Tag: books (Page 1 of 25)

I just read a remarkable book that demands its own post.

The Real Hoosiers – Jack McCallum
McCallum, the longtime NBA writer for Sports Illustrated, dove into the history of the Indianapolis Crispus Attucks high school basketball teams of the mid–1950s, when Oscar Robertson starred there. Famously, Attucks lost to Milan in the first game of the State Finals in 1954. Milan beat Muncie Central that night for the championship. Their tournament run inspired the movie Hoosiers.[1]

The next two seasons, Attucks lost just a single game on their way to back-to-back state championships.

McCallum begins the book exploring that famous 1954 tournament, pointing out how many elements of the movie were only loosely based on fact, and showing how the historical record has been colored both by the movie and by misperceptions based on the movie. He spoke to Bobby Plump, the Milan star who hit the game winning shot in the championship game and upon who the character Jimmy Chitwood was somewhat based. Plump is a terrific interview and has never been shy about pointing out some of the inconsistencies of both the movie and how people consider those real teams.

The title has a double meaning, though. It’s not just about correcting some of the story about 1954, showing how Attucks was as big of an underdog story as Milan in some ways and that the Tigers upheld many of the hoary principles of Hoosier basketball as well as the rural, white teams did. It is also about examining what Indiana was like in the 1950s, particularly in how African Americans were treated. I had never heard this description before, but McCallum says that Indiana was/is sometimes called the “northern-most southern state, or southern-most northern state,” because of its record of race relations. In diving into that history, McCallum shows us that the “real Hoosiers” were people who were not only reluctant to give African Americans their inalienable rights as US citizens, but even deep into the 20th Century these same “Real Hoosiers” were working hard to keep laws on the books that were insanely racist. As McCallum sadly points out, some behaviors which were common 70 years ago and seem hopelessly retrograde are becoming common again today.[2]

Attucks was built to be the only Indianapolis high school open to Black students, ending what had been integrated schools in the city. It was constructed – and still stands – on the old west side of downtown, an area sometimes called Frog City or Frog Island, that was known for its extreme poverty and lack of basic services. Until the land was cleared for a massive building project in the late 1940s, and continues to today, there were regular outbreaks of cholera and more occasional ones of malaria in this part of town. Guess what demographic group was overwhelmingly forced into this area?

As the city began to clear out Frog Island, the Black families of the area were forced to move elsewhere.[3] But Attucks was still the only high school that their kids could attend. Of course, while the city promised a bussing service for these kids, the money was never allocated for it. Oscar Robertson, for one example, had to walk 24 blocks to school each day despite there being several public schools between his family’s new home and Attucks.[4]

I had never realized this, but McCallum points out how much of the physical history of Black people in Indianapolis has been wiped away. There is no 18th and Vine area, as in Kansas City, where the historical contributions of the Black community are celebrated. Any monuments to African Americans in Indy are scattered around town, just as the people they honor were forced to scatter.

Attucks was one of the few things Black Indianapolis residents could rally around. McCallum both begins and ends the book with a long list of Attucks graduates who went on to do great things, often as the first African Americans to penetrate a particular field. And for a few years in the 1950s, thanks to being home of one of the greatest players to ever step on a court, the Flying Tigers basketball team put Attucks on the map for the entire state.

The 1955 team was the first Indianapolis school to ever win the state championship. Remember, this was in the old, single class system. It only took 44 years for the biggest city in the state to conquer the tournament, which seems crazy. It was also the first all-Black team to win a state championship anywhere in the US.

And the 1956 team was the first Indiana team to ever go undefeated.[5] Ray Crowe, the Attucks coach, was a remarkable man who taught his players both to play basketball better than anyone else and how to comport themselves in a way that wouldn’t cause the team trouble given the era they played in. This book just came out last year, but McCallum was still able to talk to a large number of players on that team, teachers and administrators at the school, and several prominent players who faced the Tigers.

He did not speak with Robertson, who declined his requests. The Big O is a complex, sometimes difficult man, and he still holds a lot of painful memories of his time at Attucks. He was far ahead of his time, a huge guard that the offense ran through but who could also defend every spot on the court and still be the best rebounder. He was LeBron James 50 years before LeBron. Oscar also was arguably the most important player in leading NBA players to gain the right to free agency and control their own careers. He did this before Curt Flood sacrificed his career to challenge Major League Baseball’s reserve clause. For some reason, despite being a much better player, Robertson doesn’t get celebrated for this the way Flood does. Perhaps it is because Robertson was so good that the NBA couldn’t blackball him, thus his career didn’t end when he stood up for players’ rights.

Robertson’s history with the city and state remains strained. He is very much like Michael Jordan in that he never forgets or forgives a slight. He has bitter memories of how Attucks was treated after they won their first championship, which he believes was much more reserved compared to how the general public had celebrated Milan a year earlier. Several of his teammates say his memories aren’t accurate of what actually happened, and the newspaper record from the time shows that some of the things Robertson complained about were based on choices made within the Attucks/Black communities, not things that were forced upon them by the racist city council or governor.

