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.

The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus

The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus is a new novel, which I just could not finish.  Neither the story, the writing nor the execution were great.  I'll cut to the chase: pass.

A plague, carried by children and spread through language, kills.  Sam and Claire try to understand what is infecting them, how to be close to their angry daughter, Esther, and how to survive.  Sam leaves to find answers.  Sam and Claire are also "Jewish" and worship in little huts in the forest where they receive messages from a "rabbi".

The premise of the novel is creative but that is all that I liked about the book.  Marcus is supposed to be a great writer; I just was not impressed or drawn into the story.  The plot drags.  The sentence construction is okay.  As to the Jewishness of the family, aside from using Jewish words (e.g., Jew and Rabbi), not much about what Sam and Claire did seems Jewish to me.  While I am an open-minded reader, this book was too much for me.

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.

New Mysteries for 2011

Before the year closes out, I wanted to share some short thoughts on four recent mystery novels.

The Drop by Michael Connelly is part of the Harry Bosch series.  This is a must read for mystery fans.  Bosch is an LAPD detective, with three years left until retirement.  He takes up a twenty year old murder case in which a DNA match was just found to a convicted rapist.  The problem is that when the murder was committed the killer was only eight years old.  Meanwhile, Bosch is called on to investigate the suspicious death of the son of a powerful city councilman, who, not coincidentally, is a nemesis of Bosch.  In this fast-paced, page turner, Bosch hunts down two mysteries, is enmeshed in the dark depths of political conspiracy and even finds time for a romantic relationship.  I simply could not put this book down. The book was one of Connelly's better ones and was one of my favorites of the year.  Highly recommended.


A Drop of the Hard Stuff is Lawrence Block's most recent mystery involving his detective Matthew Scudder.  Scudder tells this tale from his younger years after he was forced out of the NYPD.  Like so many fictional detectives, Scudder faces his problems of alcoholism.    Scudder enrolls in Alcoholics Anonymous.  As he approaches is one year anniversary of staying on the wagon, Scudder reconnects with a childhood friend who followed a route into a life of crime.  Based on the AA 12-step program, the friend has tried to "make amends" for the harms he caused to others.  Along the way, he is murdered.  Without the resources of the police department, Scudder hunts down a killer.  This was a very well crafted mystery set in a grittier New York City than we live in today.  The use of AA as a backdrop worked very well.  This is a worthwhile read.

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows: A Flavia de Luce Novel is the fourth Flavia de Luce mystery by Alan Bradley.  As Christmas arrives at Buckshaw, the de Luce family estate, the cash strapped Colonial (Flavia's father) has rented out the mansion to a movie company to generate cash.  In the middle of a charity performance for the local church by the movie stars, a blizzard hits, and the characters are trapped in the mansion.  Suddenly, there is a murder.  Classic British cozy murder set up.  Flavia sets out to solve the murder.  While I have enjoyed this series immensely and love Flavia, this one came up short.  After the murder, the plot stalled out.  The characters were not particularly well developed.  I am afraid that Bradley is responding to the success of his series by pushing out product.  Also, while I love the setting, there have been a lot of murders in the house in a very short period of time.  Bradley needs to move his detective out of the mansion to other locations if this series is going to hold together.  Pass on this mystery but read any of the previous ones for a unique and wonderful character and mystery.  Sorry, Flavia.

The Leopard by Jo Nesbo is the second Nesbo mystery I read and reviewed this year (Snowman was the first; review here).  While intricate, well written and well plotted, I found this novel less compelling than Snowman, even more gruesome (seemingly for shock value only, and a bit too long.  Two women are brutally murdered by an apple like device which is jammed in their mouths and shoots out 24 knives.  Gruesome.  From there, Nesbo's broken detective, Harry Hole, is running across the globe to solve a murder.  The ending was overly dramatic (a long confession explaining everything).  Everyone is looking to be the next Stieg Larsson.  This novel even employs a mildly crazed hacker.  This isn't it.  I'd give Nesbo another chance but I would recommend passing on this one.

