The Rabid Reader

The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity (Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, Simon & Schuster, 2012, 656 pages)

Outstanding.  Probably the best book I've read this year. 

 

With Hitler to the End: The Memoir of Hitler's Valet (Heinz Linge, Skyhorse Publishing, 2009, 240 pages)

Heinz Linge served as Hitler's chief valet for the last ten years of the dictator's life.  If it can be said that Hitler had any intimate associates, Linge was undoubtedly the most intimate.  Linge was with Hitler virtually 24/7 for ten years.  Linge thus had a front seat at some of the most significant and banal moments in Hitler's life and dark reign.  It was Linge who stood outside the door to Hitler's bedchamber in 1945 while Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide.  At war's end, Linge was captured by the Soviets and eventually spent 10 years in captivity, all the while being interrogated by the Soviet secret police as to every aspect of Hitler's life, including the size of Hitler's genitalia.   

Linge's account of his time with Hitler is exceptional for its frankness and honesty.  Be forewarned though, Linge does not view his former employer as the monster, or out of control "carpet eater" (to use Linge's phrase) that history has judged him to be,  Indeed, Linge portrays Hitler as often kind, gentlemanly, indulgent, reasonable, and brilliant.  Linge is not fawning, however.  He understood Hitler's faults and rightly condemns the wrongs for which Hitler was ultimately responsible.  In this respect Linge's account is important as he counters the conspiracy theorists who argue that the Holocaust was Himmler's doing, not Hitler's.  Linge contends unequivocally that Hitler knew precisely what was going on all along.  

Most interesting is Linge's revelation (not substantiated anywhere else as far as I know) that shortly after the fall of France in 1940 Hitler sent Himmler and his Henchmen on a hunt for a French woman, Charlotte Lobjoie.  Linge claims that Hitler fathered Lobjoie's son, Jean Marie, born in March 1918 while Hitler served in the German army during World War I.  

 

Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (Bart Ehrman, HarperOne, 2012, 368 pages)

Large numbers of atheists, humanists, and conspiracy theorists are raising one of the most pressing questions in the history of religion: "Did Jesus exist at all?" Was he invented out of whole cloth for nefarious purposes by those seeking to control the masses? Or was Jesus such a shadowy figure—far removed from any credible historical evidence—that he bears no meaningful resemblance to the person described in the Bible?

In Did Jesus Exist? historian and Bible expert Bart Ehrman confronts these questions, vigorously defends the historicity of Jesus, and provides a compelling portrait of the man from Nazareth. The Jesus you discover here may not be the Jesus you had hoped to meet—but, according to Ehrman, he did exist, whether we like it or not.

 

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Robert A. Caro, Knopf, 2012, 736 pages)

Believe the hype.  A tremendous piece of work.  My bet for a Pulitzer Prize in 2013. 

The Passage of Power is book four in Caro's monumental biography of President Johnson and follows Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career—1958 to1964. It is a time that would see him trade the extraordinary power he had created for himself as Senate Majority Leader for what became the wretched powerlessness of a Vice President in an administration that disdained and distrusted him. Yet it was, as well, the time in which the presidency, the goal he had always pursued, would be thrust upon him in the moment John F. Kennedy was assasinated. Caro vividly recounts the crucial events in Johnson's career during this period, his ascent to the vice presidency, his marginalization within the Kennedy White House, his ascent to the Presidency, and his initial legislative triumphs as President.  Most vivid however is the complex relationship, hatred really, between Robert F. Kennedy and Johnson.

Only one complaint from me: Caro's editor should be fired.  At times it is difficult to discern whether an editor reviewed the manuscript.  Caro has a habit of writing impossibly long sentences that sometimes require multiple readings to parse.

   

 

The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public (Lynn Stout, Berret-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2012, 134 pages)

I know what my law school students will be reading this year.  This is a tremendously important and timely contribution to the field of corporate governance.

Executives, investors, and the business press routinely chant the mantra that corporations are required to “maximize shareholder value.”  This idea holds that publicly-traded corporations "belong" to their shareholders, and they exist for one purpose only, to maximize shareholders' wealth, i.e., drive up the stock price (implicitly at whatever cost) and pay out dividends. 

In The Shareholder Value Myth, renowned corporate law expert Lynn Stout debunks the myth of shareholder value thinking and shows how it has little if any basis in the law and endangers not only investors but the rest of us as well.  According to Stout, the shareholder value myth leads managers to focus myopically on short-term earnings; discourages investment and innovation; harms employees, customers, and communities; and causes companies to indulge in reckless, sociopathic, and irresponsible behaviors. 

 

Archangel: A Novel (Robert Harris, Random House, 1999, 373 pages)

Very good weekend or vacation read. 

Archangel begins outside Moscow in 1953.  Joseph Stalin suffers a fatal stroke, and the notorious Beria, head of Stalin's secret police, orders a young guard to swipe a key from the dictator's body, to stand watch as Beria uses it to steal a notebook from Stalin's safe and then to help bury the notebook deep in the ground. These events unfold not in flashback proper but as told to American Sovietologist C.R.A. "Fluke" Kelso by the guard, now an old drunk. Following a lead from the old man's story as well as other clues, Kelso, soon accompanied by an American satellite-TV journalist, goes in pursuit of the notebook and, later, the explosive secret it contains; others, including those who cherish the days of Stalin's might, are on the chase as well. 

 

 

How We Die: Reflections of Life's Final Chapter, New Edition (Sherwin B. Nuland, Vintage, 1995, 320 pages)

Winner of a National Book Award, Sherwin Nuland's How We Die is the best book on perhaps the single most universal human concern: death.   Drawing upon his own broad experience and the characteristics of the six most common death-causing diseases, Nuland examines what death means to the doctor, patient, nurse, administrator, and family.  How We Die is not the usual syrup-and-generality approach to this well-worn topic.   It is thought provoking and poignant.  Fundamental to it are Nuland's experiences with the deaths of his aunt, his older brother, and a longtime patient, all of which remind us of of our own experiences with death. 