It is hard to blame him, though, given the environment and age he grew up in. Because of all of this, while his name is still held in high esteem here, it always pops up a little later than you would expect when Hoosiers talk about great, local players. Some of that is because he left the state for Cincinnati when he went to college, shunning a recruiting pitch from IU, and stayed in Cincy after retiring from the NBA. When his name does come up, though, no one forgets what a unique and dominating player he was.

McCallum’s story is equal parts delightful, illuminating, engrossing, and maddening. Despite understanding our collective history, it is still depressing and deflating to know that the pre-Civil Rights era really wasn’t that long ago. My father-in-law is two years younger than Robertson, going to high school just a couple miles from Attucks. They are both in their mid–80s, but still, are alive and can speak to that era. And in many states, including northern states like Indiana, it was deep into the 1970s before real change came about. And, of course, our issues with race in this country never really go away, and in fact are being used more-and-more to inflame parts of the population and keep us divided.

Sports don’t solve these problems. But they can give people hope, something to ignore the realities they face daily for a little while, and create a shared pride for a community. That is exactly what Crispus Attucks did for African Americans in Indianapolis in the 1950s.

Beirut Station – Paul Vidich
I’ve read a couple of Vidich’s books and was luke warm on both, so had largely written his work off. His spy stories seemed reserved, dry, and emotionally complex in a way that I did not connect with. But I heard him on a podcast where his personality seemed the opposite of that, and read some good press for this book, so decided it was worth the shot.

I’m glad I didn’t give up on him.

The earlier books I read were both set during the early days of the Cold War, and I think that threat of nuclear apocalypse affected their tone. Here he sets his story in Beirut during the Israeli bombing campaign against Hezbollah in 2006. A joint US-Israeli group is working to assassinate a Hezbollah leader, but a young CIA agent calls off a near perfect shot at him when she sees that his young son is in the car with him. She is then tasked with finding a new way to target him, leveraging her relationship with his kids as their teacher. As a Lebanese-American she constantly feels unsure of where she belongs and who truly trusts her. She’s surrounded by representatives from various sides who have their own dueling interests. Soon she is in the midst of a battle between Hezbollah, Israel, and the US, never certain if any of them are interested in keeping her alive.

This book had some common elements to Vidich’s earlier ones. It was dark and complicated at times. The drama is carried more by internal strife and ruptured relationships than by raging gun battles. And we get deep inside his protagonist’s head. So perhaps it was just the more modern setting that helped me connect with it better. Maybe it was focusing on a modern woman that allowed him to add some heft to the story that was lacking in his severe, closed-off 1950s Cold War men.

Whatever it was, I really liked this book.

Saturday Night – Doug Hill & Jeff Weingrad
I’ve read James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales’ Live From New York oral history of Saturday Night Live that came out in 2015. Twice it was so good. There is also a new book about Lorne Michaels out that I am on the waitlist for.

But I had never read this book, originally published in 1985, about the early years of the show. I had heard about it often, but I believe it was out of print for several years. Fortunately my library not only had it, but had an ebook edition. I put it on hold the week of SNL50 and it came in this week.

This book is pretty exhaustive, most notably about the lead up to season one and then the first five seasons of the show, aka the first Michaels era. It does cover the disastrous 1980–81 season, then Dick Ebersol taking over and letting the considerable talents of Eddie Murphy carry it into the mid–80s. These next two eras get brushed over relatively quickly. And it ends with Michaels set to take over for the 1985–86 season.

There are tons of great stories in here. If you’re an SNL head you’ll know a lot of them, but as the original cast first took the air over 50 years ago, many of them have faded. Almost none of the stars or producers come out looking great. Everyone had their own ego and personality issues, which were often exacerbated by drug use. Really it was a reminder that TV stars are just like us, in that they have flaws and hangups and having fame and fortune doesn’t make those disappear. Especially in the pressure cooker of live television.

Also, this book answered some of my questions about the accuracy of the movie Saturday Night. There were clearly a lot of moments from throughout season one, and even beyond, that were rolled into that story about the show’s first night for effect.

Alias Emma – Ava Glass
To start, a crackling British spy caper.

Emma, a young agent in a secret department within the British secret service, is tasked with guiding the adult son of a former Russian agent to safety before a Russian death squad can liquidate him. The catch is the Russians have tapped into London’s security network and are able to track many of Emma’s movements. And they may have placed an agent at the top of the security service, preventing her from calling for help. This leads to a thrilling chase through the tunnels and underground rivers of the city. Naturally, when all seems lost things work out.