Happy reading!

Now You See Me by S.J. Bolton

Now You See Me by S.J. Bolton is a fantastic police procedural mystery.  I could not put it down and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The novel opens in present day London when a young detective, Lacey Flint, finds a woman, who has just been stabbed, leaning on her car in a parking lot.  Within hours, a Jack the Ripper styled letter appears and names Lacey.  The murderer is not merely rehashing the Ripper's killings; the murderer picks and chooses key elements of Ripper's rampages to "update" Ripper's murderous spree.  Lacey, who has a keen interest in Jack the Ripper and serial murderers, becomes central to the investigation.  She must work with the team, which is made more difficult because she is forced to work with a male colleague in the special operations branch of the force who is both attracted to and mistrustful of her.  As bodies and Ripper parallels pile up, the pressure on the police to solve the mystery becomes extreme.

Bolton beautifully develops her characters, making them multidimensional.  The writing is crisp and thoughtful.  The plot is interesting and carefully calibrated.  The modern ties to the history of Jack the Ripper turned a very good book into a great one.

This was the first book by Bolton that I have read.  If you like mysteries and can tolerate the violence (if you are fine with Stieg Larsson, you'll be fine with this), you'll love this one.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

State of Wonder in the newest novel by prize winning author Ann Patchett.  It is one of the "big" novels of the year.  It does not disappoint.

When a pharmaceutical researcher, Dr. Anneck Swenson, fails to keep her employer informed from the Amazon about her research into a drug that ensures everlasting fertility for women, the corporation sends another researcher to find out what is going on.  Instead of receiving a status report, the president of the company receives a short note from Dr. Swenson stating that the emissary died and was buried. The emissary's widow demands answers and the president of the corporation wants to know the timetable for the research.  The president sends the novel's protagonist and his love interest, Dr. Marin Singh, to find out what happened to his first emissary and what is going on with Dr. Swenson's research.  Singh reluctantly goes.

Dr. Swenson is tough, curt and yet clear-headed and sharp.  She was Dr. Singh's teacher years before and, although she heavily impacted Singh's career, does not recall Singh.  She also has no patience for the corporation's interference in her work.  The novel opens with Singh's trip to the Amazon and her adventures there.  Singh first must overcome the obstacles Swenson puts in her path to find out what happened and then must tackle the Amazon itself.

State of Wonder opens with a bang and begins like a page turning medical thriller.  After grabbing the reader's attention, it develops into a beautifully crafted novel.  Patchett's characters are multi-dimensional, including the silent character that permeates the novel, the Amazon jungle.  By stripping her characters of their possessions and placing them in the jungle, Patchett tests and pushes her characters to their extremes.

This is a worthy addition to any reading list.

Interview with Patchett:

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks has written a fantastic new novel, Caleb's Crossing, that is one of the better novels of 2011. 

The novel is set in the late 1600s on Martha's Vineyard.  It is the story of Caleb Cheeshah-teaumuck, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College.  In the story, Caleb is befriended by Bethia Mayfield, the daughter of an English proselytizing minister. Like Caleb, Bethia, an exceptionally bright, young woman, searches for knowledge and must find a way to access it.  They build a lifelong bond.

The title of the book is a bit misleading.  The story, which is Bethia's diary from different phases of her life, is really about Bethia struggling in a male-dominated world to overcome the blind obedience demanded of women.  Bethia first must take on her deceased mother's obligations, which include tending to the home and raising her infant sibling.  Then, she is indentured as a housekeeper (i.e., looks a whole lot like slavery) to support her brother.  Throughout her life, Bethia thirsts and searches for worldly knowledge.  While listening to Bethia's quest through her diary, we watch Caleb cross from his Native American culture to the Christian culture and the costs he must bear. 

The root of the story is true. There was a Caleb Cheeshah-teaumuck who graduated from Harvard.  However, very little is known about his story.  Brooks creates a gorgeous story and hangs it on this narrow historical framework.

