Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand has been perched on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year with good reason.  It is the remarkable story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner, a World War II veteran, a crash survivor, a survivor of the brutal Japanese prisoner camps and a fearless man.  Laura Hillenbrand's previous work, Seabiscuit, was a highly successful 2002 work.  This work was recently optioned for a movie.

Louis Zamperini grew up in California and was a rambunctious teenager.  With his brother's guidance, he became a runner, nearly breaking the four minute mile.  He competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics turning in an extraordinary performance in an event he had no real experience in.  His training for the 1940 Olympics was cut off by the war.  As part of an air force bomber crew, Zamperini flew regularly over the Pacific.  In May 1943, his plane went down.  Miraculously, Zamperini and two other crew members barely survived.  They spent 47 days drifting at sea in a tiny raft with essentially no provisions.  The three men survived daily shark attacks and a vicious attack by a Japanese bomber.  Picked up by the Japanese, Zamperini was interned in a POW camp.  He was brutally beaten and barely survived his two-year ordeal.  The US government had declared Zamperini as dead.  His return home at the end of the war was nothing short of a miracle.  Today, Zamperini is in his 90s.

With this work, Hillenbrand turned in a magnificent performance.  The book is meticulously researched.  It is loaded with corroborating facts.  Hillenbrand does a masterful job of telling this modern Odyssey story.  Some reviewers have noted their disbelief at parts of Zamperini's story.  While many parts of the story defy reality, what many soldiers and Holocaust survivors endured (and how they did it) defies comprehension.  Hillenbrand's reputation and work deserves deference. The book reads as well as any fiction work.  It is a page turner and will give you a deep respect for the unbroken spirit of Mr. Zamperini.  He truly is an American hero.

Walking on the Moon With Einstein

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer is a 2011 non-fiction book that will change how you think about your memory.  If you like Malcolm Gladwell or books that help you see the world a bit differently, I'd add this to your reading list.

Foer, a young reporter, went to report on the ultimate event -- the U.S. Memory Championships.  He met the competitors, learned about their talents and decided to participate in the following year's competition.  He learned the skills, trained and ended up winning the competition.  Through Foer's adventure, he teaches the reader that memory is like most other skills, one which we can be learned.  He explains some of the basic and intricate techniques he was taught.  It is amazing.  By creating absurd images of objects and placing them in a memory palace (a place you know very well, such as a childhood home), with proper training, you can store extensive material.  For example, look at this list:

-pickled garlic
-cottage cheese
-smoked salmon
-six bottles of white wine
-3 pairs of dirty socks
-3 hula hoops
-a snorkel
-a dry ice machine
-write an email to Sophia

Last Thursday, I memorized the list above based on the techniques in the book and I still remember it crisply.  It is amazing!  I've tried this out on four subjects so far and each one has had equal success.

The book reads as if it is a long New Yorker article: well written, highly entertaining and beautifully executed. It was a great book.  Highly recommended.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is remarkable.  This is a non-fiction book from 2010.  I highly recommend it.  (It came highly recommended to me from three readers of this blog.  Thank you, DH, MH and JM).

What makes this book standout is that Skloot ties together a story about race, medicine, medical ethics, science, healthcare and human beings in a narrative that simply flows.  In 1951, Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer.  She was a decedent of slaves, an honest and hard working woman, and a mother of very young children.  Unbeknownst to her, Lacks's doctors extracted tissue from her for research.  Her tissue produced the first cells to survive and spawn new cell lines -- the HeLa line of cells.  The HeLa cells have continued to replicate and have been used extensively, for example, in developing the polio vaccine and throughout cancer research.  Neither Lacks nor her family were asked for their consent.  They were never compensated or even recognized for the contribution they made.  While her cells advanced medical research and enriched some companies, the Lacks family could not afford basic healthcare.  