What I especially enjoyed about this book was how British it was. Not in the almost impenetrable way Mick Herron writes his Slow Horses series. But rather how it does not attempt to be an American thriller in any way. Emma doesn’t have a gun, nor do any of her fellow agents. When she does kill a Russian agent who attacked her, she is worried about what the man she is trying to protect will think of her. American spies never show remorse or self-consciousness about killing bad guys!

I also appreciated how Glass put little moments of sexual tension into the story, but never lets them boil over. It reminded me of the movie Out of Sight a little, and how there was that underlying tension between George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, but they never acted on it. Sometimes that is sexier than letting the characters give into their attraction to each other.

American Kingpin – Nick Bilton
I missed some things in the years I was concentrating on raising my kids, driving them around, coaching their teams, etc. It didn’t help that all that coincided with when I began paying far less attention to whatever the biggest news stories of the day were. Thus, somehow, I totally missed the whole Silk Road thing. I never knew a thing about it when it was an active presence on the Dark Web. I didn’t know a thing about the arrest and trial of its creator, Ross Ulbricht. Hell, I didn’t know that our current president had just pardoned Ulbricht a few days before I read a blurb about this book and checked it out.

So I was not prepared for what a wild ride the book would be. As always, you grain-of-salt parts of Bilton’s writing. But if even a fraction of what he writes is close to what really happened, this is an insane story. His brisk writing style turns it into a page-turner that feels more like a novel than an accounting of a criminal empire. The tedious, methodical way the Silk Road empire was investigated and then pulled apart by law enforcement was fascinating.

One thing that struck me about the book was how many characters, both Ulbricht and the people in various government agencies who chased and eventually caught him, hated authority. Agents in Homeland Security, the DEA, and the FBI all ignored their bosses’ commands because they didn’t feel like anyone should have authority over their actions. Ulbricht’s entire motivation was to advance his hyper-libertarian view that all drugs should be legal and the government had no right to tell people what they can and cannot put into their bodies.

What becomes obvious is that all of these people also rarely take responsibility for their actions. The law enforcement agents are seeking to protect Americans and bring a criminal to justice. Ulbricht is just helping people get the things they have a natural right to. The ends always justify the means with these people, and any harm that comes to others is regrettable, but not something they spend much time worrying about or feel responsible for. Free will and all that.

At its height, massive amounts of illegal drugs were delivered to people all over the world thanks to the Silk Road. There’s no telling how many overdoses were caused by it. How much crime was committed to pay for the drugs. How much other damage was done by people who used these drugs. Ulbricht was, indirectly, one of the biggest drug dealers in the world. Again, he received a presidential pardon about a month ago. In doing so, our Great Leader called the legitimate law enforcement agents who brought Ulbricht down “scum.” Remember all of that the next time he either rails against drug kingpins in other countries, yells about illegal drugs pouring into our country, or acts like he supports the police.

Creation Lake – Rachel Kushner
I had given up on Kushner books. I’ve read two of her previous novels. I enjoyed, but did not love, one; the other I found a bit tedious. This was on many Best Of lists last year, then I saw it recommended by two other people I trust, so I decided to give it a shot.

I’m regretting that decision.

This wasn’t terrible. The core story is about a disgraced former Federal agent who freelances for whoever will pay her to infiltrate protest groups. A different take on corporate espionage. In this case, she assimilates into a commune in rural France with a different mission: pushing them to turn their protest into an attack on a government minister her employers – who are never identified – want neutralized.

That all is kind of cool. What is less cool is how roughly half of the story is this agent reading through emails of the spiritual head of this agrarian rights group. Much of that dives back into the origins of man, where Homo Sapiens separated from Neanderthals, they from Homo Erectus, and so on. I may have that order wrong, but you get what I’m saying. There’s lots of stuff about caves and fossils and what not. Not the most engaging reading material.

The point of all that is to establish the group’s ideology, and the protagonist’s discovery that she models her life around similar principals. I just found it all, again, dull. My complaint about Kushner’s The Flamethrowers was that it was too artsy. This book gets into that same territory. Maybe I’m just not cut out for artsy novels.

Once again I am behind on these, so let’s get caught up with my last four reads.

The Miracle of St. Anthony – Adrian Wojnarowski
What a book! Future NBA scoops guru Woj spent the 2004–04 season embedded with the basketball team at St. Anthony High School of Jersey City. The program was famously coached by Bob Hurley for 45 years. For much of that time Hurley also worked tirelessly to keep the school open, spending countless hours fundraising and donating the money he made from speaking engagements and clinics to the school. He, and others, kept it afloat until 2017.

That 2003–04 squad was one of his 26 state title teams, finishing the season undefeated and ranked #2 in the country. Unlike his four national championship teams, this one didn’t have a single D1 senior recruit on the roster.

The book is about more than basketball, though. Woj gets to know the kids on the team, the circumstances they came from, the daily challenges they face, and so on. He tracks the Sisters who run the school as they also fight to keep the facility from being closed and kids from dropping out.