I would add Caleb's Crossing to my list of top books for the year so far.  It is an excellent book for discussion.  The writing is gripping.  Brooks writes the story in the language of the 1600s.  Much like Twain's classics, once you adjust to the difference in language, the story flows. This book should have broad appeal. Brooks also paints a lively picture of Martha's Vineyard.



22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson

22 Britannia Road, by Amanda Hodgkinson, is a first novel about the struggle of two-Polish ex-patriots readjusting to life after WWII in England.  In this ambitious novel, Janusz, Silvana and their son Aurek are split up during the war while Janusz goes to fight and Silvana and Aurek try to survive.  It is a good (not great), readable, sentimental novel. 

The novel proceeds with three story lines -- Janusz's experience fighting against the Nazis; Silvana's struggle to take care of her infant; and their attempt to reconstruct a family and rebuild a life in England after the war.   At the outset, Janusz goes to battle and ends up joining the English military.  He has difficult war experiences.  Silvana and Aurek flee Warsaw and survive in the forests and on the benevolence of peasants.  When the family is reunited in England after the war, Aurek, who grew up in the forest, must learn to cope in civilization (a slight hint of Room by Emma Donaghue here).  Silvana, who is fiercely protective of her son, must rebuild a relationship with her husband across the chasm of horrific experiences and choices they each have made.

Hodgkinson develops the main characters reasonably well (the supporting characters are very stereotypical) and delivers a few interesting plot twists.  That said, Silvana's development is a bit predictable and while Janusz has hard experiences, he does not make hard choices.  While the novel is a very good debut, the story does not hit it out of the park. 

There have been several highly favorable reviews.  Waterstones (the Barnes & Noble of Britain) picked this as one of their favorites of 2011.  Amazon picked it as a Best of the Month Selection.  Several bloggers have gotten behind this book (see Lemuria Bookstore Blog here, Gillian Hamer here and Burton Books here). 

If you liked Major Petrigrew's Last Stand (my review here), The Invisible Bridge, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society or other similar books, you probably will enjoy this one. If those are not quite for you, you should pass on it.

The book's promotion site is here.

Author interview here.  Sorry, I couldn't find any videos with the author.

The Great Frustration by Seth Fried

Seth Fried's short story collection, The Great Frustration, is funny, well-written and extremely difficult to put down.  With this collection, Fried displays his imagination and skill.

In the first story, “Loeka Discovered,” a group of scientists discover a prehistoric man, whose release from a deep freeze unfreezes emotions among the scientists.  As the narrative of the prehistoric man's life changes based on further discoveries, the scientists' moods swing wildly, creating entertaining results.  If you want to read this story on the web and get a flavor of Fried's writing, click here.   In the second story, my favorite, “Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre,” a town wonders aloud why everyone attends an annual picnic that year after year ends with a massacre.  In a third story, "Life in the Harem," an unattractive male clerk shares his tale of living in a sultan's harem.  (A preview clip for this story is below).

Each story is creative, credible and engaging.  This book (under 200 pages) is difficult to put down and will make you laugh out loud.

Fried has been published in several prominent literary journals (McSweeney's, Tin House etc.) and is the selection this month for the online book club, http://www.andrewsbookclub.com/.  You can get a taste of Fried's humor on his blog http://sethfried.blogspot.com/.

Read The Great Frustration, laugh and enjoy.

"Interview" with Seth Fried:

Preview for one of the short stories, "Life in the Harem":

Boxer Beetle by Ned Beauman

If you like Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union) or Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction (see clip below) among others), you'll enjoy the debut novel by Ned Beauman, Boxer Beetle (available in the US in August 2011; available from the UK now at this link).  It is a fun, eccentric and well-executed novel with a wild cast of characters.

First, there is Kevin "Fishy" Broom, a modern day dealer in Nazi memorabilia, who suffers from from trimethylaminuria: a rare condition that means he smells of rotting fish.  Fishy stays at home and traffics in Nazi items over the internet.  Then, there is Philip Erksine, a 1930s fascist and entomologist, who is trying to apply eugenics first to his study of beetles and then to humans.  There is also Sinner Roach, a five foot tall, nine-toed, Jewish, homosexual boxer, who Eriskine determines is a perfect subject for his studies.