Skloot does a magnificent job of uncovering and telling the story of Henrietta, her family, the doctors and researchers involved and the breakthroughs that they made.  She tells Henrietta's story, the story of the researchers and what they accomplished and, in accessible terms, the story of the advances made by science.  She manages to get close to the Lacks family (in a loving, non-exploitive way) and share their story.  She challenges the reader with ethics questions, some of which still remain open today.  The writing is thoroughly accessible.

Best Books of 2011

After nearly a year of reading and posting comes to a close, I wanted to share my favorite books of the year from among those that I have read (whether I've posted about them or not).  Year end lists are a great way to select books to read and gifts to give.  Titles of the books below link to my review and images to the particular book on Amazon.

Before diving into the list, if you are looking for a gift for a reader (or yourself), get an e-reader.  I'm often asked what I use to read.  Sometimes I use my Kindle, which links to my phone and tablet.  Sometimes I read paper.  E-readers are ubiquitous and a very convenient way to read books.  They have finally matured and become very affordable (Kindle $79; Nook $99).  I strongly suggest one.  By getting one, you are not committing to an "e-reader lifestyle of reading."  But, consider that it is a easier to carry a Kindle full of books rather than a stack on vacation, on the train or anywhere else.  You can download samples to check out whether you want to read a book.  And as for the reading experience, it is just like reading on paper except the device slips into a pocket easily.

My recommendation is the simple Kindle.  For $79, you get a Wi-Fi only device (no touch screen). You really can't go wrong.  If you have questions about e-readers, email me.  I'm happy to discuss.

Now, on to the 2011 favorites list:

Fiction

Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

The Free World by David Bezmogus

Mystery/Thriller


The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz


The Snowman by Jo Nesbo


The Drop by Michael Connelly (I never got to post a review but it is fantastic)


Non-fiction

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson


The Prime Ministers by Yehuda Avner


Honorable Mention

The Game of Thrones Series by George R.R. Martin (a modern day J.R.R. Tolkien)

Happy reading!

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson is a compelling and haunting novella.  Originally published in The Paris Review in 2002 and then in the O'Henry prize recipient in 2003, the novella has been issued as a standalone hardcover this year.  Like several other compact novellas I have read this year, this one is worthy of reading.


In 1920, Robert Grainier, the story's main character, returns home from working on the railroad to find that the cabin he built and his wife and child were victims to a massive forest fire.  In simple and direct prose, Johnson decimates the reader.  Grainier grew up in the West in a natural world and lives his life attached to the rails.   After finding the devastation of the fire, Grainier, a decent and lonely man, suffers.  Without bemoaning his woes, Grainier brings to mind the story of Job and his suffering.  His quiet acceptance and the mild delirium he suffers as a result of the tragedy are beautifully portrayed by Johnson.


The novella was listed by the New York Times as one of the best books of the year.  It is a well deserved distinction.  You will be able to read this moving novella in a single sitting.  It is worth the time. 

Johnson reading from one of his other works:

NY Times 10 Best Books of the Year

The New York Times has published its list of ten best books of the year (5 fiction and 5 non-fiction).  I've read three of the five fiction pieces and all of them are worthwhile.  The list of the 100 notable books of the year can be found here.

Fiction
THE ART OF FIELDING By Chad Harbach (get the book here)
11/22/63 By Stephen King (get the book here)
SWAMPLANDIA! By Karen Russell (get the book here)
TEN THOUSAND SAINTS By Eleanor Henderson (get the book here)
THE TIGER’S WIFE By Téa Obreht (get the book here)


Non-fiction (NYT summaries below)
ARGUABLY
By Christopher Hitchens
Our intellectual omnivore’s latest collection could be his last (he’s dying of esophageal cancer). The book is almost 800 pages, contains more than 100 essays and addresses a ridiculously wide range of topics, including Afghanistan, Harry Potter, Thomas Jefferson, waterboarding, Henry VIII, Saul Bellow and the Ten Commandments, which Hitchens helpfully revises.