Hurley had a lot in common with Bobby Knight, someone he was friendly with. He was fiery. He held players to a high standard. He expected as much from them in class as on the court. You can see where his sons got their (over) intensity. Unlike Knight, though, Hurley seemed like someone you could have a genuine conversation with that wouldn’t involve him spending most of the time proving that he was smarter than you and everything you believed was wrong.

Like any sports book, it was fun to see how much things have changed in the 20 years since this came out, and how players who seemed like can’t miss prospects at the time faded away.

Lazarus Man – Richard Price
I’ve read a couple of Price’s books in the past, and watched movies and TV shows he’s written for. He never disappoints.

Here he writes of the aftermath of a building collapse in New York, and how several people are affected by it, including a man pulled from the rubble alive three days after the collapse. As these folks navigate the days after the collapse, they give us a view of what everyday life is like for people in Harlem in the late 2000s. These glimpses into their lives pull the story along, but there’s never any great conflict or common ending that their stories are leading us towards. There is a rather notable reveal/twist late in the book, but it is hinted at throughout and doesn’t really shock the reader or flip the story in a dramatic way.

Price is such a good writer, especially of dialogue, that this thinness in plot is fine. Not every novel needs to have a great, deeper meaning or statement on life. That lack does keep this from standing next to his earlier, better works, though.

The Gray Man – Mark Greaney
A decent, mindless, assassin kills a bunch of bad guys novel. There’s a whole series of these. I’m not sure I’m going to work through them all – Lord knows I have plenty of other spy series I could jump back into – but Greaney’s 2024 entry landed on a couple Best Of lists so I may selectively pick some that got good reviews and/or focus on topics that interest me.

Notes On A Foreign Country: An American Abroad In A Post-American World – Suzy Hansen
I forget where I heard about this book, but I also read an article Hansen published in a magazine within recent weeks, so something got her into my feed.

I knew that this was all about her observations as an American living overseas over the past decade, but I did not realize it was almost pure analysis. I was hoping for a book that was as much travelogue as extended piece for Foreign Affairs.

That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it. Hansen spends the entire book explaining how pretty much everything about her world view was challenged and changed by the decade she spent living in Turkey. She dove into how little history Americans know and understand about other countries. How even our overseas reporters, who are supposed to learn about and explain other cultures to us, are often woefully ignorant about the lands they are reporting from. She gets deeply into how Americans don’t understand the ramifications of our foreign policy and the direct effects it has on people in other countries. How what is “good for America” is often purely about economics for us and has no regard for anyone crushed along the way. And so on.

I tend to agree with much of her perspective, which shouldn’t be a surprise. Pretty woke, right? Where this is important for all Americans is in explaining the “why do (insert ethnic/religious/cultural/racial group identifier here) hate us?” questions we face all too often. It’s because we’ve routinely crushed, or helped to crush, popular, effective governments in other countries because their interests didn’t align with ours (or more specifically with our biggest corporations who have operations in these countries). It’s because we have a long history of supporting very bad people because we didn’t understand local interests or assumed because their opponents might lean to the left, that meant they were deeply indebted to the Soviets. We would never let another world power come into the US and tell us what we could and could not do inside our own borders. But we’ve been doing that to people all around the world for nearly 150 years now, since we first started building our own empire by taking Cuba and the Philippines from Spain.

Even if you disagree with her contentions, Hansen’s perspective is important, especially in an age when we are equally threatened by small, non-governmental actors as we are by China and Russia. Like so much of the bullshit we face these days, a little interest in and empathy towards others could go a long way towards making the world a safer place.

There’s Always This Year – Hanif Abdurraqib
I started the year with this wonderful book. It is a multi-layered examination of the places we call home and how we relate to them as we age, all set against a backdrop of basketball. For the most part, Abdurraqib’s tale follows the career of LeBron James, from high school phenom to his first run with the Cavaliers, to The Decision and move to Miami, and finally his return to Cleveland and winning the title the city sought for so long.

But only a fraction of the book is actually about LeBron. It’s as much about the neighborhood Adburraqib grew up in in Columbus, OH and what it was like to come of age in Ohio in parallel to LeBron. There’s also a nice diversion about former Kansas Jayhawk Kenny Gregory, who was a few years older than the author and lived a few doors down from him, and what it meant to the Columbus projects for a local kid to be a McDonald’s All American, winning both the dunk contest and game MVP award. KG is also used as a counter to LeBron, as the Can’t Miss Kid who, for various reasons, misses. At least compared to all the expectations on him before he went off to college.

There are also bits about music and culture and family and other stuff. Abdurraqib is more poet than social critic/commentator, so the book at times reads as such. There are even sections written in verse. The whole book was surely written over months, if not years. But it reads as though he spun it out over a single night, or maybe two, letting the thoughts flow from brain to pen/keyboard and following whatever diversions they took on the way to getting to his bigger points.