 

The Grand Design (Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, Bantam, 2010, 208 pages)

Interesting (and surprisingly witty for a science book), but a little over my head.

 

Free Will (Sam Harris, Free Press, 2012, 66 pages)

The latest front in the war on religion.  

 

Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (Elaine Pagels, Viking Adult, 2012, 256 pages)

Although I fancy myself a student of the Bible, I confess that I've never paid much attention to the last book of the New Testament--Revelation.  Its content has always struck me as a little too far removed from the reality of day-to-day living to merit much attention.  I just don't spend much time thinking about the so-called Last Days.  The fact that so many people have explains the ongoing interest Revelation inspires.  For almost 2,000 years, Revelation has shaped the way most Christians pray, imagine, fear and even joke about the Last Days. 

Elaine Pagel's Revelations is a superb introduction to the the meaning and history of the New Testament's last book.  Its history is almost as complicated as its meaning.  Though most Christians assume that the author of Revelation is the same John who authored the New Testament gospel by the same name, Pagel's shows that this is likely an invention of later proponents seeking to invest Revelation with the Patina of having been authored by one of Christ's own apostles.  The book's placement in the cannon of New Testament scripture is also explored.  Pagel's reminds us that the Bible is not "a" book, but rather a collection of books and the collection and ordering of those books was the the subject of spirited and long debate long after the books were written.  Pagel's chosen title--Revelations (plural)--is itself an acknowledgement that there were other so-called revelations that competed for placement in the New Testament cannon.  These facts tend to undermine the all-to-frequently made claim that additional scripture, whatever its source, runs afoul John's proscription in the last chapter of Revelation, i.e., "if any man shall add unto these things. . ." 

Perhaps most striking is how malleable Revelation has been through the centuries.  It has been interpreted and reinterpreted when historically and politically expedient to do so.  It has been employed by devils, angels, christs and anti-christs alike.  In the first instance, Pagels, argues, Revelation was most likely intended to be an allegory for the fall of the Roman Empire.  Of course, when the Romans finally embraced Christianity this required a new interpretation.  Protestants vilified the Pope and Catholics vilified Martin Luther as the anti-Christ foretold by John.  An on and on it goes.  The point here, which Pagels ably makes, is that Revelation is, like most scripture, best understood in the context and time in which it was written.

Uncle Al Capone - The Untold Story from Inside His Family (Deirdre Marie Capone, Recaplodge LLC, 2010, 214 pages)

Promising concept, but lacks substance.

Deirdre Marie Capone is the grandniece of Al Capone and the last living member of that family born with the last name. Uncle Al Capone purports to offer up an insider’s view of the notorious gangster. The problem is Capone died when the author was only seven years old and her remembrances amount to little more than anecdotes about family meals.



Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West (Blaine Harden, Viking Adult, 2012, 224 pages)

Very good book. I was prompted to read Blaine Harden’s Escape from Camp 14 after reading Melanie Kirkpatrick’s review in The Wall Street Journal. Kirkpatrick is a former deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Portions of Kirkpatrick’s review follow.

“There is no dispute about the existence of the North Korean gulag. Anyone with a computer and access to the Internet can go to Google Earth and zoom in on a string of vast prison camps located in the unforgiving, mountainous center of the country. The U.S. State Department and international human-rights organizations put the number of inmates at about 200,000. As many as one million North Koreans are believed to have perished there. Only three people are known to have escaped.

“One is Shin Dong-hyuk, a young man who defied the odds and managed to flee, first from the gulag and then from North Korea itself. He made it to China and eventually reached safety in South Korea in 2006. His remarkable story is told by Blaine Harden, a former Washington Post reporter, in Escape From Camp 14. It is a searing account of one man's incarceration and personal awakening in North Korea's highest-security prison.

“The book is also an indictment of the barbaric regime that rules North Korea, the world's most repressive totalitarian state. Mr. Shin is roughly the same age as Kim Jong Eun, who took over as North Korea's dictator after his father's death in December. Mr. Harden notes that the ruler and Mr. Shin ‘personify the antipodes of privilege and privation in North Korea, a nominally classless society where, in fact, breeding and bloodlines decide everything.’

“Mr. Shin was born in Camp 14, the offspring of two inmates who had been rewarded for good behavior [by being forced to marry]. The prison authorities assigned his mother to his father and allowed them to sleep together five nights a year. The boy barely knew his father, living with his mother and older brother until he reached his early teens, when he was moved to a dormitory. Mr. Shin told the author that he had no experience of maternal love. He viewed his mother not as a source of affection but as a competitor for the limited amount of food that was available to them.

“Prisons in North Korea are known for starvation-level rations, backbreaking work and brutal treatment. But unlike most prisoners, who, if they survive, at least have the possibility of release, everyone at Camp 14 is serving a life sentence. The camp ranks as a ‘total control zone, where prisoners are deemed ‘irredeemable.’

“Mr. Shin's unforgivable crime was being born of ‘bad seed.’ His father was sent to Camp 14 because two of his brothers had fled south during the Korean War. Under an edict laid down by Kim Il Sung, founder of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the crimes of such traitors must be paid for by their relatives, ‘through three generations.’ For most of Mr. Shin's life, Mr. Harden notes, he accepted that his tainted lineage meant that he deserved the suffering inflicted on him at Camp 14—‘he believed the guards' preaching about original sin.’

“At 14, [Mr. Shin] was forced to witness two executions: those of his mother and brother. They had been arrested for violating Rule No. 1 [of the camp]: ‘Do not try to escape.’ His mother was hanged, and his brother was shot. The only emotion Mr. Shin felt was anger. He blamed them for his interrogation and torture after their arrests. Guards bound his hands and feet, hoisted him into the air by means of a hook pierced into his abdomen and dangled him over an open fire.

“His escape from Camp 14—in 2005, when he was 22—came about because of a chance encounter with a new inmate, a man who had held a high-ranking government position. The two men shared a desperation to get out of the camp, whatever the risk, and plotted to reach China, a country Mr. Shin had never heard of but one where his friend had relatives. His friend, though, was killed during their escape over the electric fence that surrounded the camp; Mr. Shin crawled over his corpse to freedom. Thanks to luck as well as to skills he had honed at Camp 14—stealing, lying and fighting—he managed to travel to the border and cross into China by himself. In that country, he was helped by ethnic Koreans, local Christians and, eventually, a South Korean journalist who escorted him to the South Korean consulate in Shanghai.