The novel moves between two story lines.  The first plot line leads Fishy to a crime-scene and then a hunt for rare Nazi items and a murderer.  The second plot line is in the 1930s (the bulk of the book), in which Erksine pursues his eugenics experiments and Roach.

The book is witty, fun and well written.  Like Chabon's works, the book has a comic book feel but is excellent and well-paced literature.  Beauman was recently selected by the Guardian newspaper as one of Britain's 12 best new novelists.

A key document from the book:

A clip with Beauman:

Another review from Paperback Reader.
Pulp Fiction Clip:

 

To The End The Land by David Grossman

If there was ever a compelling story to be told with authority, this should have been it.  David Grossman, one of Israel's premier literary writers, suffered the horrific tragedy of losing his 20 year-old son who was serving in the Israeli army during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict.  At that time, Grossman was engaged in writing his latest novel, To The End Of The Land, which explored the psyche of an Israeli mother, Ora, whose son reenlisted to serve in the army for a major offensive action just as he completed his three years of service.  This should have been a great book.  It was a disappointment.

Ora had planned a celebratory hike with her son to mark his return to civilian life.  She was shattered by his decision to reenlist and could not keep it together.  After leaving her son, Ora fled her home so the "notifiers" (i.e., the military officials charged with notifying families of deaths) will not be able to let her know if her son dies, thus prolonging his life.  She forces her former lover, Avram, a psychologically damaged war veteran, to go on the hike she was to have taken with her son.  While Ora and Avram are hiking, we learn about Avram, Ora's estranged husband, Ora's family and Ora. 

I could not finish the book.  It is nearly 600 pages, and it was just too much.  I knew of Grossman's reputation and loss before reading the book and was eager to read it. The book became too difficult to wade through, and I set it aside.  Grossman needed a more aggressive editor to hack away at the surplus, which made the beautifully written prose cumbersome and difficult to tackle.  I have no doubt that Grossman was pouring out his own grief in these pages, which makes not liking this novel difficult.  As a work of literature, I did not enjoy the novel.

After writing this review, I attended a discussion about this book led by an outstanding presenter.  She identified some of the significant themes Grossman tackles: immortality, the effect of a constant war on the psyche of the warrior and shifting reality, to name a few.  She also shared some of the significant plot developments that happened deep into the book.  While she agreed that the book needed a lot of editing, the themes of the book she identified may make tackling this book worthwhile for the truly persistent, dogged and determined.  For me, I was just satisfied with a great discussion and moving on to another book.

Other reviews: Boston Bibliophile (far more positive).

The novel was a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award as well.  (Goon Squad won that award).

A discussion with Grossman:

The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht, a 25 year old, first time novelist, is one of the most anticipated books of 2011.  Ms. Obreht was included as one of the New Yorker's 20 Under 40 last spring without having published any novels or short story collections.  (Seems a bit like President Obama winning the Novel Peace Prize shortly after being elected to office.)  Talk about pressure. 

The Tiger's Wife justifies the pre-release attention Obreht garnered.  The novel is a stunning debut and is the launching point of a career to watch.  While the book is not perfect (I'm not sure of one that is), it is a sensuous read and worthy of staying up to read.

The story revolves around Natlia and her grandfather both before and after the disintegration of Yugoslavia (although the country is unnamed in the book).  Natlia's grandfather passes away far from home while Natlia, a doctor, is on a humanitarian mission to provide services to orphans.  Natlia tries to find answers about her grandfather's death while keeping secrets from her grandmother about what she knew and when she knew it. 

In parallel, Obreht takes us back to the grandfather's childhood in the 1940s.  During the war, a tiger escapes from the zoo and seemingly develops a relationship with a deaf-mute woman, who has abused by her butcher-husband.  During the grandfather's life, he meets the "deathless man," a symbol for death, who crosses paths with the grandfather and Natalia over the years.  The tiger's wife and the deathless man are fables that intersect with life and test the characters.