THE BOY IN THE MOON
By Ian Brown
A feature writer at The Globe and Mail in Toronto, Brown combines a reporter’s curiosity with a novelist’s instinctive feel for the unknowable in this exquisite book, an account — at once tender, pained and unexpectedly funny — of his son, Walker, who was born with a rare genetic mutation that has deprived him of even the most rudimentary capacities.

MALCOLM X
A Life of Reinvention.
By Manning Marable
From petty criminal to drug user to prisoner to minister to separatist to humanist to martyr. Marable, who worked for more than a decade on the book and died earlier this year, offers a more complete and unvarnished portrait of Malcolm X than the one found in his autobiography. The story remains inspiring.

THINKING, FAST AND SLOW
By Daniel Kahneman
We overestimate the importance of whatever it is we’re thinking about. We misremember the past and misjudge what will make us happy. In this comprehensive presentation of a life’s work, the world’s most influential psychologist demonstrates that irrationality is in our bones, and we are not necessarily the worse for it.

A WORLD ON FIRE
Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War.
By Amanda Foreman
Which side would Great Britain support during the Civil War? Foreman gives us an enormous cast of characters and a wealth of vivid description in her lavish examination of a second battle between North and South, the trans-Atlantic one waged for British hearts and minds.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The hottest book this fall is Walter Isaacon's biography of Steve Jobs, entitled Steve Jobs.  It has been at the top of the best seller list since Jobs' untimely death in October 2011.  For anyone interested in technology, product development, business, the seismic changes in the music or movie industries or entrepreneurship generally, this is a must read.

The basic contours of Jobs' story are well known.  Steve Jobs, the college-dropout, hippie, Zen-oriented, whiz kid, created the personal computer with his friend in his parent's garage.  The computer, the Apple, becomes a runaway hit, evolved into the Macintosh (and the mouse and user interface that most of us currently use), and created an entire industry.  On the heels of his success, Jobs was fired by the company he created.  He created a new computer company, Next, which flopped.  After finding some humility, Jobs found his way back into Apple, reinvigorated the company, learned from his mistakes and then revolutionized the PC industry, the animation/movie industry (by creating Pixar, which made megahits such as Cars, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Toy Story etc.), the mobile phone industry (the iPhone) and mass-marketed touch computing.  He then created the tablet category of computers with the runaway hit, the iPad.  Jobs did not market test his ideas; he believed that consumers did not always know what they wanted.  He designed a closed ecosystem of computing that allowed him to create and control an optimal and complete computing experience.  For years, his approach was derided as Microsoft grew and grew.  Finally, with the iPod, the iPhone and iPad, the rationale for the closed eco-system took off, making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world.  As a marketing genius, entrepreneur and visionary, Jobs was incredible.  Jobs demanded perfection from himself and those who worked for him.  As a business leader, there is a lot to learn from him.

As a person, Jobs was a flawed (i.e., normal) human being.  He made mistakes and often learned from them.  Jobs was adopted as a baby and well cared for by his adopted-parents.  Yet, as a young man, Jobs fathered a child and essentially abandoned her.  Later in life, he brought her back into his life.  This is surprising behavior from a man who presumably should be most sensitive to the damage caused by abandonment.  As a boss, he could be demeaning  and unnurturing.  His ability to warp reality (what those around him called the "reality distortion field") was not only a powerful business tool, it also carried into his personal life with negative consequences.  When Jobs was first diagnosed with cancer, the man who was at the forefront of technology and possessed contacts and money chose to ignore his cancer, essentially trying to will it away and ignore it.  About nine months later, he finally began to come to terms with it and started treating it by more traditional means.

Several years before his death but after Jobs knew about his cancer, Jobs asked Isaacson to write his biography.  Jobs believed that his legacy was worth chronicling (as it was).  Isaacson had published successful biographies about inventors/geniuses (Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and Einstein: His Life and Universe; both are excellent reads).  Jobs saw himself as the continuation of these stories.  He was probably right.

