The Charm School – Nelson DeMille
I had never heard of this 1988 book before. I was pleasantly surprised that despite its age, it held up pretty well. In fact, its age was one of the best things about it.
The book is split into two halves. In the first, an American student traveling through the Soviet Union in the late ‘80s stumbles upon a secret that could take the Cold War to a new, more intense level: a secret camp holds hundreds of American POWs from the Vietnam war, and they are being forced to teach Russians how to “act American” before deployment to the US. Think The Americans. The student reports his findings to the US embassy, where two staff members struggle to verify his information and protect him from the KGB. The staffers – he am Air Force agent, she a PR liaison – also strike up a romance during all this.
In the second half, those two staffers end up in the camp and see that the report is, in fact, completely true. They are forced to fight for their lives while following some very disappointing orders from above about how to deal with the POWs.
I was surprised at the depth of DeMille’s story. This wasn’t the standard “US is good, USSR is bad” spy novel. His most patriotic Americans were able to see good in the Soviet people and questioned areas where the US/capitalism fall short. They made an effort to understand why the other side behaved the way they did. He shows little moments of levity between CIA and KGB agents despite their bitter conflict. As I read I realized that our society had more room for nuance and understanding of others in the Eighties than it does now.
I also loved DeMille’s dialogue. It was a snappy throwback to the movies of an earlier era. It took a few chapters to get into it, but once I did it was terrific.
It was also a throwback in that it checked in at 800 pages. Seems like most thrillers these days are in the 300–500 page range, which I tend to prefer. DeMille’s story and writing were good enough that I didn’t mind having to spend a little extra time with it.
The Breaks of the Game – David Halberstam
I’ve known about this book for decades. I’ve read several of Halberstam’s other books, notably The Best and Brightest, about the Vietnam War, and Playing For Keeps, about Michael Jordan’s career. Yet, despite knowing that so many sportswriters I admire consider this a classic, I never got to it. Until it received a lot of attention after Bill Walton’s death. I quickly grabbed it and raced through his accounting of the 1979–80 NBA season, with a focus on the Portland Trailblazers and Walton.
The Trailblazers won their only NBA title in 1977, behind a dominant performance by Walton. A year later they were even better, on pace through 60 games to have the best regular season in league history until Walton suffered the first of his many foot injuries. He came back for the playoffs but broke his foot and Portland was quickly eliminated. The next year or so featured much acrimony between the team and its star, with Walton eventually forcing a trade to his home town San Diego Clippers.
Halberstam’s book covers how both sides were trying to find a new normal.
I don’t know if it was the first book of its kind, but it was super interesting to read a view of a season that came with insider access from so far back.
But there were also some major stylistic differences in how sports books were written at the time compared to now. And while race will always be a big part of any NBA story, some of the ways Halberstam wrote about it was jarring to my modern sensibilities. He often referred to specific players as “the black,” which while normal and inoffensive forty years ago, seems super cringey now.
Still, a very interesting look at the NBA just before it began a remarkable decade of growth.
60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s – Rob Harvilla
Delightful. The podcast this sprung from was great, and I was worried this would just be a rehashing of those same stories. Harvilla, for sure, recycled some bits and anecdotes. But he also put songs with similar qualities together, and adjusted his approach to give a higher-level view of the Nineties than the more drilled-down effort that was his pod.
Most of all, I really enjoyed his final chapter, when he got into why music is so important to him, and how it has been his entire life. I recognized a lot of my own love of music and how it is an integral part of my life in his words.