“Parts of Escape From Camp 14 can be painful to read. Mr. Harden spares no detail of Mr. Shin's torment, physical or psychological. He writes in a direct, matter-of-fact style that puts the horrors he is relating in dark relief. He is equally explicit in describing Mr. Shin's difficulties in learning to succeed in a free society—his nightmares, his inability to hold down a job, his troubles making friends or placing trust in anyone. There is ‘no easy way for Shin to adapt to life outside the fence,’ he writes. Mr. Harden quotes him as saying, ‘I am evolving from being an animal.’ Today he is living in Seoul and trying to raise the world's awareness of his countrymen's plight.

“The effects of North Korea's gulag extend beyond the lives of those unfortunate men, women and children who live and die there. The threat of being sent to the camps—and the monumental human suffering that implies—terrorizes every North Korean. It is one of the brutal control mechanisms by which the Kim family regime stays in power.”

 



Branch Rickey (Jimmy Breslin, Viking, 2011, 147 pages)

One of my favorite baseball biographies.  Second time around; this time read with my son.

Nice Guys Finish Last (Leo Durocher, University of Chicago Press, 2009 ed., 456 pages)

One of the best baseball memoirs. 

 

To End All Wars (Ernest Gordon, Zondervan, 2002, 248 pages)

Remarkable true story.  

In 1941, Ernest Gordon was twenty-four when he was captured by the Japanese and forced, with other British prisoners of war, to build the notorious "Railroad of Death."  Sixteen thousand POWs died as the Japanese sought to extend their Empire in the Far East.  Gordon and his fellow prisoners faced appalling conditions exacerbated by the brutality of their captors.  He survived and his story is an inspiring example of the triumph of the human spirit against all odds.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Susan Cain, Crown Publishing, 2012, 352 pages)

Very, very good book.  I was prompted to read this after reading the author's op-ed piece in the January 13, 2012 New York Times, portions of which I've quoted below.

"Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.

"But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.

"The New Groupthink has overtaken our workplaces, our schools and our religious institutions. Anyone who has ever needed noise-canceling headphones in her own office or marked an online calendar with a fake meeting in order to escape yet another real one knows what I’m talking about. Virtually all American workers now spend time on teams and some 70 percent inhabit open-plan offices, in which no one has 'a room of one’s own.' During the last decades, the average amount of space allotted to each employee shrank 300 square feet, from 500 square feet in the 1970s to 200 square feet in 2010.

"Our schools have also been transformed by the New Groupthink. Today, elementary school classrooms are commonly arranged in pods of desks, the better to foster group learning. Even subjects like math and creative writing are often taught as committee projects. In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question.

"SOME teamwork is fine and offers a fun, stimulating, useful way to exchange ideas, manage information and build trust.

"But it’s one thing to associate with a group in which each member works autonomously on his piece of the puzzle; it’s another to be corralled into endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers. Studies show that open-plan offices make workers hostile, insecure and distracted. They’re also more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress, the flu and exhaustion. And people whose work is interrupted make 50 percent more mistakes and take twice as long to finish it.

"Privacy also makes us productive. In a fascinating study known as the Coding War Games, consultants Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister compared the work of more than 600 computer programmers at 92 companies. They found that people from the same companies performed at roughly the same level — but that there was an enormous performance gap between organizations. What distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn’t greater experience or better pay. It was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed. Sixty-two percent of the best performers said their workspace was sufficiently private compared with only 19 percent of the worst performers. Seventy-six percent of the worst programmers but only 38 percent of the best said that they were often interrupted needlessly.

"Solitude can even help us learn. According to research on expert performance by the psychologist Anders Ericsson, the best way to master a field is to work on the task that’s most demanding for you personally. And often the best way to do this is alone. 

"Conversely, brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity.  decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases. The 'evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,”'wrote the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. 'If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.'

"To harness the energy that fuels both these drives, we need to move beyond the New Groupthink and embrace a more nuanced approach to creativity and learning. Our offices should encourage casual, cafe-style interactions, but allow people to disappear into personalized, private spaces when they want to be alone. Our schools should teach children to work with others, but also to work on their own for sustained periods of time." 

The Going In-House Handbook: A Concise Guide to Making Big Career Changes (Susan Ellen Wolf, Scout Publishing Enterprises, 2011, 70 pages)

Terrific resource. 

N. Eldon Tanner: His Life and Service (G. Homer Durham, Deseret Book Co., 1982, 370 pages)

During the course of a famous libel trial in New York, a question was posed: Could anyone cite the name of an individual of perfect honesty? The name of N. Eldon Tanner of western Canada was entered into the court record as such a person.  "If we had forty men like Eldon Tanner spread around the globe, the problems of the world would be reduced by about fifty percent." (McCown E. Hunt)

Here, in N. Eldon Tanner: His Life and Service, G. Homer Durham explores the fascinating life of this man who was acclaimed as a financial genius, an astute and perceptive businessman, an eminent minister in Canadian government, a dedicated religious leader, and a warm and loving father.  Whether facing such problems as making young boys feel welcome in church when all they had to wear were overalls, or transporting Canada's rich reserves of natural gas across the continent, or serving as a counselor to four presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, N. Eldon Tanner always acted in the context of what was right rather than what was expedient.

 

A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing (Lawrence M. Krauss, Free Press, 2012, 224 pages)

I've always had an interest in cosmology and physics and picked up Lawrence Krauss' A Universe From Nothing hoping it might be a good treatment of these subjects, especially for a layperson like me. I was sorely disappointed to immediately discover that this is little more than Krauss' argument against the existence of God.  (Of course, I should have known better from the start because the cover of the book indicates that the Afterword is written by Richard Dawkins, who argues that Krauss' work is nothing short of the death knell for theism.)

