey from Paris to Pamplona. In Paris, the cast of Lost Generation friends hang out in cafés. In Pamplona they attend bullfights. In between, Barnes goes fishing with friends.

In a broader sense, the book is about dissatisfaction and restlessness, and not only within Ashley. This is summed up nicely by Cohn’s words to Jake, “Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it?”

Of course, the book shines in its language. Hemingway’s lean buy meaty prose is readable and engrossing. The minimalist dialogue beautifully conveys the interaction of a group of intimate friends.

Here’s a great line that captures the character of Hemingway’s writing in this book, “The beer was not good and I had a worse cognac to take the taste out of my mouth.”

The book rises to crescendo with the Pamplona bullfights and Hemingway adeptly ends on a sad note apropos of the morning after a great party.

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