The first pages of the novel lulled me into thinking this would be a literary book that develops slowly.  Suddenly, Obreht throws in rapid action; and the novel unfolds.  My critiques, minor as they are: the book has multiple plot lines that have to be tracked carefully.  After the dramatic opening, the novel slows down a bit and takes a while for it to pick up again. 

Obreht's writing is rich and breathtaking. She juxtaposes beauty with devastation and companionship with loss. Obreht draws on her formative years in Belgrade and uses the novel to cope with her loss of her grandfather.  It is a magnificent work.

Read Obreht.  She deserves the accolades.  I would be surprised if this is not the winner of a prize or two this year.  The reviews have been deservedly glowing.

Other reviews: NYT, The Magic Lasso, The Devourer of Books (they all loved it).

The Eichmann Trial by Deborah Lipstadt

There have been two significant judicial trials related to the Holocaust -- the trial of Adolf Eichmann for crimes against humanity and, just a few years ago, the trial of historian Deborah Lipstadt for her "libel" of Holocaust denier, David Irving.  Who better than Profeesor Lipstadt to write a popular and approachable book about the first and foremost trial of the Holocaust.  The Eichmann Trial is worth reading.

After World War II, Adolf Eichmann, the chief operating officer of the destruction of millions of Jews, fled to Argentina where he hid for several years.  In the late 1950s, the Israeli security forces became aware of his  whereabouts but did not act on the information. Before the capture was authorized, Ben-Gurion, the Prime Minister of Israel at the time, made a critical decision: rather than simply killing Eichmann in Argentina and leaving him in a ditch, he was brought to Israel and put on trial.  In 1960, the Israelis captured Eichmann and transported him to Israel to stand trial for his crimes.  Ben-Gurion walked into the Knesset (the Israeli legislature) and announced, "Eichmann bi'yadenu," Eichmann is in our hands.  It was a dramatic and powerful moment.

Immediately, the Israelis were questioned by the world, including by American Jews: how could a state that did not exist during the Holocaust try Eichmann?  Could the Israelis conduct a fair trial?  Wasn't Eichmann illegally abducted?  Would the victims and survivors have a voice in the trial (they had none at Nuremberg)?  Where would the trial be held (no court house at the time was equipped for such a trial)?  Who would defend Eichmann?

To fully appreciate the magnitude of the trial, Lipstadt reminds us that in the 1950s and 1960s, there were no Holocaust memorials and while the fact of the Holocaust was known, people were still focused on returning to  life and fighting the Cold War.  Also, Israel was still in its relative infancy.  Although it miraculously defended itself in two wars, it had not as powerful as it would become in 1967.  Without this context, it is hard to fully appreciate the importance of this trial.  Lipstadt expertly sets the context  and walks through the critical decisions (and mistakes) made in conducting the trial.  Having sat through a highly publicized trial herself, Lipstadt adds an extra dimension to her recounting of the tale.

The Jewish Encounters series, of which this is the most recent addition, is intended to present Jewish subjects "in a lively, intelligent and popular manner."  The Eichmann Trail  is not an academic piece, yet, it is written by a woman with impeccable credentials on the subject.  Lipstadt masterly narrates the story.  But, the story does not end with the trial.  After the trial, the New Yorker ran a series of articles by Hannah Ardent, a Jew who fled Germany.  She argued that the trial was unfairly conducted and that Eichmann essentially followed orders and was not an anti-Semite.  Who better than Lipstadt to examine this?

The only thing that I did not love about the book was the author's interruption of the narrative with references to her own trial.  The comparison of Eichmann's trial and Lipstadt's trial should have been in an epilogue.  That distraction is easily overcome.

The book is short (200 pages) and reads like a well written New Yorker or New York Times Magazine piece.  It is easily accessible and requires no background.  In reading this book, you will understand how this trial became precedent for how many future trials would be conducted.