Krauss is clearly a very, very smart man, and this book is a worthy and thought-provoking read.  I enjoyed the science but not the agenda.  Even so, despite what Richard Dawkins might think, I didn't find anything here particularly offensive to my conception of God.

 

The Little Messenger (Jon Rosenberg, Second Half Books LLC, 2011, 440 pages)

Jon Rosenberg started out post-college life as a math teacher in the Virgin Islands. When he first saw what his students could do with the school’s two personal computers, he decided that the PC was the most important thing to happen to education since the invention of the book. He has been in computer software development ever since. He currently lives in Redmond, Washington with his wife and two teenage sons, one of whom was diagnosed with autism in 1995.

Rosenberg draws heavily on his own life experience for The Little Messenger. Dan Abrahams, the main character, is a smart software engineer trying to balance the demands of work at a hot technology company on the fast track to an IPO with those of a growing family and a son with severe autism. Dan is eventually sucked into a web of industrial espionage that makes The Little Messenger a terrific thriller.

It is hard to believe that this is Rosenberg's first book. Very well crafted, interesting characters, believable and fast-paced storyline, and engaging prose.

The Beasts of Buchenwald: Karl & Ilse Koch, Human-Skin Lampshades, and the War-Crimes Trial of the Century (Flint Whitlock, Cable Publishing, 2011, 326 pages)

No matter how much I read about the history of Nazi Germany, it never fails to amaze me how that regime enabled the most amoral, base individuals to rise to the top of its twisted society.

When Captain Fred Keffer of the U.S. 6th Armored Division arrived at the teeming concentration camp known as Buchenwald, located high on a forested hill above Weimar, the Cultural Capital of Germany, on April 11, 1945, he was stunned into disbelief. Until then, rumors of concentration camps had been just that—rumors. Not even the Soviets liberation of the Auschwitz death camp four months earlier had convinced the advancing American army that it might encounter such places. Yet the awful reality of suddenly and unexpectedly coming across 21,000 sick and starving prisoners who had just revolted and chased their SS guards away proved the truth of such rumors.

As Keffer and the Americans of General George S. Patton's Third Army, who followed him into the camp, soon learned, Buchenwald had been a place of murder, torture, and ghastly medical experiments on the inmates. But the worst were tales told by the survivors of Ilse Koch, the wife of the camp commandant, ordering lampshades, book covers, purses, and gloves made from the tattooed skin of murdered prisoners.

After the war, Ilse Koch was hunted down by the American occupation authorities and put on trial in 1947 (her husband had already been executed by the SS for corruption) for her alleged role in war crimes committed at the camp. The sensational tribunal blew the lid off the details surrounding how the Nazis treated their victims and was extensively covered in the American press. Yet, there was more.

Prosecutorial misconduct may have contributed to Ilse Koch receiving a life sentence. And, after serving only four years, her sentence was commuted in a controversial decision based on Cold War politics. Re-arrested and re-tried by West German authorities, she was again sentenced to life in prison—a sentence that ended with her suicide in 1967.

Author Flint Whitlock spent several years researching the Kochs, visiting the site of the camp (today a monument to the Third Reich's victims) on several occasions, exploring U.S. and German archives, interviewing former inmates and their liberators, and delving into the official records of the war-crimes trial and Ilse Koch's supposed role in the shocking rumors of household objects being made from human skin.

The J. Golden Kimball Stories (Eric A. Eliason, University of Illinois Press, 2007, 186 pages)

"With his gaunt figure, magpie voice, and fiery vigor, J. Golden Kimball (1853-1938) embodied the down-to-earth humor he so unselfconsciously provided his people.  He was loved by all Latter-Day Saints.  Even religiously disinterested 'jack-Mormon' farmers and wayward youths emptied fields and pool halls to gather around the radio to hear his sermons. . . As he toured the Mormon settlements of the West, 'Uncle Golden,' as people of no particular relation often called him, charmed congregations with frank talk and refreshing, if slightly irreverent, quips occasionally peppered with salty language."

The J. Golden Kimball Stories, compiled by Eric A. Eliason from original fieldwork and previously unpublished archival resources, shares the beloved and iconoclastic Uncle Golden's opinions on death, marriage, love, hell, and God.  A couple of my favorite stories:

--"J. Golden Kimball began one of his conference addresses supposedly by saying, 'Brothers and sisters, how many of you have read the seventeenth chapter of Mark in the New Testament?'  When many hands went up, Kimball said, 'Well, you're the people I want to talk to today.  There are only sixteen chapters in Mark and my sermon for today is on liars and hypocrites!"

--"J. Golden Kimball was once asked his opinion of women wearing cosmetics, which some church leaders in the early part of the 1900s frowned upon. J. Golden Kimball, 'Well, a little paint never hurt any old barn.'"

--"In his last years, J. Golden Kimball met a friend in the street who said to him, 'How are you Golden? How are you getting along?' 'Well, to tell the truth, I'm not doing so good.  Getting old and tired.  You know, Seth, I've been preaching this gospel nigh onto sixty years now, and I think it's time for me to get over to the other side to find out how much of what I've been saying is true.'" 

How to Be Black (Baratunde Thurston, Harper, 2012, 272 pages)

Baratunde Thurston is the director of digital content at The Onion, the co-founder of Jack & Jill Politics, a stand-up comedian, and a globe-trotting speaker. He was named one of the 100 most influential African-Americans of 2011 by The Root and one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company magazine.  

How to Be Black, published just in time for Black History Month 2012, is part memoir, part satire, and part guide to the complexities of racial relationships in America.  Very funny, often poignant, and always thought provoking. 

The Poetical Writings of Orson F. Whitney: Poems and Poetic Prose (Orson F. Whitney, Nabu Press, 2010, 222 pages)

Orson F. Whitney (1855-1931) was a politician, journalist, poet, historian and academic. In 1878, Whitney began a career in writing with the business office of the Deseret News, the newspaper owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  He later became a reporter and the city editor. During a mission in Europe for the Church from 1881 to 1883, he acted as editor of the church publication the Millenial Star.  In 1906, Whitney was called to serve as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which together with the First Presidency, is the governing body of the Church.