The Wide Wide Sea – Hampton Sides
Captain James Cook was one of the greatest seafarers of the age when men piled into ships and sailed off to parts unknown, hoping to “discover” new lands, peoples, and opportunities. This is an accounting of his final voyage, when his primary mission was to explore the western coast of North America for a potential connection to the theorized Northwest Passage. Along the way he became the first European to land on the Hawaiian Islands.

Cook was unlike most of the other most famous sea explorers whose names are litered across maps and history books. He wasn’t interested in spreading Christianity to “save” the heathens of the unexplored territories of the world. He generally treated the native peoples of the lands he arrived at with respect and intellectual interest, striving to learn about their cultures and societal structures. He took pains to avoid spreading Western diseases in lands where white men had yet to land, not always with success but at least with genuine intent to protect the locals.

But something was off about his final voyage. He seemed cranky and distant, and at times sloppy. There were a series of early setbacks to his journey that were unintentional but set a tone for the remainder of the mission. He was much more likely to punish his sailors with the lash than he ever had been in the past. Worst of all, the change in his mood and behavior led to a massive misunderstanding that ended up costing him his life on a Hawaiian beach in 1779.

This is a remarkable book. It came from a time (Cook left England in mid–1776) when there is a healthy historical record from people on the voyage to accurately recreate their travels. It is truly remarkable that large ships were sent to sea in this time (and had been for over 300 years!). Life on a ship seems like a truly awful experience. Sanitary conditions could be horrific. Boats were filled with rats and cockroaches. Food rotted quickly, supplies of fresh water were limited. The ships constantly leaked. Weather conditions were miserable and the sailors relied on 18th Century clothing to keep themselves dry and warm. Sailors would randomly fall into the sea because of unsettled conditions, often never to be rescued or seen again.

And then there was the matter of it being impossible to communicate with the rest of the world. Ships would set sail and travel for years at a time, family, friends, and benefactors not knowing if a crew was carrying out its mission or on the bottom of the sea until they crawled back into port years later. In severe storms or heavy fog, Cook and his companion ship would fire off their canon at regular intervals to avoid running into each other.

It just doesn’t seem like a lot of fun.

A fascinating story well constructed by Sides.

Ted Templeman: A Platinum Producer’s Life In Music – Ted Templeman as told to Greg Renoff
Kind of an odd choice, but Alex Van Halen referenced this book a lot in his memoir, and then I’ve come across a couple other random references to it since I read AVH’s book, so I thought it would be an interesting read. Which it was, with some big flaws.

First off, I had no idea that Templeman was in the band Harpers Bizarre, which had a few hits in the Sixties, including “59th Street Song (Feelin’ Groovy).” He spends the better part of the first 100 pages of this book detailing his childhood and his Harper’s Bizarre days. Not the reason I picked it up.

Eventually he gets into his production career, beginning with Van Morrison, moving through The Doobie Brothers, and peaking with Van Halen’s glory days.[1] That last bit was obviously the most interesting.

Yet, the book landed a little flat. In musical terms, it felt a little over-produced, as if the rough sections had all been smoothed away. I wasn’t necessarily reading it for gossip, but controversial moments are relayed in an almost passing manner. He keeps hinting that Eddie Van Halen had “issues” but never really spells out that he had become an addict. It’s a weird avoidance of something that is on the public record. Templeman also glossed over many musical terms without explaining them. And, most strangely to me, he insists on calling artists by their shortened names. Eddie Van Halen is always Ed, never Eddie. Alex is alway Al. Michael McDonald is always Mike. He never, ever strays from this. Which drove me nuts. It’s such a Hollywood thing, like “Bob DeNiro is a pal of mine,” or whatever.

There were plenty of good parts. It was very interesting to read his take on how Van Halen fell apart. He had produced Sammy Hagar as well, and famously wanted Sammy to replace David Lee Roth when he signed the band in the late Seventies. In Alex’s book he said he had read this one, and while he respected Templeman, he disagreed with many of his characterizations of VH’s career. It was fun to try to pick out the parts where their views diverged.

Can’t say I highly recommend this book, but it wasn’t a total waste of time, either.

I completed my final book of 2024 late Saturday/early Sunday as I was battling some insomnia. It was my 62nd book of the year, making 2024 one of my best reading years ever.[1] I read seven books in two different months, six books in three separate months, and never fewer than three books in a 30/31-day stretch. Pretty good work. Now I get to start all over again.

The Siege – Ben MacIntyre
I’ve read two of MacIntyre’s books before, and heard about this latest one via a couple different podcasts. It relates the 1980 takeover of the Iranian embassy in London by Arab terrorists. Our generation remembers the Iranians occupying the US embassy in Tehran well, but I did not remember this event, which lasted for six days that spring.

MacIntyre spoke to many of the surviving hostages, police and military, and government officials involved in the event, which allowed him to piece together a highly detailed, very British accounting of every moment of the crisis, from before the terrorists – who had the stated goal of autonomy for an Arab-majority province in Iran – entered the embassy to the quick but problematic assault by British special forces to free the hostages.

It is a fascinating tale not just for the shady motivations of the terrorists, more on that in a moment, but for how it was one of the first public uses of British SAS forces. The unit had existed since World War II – as one of MacIntyre’s other books outlines – but was barely known to the British public until they stormed the embassy. Quite different from America, where our special forces have always been celebrated as both the elite of the elite and as a warning to forces that want to do us harm.

Now to the terrorists. While most of the force were Arab Iranians who truly sought the autonomy back home they believed the Islamic government had promised them when they supported the 1979 revolution, the power behind them was much less narrowly focused. The organization, training, and money all came from Iraq, leading directly to Saddam Hussein and the super terrorist Abu Nidal. Saddam wanted to embarrass and destabilize the new Shiite government in Iran, hoping to increase his own power in the region. This disastrous event in London was one of the direct causes of the horrific Iran-Iraq war, which lasted for eight years. That, in turn, led to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, as Iraq wanted to take possession of Kuwait’s oil reserves to stabilize its economy after the Iran war. Which led to US troops being stationed in Saudi Arabia before liberating Kuwait. The presence of which was one of Osama Bin Laden’s motivations for declaring a holy war against the US. And you know what happened from there.

Anyway, a highly interesting read about a seemingly unimportant blip in history – to most Americans – that ended up being massively impactful on all of our lives.

There Was Nothing You Could Do – Steven Hyden
I intentionally saved this for the end of the year. What better way to wrap up the 40th anniversary of the greatest year in pop music history than with a book about one of that year’s biggest albums?

In Hyden’s latest, he takes on Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA, the biggest, most popular, and perhaps most impactful album of The Boss’ career. However, this is not just an assessment/break down of the album itself. Hyden takes a long look at where Springsteen was when he recorded the album, how he was already struggling with the weight of success and popularity. How the E. Street Band was already beginning to fracture ever-so-slightly. How Springsteen took a deliberate step back on Nebraska. How, despite their huge differences in sound, how many of the songs on Born In The USA were recorded around the same time as Nebraska was. Biggest of all, Hyden examines what the USA cycle did to Bruce and how he changed in the years after, from pulling back further from the pop mainstream to separating from the E. Street Band to becoming more overtly political.

Bruce Springsteen is one of the most important and influential artists of the rock era. Because of that, whether you like him or not, his story is important. And the most important part of his story is the point where he both embraced popularity and decided that wasn’t for him.

Favorite Books of 2024

I’ve written about every book I read this year already, so no need for blurbs about my favorites. Here’s a list of the ones that I enjoyed the most. Not all of these were new releases.

The Peacock and The Sparrow – I.S. Berry
Calico – Lee Goldberg
Brooklyn Crime Novel – Jonathan Lethem
The Family Chao – Lan Samantha Chang
Chain Gang All-Stars – Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
The Wager – David Grann
Carrie Soto Is Back – Taylor Jenkins Reid
Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) – Jeff Tweedy
Middle of the Night – Riley Sager
Nuclear War – Annie Jacobsen

A Spy Like Me – Kim Sherwood
The second installment in Sherwood’s planned 007 trilogy, it continues to tread ground that is very unlike anything ever written for the Bond franchise. James Bond himself remains absent (mostly), as the rest of the Double-Os attempt to unravel a network that finances terror attacks before it can strike again. They’re also searching for clues for Bond’s status and whereabouts. And seem to be getting killed off at a fairly concerning rate. Oh, and is there a double agent in their midst?

What sets Sherwood’s Bond work apart is how she plants them firmly in the modern age, beyond even where the Daniel Craig era pulled the movie franchise. I’m sure a lot of geezers get annoyed by all the wokeness – “How can there be gay spies?!?!” – but her characters fit our age, so those old fogies can piss off.

I still struggle with Sherwood’s writing style. It is also far different than the many other authors who have carried the series since Ian Fleming’s death. I keep arguing with myself on whether a Bond novel should have a certain core style, or if it is ok to break free of those restraints. Maybe the combination of her writing with a more edgy, modern flair and the very modern characters is too much for me? Maybe I’m an old fogey?!?!

I didn’t love this. But I’ll stick with Sherwood for one more book to see how her arc turns out. And maybe at the end it will all make sense to me.

A Christmas Story – Jean Shepherd
The 17th straight December I’ve sat down for a few hours to revist this classic. Still makes me laugh.

Brothers – Alex Van Halen
I got this after reading the New York Times article about it I linked to a few weeks back. I was intrigued by Alex’s seeming willingness to share more than the standard, aging-rocker bits about his life, career, and relationship with his late brother Eddie. This book was certainly frank, but I wouldn’t describe it as surprising.

Alex runs through the Van Halen brothers’ lives, from early childhood in Holland to moving to the US to discovering rock music and launching their band. He marches through Van Halen’s history up to when David Lee Roth left the band in 1985. Then he stops, jumping ahead to describe his life as a 70-year-old and his continued grief at the loss of his younger brother in 2020. There are lots of good tidbits from each section but, again, I think if you’ve read about the band or watched shows about them, you either know some of the stories or could guess at them.

I guess my point is the book is not gossipy at all. When he shares details that might shock people, they are often via quotes from already published works. So, again, a fan would be familiar with them. He talks about how he and Eddie fought constantly, but they also loved each other more than anyone else and always had each other’s backs. How he felt that his brother crumpled under the pressure of being labeled a “guitar genius.” How the entire band took things too far to the extremes at times. How DLR drove them all nuts nearly from the beginning. How disappointed he was when that initial incarnation of the band ended. There’s nothing super controversial in his words, though. He often defends DLR, saying his wackiness was the perfect counter to the VH brothers’ musical talent. That you need someone who loves the public eye and is ambitious if you want to be successful.

However, he barely mentions Michael Anthony. He does drop Sammy Hagar’s name a couple times, but only in the context of how the Red Rocker once opened for Van Halen and how, before they signed their first recording contract, their manager wanted to boot DLR for Hagar. There’s not a word about the Van Hagar years. Nor what came after that. Perhaps because his brother wasn’t as happy in these years, or Alex’s partying got out of hand and he eventually had to get sober to stay healthy and able to play.

As I said, much of the book is Alex’s reaction to quotes from others. He pulls lengthy passages from books by DLR, producer Ted Templeman, manager Noel Monk, and many interviews with Eddie and then shares his reaction to them. Sometimes he provides context, sometimes he argues, sometimes he supports. I found that manufactured dialog fun to read. Often when he disagreed with someone, Alex pointed out that he understood where the other person was coming from. I expected the book to be more combative, for some reason. Maybe Alex has mellowed as he aged. Or perhaps I’ve had the wrong view of him for 40-some years. I like this mature Alex, though. He’s old enough to know a lot of the things we fight about are kind of silly and there’s nothing productive by remaining upset about them years later.

Because of all those quotes/reactions, the book can come across as a little light. I still really enjoyed it. My biggest takeaway is how much Alex loved, and continues to love, his brother and how proud he is of what they created. And that Alex is probably a pretty good dude to hang out with.

Happy Thanksgiving to all! Hope your travels and gatherings are safe and enjoyable.

The Right Stuff – Tom Wolfe
Somewhere I ran across an author/poster I follow who mentioned that they had recently read this book. In their blurb, they said something about not loving Wolfe’s writing style but still enjoying the book.

I’ve never read any of Wolfe’s work before. At least for this piece, I loved his writing and the book.

I have seen the 1983 movie based on The Right Stuff many, many times. Or at least parts of it, back when it used to run on cable often. So I knew the basic story, the tale of the seven astronauts selected for the United States’ Mercury project designed to put a man in orbit. The movie is fun.

The book is more fun.

Wolfe writes in a breezy style that you are never quite sure if he’s totally into the mythology of the astronauts or making fun of it. That gets applied to everyone involved in the story, from the astronauts’ wives to politicians to NASA administrators to the media of the era. He often adopts the perspective of his subjects, and does so in a very 1950s, gee-whiz manner. This is a serious subject, but he never takes it too seriously. He’s not looking to explain the science behind putting a man into space, but rather exploring the personalities involved and the public reaction to them.

The Sun Down Motel – Simone St. James
Another one of the “scary” books I put on hold back in early October that also came through after the spooky season had ended. And, again, it worked out perfectly, as this book is split into two overlapping sections, one in November 1982, the other in November 2017. You know how I am about reading books in their proper moment in the calendar.

In the 1982 portion, Viv is on her way to a new life in New York City from Illinois before she gets stranded in a strange little town in rural New York. To earn some cash to complete her trip to the city, she begins working the overnight shift at a small motel. A motel where weird shit happens. She eventually learns of a series of strange deaths and disappearances, and begins investigating them. This leads to trouble.

In the more modern section, Viv’s niece Carly moves to that same small town to look into the disappearance and presumed death of her aunt 35 years early. She stays in the same apartment, gets the same job, and runs into some of the same creepy stuff her aunt ran into. And she begins finding connections between her aunt’s disappearance and the ones Aunt Viv was looking into.

This is one of those books where the resolution isn’t super surprising. How St. James get there is what makes the book fun. There is some truly creepy stuff and a highly satisfying and deserved end for one character. A good page turner as we drift into the dark months.

Let the Right One In – John Ajvide Lindqvist
I put several scary books on hold in late September and hoped one or two would come in before Halloween. This one actually came through after the holiday, but that was perfect as it takes place in the week before and after Halloween, 1981. In Sweden. So it’s a little weird.

Not sure I realized when I added this to my holds that it was a vampire book. I haven’t done much of the vampire thing. And, I have to say, I did not love this one. Maybe it was the Swedishness of it. Or it was a sometimes tedious story that seemed to stretch on far too long. But most likely it was some of the brutal violence that goes along with the genre. It was a little much at times. Plus vampire stories all seem kind of the same to me. I guess I should have read the synopsis closer before adding this to my list.

Nuclear War: A Scenario – Annie Jacobsen
This was flat-out the scariest book I read last month. That was totally random, as I had placed a hold on this in late August and it finally came in during the spookiest month of the year.

It is exactly what its title suggests: Jacobsen lays out, minute-by-minute and sometimes second-by-second, the course of events over a roughly 90-minute stretch after a nuclear missile is launched at the US. How the launch is detected, how the missile flies, what the procedures are within the US government, how a response is chosen and approved, the result of the first detonation, and how other countries get pulled into the event, turning a single-missile attack into global nuclear war that basically ends civilization as we know it.

The first half of the book reads like a novel. You can’t help but race through pages, thinking something will avert the inevitable end. As Jacobsen shifts into laying out what happens after the bombs start exploding, it’s a decidedly less thrilling read.

Our generation grew up with nuclear war hanging over our heads. For 30 years we’ve thought that fear had largely passed. With more countries gaining access to nuclear weapons and some of the countries who already possess them being led by less mentally stable people, that threat is far closer than we think. As this book points out, a single rogue missile is all it could take to send us down a path we can’t turn back from.

The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King – J.R.R. Tolkien

I’ve thought about re-reading The Lord of the Rings for several years and finally pulled the trigger. Which was dumb. Given how focused I am on nostalgia, memories, and anniversaries, I really should have tackled it last year, the 40th anniversary of the first time I read it. In fact, that’s how I spent the fall of 1983, working through these four books as a couple friends did the same. So much for symmetry.

I honestly can’t tell you what triggered me to finally jump in. I was waiting on several books from the library and had a lull. We have all the LOTR books in our one remaining bookcase, so I’m sure I had seen them at some point and they made an impression. On the last Saturday in September I checked to see if they were available via ebook at the library and most were.[1] I checked out The Hobbit and The Two Towers and put holds on the other two. Thus I snuck one book in between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring but basically spent the last month pouring through these four classics.

This was at least my third time reading the series. There was the first time in seventh grade, a mid–90s re-read, and now. I’m not sure if I squeezed out another effort sometime between the first two.

So it had been 41 years since the first read, I’m guessing 27 or 28 since the second. Plus I saw the movies when they came out roughly 25 years ago. Naturally, as I worked through the books lots of details came back to me just before I got to those sections of the stories. I forgot how much influence classic Greek epics had on Tolkien’s writing, surely as much as traditional British writing.

As easy as it is to make fun of people who go all Star Wars on LOTR, they really are great stories. It was fun to pick up moments that have influenced more modern works. As I read The Two Towers I sure felt connecting points to the general arc of The Empire Strikes Back. When The Ring comes to its final fate, I immediately thought of the final moment of action in Die Hard. Plus plenty of general points that pop up in modern stories.

I’ve said many times how I am intrigued by the concept of sci-fi and fantasy, but really struggle to connect when I occasionally take a stab at those genres. I’ve always thought some of that was because of how well Tolkien crafted his worlds and stories, and that nothing else made sense to my mind. There is some general, fantasy silliness in his books, at least to me, the non-fantasy fan. But the stories do hold up well, other than some casual racism. I bet some uptight parents even think Tolkien was kind of woke for the moments when he had women assert that they had the right to fill the same roles as men. All that makes it worth devoting a month that could have been spent on other books working through stories I’ve read before.

My biggest criticism is there was too much detailed description of this mindless march or that one. Too much detailing of every tree and plant the Fellowship saw, or spinning out history that doesn’t have a great effect on the core story. So many names of kingdoms and blood lines. There was some juvenile laughter on my part about how often the Hobbits place their heads in each other’s laps to take a nap. The stories could be tightened up just a bit. But they are supposed to be epic quests against absolute evil attempting to take over the world; you have to allow some space for Tolkien to stretch shit out.

Now the question is will I watch the movies again? My To Watch list is probably longer than my To Read list. Right now it doesn’t look like Peter Jackson’s movies are on any streaming platforms we pay for. I would imagine we’ll either re-up with Max at some point, or they’ll land on Prime or wherever eventually and then I’ll load them into the queue.