Isaacson had full access and complete editorial control over the book.  Jobs seemed to have shared everything.  The only criticism of the biography is that Isaacson became to close to his subject.  Occasionally, it shows. Yet, who wouldn't be in awe of the man who created and/or reshaped the technology, movie, music and mobile phone industries.

Two interesting notes for the literary oriented reader.  Jobs dated Jennifer Egan, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad and personally installed a Mac for her.  Jobs' natural sister, Mona Simpson, is a writer, who incorporated her brother and his life into her bestselling books.  The biography is filled with interesting tidbits and should be at the top of everyone's reading list.

[Full disclosure -- this review was written on a Dell.  Soon enough, I'll be on a Mac.]

Many of you will remember this famous 1984 Superbowl commercial that launched the Mac:

The launch of the iPhone in 2007:

Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Speech:

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte

The Ask, by Sam Lipsyte, is a dark comedy that follows the life of Milo Burke, who works for a mediocre university soliciting funds (The Asks).  After being fired and struggling with unemployment, Milo is roped into an Ask from an old friend who has come into money and now Milo has to handle some uncomfortable tasks for his friend.  The book looks at the haves and have nots and the expectations that belong to each.  It attacks political correctness, work, class, child rearing and war.

The Ask was a NYT notable book of 2010.  It is an entertaining commentary about society.
A reading by Lipsyte below.

Great Reads from 2010

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.  A fantastic book which is a a series of freestanding short stories that together create a novel. The writing is magnificent and highly readable. Egan experiments with new forms, including an entire chapter written in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.  The New York Times selected it as one of the five best fiction books of 2010.  Her PBS interview is below.

Room by Emma Donoghue.  The voice in this book is powerful. It is the story, told from a child's perspective, of a boy and his mother being held captive in a room. The child (our narrator) is born in captivity and believes that this room is the entire universe. His mother creates an entire world for him and through him we see her stength and power. It is impossible to put this one down.  It was one of the 2010 Man Booker prize finalists.  The book trailer is below.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.  This was labelled as "THE" book of 2010. It made a huge prepublication splash, helped by Franzen's appearance on the cover of Time and photos of President Obama with a reviewer's copy on his Martha's Vineyard vacation.  Franzen is an incredible writer. The book lived up to the hype. The story itself is about a Midwestern family and the concept of freedom. It is very hard to summarize the plot but trust me it is a great book.  A recent interview with Franzen is below.  He comes across as reserved.  The writing is anything but.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.  This was one of my favorite finds of the year.  In each chapter, Rachman tells the story about different people connected to a struggling Roman newspaper printed in English.  The characters are imperfect and their struggle is great to read.  I'm looking forward to his next book.  Rachman should have a bright future.  The NYT review was one of the first and could not have been more generous and dead on.

The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson.  If you haven't read these (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest), you have missed the publishing phenomenon that rivals Harry Potter.  Larsson was a Swedish writer who died young, leaving these manuscrips behind.  These books have become a literary sensation worldwide and have been mainstays on every bestseller list throughout 2010.

These are thriller mysteries. The writing is fine.  What makes these amazing is the storytelling.  Larsson packs a lot of punch in these books. In these books, Larsson attacks Swedish society, the abuse of women, sexuality, technology and the freedom of the press.  If you haven't read these, you should.  They are great beach / long winter night reads.

The Dragon Tattoo is a free standing book.  The last two continue with the same characters but are really just a single story.

There is a fourth manuscript that exists but it is stuck in litigation between Larsson's family and his long time girlfriend.  NYT story here.  The Swedish movie trailer is below.

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart.  This is a satirical look at life in the near future.  China runs the world.  People are attached to the network, constantly monitoring their coolness factor and credit rating.  It is an excellent book and hysterical.  In June 2010, Shteyngart was named one of the top 20 writers under 40 by New Yorker.  Book trailer below.