Hear Lipstadt talk about her book here:

Deborah Lipstadt on The Eichmann Trial from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

The Free World by David Bezmozgis

Many books have been written about the immigrant experience: the need to leave a land, the difficulty of assimilating into a new culture and the challenge of preserving identity.  David Bezmogis, a New Yorker 20 Under 40, uses his new and first novel, The Free World, to tackle the story of the Soviet Jews. 

The Soviet Jews that were released in the 1960s and 1970s could not travel directly to Israel or the US.  Often, they stopped over in Vienna or Rome en route to the free world.  The stop over could take days, weeks and even months.  (For a fantastic non-fiction book on Soviet Jewry, click here.) 

Bezmozgis' story opens in 1978 with the arrival of the Krasnansky family in Rome.  The familial patriarch, Samuil, is an old Communist and Red Army veteran, who reluctantly leaves his home and life.  His wife, Emma, reconnected with her spiritual heritage in the Soviet Union.  Although she is only a supporting character, she displays a sharp understanding of her family and their problems.  Their eldest and pragmatic son, Karl, arrives with his wife and two boys.  His muscled physique and opportunistic outlook lead him into the underworld of Rome.  The younger son, Alec, a bon vivant and womanizer, arrives in Rome, with his new, scandalously acquired bride, Polina.

The family tries to find its way through the maddening bureaucratic maze of Rome, while struggling to survive and understand why they left.  On the way, they find other former Soviet Jews and develop interesting connections.  Throughout the novel, Bezmozgis takes us back into the characters' colorful histories, developing who they are and why they left. 

Bezmozgis was born in Latvia. Like Gary Shteyngart (Super Sad True Love Story and Absuridstan), Bezmozgis's writing is biting and sharp witted.  His use of the English language is shaped by the rhythm of the English as it translates into Russian.  As he said in an interview:

I usually thought about what the conversation would be like in Russian and then would translate it into English. If there was something ungainly about it, then I’d try to correct for it. There are certain words where, if I had a choice between that and some other English synonym, I’d consciously use the one that’s more Russian. My belief is that it will be transparent enough for an English speaker, but if you’re a Russian–speaking reader and you can translate backwards, there are certain nuances that will come through.  Full Paris Review interview here.

The novel has a great rhythm and pace to it.  Bezmogis intersperses humor and tragedy through the book, while meaningfully and thoughtfully exploring his characters.  It is a beautifully written book.  My only critique is that he drops in several dialogues in Italian, which are distracting.  Otherwise, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it.  If you liked Shteyngart, you should read Bezmozgis.  Both deserved their New Yorker 20 Under 40 status.

Other reviews: Largehearted Boy, NYT and The Millions.



Review -- When They Come For Us We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry

In 1987, I travelled with about 250,000 others to Washington DC for the rally to demand that Gorbachev release the Jews held in the Soviet Union, the Refuseniks.  For decades, Jews in the USSR were not permitted to practice their religion or to leave the country.  The process of obtaining an exit visa was expensive, oppressive and often a dead end.  Instead, when Jews asked for the right to leave, they often lost their jobs immediately and cut off from society.  Within the Soviet Union, they formed an underground community of Refuseniks, protesting their oppression.

In the 1980s, my brother, like many Jewish kids at the time, had a "twin" for his bar mitzvah, a Refusenik who became part of the ceremony that day.  Many of us wore metal bands on our wrists with the name of a Refusenik.  It was all an effort to raise awareness about these prisoners of conscience.

Until I read Gal Beckerman's new book, When They Come For Us We'll Be Gone, I had no idea about the depth of the history of this important movement.  The Soviet Jewry movement was in many ways a response by American Jews to their failure to act in the face of the German atrocities of the 1930s and 1940s.  It was the embodiment of "Never Again."  Starting in the 1960s, a small group of activists in Cleveland began raising awareness about the plight of the Soviet Jews.  It was the first time American Jews flexed their political muscle in the United States.  And, it was a very difficult issue because it was intertwined with the foreign policy issue of the day -- the Soviet Union, the United State's opponent in the Cold War.  Different forces within the Jewish community fought to find a way -- quiet diplomacy, peaceful protests, attacks on Soviet targets.  Beckerman's study addresses many of the key moments and players in the history of the movement, from Rabbi Meir Kahane to Natan Sharansky to Senator Jackson.  The efforts of the Jewish community ultimately found key supporters in the US governement and for the first time in US foreign policy history, the Cold War politics of detente bent to address a question of human rights.

