Ideas and Information for Readers nd September 2012 “Our 22 Year” Dear Friends, Reviews in This Issue LEADERSHIP Our country, and many cities, states, and other institutions are in crisis. These crises, Hemingway’s Boat (Hendrickson) Still the Best Hope it seems, developed and fed by numerous stress points, require enlightened management to take over and (Prager) Mission to Paris carry out effective solutions. But where are the leaders? Does it strike you that there is a dearth of leader - (Furst) The Coldest Night ship in America? There are countless books on leadership and management and the principles are well- (Olmstead) The Cold Dish known. To be effective, leaders must be unifiers, not dividers. They must be tuned into their constit uencies (Johnson) The Age of Doubt and be able to deal with the important issues without polarization and rancor. They must be courageous, (Camilleri) A Dublin Student Doctor unselfish, not hold themselves above the fray, and be able to engender a spirit of cooperation and together - (Taylor) The Innocent ness. They must build and nurture a culture, an environment of integrity and trust. But you know all of (Baldacci) Boomerang this. So, will the leaders please step forward? And will they be recognized when they appear? (Lewis) Death Without Company “FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO LEAD, READ” (Johnson) was the title of a piece by John Coleman Kindness Goes Unpunished Harvard Business Review (Johnson) in the blog network. The National Endowment for the Arts has found that Dorchester Terrace (Perry) reading has declined among every group of adult Americans and for the first time in American history, Why Capitalism? (Meltzer) less than half of the U.S. adult population is reading literature. The article notes that this is bad news for The Last Storyteller (Delaney) leadership, since deep, broad reading habits are often a defining characteristic of good leaders, serving as The Amateur (Klein) a catalyst for insight, innovation, empathy, and personal effectiveness. Common sense (there’s that rare A Pocket History of Ireland (McCullough) The Fallen Angel quality again) suggests that the leadership benefits of reading are many, such as improved intelligence, (Silva) Birdseye sharper insight, development of abstract reasoning skills, better commun i cation skills, improved creativity, (Kurlansky) The Chessman and a deeper psychological orientation to effectively understand and manage the human factors. (Burton) MINDING MANNERS Agent Garbo (Talty) We are regularly reminded of the breakdown of manners, protocols, niceties, House of Stone (Shadid) and decencies in our society. Many of the little rules that add decorum, civility, and sophistication to our The Chaperone (Moriarty) society, to say nothing of providing structure and defining limitations, have crumbled. Don’ts don’t The Road to Serfdom (Hayek) seem to mean don’t anymore! Do’s prevail and it’s all just fine because you are, of course, “doing Evensong S (Firestone) your own thing!” Dressing for dinner, speaking the language correctly, opening car doors for ladies, Empires of the Sea E (Crowley) removing hats indoors, and practicing good table manners, to name a few, should be recognized, Gone Girl N (Flynn) perhaps saving a few good souls from the number of those who have dropped their guards and Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf Goodman I slipped into the abyss of mediocrity. L TYING OUR OWN HANDS The Death of Common (Mnookin) City of Women Sense, Life Without Lawyers We heard lawyer/author Philip Howard ( (Gillham) E The Orchardist ) speak not too long ago about how America has tied itself in knots with (Coplin) The Sins of the Father H a deluge of laws, regulations, and legislation. Every conceivable aspect of life has seemingly attracted (Archer) The Admirals T the attention of bureaucrats and legislators to the point where such things as common sense and (Borneman) discretion are pushed aside. It is relatively easy to legislate, to add regulations, but exponentially Features N harder to eliminate laws and regulations previously enacted and which have run the course. Govern - • Jane’s Selections E ment agencies attract a constituency over time and any attempts to roll them back as circumstances • TRE Favorites… of Yesteryear E change are met with howls of protest. Thus, the beast grows and grows and the noose is drawn • Origins of Words and Phrases • Building Your Working Vocabulary W tighter. Here’s a vote for lightening the load, for cutting out or cutting back, for regular audits to • Ambrose Bierce… On Politics T gauge need and relevance, all to allow some room for common sense. • Mystery Writer Craig Johnson E SEPTEMBER—THE SECOND NEW YEAR September marks a pivotal point in the • The Words We Use… And Misuse B • Pronunciation for the Careful Speaker . calendar, marking it a candidate for a second New Year. Summer is over, vacations are complete, business fires up again, schools reopen, football season is here, and the pace accelerates as the Fall • Erin Go Bragh (Ireland Forever) . season begins and we look forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas. The rhythm changes and there’s • …and more . a “reawakening” as we move into the Fall. We’ll always happily recall sitting in the cocktail lounge G at the St. Regis Hotel in New York on September 1st a few years ago, listening to the piano player THE QUA RTERLY N turn out a medley of “September” songs to usher in the season—“September in the Rain,” “September PUBLICATION I Morn,” “September,” “September Song,” and many more. A Happy Fall season to you! D FOR READERS Sincerely, A Subscribers-Only Password: BY READE RS E ORWELL Until December 2012 for September 2012 R Volume XXII Issue 3 Stephen H. Ackerman, Publisher www.the-readers-exchange.com 1 ©2012 The Readers Exchange BOOK REVIEWS TITLE Reviews and Ratings: Book reviews are written by the Publisher (SHA) or by one of the Contributing AUTHOR, NO. OF PAGES, Editors and attributed accordingly. The 0-10 rating system was developed to provide some sense of YEAR OF PUBLICATION, the level of satisfaction of a book compared with other books. This is not a sophisticated evaluation. PUBLISHER AND RATING The rating is based on writing, storytelling ability, and the overall impact of each reading experience. HEMINGWAY’S BOAT: This is a major triumph, a big book seven years in the making about a towering artistry, a EVERYTHING HE LOVED IN towering charisma, and a towering meanness. No wonder Hemingway (1899-1961) is the most LIFE, AND LOST, 1934-1961 written about American author, no wonder his literature won both Pulitzer and Nobel prizes, no PAUL HENDRICKSON wonder his books birthed three blockbuster movies starring no less than Tyrone Power, Errol (2011, 531pp, Flynn, Ava Gardner, Gary Cooper, Ingrid Berman, and Spencer Tracy, no wonder his books Knopf) (including the most reviled by critics) were gigantic best sellers. What more is not known 10 about the man? Why such a massive book about so worked-over a controversial writer? Paul Hendrickson—a lapsed priest, former journalist, and now distinguished professor of creative writing (University of Pennsylvania)—found the lost key to the enigmatic Ernest Hemingway— Pilar , his specially made fishing boat, worked in the Gulf Stream from 1934 to the early 1950s. Pilar’s existence as a deep-sea, working boat provides a new-found insight into what made Hemingway tick, and why Hendrickson can write a successful book about Hemingway’s years when he was in early and then full-blown decline, not even covering Hemingway’s glamor years, The Sun Also Rises, Farewell to Arms, his many triumphs of his 20s (his literary masterpieces Boat and his Michigan-set short stories, and, of course, his celebrated taking of Paris by storm). answers what nobody else has been able to—how could a man be so flawed, so mean, and yet so great at the same time? Hendrickson argues that Hemingway was horribly tortured by insomnia and depression (and their handmaiden, alcoholism), and the demons were always lurking— hence, so many meannesses, so many fights, so much licentiousness, so much homo phobia, so much boastfulness. He was at his worst when writing and, if it is humanly possible, even worse in his post-writing let downs. Hendrickson shows that the demons could be exorcised only on Pilar, only in the deep, limitless Gulf Stream, only when he was deep-sea fishing for big fish— Pilar, marlin and tuna. Just the prospect of going out on or savoring the day’s trip, allowed Hemingway to sleep, to work, and, most important, to be a decent human being. Implicit through - Pilar, out the book is that during the late 1930’s when critics were savaging him and his famous style was an object of parody, gave him the inner peace to get up off the floor (he was finished in For Whom the Bell Tolls his 30’s, the critics agreed) and write his final masterpiece, (1940). This splendid biography does not redeem Ernest Hemingway, if anything it makes him an even worse person, but it shows a rare side of “Papa,” as his beloved Cubans called him, a side of Hemingway which four good women found worth marrying and which scores of people, some of them famous Pilar but many just common folk, marked their lives by the time spent on with a great and kindly Pilar man. Once is gone (and with her Cuba, the Gulf Stream, and the fishing), Hendrickson’s Hemingway is consigned to his demons, which spiral into paranoia, then Mayo Clinic shock treatments, and then the shotgun in the Ketchum, ID house. (Contributing Editor William Lilley, III, Washington D.C.) THE ORCHARDIST This excellent debut novel is set in the early 1900s in rural Washington State and centers on AMANDA COPLIN William Talmadge, a loner who has carefully tended his orchards of plums, apples, and apricots (2012, 426pp, for decades.