The Poetical Writings is, as the title suggests, a collection of Whitney's poems, particularly his religious verse.  While a good collection, Whitney's most famous poem, The Soul's Captain--a response to William Henley's Invictus ("It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul")--is not included here, unfortunately.  

The Soul's Captain (Orson F. Whitney)

Art thou in truth? Then what of him
Who bought thee with his blood?
Who plunged into devouring seas
And snatched thee from the flood?

Who bore for all our fallen race
What none but him could bear–
The God who died that man might live,
And endless glory share?

Of what avail thy vaunted strength,
Apart from his vast might?
Pray that his Light may pierce the gloom,
That thou mayest see aright.

Men are as bubbles on the wave,
As leaves upon the tree.
Thou, captain of thy soul, forsooth
Who gave that place to thee?

Free will is thine -- free agency
To wield for right or wrong;
But thou must answer unto him
To whom all souls belong

Bend to the dust that head "unbowed,"
Small part of Life's great whole!
And see in him, and him alone,
The Captain of thy soul.

 

Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink (David Margolick, Knopf, 2005, 432 pages)

David Margolick is a long-time contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He has held similar posts at Newsweek and Portfolio.  For fifteen years he was a legal affairs correspondent for the New York Times.  He is one of my favorite writers.  Beyond Glory, published in 2005, is Margolick at his best. 

Few sporting events aroused more passion than the heavyweight boxing fights in the 1920s and 1930s.  The 1936 and 1938 bouts between Joe Louis, a black American, and Max Schmeling, a hero of Nazi Germany, were no exception.  Those fights, perhaps more than any others, had more meaning outside the ring than inside because they symbolized the hopes, hatreds, and fears of a world moving toward total war.  Schmeling beat Louis in 12 rounds in 1936.  Louis repaid the favor in one round in 1938.    

Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch (Sally Bedell Smith, Random House, 2012, 688 pages)

Interesting and comprehensive in scope but far too fawning for my taste.

Little Caesar: A Biography of Edward G. Robinson (Alan L. Gansberg, New English Library, 1983, 248 pages)

A fine biography of one of my favorite actors.

Joseph Fielding Smith: Gospel Scholar, Prophet of God (Francis M. Gibbons, Deseret Book, 1992, 524 pages)

Joseph Fielding Smith was the grand nephew of Joseph Smith, who organized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1830.  Joseph Fielding served as the 10th President of the Church from 1970 to 1972. To members of the Church, myself included, Joseph Fielding is regarded as a modern day Apostle of Jesus Christ, a prophet of God, and a successor to his great uncle Joseph Smith.  

Gibbons biography of Smith is serviceable, though not terribly inspiring.  His approach is somewhat cold and clinical and fails to capture the spirit of Smith's lifelong ministry.

Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party (Ying Chang Compestine, Square Fish Publishing, 2009, 272 pages)

This from my own Rabid Reader who is in the 5th grade:

Revolution is Not a Dinner Party by Ying Chang Compestine is a memoir about Compestine’s childhood. She grew up in the city of Wuhan during the Cultural Revolution. In the story Compestine’s is a brave girl named Ling. Several events in the story show Ling’s bravery.

The first example is when the Red Guards barged into Ling’s House and take her father away. Ling had to live with her mother for almost two years. Ling was very brave in this situation to live without her father. She knew was that her father would come back.

The second example is when Red Guards tore up her mother’s pearl necklace and Ling’s doll Bao-Bao. They also tore up one their chairs. She was brave enough to say to the Red Guards, “I hate you!” The guards said, “We are doing our job. If the enemy hates us we should keep on doing it.”

The third example is when Ling goes to school and Gao, the young pioneer, beats her up. He throws an abacus and a ball at her. The next day when Ling returns to school she gets revenge by throwing the abacus at Gao. She pins him to the ground and punches him in the face and Gao bleeds everywhere. Gao yells, “Help! She is punching me. She is killing me.”

The final example of Ling’s bravery is when the lice in Ling’s hair becomes so bad she is forced to cut all her hair off. In Ling’s culture cutting all of your hair off can be very embarrassing. When Ling went to school, Gao did not say a word. Ling was expecting him to say something mean.

Ling’s experiences teach us that sometimes to be free we must be brave. Being brave means standing up to people that try to harm you and protecting your family. Ling was a brave girl who would fight for her freedom.

What Is Six Sigma? (Pete Pande and Larry Holpp, McGraw-Hill, 2001, 98 pages)

Maybe not a real page turner but nonetheless important for the business minded. 

Originally developed by Motorola in 1986, Six Sigma is a system for improving the quality of organizational processes. Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes. The term Six Sigma originated from terminology associated with manufacturing, specifically terms associated with statistical modeling of manufacturing processes. The maturity of a manufacturing process can be described by a sigma rating indicating its yield, or the percentage of defect-free products it creates. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of the products manufactured are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defects per million). Motorola set a goal of "six sigma" for all of its manufacturing operations, and this goal became a byword for the management and engineering practices used to achieve it.

What Is Six Sigma? is a concise summary of the core themes and processes of Six Sigma. Unlike almost all other books on Six Sigma, it is written for the employees of organizations rolling out Six Sigma and not just managers.



Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster, 2011, 656 pages)

Isaacson (also author of Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and others) has done it again.  Very well done.  One of the best business biographies.

 

One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com (Richard L. Brandt, Penguin Group, 2011, 214 pages)

Years ago when I worked at Amazon.com in Seattle, I asked a colleague what Jeff Bezos was like.  He replied, "Crazy.  But crazy like a fox." As I have watched Bezos's career both from the inside and outside over the years, I have realized what an apt description that was.  Richard L. Brandt's brief biography of Bezos, One Click, confirms this view.  

Brandt charts Bezos's rise from computer nerd to world-changing entrepreneur.  Bezos's success can be credited to his forward-looking insights and his "crazy like a fox" business sense.  Brandt explains, among other things, why Bezos decided to allow negative product reviews, correctly guessing that earned trust would outweigh possible lost sales; why Amazon zealously guards some patents while freely sharing others; and why Bezos called becoming profitable the "dumbest" thing they could do in 1997.  

Brandt ascribes Bezos's and Amazon's success to four deceptively simple principles.  One, obsess over customers.  Second, invent, and reinvent, tenaciously, until your get it right.  Third, focus on the long term. Fourth, remember "it's always day one"--there are always new challenges ahead, new ideas to explore, and new directions to turn.

Brandt's One Click is a good example of the business books I like to read: part biography, part wisdom, distilling the essentials quickly, without too much business school jargon.  Worthwhile read. 

Richard III (William Shakespeare, Signet Classics Edition, 1998, 336 pages)

Wickedly delicious. 

Cecil Andrus: Idaho's Greatest Governor (Chris Carlson, Caxton Press, 2011, 269 pages)

In 1990, during the second half of my senior year of high school in Boise, Idaho, I served as a page/ intern in the Idaho State Senate.  That experience gave me the opportunity to very closely follow the key personalities there, as well as Idaho's governor at the time, Cecil D. Andrus.  Andrus was just finishing up his third term as Governor, having returned to the state house after two previous terms as Governor and service as Jimmy Carter's Secretary of the Interior.  As a page/ intern, my opportunities to interact with Governor Andrus were limited of course, though I did have one memorable exchange with him, which I've related elsewhere.  

Even though my life has taken me away from Idaho, I remain interested in the state's politics and political personalities. That's why I was excited to hear that Chris Carlson, longtime confident of Andrus, would be publishing a reminiscence of the Governor.  Carlson's Andrus is filled with a number of wonderful anecdotes and does credit to Idaho's four-term Governor.  Very good reading for anyone with interest in Idaho political history (admittedly, a small group, perhaps).  

Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (Robert Gerwarth, Yale University Press, 2011, 393)

Reinhard Heydrich was one of the most feared men in Nazi Germany, an appalling figure even by the standards of the Nazi leadership he so dutifully served.  At the height of his power, Heydrich was Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, the Gestapo, and Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia (Czechoslovakia). Heydrich was also, at Hermann Goering's behest, the architect of the "Final Solution," the machinery intended to annihilate the Jews of Europe.  When Hannah Arendt wrote of the "banality of evil" to describe the Nazi's coldly and deadly efficient administration of the Final Solution she no doubt had not only Adolf Eichmann in mind but Heydrich as well.  From behind his desk and shielded by the ruthlessly efficient bureaucracy he built Heydrich shouldered a major share of responsibility for some of the Nazi's worst atrocities.  

Heydrich was assassinated in 1942 by Czech partisans parachuted into Czechoslovakia with the assistance of the British.  For his assassination the Nazi's exacted a horrific revenge.  Historians have since debated the wisdom of the operation to remove him.  That debate continues.

Heydrich has received remarkably modest attention by historians.  Robert Gerwarth's biography changes that.  Gerwarth weaves together little-known stories of Heydrich's private life and explores fully his progression from privileged middle-class youth to rapacious mass murderer.  Gerwarth sheds new light on the complexity of Heydrich's adult character, his motivations, his incremental steps that led to unimaginable atrocities, and the consequences of his murderous efforts towards recreating the entire face of Europe.

Superb biography. 

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President (Candice Millard, Doubleday, 2011, 352 pages)

Ask anyone to name a United States president that was assassinated while in office and most will likely answer Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy.  Hardly anyone remembers James Garfield, who was shot in the back by a deranged assailant at a train station in Washington, D.C. just four months into his first term in office.  Sadly, Garfield did not die instantly but lived on for several weeks before succumbing to infection stemming from his wound.  Like Kennedy, Garfield was cut down in the prime of his life and we are left only to speculate what might have been had he lived.  It is probable that Garfield's presidency would have been worth remembering given his track record.  He was a remarkable man.  Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman.   

Millard's Destiny of the Republic is a wonderful account of Garfield's murder and the efforts to save him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems (Dover Thrift Editions, 1992, 94 pages)

I am not an authority on poetry by any means, but I've always enjoyed Tennyson; The Lady of Shalott, Ode on the Duke of Wellington, Crossing the Bar, and The Charge of the Light Brigade are some of my favorites.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession (Allison Hoover Bartlett, Riverhead Books, 2010, 300 pages)

A gift from my kids.  The title suggests a subtle commentary on my priorities, I suppose.  Interesting read.

Allison Bartlett delves into the world of rare books and those who collect—and steal—them. On one end of the spectrum is Salt Lake City book dealer Ken Sanders, whose friends refer to him as a book detective, or Bibliodick. On the other end is John Gilkey, who has stolen over $100,000 worth of rare volumes, mostly in California. A lifelong book lover, Gilkey's passion for rare texts always exceeded his income, and he began using stolen credit card numbers to purchase, among others, first editions of Beatrix Potter and Mark Twain from reputable dealers. Sanders, the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association's security chair, began compiling complaints from ripped-off dealers and became obsessed with bringing Gilkey to justice. Bartlett's journalistic position is enviable: both men provided her almost unfettered access to their respective worlds. Gilkey recounted his past triumphs in great detail, while Bartlett's interactions with the unrepentant, selfish but oddly charming Gilkey are revealing (her original article about himself appeared in The Best Crime Reporting 2007).

 

Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason (Nancy Pearl, Sasquatch Books, 2003, 287 pages)

An essential reference for anyone trying to broaden their reading horizons.  Nancy Pearl has worked as a librarian in Detroit, Tulsa, and Seattle.  Pearl reviews books weekly for National Public Radio's Seattle affiliate KUOW.

Book Report: What Did You Read in 2011?

In 2011, I read 75 books totaling 30,523 pages.  How did you do?

Go Forward With Faith: The Biography of Gordon B. Hinckley (Sheri L. Dew, Deseret Book, 1996, 653 pages)

Gordon B. Hinckley, served as the 15th President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from 1995 to 2008. To members of that Church, myself included, Hinckley is regarded as a modern day Apostle of Jesus Christ, a prophet of God, and a successor to Joseph Smith, who organized the Church in 1830.  This biography does what any good biography should do: Inspire you to do a little better, try a little harder, and believe a little more.

Pershing: Commander of the Great War (John Perry, Thomas Nelson Publishing, 2011, 240 pages)

Fine biography; strikes the right balance between forrest and trees. This from the introduction:

"No other American military leader is as important and yet as little known as John J. Pershing. He led an army of more than a million men in France, defeating the seemingly invincible German war machine after only six months of offensive action. . . By the time he sailed home, Pershing had become the only U.S. army officer in history to be commissioned General of the Armies during his lifetime. The one other soldier so honored, a century and a half after his death, was George Washington.

"Pershing returned to the United States a hero. There was a ticker tape parade in New York, an address to a joint session of Congress, rumors of a presidential bid, gossip about the society women the handsome widower was dating, and a Pulitzer Prize for his history of the "war to end all war [World War I]". And yet today General Pershing has faded away to the second or third tier of America's historical consciousness. While some of us have heard his name, many more have not. His accomplishments rightly place him in the company of great generals such as MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Patton, all of whom he commanded and inspired, and all of whom he outranked."

The Hiding Place (Corrie ten Boom, John Sherrill, and Elizabeth Sherrill, Chosen, 35th Anniv. Edition, 272 pages)

I am not quite sure how I managed to get through all these years without reading The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom's remarkable account of surviving the occupation of her beloved homeland and eventually her own incarceration by the Nazis during World War II.

Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch watchmaker who became a heroine of the Dutch Resistance by risking her life to help Jews and underground workers escape from the Nazis. Eventually, ten Boom and her family were betrayed and she, her sister, and father were rounded up by the Gestapo and put in prison. As the war reached its final stages, Corrie was transferred to Ravensbruck, the notorious concentration camp for women in Northern Germany. Even in its final throes of defeat the murderous work of Nazi Germany continued. She was miraculously released from the camp shortly before the end of the War. In 1959 Corrie was part of a group that visited Ravensbruck, which was then in East Germany, to honor her sister and 96,000 other women who died there. There Corrie learned that her own release had been part of a clerical error; one week after her release, all women her age were taken to the gas chambers.

What strikes me as most remarkable about Corrie's story is her unshakeable faith in Christ that imbued her with courage and peace that no doubt aided in her survival. There are a number of miracles recorded in her account. She became a minister of love, peace, and endurance to all those around her during and after the War. Corrie's is a terrific account of how good can eventually triumph over evil. 

Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (John A. Farrell, Doubleday, 2011, 576 pages)

Terrific biography of a complex and flawed man. 

Many corporate lawyers I know dream of leaving behind the corporate world and becoming master trial lawyers.  In today's era of specialized law practice that's probably a pipe dream.  In 1894, after nearly 14 years as a railroad lawyer Clarence Darrow pulled off the switch.  Darrow would in time become famous for participating in some of the most important (or more aptly, notorious) trials in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  His road to fame began when he defended union leader Eugene Debs in the land­mark Pullman Strike case and from there he went from one headline to the next including defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks (1924)—until he was nearly crushed by an indictment for bribing a jury.  He redeemed himself in Dayton, Tennessee, defending schoolteacher John Scopes in the “Monkey Trial,” cementing his place in history. 

Eva Braun: Life with Hitler (Heike B. Gortemaker, Knopf, 2011, 336 pages)

I was prompted to read this after seeing Dorothy Gallagher's November 16, 2011 review in The New York Times, portions of which I've pasted below.

"Hitler could not have wished for a better girlfriend. In this first full-scale biography of Eva Braun, the German historian Heike B. Görtemaker examines the known sources for Braun’s life and emerges with a highly readable and consistent portrait of an ordinary woman who loved sports, fashion and jazz; and who was, without a doubt, utterly devoted to the man history has seen as 'evil incarnate.'

"In Eva Braun: Life With Hitler, Görtemaker asks whether it is useful for a nuanced picture of Hitler to show him in his off-hours, a man like other men, putting on his trousers one leg at a time. She thinks that it is, and that the 'demonization' of Hitler has been an impediment to a fuller understanding of him and of the Nazi phenomenon. Through Braun, she believes, a new perspective on Hitler will open. And she writes that Braun’s "‘normality’ at the center of this atmosphere of ‘evil’ is like an anachronism that brings this evil into relief and shows it in a new light.”

"One day in 1929, in Munich, 40-year-old Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, paid a visit to the shop of his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. It was here that he first met Hoffmann’s new employee, pretty, blond, blue-eyed, 17-year-old Eva Braun. Hitler was quite taken; Eva was naturally impressed with the leader of this up-and-coming national movement.

"Eva was a lower-middle-class girl, one of three sisters, of purely Aryan descent (Hitler had her family investigated for Jewish taint).  Probably Eva wished for marriage, but this was not to be, at least not for 16 years.  Hitler had another bride: 'I am married to the German people and their fate! . . . No, I cannot marry, I must not,' he often said in one form or another.  A secret girlfriend was another matter.

"In those years of the Nazis’ rise to power, Hitler didn’t have much time for Eva; he had a lot on his mind. There were the Reichs­tag elections to win, the chancellorship to obtain, the masses to whip up, the Jews to persecute.  While Hitler was away from Munich, Eva lived with her parents, worked at Hoffmann’s photo studio and waited for her admirer’s occasional visits.  She was not always patient.  There is evidence, Görtemaker says, that she tried to kill herself in 1932, and tried again three years later when she feared that Hitler’s interest was flagging.  Braun’s first attempt reminded Hitler that his half-niece, Geli Raubal, who had lived with him and to whom he had been devoted in some way, actually did kill herself in 1931.  He was moved to remark about Braun, 'Now I must look after her” because something like this 'mustn’t happen again.'  Braun’s second attempt in 1935 spurred Hitler to provide her with her own apartment in Munich, and give her permission to spend more time in his presence.

"Did Braun share the political positions and basic worldview of her lover'? Görtemaker asks. The question is rhetorical. Why wouldn’t she? If only by osmosis, why wouldn’t this young, quite ordinary girl accept the opinions of her lover, of her boss and of her father, who was also a Nazi Party member?

"It is true that all personal letters and documents between Braun and Hitler were destroyed on Hitler’s orders in the last days of the war, and that specific information is to be found only in the memoirs and testimony of those who served him — and who, when the war was lost, served themselves.  But Görtemaker shows that by early 1936 Braun’s position with Hitler was 'unassailable.'  At the Berghof, Hitler’s mountain retreat in the cloud-swirled Bavarian Alps, she had her own little apartment, next to Hitler’s bedroom, and was accepted by his intimates as mistress of the house.  At meals, she sat at Hitler’s left.  She felt secure enough to rebuke Hitler for being late to dinner, and to indicate when she thought he had talked enough.

"[Braun] enjoyed swimming and skiing. She loved fashion and changed her clothes several times a day. She took photographs and home movies of Hitler and his guests (which can be seen on YouTube) and generally behaved as though she were at home.  And then, on Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. Görtemaker is in no doubt that Braun knew of his plans.  He seems to have talked freely about them at the Berghof.  During the course of the conflict, at least until close to the end, she seems to have been unconcerned, taking her annual trip to Italy while Hitler was conducting the war on the Eastern Front. Even as the war turned against Germany, Hitler, according to Goebbels, was praising his companion’s 'calm, intelligent and objective way of being.'  Not until 1944, when the Red Army had reached Warsaw, did Braun make her will.

"Eva Braun loved Hitler; of that there can be no doubt. In the spring of 1945, when the war was clearly lost, she rushed to Berlin to be with him in his bunker, to marry him, to commit suicide with him at the moment when the Red Army reached the Reichstag.  But knowing that there was genuine love in Hitler’s life, even a sort of domestic existence, do we see Hitler’s 'evil' in a new light, as Görtemaker suggests we will?  Or do we know, as we have always known, that evil walks among us; that no monster (or his friends and lovers) thinks himself monstrous, no madman thinks himself mad; and that, as the filmmaker Jean Renoir once said: 'The really terrible thing is that everyone has his reasons.'"      

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson, Knopf, 2008, 480 pages)

From what I hear, I am probably one of the last people on earth to read Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  

Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch--and there's always a catch--is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson's novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo. 

Terrific storyline, but I was overwhelmed by the violence.

Life's Lessons Learned - Personal Reflections (Dallin H. Oaks, Deseret Book, 2011, 243 pages)

All of us have learned valuable lessons during the course of our lives.  Sharing those lessons is what makes for wonderful teachers, parents, mentors and friends.  Here, in Life's Lessons Learned, Dallin Oaks --a lawyer, professor, college president, state supreme court justice, and now member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints--offers up some of the best lessons he has learned and the circumstances in which he learned them.  Each chapter is a short narrative followed by a simple, straightforward statement of the lesson learned.  Some of my favorites:

• Powerful ideas should change our thinking and our actions.
• We must be careful to prevent pride in our educational accomplishments, our professional accomplishments, or other personal strengths from weakening the humility we need to continue learning and progressing.
• "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."
• We should ask ourselves often, "What would you like to be remembered for?"
• Each of us should pursue truth by reason (science) and truth by faith (religion).

Well worth reading.

The Confession (John Grisham, Doubleday, 2010, 432 pages)

Loved it.  Fiction, but sadly could just as well be non-fiction.  As the work of the Innocence Project has demonstrated over the years there are likely more people behind bars innocent of the crimes they were convicted of having committed than we might like to admit.  How many have been put to death?

The gist of Grisham's novel is this: In 2007, almost on the eve of the execution of Donté Drumm, an African-American college football star, for the 1998 murder of a white cheerleader whose body was never found, Travis Boyette, a creepy multiple sex offender, confesses that he's guilty of the crime to Kansas minister Keith Schroeder. With Drumm's legal options dwindling fast and with the threat of civil unrest in his Texas hometown if the execution proceeds, Schroeder battles to convince Boyette to go public with the truth--and to persuade the condemned man's attorney that Boyette's story needs to be taken seriously.  

You might think about the death penalty differently after your finish. 

Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy (John Julius Norwich, Random House, 2011, 528 pages)

John Julius Norwich's Absolute Monarchs profiles most of the 265 or so popes who have led the Catholic Church since, according to the New Testament, Christ conferred the keys to his earthly kingdom on Peter his most senior apostle.  (The number depends on whether you include or exclude a few individuals.) Catholic tradition and teaching hold that each pope is a successor to Peter.  

Profiling so many men in 528 pages is certainly no easy task but, as Norwich observes, some who ascended to the throne of St. Peter were not quite as noteworthy as others and fittingly receive less attention.  Considerable space is devoted to the more interesting popes including those of most recent memory. 

As readers of Absolute Monarchs will discover, there are many admirable men who have served as pope.  These were true servants in the spirit of Christ.  Readers will also discover that there have been more than a few for whom the papacy was merely a means to political, temporal and financial power, the cause of Christ being entirely secondary if not altogether unimportant.  Perhaps that is an unfortunate possibility when the seat of St. Peter can be had for only a requisite number of votes.  This vast spectrum of personalities does beg the question: have the keys to Christ's kingdom here on earth remained with the Catholic Church during those times when its foremost representative was anything but like Christ?  That is a question Norwich does not attempt to answer. 

Though most of Norwich's work is lush and fruitful reading, there are some dry deserts along the way that must be muddled through.  Still though, Absolute Monarchs is a good and worthwhile read.      

Spencer W. Kimball (Edward L Kimball and Andrew E Kimball, Bookcraft Inc., 1979, 438 pages)

A pleasure to read and very, very inspiring.  Spencer W. Kimball served as the 12th President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from 1973 to 1985. To members of that Church, myself included, Kimball is regarded as a modern day Apostle of Jesus Christ, a prophet of God, and a successor to Joseph Smith, who organized the Church in 1830.  Kimball's life was buffeted by considerable health challenges, but through it all he kept a sense of duty, purpose, and humor.  He gave all that he had for the cause of Christ.