The Rabid Reader

Up Till Now: The Autobiography (William Shatner, St. Martin's Griffin, 2009, 368 pages)

Star Trek, TJ Hooker, Rescue 911, Boston Legal, Priceline.com--William Shatner has become one of the most recognizable actors in the world.  It was the original Star Trek series, and later its films, that made Shatner an internationally known figure, but he neither began nor ended his career with Captain Kirk. Long before, he straddled the classic world of the theater and the new world of television.  My favorite Shatner role in recent memory was that of Denny Crane on Boston Legal. Crane was the perfect vehicle for Shatner to show off his wonderful humor and delivery.  What's remarkable about Shatner's career is the range of projects he's been involved with and his tremendous depth of talent.  He's worked with many of the most notable personalities in the last 60 years.  Up Till Now is a wonderful memoir, frequently laugh out loud funny.  For a real treat check out the audio book version done by Shatner himself.

I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius (Robert Graves, Penguin Modern Classics ed., 2007, 416 pages)

I, Claudius, written by Robert Graves in 1934, is a novel written in the form of an autobiography of the Roman Emperor Claudius. It includes "history" of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty and Roman Empire, from Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BC to Caligula's assassination in AD 41.  In 1998, the Modern Library ranked I, Claudius fourteenth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present.  I am hard-pressed to understand why.  True, I, Claudius, was regarded at the time of publication as a pioneering masterpiece of historical fiction, but in my view it is a meandering, aimless narrative with little to capture one's attention.     

 

Bossypants (Tina Fey, Reagan Arthur Books, 2011, 288 pages)

Occasionally naughty but always funny.  

Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (Rob Bell, HarperOne, 2011, 202 pages)

Rob Bell, the founding (and now former) pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, lit a not-so-small firestorm among Christian circles when Love Wins hit the sales stands. Bell's thesis: salvation (i.e., heaven or hell) may not necessarily be the binary, either/ or proposition that some Bible adherents have been preaching; God's love and interest in his children might be so expansive that He will save all His children in His own way in His own time.  Conservative Christian blogger Justin Taylor suggested Love Wins was a heretical nod towards universalism ─ a dirty word in some Christian circles that suggests everyone eventually goes to heaven and there really is no hell.  (Which reminds me of a little ditty I once heard--"I know there is a Heaven, my preacher tells me so.  I know there is a Hell, where else will my neighbors go?")  Prominent evangelical pastors on both the right and left have rushed to condemn or defend Bell.

Having just finished Bell's book and having followed the debate over it these past few weeks, several things come to mind.  One, it is fascinating to me (and mildly discouraging) that there continues to be so much disagreement about what's in the Bible and what isn't.  You'd think after all these hundreds of years we'd have a little more consensus.  Two, I find it remarkable that fellow Christians continue to repackage and consume repackaged versions of the Gospel, mostly, I suspect, to fit our current socially and politically correct conceptions of God and salvation.  Again, you'd think after all these hundreds of years we'd have Christ's Gospel pretty well figured out.  Third, why is it so remarkable (i.e., heretical) to think that maybe, just maybe, God's gift of salvation is not so black and white, not so either/ or as we might suppose?  I rather think that a God in Heaven who has all power, created all things, sent his Son to die on the cross, and anxiously awaits our return might be willing to give us that degree of glory and salvation that we through our beliefs and works have demonstrated we're ready to receive.  Some I suppose may get a whole pie, some half, some only a slice, and some, well, none. 

While I don't necessarily agree with Bell's theology, I do appreciate his willingness to force the conversation. 

Hirohito And The Making Of Modern Japan (Herbert P. Bix, HarperCollins, 2000, 816 pages)

Second time around for me on this one.  I first read Herbert Bix's Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan when it was first published in 2000.  I was prompted to pick it up again after recently viewing a documentary profiling the late Emperor. 

Bix won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for this work, and deservedly so.  In Hirohito, Bix deploys a (then) fresh array of resources (many available only after the Emperor's death in 1989) to debunk many of the myths invented by Japanese and Americans alike to save the Emperor from indictment for his role in World War II.  For years, Hirohito was described as weak figurehead who was helpless to the stop the military clique that launched Japan into war against China and the United States.  Bix argues, and demonstrates rather persuasively, that Hirohito was a principal in the Japanese war machine; he acted fully as a military leader and head of state, encouraged the belligerency of his people and pursued the war to its disastrous conclusion. To the very end, Hirohito refused to acknowledge any responsibility for his role in the death of millions as well as the brutalities inflicted by his forces in China, Korea, and the Philippines. In fact, he worked with none other than General MacArthur to select his fall guys and fix testimony at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials--the Emperor trying to protect the throne at all cost, the U.S. acting to ensure control of the Japanese population and the military by retaining Hirohito as a figurehead. 

Marion G. Romney: His Life and Faith (F. Burton Howard, 1988, Bookcraft, 273 pages)

Of all the biographies of prophets, apostles, leaders and luminaries in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the "Mormons") this is by far my favorite.  F. Burton Howard's account of Marion G. Romney's life is richly detailed, very personal, and shows a man who loved God and walked by faith.  Howard emphasizes Romney's faith and his willingness to listen to and be guided by the Spirit in all things.  "My greatest desire," Romney confided in his journal very early in his life, "is to retain my testimony [of Jesus Christ] and give service where the Lord would have me give it, in the way in which he would have me give it."  In every way, Romney's life and ministry reflected that desire.  Would that I could do the same.     

The Innocent Man (John Grisham, Doubleday, 2006, 368 pages)

John Grisham is best known for his fiction--The Firm, The Client, The Pelican Brief, and A Time to Kill being among my favorites. The Innocent Man, Grisham's first published nonfiction, is in my view one of his finest books.  Grisham relates the tragedy of Ron Williamson, a baseball hero from a small town in Oklahoma who winds up a dissolute, mentally unstable Major League washout railroaded onto death row for a hometown rape and murder he did not commit.  Williams is ultimately exonerated, though almost too late.  Even so, Williams was never the same.  

Grisham could have titled this book The Innocent Men because as readers learn Ron Williamson was only one among a handful of men wrongly convicted by a zealous small town prosecutor and unscrupulous detectives who were not above forcing fabricated confessions from suspects.  Being a lawyer, I can think of no more noble endeavor than to convict a man guilty of a heinous crime.  A close second would be defending and exonerating a man wrongly accused and convicted of the same. 

Tremendous book.  Well worth reading.      

Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century (Michael Hiltzik, Free Press, 2010, 512 pages)

No doubt the definitive account of the building of Hoover Dam, one of the great engineering marvels in the U.S.  But I found Hiltzik's account much too long and involved for my taste.  Skip the first third of the book and focus on the chapters covering construction.