Gal Beckerman, a writer for the Forward, has written a carefully researched, detail laden book, which is beautifully narrated and highly readable.  For his efforts, Beckerman won the 2010 National Jewish Book Award.  This is an important study and well worth reading.

Radio interview with Beckerman here.

Tournament of Books: The Finals Are Coming

What a week of ups and downs. 

In the first knock down semifinal match, Freedom defeated Goon Squad., my pick to win the whole tournament.  I thought my many NCAA bracket losses exemplified my lack of basketball knowledge.  It seems that I'm just not good at tournament picks (or else I don't know as much about books as I thought I did). So it goes.  Franzen's Freedom is a formidable foe and a worthy opponent.

In the second semifinal match up, Lemon Cake beat Next.  While I thought Lemon Cake was a fine book, there was no way it could withstand the blows Freedom has been dealing out to its foes.

Then came the Zombie round.  In the zombie round, the winner of each semi-final round squares off with another contestant that lost earlier in the contest.  The zombies were Room and Goon Squad.  Freedom dealt a decisive blow to Room to enter the finals and Good Squad squarely defeated Lemon Cake. My pick is back!

On Monday, the finals are played out with a rematch of Freedom and Goon Squad.  I'm still hoping for Goon Squad to pull off an upset of the seemingly unstoppable Freedom.  What makes this round different than the earlier match up between these titans is that every judge votes in the finals.  In earlier rounds, it is a single judge making the call.  While I enjoyed Freedom a lot, I'm sticking with Egan's Goon Squad to win it all.  Stay tuned.



Start-up Nation by Den Senor & Saul Singer

Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle, by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, attempts to answer the question: how did a small, besieged country without natural resources or local trading partners become a world player in high-tech?  Israel is a country of about 7 million people and just over 60 years old; yet, it produces more start-up companies than countries like Japan, China and India.  It attracts, per capita, more than twice the venture capital investments than the US and thirty times more than Europe.  Aside from the US, Israel has more companies listed on NASDAQ than any other country.  What explains Israel's success?

Senor and Singer argue that the Israeli military is one key to Israel's success. In Israel, military service is mandatory. Young conscripted soldiers are empowered quickly to make hard decisions and improvise in difficult, unpredictable situations. The soldiers that stand out are selected by the elite military units for intensive training. The military also demands thoughtful and thorough debriefings of failed and successful missions alike.  Outcomes alone are not sufficient.  Every exercise and engagement is treated as a learning opportunity.  In the debriefs, senior soldiers challenge junior soldiers and vice-versa.  Hierarchy, tradition and the status quo are not accepted as roadblocks to finding the best solution.

The military's values help create a culture that empowers and nurtures entrepreneurism.  A failed venture is not a failure; it is an opportunity to learn for the next one.  Challenging existing technologies and business models is endorsed. 

Israel also creates breeding grounds for ideas--tight clusters of universities, firms and start-ups, coupled with strategic government support.  Together, these clusters foster innovation.  (See Steven Johnson's book, Where Good Ideas Come From for why clusters matter--video clip below.)

The strength of the book is the examples Senor and Singer share.  Whether it is the story of Shimon Peres and a young entrepreneur approaching senior auto executives about the electric grid for cars or the story of the unwillingness of one plant to allow the 1991 Persian Gulf War to interfere with its on-time shipments, it becomes clear why Israel is a unique story.

Recommendation: For the business person, there are lessons to be learned about how to run an organization successfully.  For the supporters of Israel, the book generates a sense of pride that Warren Buffet (who never buys non-US companies), Google, Cisco, Intel and many other high-tech companies look to Israel for innovative development.

Author interview:

Where Great Ideas Come From: