Descent into Darkness – Pearl Harbore 1941, a Navy Diver’s Memoir, by Edward Raymer

Posted on October 7, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book:  I had visited the Pearl Harbor Submarine museum and the Arizona memorial and found this book in the bookstore, while I was reading Shadow Divers, which had fascinated me about difficult diving.  The experience of those men who dove on the ships recently sunk by the Japanese on December 7, 1941 intrigued me.

Summary in 5 sentences: This is a first person memoir from a retired officer who had been a Navy Salvage diver called upon to dive on many of the ships only days after they were sunk by Japanese bombs and torpedoes during the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. For over a year he and his diving team dove on such iconic battleships as the Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Oklahoma, California, West Virginia – to try to recover bodies,  to recover important equipment and ordnance, or to attempt to get the ships back to the surface to ready them for the shipyards and repair. An important part of the story is the camaraderie of the divers living in a locked-down Honolulu and the various shenanigans these young men pulled – to include drinking, carousing,  and chasing the few available females – to distract themselves from their difficult and occasionally gruesome work.  After a about a year and a half on Pearl Harbor, the author and his best friend volunteered for duty in the South Pacific where they spent a year supporting the ships and forces fighting the Japanese in Guadalcanal and other locations.  They then returned to Pearl Harbor and a much changed Honolulu, for a year of duty to work mostly on trying to right the Oklahoma, before being sent back to the states for shore duty in 1944. 

My Impressions: A short book at 215 pages and a quick and engaging look at Pearl Harbor and the life of salvage divers immediately following the Japanese Attack on the US fleet there. The book is autobiographical, told in the first person based on the author’s recollections, and though he wrote the book many decades after the events he describes, he insists in the preface,  that all the incidents took place as he describes them and the dialogue is as close to accurate as he and his surviving friends could recall, and accurately reflects how they spoke and what were doing and thinking at the time. 

The book is written from the perspective of the author as a young sailor who’d recently enlisted in the Navy and completed Dive school prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Diving in those days was almost exclusively hard hat and salvage diving. He takes us briefly through his enlistment and completion of dive school in San Diego in late 1941 and then how he and his best friend are immediately ordered to Pearl Harbor after the attack, arriving a day or two afterward.  They are almost immediately put to work diving on the recently bombed and torpedoed ships to: 1. rescue any sailors still trapped in air bubbles in the ships, 2. to determine if the ships could be salvaged, re-floated and repaired, 3. to make repairs underwater that would enable the ship to be re-floated and repaired, and 4. to recover ammunition and other items of value that could still be of use in fighting the Japanese.

His descriptions of diving in near complete darkness, aware of and feeling his way through unseen dangers of sharp objects and falling or dislodged machinery was reminiscent of what I’d read in Shadow Divers. Many of the challenges they faced has no prescribed solutions – they had to put their heads together and improvise how to repair, or get into certain spaces, try out unproven techniques, and deal with the dangers. It was difficult psychologically to be diving around the floating corpses of sailors who’d died just a few days or weeks before.

What was particularly appealing about this book is that Raymer combines descriptions of his dives, and his experiences during them, with anecdotes from the rowdy young men in the dive locker trying to also have some fun in a Honolulu under martial law immediately after the Japanese attack.  They were working 12 to 14 hour days, getting very little time off, occasionally  getting a day or two of liberty – but there were no recreational facilities on the Navy base at Pearl Harbor, and Honolulu was in black out conditions at night and under martial law.  Being feisty and creative young men,  they looked for and found opportunities for amusement in a city that was essentially locked down. He describes the thriving red light district, their efforts to find female companionship outside of the short term transactions in the bordellos, how they found a way to skirt the prohibition on alcohol, how they got into and out of trouble. These crazy escapades gave them something to look forward to, and an opportunity to blow off steam after working in harsh and under very stressful conditions.

But most of the book is about them diving on ships filled with explosives and decomposing bodies, and how the team dealt with occasional fatal accidents in the diving team – in fact the author came very close to dying himself on one of the dives – reminding me of John Chatterton’s close call  in Shadow Divers.  He and his fellow divers dove extensively on the battle ships Arizona, West Virginia, Utah, Oklahoma, Nevada, California.

After about a year of salvage work on the battleships in Pearl Harbor, Raymer and his buddy Moon Mullins volunteered for salvage work closer to the action in the South Pacific and were sent to the Tonga Islands where they helped refit ships damaged by the Japanese and were subject to regular air attacks from the Japanese. They were then assigned to support the Navy’s efforts to support the Marines fighting on Guadalcanal, and were often on the beach where they hunkered down with the Marines and were subject to attack and regular sniper fire, and where he eventually contracted malaria.  While  moving fuel and ammunition to supply the Marines ashore, they were often under fire, and were busy helping ships and rescuing sailors from ships that had been hit by Japanese planes and/or torpedoes. Eventually they found themselves on the damaged USS Portland heading for Australia to assist with repairs – and we get some good stories of sailors on liberty in Australia.  

After nearly a year in the South Pacific, in 1943 he was sent back to Pearl Harbor where he assisted continuing efforts to salvage and  help restore to operational status the battleship  Oklahoma. While in Pearl Harbor he was asked to briefly escort Eleanor Roosevelt during her visit to the Oklahoma to observe efforts to put her back into commission.   Coming from a strong Republican family, Mrs Roosevelt was not a well loved figure in the world he grew up in, but he found her to be charming and impressive.

The book concludes with the author getting orders in 1944 to the Experimental Diving Unit in Washington DC.  

The book’s epilogue tells the stories of what eventually happened to the ships he’d worked on.  Also in the epilogue, Raymer points  to how during his research in writing this book, he found that official records and documents were often inaccurate and simply wrong – based on his personal experience.  This was also a key lesson in Shadow Divers.  In both cases, Raymer’s and in Shadow Divers, much of what they found in the official archives was someone’s best guess or assumption about what happened.  

One disappointment for me was that the epilogue does not tell us the rest of the author’s story- it simply concludes with him being in DC at the end of the war.  After a  little research on my part, I learned that Raymer served 30 years in the Navy, retired as a Commander and died in 1997 in California.  After getting to know the author and enjoying his company,  I’d like to have known more about what he and his buddy Moon Mullins did after the war – how the rest of their lives turned out. That said, I really enjoyed the book and have recommended it to John Chatterton, the diver made famous in Shadow Divers and Pirate Hunters.  

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The French Lieutenant’s Woman, by John Fowles

Posted on September 21, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book: Selected by my literature reading group. Also, I’ve had my wife’s copy on my bookshelf, unread by me, for decades.

Summary in 4 Sentences:  An upper class English gentleman in the late 1860s,  has made a good catch in betrothing himself to be married to a sweet, beautiful, and somewhat spoiled well-to-do woman, with an excellent dowry.  He then allows himself to fall in love with an intelligent but mysterious governess – the “French Lieutenant’s Woman,” and is unable to overcome his  obsession with her.  They then  have a brief tryst, he breaks off his marriage, and then his new mistress disappears.   After several unhappy years, he finally finds her again, and their interaction when they finally reunite deepens the mystery. 

My Impressions: Not an easy book to read, but interesting, challenging and worth reading for a number of reasons.  I struggled at first to get through the first 2/3 of the book, as did a number of the members of my reading group.  Why ?  First, the writing is classic (and elegant) English, occasionally a bit cumbersome.  I was regularly referring to my phone dictionary to help me understand words and references that were not familiar to me, though the “elegant” writing was often a pleasure to read.   And second, I didn’t particularly care for the two main characters in the book, both anguished, conflicted, weak and indecisive, though I could relate at least to a certain degree with the male protagonist’s challenge. 

In short, the story takes place during the height of the Victorian era, when the English upper classes had fully embraced the Victorian values of refinement, sophisticated restraint,  and suppression of (nearly) all human emotions that were not publicly endorsed by refined society.  Proper etiquette, emotional restraint, follow the rules, and “Don’t rock the boat” seemed to be the prevailing sentiments in the self-satisfied upper classes – at least in public.   Our protagonist Charles Smithson is comfortable in this world, doing whatever he chooses that doesn’t rock the boat, and protects his many prerogatives.  He has no real ambition or goals in life, though he has come to realize that he is bored with following all the rules of propriety. He also realizes that his engagement to marry the perfect woman for someone of his class and stature, continues to carry  him down the same predictable path of conformity.  His comfort and self-satisfaction are upset when he is drawn to, and becomes obsessed with Sarah Woodruff, the French Lieutenant’s Woman or “whore” as the people in town referred to her, a woman outside his class.  Charles is infatuated with Sarah, but engaged to Ernestina, and wrestles with what he should do.  Ernestina is chaste, virtuous and submissive and represents conformity to the path his aristocratic class expects of him; Sarah represents a break from the safe, well beaten path and a new freedom.  Finally, he chooses to break his vow to marry his fiance Ernestina, and in so doing, breaks with the predictable trajectory of his life, and is now dishonored in his social class and many of his previous options are gone.  This obsession is also coincident with losing the patronage by his very wealthy uncle. 

So now Charles has “burned his ships” by breaking off his socially approved (and celebrated) engagement to Ernestina to go with a woman with a “reputation.”   But he is now ready to forge a new and more creative path for himself.  Then the woman who has inspired this dramatic decision, disappears.  He puts his attorney and a private detective company to work to try to find her, while to distract himself from his heartbreak, and now being a social outcast himself, he travels, becomes a tourist in Europe and America (he obviously still has money – so it wasn’t THAT big a break from his previous comfort zone.) Then his attorney wires him that they’ve found her, and he travels back to England, finds and confronts her, and the reuniting is not what he’d hoped for and dreamed of.    In meeting and reconnecting, we get to know Sarah  a bit better, but she chooses to remain a mystery – to us and to Charles – unwilling to truly reveal herself, but she gives us some more clues as to who she is and what motivates her.   But Charles is distraught and does not cope well.  And we are left with an inconclusive ending.

In the early stages of the Charle-Sarah infatuation, Sarah does reveal  a bit of herself, which intrigues Charles and opens the door to an infatuation with Charles,  who listens attentively and compassionately – apparently a new experience for her from a man.  She was clearly very lonely, while also being very introverted and shy about who she was, almost ashamed of her past. And she continued to give small clues that she consciously rejected the upper class rules of propriety and conformity that characterized most upwardly ambitious women.  We never really get to know Sarah, but Charles and his internal conflicts and obsessions are a major part of the book.

Charles is not an a-typical male and at least some of what he experiences, most men could relate to. Most men are ambivalent about giving up their freedom, getting married, and having their freedom overwhelmed by obligations to a spouse, a mortgage, children, and all the social conventions built around the institution of marriage – what Zorba (the Greek) called “the whole catastrophe.” And most men have become indeed obsessed with a mysterious beautiful woman, and the challenge of breaking through her armor and winning her heart.   If/when they succeed, the mysterious intriguing woman morph into a demanding drama queen, and life becomes overly tumultuous and dramatic, or – she may relax and settle into her comfort zone and the old boredom sets in again. 

Sarah is more difficult to assess – and one wonders whether some early trauma, augmented by her aborted affair with the French Lieutenant may have caused her distrust of men and society, and led to her lack of confidence in being able to handle these challenges, and may also explain her propensity to fall in love with a man she thinks she can trust.   But she is clearly an unusually independent woman, and that becomes more clear at the end of the book.   When Charles asks his friend Dr Grogan for advice, Dr Grogan gives a fairly accurate assessment of Sarah and some very reasonable advice to him as to what he should do in order to not “destroy” his comfortable life.  But predictably, Charles’ obsession overrides the practical advice he gets from Dr Grogan, and he chooses to follow his heart, not his mind.  And let the chips fall where they may – which becomes something of a mess. 

The author uses some interesting techniques in telling this story. He shares his personal observations on society, the characters, their dilemma from his, the author’s perspective as  someone from the British upper classes 100 years later.  From these meta-perspectives we get Fowles’ personal judgments and assessments of the characters and their actions and decisions, and he notes the differences between then and now in what is acceptable, what is not, and how people respond to such challenges. One of the strongest themes in the book is the hypocrisy pf the upper class in their sanctimonious pretensions to virtue and propriety.  Behind the scenes, out of sight of the public and lower classes, they don’t hold themselves accountable to the standards they publicly profess and expect of the rising middle class. 

Fowles also offers us several possible endings to the story, commenting to us the readers, that though he’s the author, his fictional characters have lives of their own, and he’s just following along the trajectories that they are laying out for themselves.  Early on he gives us one simple outcome of the crisis between Sarah and Charles, in which everyone takes the path of least resistance and they all live happily ever after.  And then he says, “No wait!” and turns the story in another direction with very different outcomes.  As we get to the end of that version, we get yet another turn – another direction the story might have gone.

The book leaves a number of questions open, and I look forward to discussing with my reading group friends. 

The Movie. After finishing the book, I watched the movie, and I thought it did well in portraying the essentials of Fowles’ book. The screen writer is creative in how he offers the “meta-perspective” we get in the book, when the author steps out of narrating the story to offer a 1969 perspective on what is happening in 1869.  In the movie, we are treated to a parallel story to that in the book The French Lieutenant’s Woman. In the movie, in this parallel story,  the same two actors who play the 1869  versions of Sarah (Meryl Streep) and Charles (Jeremy Irons) are now characters in 1970s, in conventional marriages, who connect while working together away from home on location on a movie.  They are drawn to each other and fall into a passionate extra-marital affair.  In the movie they are both conflicted between their current comfortable marriages and lives, and the passion of their affair.  Like in the book, the man has the greater obsession, and the most difficulty controlling it. 

One thing the movie changed from the book was in the final confrontation between Charles and Sarah (in the 1869 story) when Charles finally finds her.  The movie version is quite a bit more dramatically than what we read in the book, and the movie leaves the viewer with an implied more positive sense of what might be next.  But the 1970s parallel version is also left unresolved. 

 I do recommend watching the movie – after reading the book – but as in a few other movie-book combinations, I believe the two of these together are better than either one alone.  

The Guardian gives a fairly negative review of the movie  here  which I didn’t  entirely agree with, but found useful in understanding the book.  But this review also notes that Fowles himself was impressed with the screenplay and the movie, and endorsed it.  

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Mark Twain, by Ron Chernow

Posted on September 19, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book:I like so many people have been a fan of Mark Twain for much of my life. I have recently re-read Huckleberry Finn in preps for reading (listening to) James by Percival Everett.  Also I have read three other Chernow biographies which I thought were awesome: Grant, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington.  When I saw that Chernow was publishing his bio of Mark Twain, I jumped on it.  Listened to it. 

Summary in 4 Sentences: This is a comprehensive look at Mark Twain’s life, based on SO MUCH material, from his diaries, letters to others, and their letters to him.  He was one of the most famous people in the world during his lifetime, so people saved his extensive correspondence and much of it has survived.  In short, Chernow  (again) does a masterful job bringing his subject to life, and providing his own commentary along the way.  I describe this to my friends as providing so much detail it was like getting into his Twain’s head and experiencing America and the world through his eyes – he lived a rich and full life, but was surprisingly unhappy and sad, especially toward the end of his life, and Chernow shares how much of this unhappiness was not just built into his idealistic, yet cynical character, but also a result of his own decisions.  

My Impressions: This is  long book at 735 pages which I listened to in 11 hours. It is a deep dive into the life of Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain – his life, his thoughts and feelings, his idiosyncrasies, his humor and wit, his occasional hypocrisy and character flaws, as well as his vengeful anger at individuals who he believed let him down, and his disapproval of the human foibles he saw with a clearer eye than most, and that he described with a twinkle in his eye.  

Listening to this book had a key advantage:   the reader did voices for the primary characters in the book – most especially Twain himself.   The book is full of quotes from Twain’s journals and letters which the reader recites to us in what seemed to me to be an authentic old southern gentleman’s scratchy and ironic voice – bringing Twain almost to life.  And he did his best to render the voices of the key women in his life – his wife Livy, his daughters, Susie, Clara, and Jean, and his woman secretary Isabel Lyon in different suitably feminine sounding voices. 

This biography is very thorough – Chernow had loads of material, to include Mark Twain’s lifetime of diaries and journals, the hundreds of  letters he’d written over a lifetime (Twain was a prolific letter writer and people saved his letters) as well as trunks full of letters he’d received.  And Twain dictated an autobiography that his will and trust demanded not be published until 100 years after his death- which was honored.  Twain’s autobiography of nearly 500 pages was published in 2010.  All this material, and Chernow’s extensive experience and well-earned reputation for writing great biographies of America’s greats, serves us well.  Chernow does a masterly job of describing Twain’s long and multi-faceted life and conflicted character,  from Twain’s own, his family’s, and his many friends perspectives, adding all along the way Chernow’s own views and judgments of Twain’s character, decisions, strengths and weaknesses. One review I read states, “the biography offers an authoritative portrait that balances Twain’s rollicking public persona with the darker complexities of his private life.” (Super Summaries) 

We begin with his family background and his early years, sourced mostly from Twain’s own writings and recollections. His relationship to his strong but unhappy and unsuccessful father certainly played an important role in his development – his mother doted on him and remained a huge fan for much of his life until she passed.  We learn about his fascination with the Mississippi, how he became a printer for his brother and then an anonymous but popular columnist in his brother’s paper, his various efforts to break out of Hannibal, Missouri, his time as a riverboat captain which he describes as the happiest time in his life, how and why he finally headed west, seeking his fortune in mining in Nevada, and writing for a local paper, before heading to San Francisco, where again he wrote columns for a local newspaper. 

His breakthrough came when he was hired to travel to the newly settled Hawaiian Islands from where he sent articles back to be published in series in his sponsoring newspaper.  Upon his return, he nervously began his career as a speaker – telling stories about his impressions and adventures in the exotic Islands, much to the pleasure and amusement of his audiences.  He was always in need of money and public speaking and telling stories earned him a living – and gave him practice that served him well later on.  He went on to publish a book about his trip to Hawaii which did well and earned him the attention of many.   His career as an author and speaker was off to the races.

He returns to the East Coast to continue his speaking as his reputation grew.  He met, courted and married Olivia Langdon who was the love of his life for the rest of his life – Chernow takes us through that awkward and difficult courtship, which ended up being a pivotal point in his life – as his wife Livy was key to his future success, blunting the edge of his anger at people and events which disappointed him, dampening his propensity for seeking revenge, and creating  embarrassing public controversy. And then he got the contract to join a group of Americans on a long cruise to Europe and the Holy Lands, his recounting of which became The Innocents Abroad, which truly launched his career. 

At this point, we are barely a quarter of the way through the book. Twain had a rich and very life which I will not try to summarize.  But here is a list of some of what learned about Twain that surprised me: 

  • He was always chasing schemes to strike it rich – he dreamt of being independently very wealthy – and eventually got there, then was in debt for much of his adult life, living the lifestyle of the rich and famous in the Gilded Age that he sought,  but his bank account did not yet justify. 
  • His best selling book in his lifetime was Innocents Abroad, but he was best known internationally for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry  Finn.
  • He fell in love with, courted over many months a reluctant Olivia Langdon, then after they married,  adored her almost beyond what is healthy.  She returned his affection, while she held on to the reins when Twain’s wild streak got hold of him. 
  • He and his family spent 9 years living in Europe when he could no longer afford to live in the style he and Livy were used to in the US.  While there he was regarded as a major celebrity, and regularly was invited to speak and entertain throughout Europe – the educated classes could speak English, 
  • He was deeply in debt for much of his adult life from bad investments and business decisions.  He falsely believed he had a great head for business and opportunities to make a financial killing.  He squandered his own fortune and that he and Livy had inherited from her family, investing in ill-conceived efforts to get unbelievably wealthy..
  • He eventually paid back his debts after many years, undertaking exhausting speaking tours, and writing to make money to pay those debts.
  • Also to earn money, he and Livy made an exhausting one year around-the-world speaking tour, which included the US, the Hawaiian Islands, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Britain
  • As America’s best known author, satirist, and humorist, he was welcomed in the highest levels of society, knew President Teddy Roosevelt, (with whose politics he vehemently disagreed)  as well as many of the most prominent figures of the second half of the 19th century.
  • Politically he was quite progressive, though Chernow regularly takes him to task for some hypocrisy in his attitudes toward black Americans.  As Twain grew older and less concerned with how he would be viewed by “polite society” he became increasingly strident in his support for progressive causes and the citizen rights of black Americans.
  • He hated America’s, and Teddy Roosevelt’s imperialist ambitions and the sense of American exceptionalism. He saw it as hypocrisy given how our nation was formed.  He wrote numerous articles condemning British and other European imperialist nations policies and how they treated natives in the lands they’d conquered. He vehemently opposed the US annexation of the Philippines. 
  • A large part of his humor was pointing out and satirizing the hypocrisy and human foibles he and the rest of is see in people every day – Twain points them out sometimes gently, occasionally viciously.
  • Twain went back and forth between being agnostic and atheistic.  One of his favorite targets for his wit was religion and the hypocrisy of the religiously righteous.  His agnosticism put him at odds with his wife, so he normally kept that to himself – while she was alive.
  • After his wife died, there are no apparent efforts to connect intimately with a potential second wife, or with any woman for that matter. Consistent with the times and Victorian mores, he was  very prudish sexually and avoided reference to sex or sexuality in his writing – until the very end.
  • He doted on his three daughters – in fact, in my opinion, spoiled them in his and Livy’s efforts to raise them to be “ladies” and icons of upper class privilege and values.  
  • His later years were particularly sad after losing his oldest daughter Suzy to illness, and then his wife, and finally his youngest daughter Jean.  Clara, his middle daughter out lived him by half a century, but she and he were never particularly close.
  • He remained sharp into his old age, but he wasn’t particularly healthy. For much of his life, he smoked cigars almost incessantly – reportedly regularly 40 cigars in a day.  As his energy significantly diminished, in his late 60s and early 70s, he withdrew to his home and significantly restricted his social and public appearances.
  • After Livy died, he had a bizarre relationship with his secretary Isabel Lyon. She idolized him and he praised her to the moon for her support and loyalty to him and his many administrative and other needs. Twain gave her much of the authority of a wife (minus sex and overt romanticism) but he never seemed to consider marrying her, and was angered by rumors that they were engaged.  Marrying her would have made sense. Later, when he believed she had misled him about something relatively minor compared to the service she’d given him, he dismissed her and treated her very harshly. 
  • In his later years, he had an obsession with young girls, between the ages of 12 and 16.  He became a grandfatherly friend to many such young girls, wrote them letters, had them over to his house, always chaperoned.  He called them his “angel fish” in his “aquarium”.  Though Chernow addresses how unseemly this appears to us today, he notes that there was never any indication or hint of sexual predation or unseemly behavior on Twain’s part with his various Angel Fish. It all appeared at the time as a grandfatherly attraction to surrogate grand daughters.  His daughter Clara is the only one in the book who seemed to be uncomfortable with his relationships with these young girls. 
  • He in many ways struck me a bit like Donald Trump in that if he liked someone, he praised them to the heavens, but when he decided he didn’t like someone, or felt he’d been let down or betrayed, he became vicious and hateful, and publicly condemned them, with unique Mark Twain’s sardonic wit.  

One of the many insights of this book are in the picture it gives of America in the 2nd half of the 19th century, especially in the upper class world inhabited by Twain after he’d achieved fame as America’s favorite humorist and author.  Twain loved being considered part of the upper classes and loved that life style, though he lampooned it regularly in his humor.  As I write this review, I’m reading The French Lieutenant’s Woman in which John Fowles satirizes the hypocrisy, superficiality, prudery, and rigid adherence to conventional propriety of the upper class  British in the Victorian era.  The world he describes fits pretty accurately the world Mark Twain inhabited in the final two thirds of his life.   Americans of wealth and class continued to see the British aristocracy as the apogee of culture and refinement, and sought to emulate them by adopting their Victorian values, pretenses, and superficiality in nearly every way.  And Twain loved living in that world, while he also so accurately and bitingly made fun of it. 

It is a long book- a great biography – a total immersion leap into the life of Mark Twain.  For those interested in Mark Twain and that period of the Gilded Age in American history, I can’t recommend it highly enough.  At the end, I do wish Chernow had given us a brief epilogue. After Twain’s death, I was curious to know what happened to several of the key characters we had followed in the book:  Isabell Lyon, his daughter Clara, some of his other friends and close associates who had been so important in his life.  But when Twain finally passes, with the arrival of Haley’s comet as he’d predicted, the book, like his life was over.  

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Pirate Hunters – Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship, by Robert Kurson

Posted on September 19, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book: I thoroughly enjoyed Shadow Divers, so was intrigued to see what Kurson’s next book was about. After reading the summary, I had to go for it.

Summary in 3 Sentences: John Chatterson (one of the heroes from Shadow Divers,) and his friend Johnny Matteras had been trying to find a sunken Spanish treasure galleon when they chose to drop that project in favor of the chance to find a sunken pirate ship that had eluded searchers for centuries.  The main reward was to solve a problem no one else had been able to solve, and to find only the second sunken pirate ship in history. Describing their extensive research we learn about the two divers themselves and what drove them, about the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean trade in the 17th, why it ended, and the unique form of problem solving that led to their eventual success. 

My Impressions: Fascinating book, fun to read,  and like Shadow Divers, well written to not only pull us into the story, but also to  educate us about so much of the context.  In addition to the main detective story of finding the ship, this book also reinforces some of the same lessons that came out of Shadow Divers – to distrust “conventional wisdom” on the solution to a problem and do more research, and how extensive research and more focus helped these guys explore options no one else had considered, and which ended up finding the right answer. Chatterdon would have echoed Steve Jobs:  “Think different.”  

We get to know the characters and backgrounds of the two main protagonists, Chatterton and Matteras, whose histories and characters are very different than most of those who would read this book.  We learn how they built their team and how that team almost fell apart under the frustration of weeks of unrewarding work, flaring tempers, and how the team was able to stick together. We also learn a bit about life on the Dominican Republic – the discomforts and challenges of living in a tropical paradise in the developing world, how these guys managed the challenges of their their own frustrations, the frustrations of their team, and the impact their obsession had to their marriages.

Most interestingly to me were the insights into the world of 17th century trade and piracy, how Port Royal became principle hang out of English pirates in the Caribbean, tolerated or even endorsed by the English government to raid on Spanish galleons bringing booty from South and Central America to Spain.  Until England signed a trade agreement with Spain, at which point the English sought to control and stop piracy.   

We also learn about who these pirates were, the unique brand of terror they used to intimidate their targets, the uniquely egalitarian culture on pirate ships. We learn about how battles were fought between ships in that era, how and why many or most commercial ships chose to surrender rather than fight, how men were injured in these battles, and died.   In particular we learn about a little known, but by all accounts, unique pirate Joseph Bannister, whose ship The Golden Fleece was the target of Chatterton’s and Matteras’s  search. And we learn how their patient and extensive research helped them put the pieces together of the scenario and battle that led to the sinking of the Golden Fleece.  And how their research and efforts to understand these details finally led them to their goal. 

This is a great and fun non-fiction book that was also a captivating detective story, of finding and putting together little clues they found in archives in Spain and the UK, deciding which clues to disregard, in their efforts to solve the problem – where is the Golden Fleece resting?   It took me back to the 17th century, but also to present day Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic – so different from the world most of us know in the UK.  

For those who prefer non-fiction that reads like a who-dunnit novel, this is a great one.  

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Hyperion, by Dan Simmons

Posted on September 14, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book: My Sci Fi reading group I’m in selected this book as part of our project to read some of the most highly regarded science fiction literature of the last decades.  Hyperion won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1989.

Summary in 5 Sentences:  The book begins when we meet 7 very different people with very  different backgrounds on a pilgrimage for which they have been selected to go to a renegade planet Hyperion, and confront and explore the the Church of the Shrike – a mysterious powerful and apparently malevolent entity based there. Part of this quest is in order to beat the Ousters, a competing entity in the universe that is in rebellion against the Hegemony,  in getting to and controlling the planet the Time Tombs, and the power of the Church of the Shrike.  Most of the book is the seven pilgrims each describing their life’s journey to explain why they were selected to be on this pilgrimage. Through these autobiographical tales, we come to understand the Universe of several hundred years into the future, and the issues that are behind their pilgrimage. 

My Impressions: A complicated story in a long multifaceted book, which takes some patience and perseverance to read. Those who stick with it, are rewarded with the auto-biographical stories of six of the seven pilgrims – each very different, each providing an important piece to the puzzle of the challenge and mission of the pilgrimage, and each story helping us better understand the universe Simmons is creating of several centuries into the future.  The autobiographies become the connecting thread between these 7 very different people and the challenge they will have working together to accomplish their mission.  There are internal tensions, and some differing agendas amongst the pilgrims, and indeed their mission from the Hegemony isn’t altogether clear -nor is it clear  how the Hegemony’s objectives for sponsoring the pilgrimage are consistent with the different, more personal agendas of each of the pilgrims. 

As i neared the end of the book with no clear conclusion in sight, I realized that Hyperion is the first in the author’s series Hyperion Cantos.   To find out what happens, I’ll need to read The Fall of Hyperion -(book 2 in the series) and perhaps Endymion (book 3)  the next book in Simmon’s Hyperion Cantos series.  

The book begins with our seven pilgrims meeting each other on a huge space ship (shaped like a tree!), as pilgrims being sent to Hyperion on a mission which isn’t entirely clear. Hyperion is a mysterious planet with mysterious forces and populations, apparently strongly influenced by the Church of the Shrike and outside the Hegemony’s control and governance.  The pilgrims  decide that each would tell their individual life stories to the others, so that they could better understand each other, their mission,  and better work together in fulfilling that mission.

Each pilgrim has been chosen by the Church of the Shrike and the Hegemony’s All Thing (see below) for this final pilgrimage. It seemed that they all understood that they were to somehow confront the Shrike and explore the mysterious Time Tombs which seemed to have a power that defied the laws of space and time in physics. More broadly, their journey is set against the backdrop of an impending Ouster invasion and the opening of the Time Tombs, on Hyperion which could have galaxy-wide consequences.

We initially get a superficial impression of each of the pilgrims and how they fit together, which sets up the more thorough background we get when each tells his/her own story about why they believe they were selected for this mission and what their own personal objectives are.  As they tell their own stories, we get to know the characters in considerable detail – they are very forthcoming and share experiences beyond what one might expect of a bunch of strangers to share with each other after meeting each other for the first time on a dangerous quest.   

The format of the pilgrims telling their individual stories is modeled after Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.  The British poet John Keats is a constant presence in the novel – as a model of human insight and wisdom.  A city on Hyperion is named for him, his poetry and insights are regularly referenced, and the cybrid is a human-AI “designed” to be a reincarnation of Keats, who (in real life) died of tuberculosis at age 31.  There are other references to classical works and authors throughout the book – clearly Simmons was well read in the classics and brought that background into his writing of Hyperion.  

The pilgrims/ key characters in the book include:

  • Lenar Hoyt A Jesuit Priest who had been to Hyperion researching the disappearance of his mentor in the Catholic Church, and while there, was “infected” with a parasite which seemed to be controlled by the Shrike
  • Martin Silenus A poet,  who comes across as an articulate, but angry and cynical  reprobate  who had witnessed the killing of the former “king” of Hyperion; 
  • The Consul the former Consul of Hyperion, with extensive knowledge of the planet, but clearly a conflicted man whose perspective is most prominent in the book; 
  • Sol Weintraub a retired Jewish professor, accompanied by his baby daughter, who had regressed in age after being aflicted by “Merlin’s disease” ostensibly by the Shrike itself, when as an adult researcher, she was researching the Time Tombs;
  • Colonel Fedmahn Kassad A former miliary commander who had fought for the Hegemony against the Ousters in their battle to upend the Hegemony’s power, believing that Hyperion was key to that strategy. The strongest character in the book who in his battles became a convert to a Stoic version of Bushido;
  • Brawne Lamia -A woman private investigator, born on a planet where women have physical strength equal to or greater than men, whose lover had been killed while trying to connect with the church of the Shrike, and who she believed was a pawn in the battle between the Shrike, the Ousters, and the Hegemony
  • Het Masteen The seventh of this team was a Templar – a quasi religious group that puts trees and nature above considerations of technological progress.  We don’t get to know him, because before he can tell his story, he is apparently murdered by someone – his body is never found. A mystery probably to be resolved in book 2.

Reading the book I was often confused by the “structure” of the universe that Simmons  describes several centuries into the future, as well as some of the terms he used, which (I assume) we were to figure out by their context,  in the course of reading the book.  I am indebted to Super Summaries (an online book site) from which I quote liberally in the below definitions, which have helped me better understand the universe Simmons was describing in Hyperion. 

Understanding these definitions up front would have helped me better understand and appreciate the book while reading it.  

  • The Hegemony The governing body of all the planets in the universe that are populated
  • AI advisory council sentient artificial intelligences that have separated themselves from human control and form part of TechnoCore, 
  • The TechnoCore  – A powerful and pervasive presence of sentient artificial intelligences outside of the control of the Hegemony.
  • The All Thing  -a forum for Hegemony members that works through neural implants. 
  • The Church of the Shrike – a religious order which resembles the structure of religious orders on earth, dedicated to the belief that the Shrike – apparently a living force or being, very powerful and more evil than good,  is connected to God or an all powerful spiritual entity.  The Church of the Shrike and the All Thing have together and for their own (unknown) reasons, chosen these seven people to be the pilgrims on the final pilgrimage to Hyperion to thwart the Ouster’s efforts to control the Time Tombs. 
  • The Outback includes planets like Hyperion which are NOT part of the Hegemony system, kind of like un- or slightly governed territories in our world.
  • The Web or Data-sphere- a planet’s computers and information sharing system 
  • Time Debt  The difference in experienced time that results from traveling at relativistic (near light) speeds or using certain forms of space travel. When someone travels at these high speeds, time passes more slowly for them compared to people who remain stationary. This creates emotional and social distance between travelers and those who stay behind, as their lives move at different rates.  The traveler’s identity becomes fragmented, caught between the world they left and the one they return to, never fully belonging to either. This sense of being out-of-sync with the rest of humanity is a recurring theme for characters who travel between worlds in the novel.
  • The TechnoCore (the AI society) is obsessed with the Tombs because they are unpredictable and cannot be fully analyzed or predicted by AI, making them a threat to the Core’s plans and its Ultimate Intelligence Project.
  • Cybrid, a being where a human body and AI are fused. The woman private invstigator had had a relationship wiht a cybrid who was killed by, is pregnant with his childOne of 
  • The Hegira – when “Old Earth”  (the world we live in now) experienced a mass exodus to other planets and worlds as it was dying due unexplained environmental catastrophe – one may assume a nuclear accident or war. 
  • FORCE – the armed forces for the Hegemony of man
  • Hawking drives/effect Allow space ships to travel enormous distances faster than light
  • Farcaster portals – allow individuals to cover great distances in the galaxy in a flash ing
  • Poulson treatments  an undefined medical treatment that can extend life and health significantly.  
  • The Ousters:  a group of genetically modified humans who live outside the Hegemony’s Worldweb, often in deep space or on the fringes of human civilization. Unlike the Hegemony, which clings to the traditions and cultures of Old Earth, the Ousters have evolved and adapted to life in space, exploring new forms of art, ethics, and biology. They are often seen by the Hegemony as “interstellar barbarians” and are considered a major threat, especially as they prepare to invade Hyperion.

    The Ousters are not controlled by the TechnoCore (the AI society that influences the Hegemony) and represent a different path for humanity—one that is more dynamic and open to change. They are in conflict with the Hegemony, partly because the Hegemony seeks to eliminate any potential competitors, and the Ousters are the only significant human group not under its control.  The Ousters are not allies of the Shrike; rather, they are another faction trying to solve the mysteries of Hyperion and possibly use the Shrike to their advantage.

  • Time Tombs – six mysterious, ancient structures located on the planet Hyperion. They are surrounded by anti-entropic fields, which means time flows backward around them. This strange property makes them a scientific and mystical anomaly that no group fully understands.  Tombs are a focal point for conflict and curiosity because they represent power, mystery, and the unknown, drawing in all the major players in the universe of Hyperion. The Hegemony sees the Tombs as a potential source of power or danger. They want to control or at least understand them to maintain dominance and security. The Church of the Shrike views the Tombs as sacred, believing they are connected to the godlike Shrike and hold spiritual significance. Both the Hegemony and the Church of the Shrike want to prevent the Ousters from getting control of the Time Tombs.  

  • Anti-entropic fields around the Time Tombs cause time to flow backward in their vicinity. For nearby observers, this means that events around the Tombs appear to happen in reverse order, and the structures themselves seem to be moving backward through time. This reversal of time creates confusion and makes it difficult to study or predict what will happen at the Tombs, adding to their mystery and danger.

As I got into the book, and the auto-biographies of the characters, I slowly began to get an understanding of  some of these entities and concepts.  My reviewing Super Summaries afterward clarified a lot – which I have included in the above. 

Though the mission of the pilgrims is never quite clear to me, the book concludes with the six remaining pilgrims knowing and appreciating each other better, and with trepidation, approaching the Time Tombs and potentially confronting the Shrike.  

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby van Pelt

Posted on September 9, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book:  I listened to a preview of it on audible, in the voice of an octopus in a tank in an aquarium.  Since reading Soul of an Octopus and watching the movie My Octopus Teacher, I’ve been very intrigued by the creature. And two friends of mine had read it and said they really liked it. 

Summary in 3 Sentences:  The book does mini cameos of 4 main characters living on the coast of  Washington State in the recent times (the book was published in 2022) and the stories and characters are separate, but as the story unfolds, their lives and stories converge. Tova, a 70ish year old widow working as a cleaning lady in an aquarium,  who had lost her son in a mysterious accident many years ago;  Cameron, a 30 year old irresponsible ne’er-do-well, who’d grown up an orphan living with his aunt, and though immature not a bad kid, can’t hold down a job: Ethan, an old man who’d grown up in Scotland who ran the local grocery store in the small town of Sowell Bay in Washington State where the story takes place, and  Marcellus, a Great Pacific Octopus living in an aquarium tank, who observes people and has a sensibility and understanding of people and his environment much more than people suspect.  We get to know these characters and their lives and struggles as their life trajectories converge to bring them together.

My Impressions:  A fun, different and easy to read book – which i enjoyed listening to.  It starts out a bit slow as the author introduces us to the characters and the setting, but picks up pace as we start seeing the issues and drama unfold.  It’s an interesting and clever story and a “feel good” book.  I enjoyed getting to know the characters representing worlds I’m not terribly familiar with. It takes place in current time in the small town of Sowell Bay on the coast of  Washington State.  In addition to the story and the character descriptions, the book also gives insight into the insulated life in a small town on the Pacific Northwest – a town which is trying to bounce back after losing some of its luster from years ago.

In Tova the main protagonist, we get to know a kind, polite, lonely, compassionate but sad widow in her 70s, facing her old age alone, and worried that as she gets older, she has no family to take care of her. She is an extremely tidy and conscientious cleaning lady at the local aquarium, working not because she needs the money but because she needs some thing t0 do. She misses her husband of 47 years and continues to lament the mysterious loss of her son Erik some  30 years ago.   She has been for years a part of  a gossipy group of old hens who call themselves “the knit-wits,” good hearted older gals, who she respects but often finds annoying as they are always minding other people’s business. 

Cameron was frustrating to follow – a 30 year old modern-day Holden Caulfield, immature with poor judgment, irresponsible, resentful of those who are able to make their lives work, is convinced that he’s a victim of bad luck, because he never knew his father, and his mother abandoned him. His immaturity was clearly meant to frustrate the reader, which it certainly did me.  Cameron was always looking for the easy way out, and never seemed to be willing to take any responsibility for his so called bad luck.   But while I grimaced at his impulsive, poorly thought out decisions, it was clear that he was not “bad” – just very immature.  We are pleased to see him finally turn a corner.

Ethan the Scottish grocer is an eccentric and sympathetic character who inadvertently becomes a key person in the story by his tendency to share town gossip with the customers of his grocery store. He is a lonely old bachelor, smitten with Tova, always ready to help in the community, when and where he can.

Marcellus the Octopus is bored and lonely in his aquarium tank, amuses himself by observing the foolishness of the humans who observe him, and  is the wise observer of all that goes on around him,  Marcellus  is the only character in the book who speaks to us in the first person. He shares with us things about the Octopus genus, his life, unique biology, his abilities,  how he sees the world, what he eats and enjoys.   We learn that he is at the end of his lifespan, and that he knows he has little time left to live – and is feeling his age in diminished energy and abilities. His observations from an octopus’s perspective of the folly of the humans who visit the aquarium are interesting, fun and insightful.  I’m reminded of a quote from The Soul of an Octopus, (my review of it here) that says,  “I am certain of one thing as I sit in my pew: If I have a soul – and I think I do – an octopus has a soul, too.”

As the story unfolded, I knew that somehow these characters’ lives would converge and there were clues as to where it was going.  I did anticipate a satisfying and happy ending, which I was happy enough to get, though there were a couple of surprises.  Though some will complain that it may have been a bit formulaic, the portrayal of Tova and her perspective was particularly descriptive and realistic – she is a very sympathetic character.  In her compassion and loneliness, she develops a “relationship” of mutual respect and understanding with Marcellus, who she cares for in her capacity as cleaning woman for the aquarium.  They seem to communicate and understand each other telepathically.  She and Marcellus have in common the knowledge that they are each in the last phases of their lives and they are both trying to have an impact of some significance before they die.  The affection and mutual respect they have for each other become central to the book, and both of their lives.

I listened to Remarkably Bright Creatures,  and found the narration excellent – the reader did well at creating believable versions of the voices of the characters – a separate male reader was the voice of the octopus Marcellus.  By the way, while we may assume that the “remarkably bright creatures” are octopuses, that is a line that Marcellus uses to describe humans.

Several threads were left hanging at the end, which I believe screamed for some resolution, and I am surprised and a bit disappointed the author left them hanging.   What happened to Cameron’s mother?  Were there any more clues as to how Tova’s son Erik died?    Was there going to be any attempt to reconcile Cameron with his mother?  How and and under what circumstances was Erik secretly involved with her?  That the author left these questions unaddressed surprises me, and make me wonder if there is a sequel in the works.  

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Shadow Divers – Two Americans who risked everything to Solve a Mystery of WWII, by Robert Kurson

Posted on August 26, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book:  Proposed multiple times by several participants in my SEAL reading group, and finally selected, 

Summary in 2 Sentences:  Three men who were leaders of the elite wreck diving culture of New England discover a German Submarine in deep water off the coast of New Jersey,  and then endeavor through many dives and much research to determine what submarine it was and what was it doing there.  The mystery of the submarine is a lens through which the author takes us into the arcane culture of wreck diving, into the personalities, character and lives of the three main characters, and ultimately into the elite and tragic world and culture of the German submarine force in WWII.

My Impressions:  I listened to (rather than read) this book and loved it.  It started off a bit slow for me, as he explained SCUBA diving with which I’m pretty familiar – I assume this was to serve as an intro for audiences with little or no diving experience.  But then he got into the series of events that led to the discovery of a German U-Boot lying in 220 feet of water 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey.  There were no known U-Boots attacked or sunk in those waters, and so began the process of not only exploring the U Boot itself, but figuring out WHICH German U Boot it was and how it ended up sunk and lying unknown in this location for so long.

At this point the author takes a break from the story to describe the lives of the three main characters in his book  Bill Engle, John Chatterton, and Richie Kohler.  Each in his own way had become obsessed with the very demanding and dangerous hobby of diving on deep water shipwrecks, each for somewhat different reasons, which we learn as we get to know these men.  All working class men from New England, all consumed by their hobby which had become a passion. Diving on wrecks lying in deep water – more than 150 feet is no casual hobby – it requires a lot of training, discipline and is quite dangerous – much more so than recreational scuba diving.   Bill Engle one of the leading figures in New England wreck diving had become a hopeless alcoholic; John Chatterson rebelled against his wealthy father, joined the army and became a a successful ground combat medic in Vietnam and struggled with PTSD when he returned;  Richie Kohler grew up admiring his German heritage, had a broken home growing up, and eventually found community amid the deep water divers of New England.  I found these mini- bios fascinating – adding depth and flavor to the story.

Over 8 years and more than 20 dives they were unsuccessful finding anything that would identify which submarine they’d found.  When word leaked that they’d found a German U-boat, the best divers wanted to join them – it was a matter of prestige in that community to dive on difficult wrecks in challenging waters.  During those many diving trips, which included other experienced divers 3 men lost their lives – in each case due to the hazards to the body and mind of diving in water that deep.  Dives could only be scheduled during certain periods of hte year when weather was likely to permit such diving.  After multiple dive visits and more than a hundred hours of research in the Naval They researched National Archives, Naval History and Heritage Command, communicating with clubs and organizations in the US and Germany focused on German U-boat history and culture, they came up with a few theories, but nothing conclusive.  

Also in the story, Kurson takes us with the divers on their dives to 200+ feet – what it’s like to have nitrogen narcosis distort one’s thinking and judgment, to work in near zero visibility due to silt in the water,  inside a ship wreck filled with debris, collapsed walls and dangling wires,  in strong currents, having no more than 20 minutes of bottom time and over an hour of decompression time. 

This wreck was considered inordinately dangerous – not only because of the depth, but also because of the carnage inside the submarine – wires and broken pipes that could snag and hold a diver. In the case of this wreck, unlike other wrecks commonly visited by wreck divers off the coast of New England, this one contained the remains of the men who had manned the sub when it went down – the divers referred to it as a bone-yard, and they and the authorities insisted that it be treated as a maritime grave.   They had to be very creative in how they did their searches and while also being resolved to do their best to respect and not disturb the bones of the crew, even though the clothing that was still attached to some of them, potentially held the secret to the submarine’s demise. 

Kuson’s description of the dives,  what the men encountered during their dives, their close calls take the reader there.  We admire their fervid research into Naval archives to help find clues that might lead them to identify the U-boat. They searched out and interviewed those still living (this was the early 1990s ) who might have clues or insights that would help them identify the sub.  

Not to give it away, but eventually and through surprising effort and challenge, they were able to identify conclusively which submarine it was, and Richie Kohler made a point of visiting the living relatives of those who had been on the U-boot, whose remains he’d swum around inside the sub, looking for clues.  

A great, compelling and fully engaging read. I had difficulty stopping the audio when I had other things to do.  Additionally, it provides insights into the world of deep water wreck diving, the fascinating lives of the men who do it, and into the secret and heroic world of the German submarine force during WWII.  

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

On Character – Choices that Define a Life, by General Stanley McChrystal

Posted on August 23, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book: Selected by the SEAL book club as our selection for summer of 2025. I and many of us had worked with Stan McChrystal in our careers. 

Summary in 3 Sentences:  A thoughtful meditation on values that help drive the decisions we make and how we live our lives – but McChrystal does it in the first person. It is very autobiographical – the wisdom he’s accrued over a full and fascinating lifetime of training and leading soldiers in combat.  But he doesn’t dwell on combat – he focuses on values he also brings in his experience coaching CEO’s in the civilian sector, as well as key life issues such as marriage, raising children, friendship, losing loved ones, accepting and  preparing for one’s eventual death. 

My impressions:  The title describes the book well – the choices Stan McChrystal has made in his life that define him and his life. It is indeed part memoir, part reflection on his decisions, part philosophy and wisdom accrued during a long, eventful and full life. It isn’t over – he is 72 years old with (presumably) many more years to live – I’d be interested in addendum in 10 or 15 years.

He is well known in military circles for having led a very successful campaign against Al Queda in Iraq and subsequently been given command of US forces fighting the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan.  His book Team of Teams (my review here) provides a valuable  description of his groundbreaking initiatives to increase the success of our efforts to combat Al Queda in Iraq.  This book is more personal – how he has personally dealt with the challenges of not just leadership, but life in general – and he offers insights about leadership as well as character, how they are reflected in his decisions, both as a military leader and as a husband, father, and citizen,  and how they all overlap.

He begins with the impact of what led to his decision to resign from his position of leading US Forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.  This was the first significant and dramatic failure in his life – and how he dealt with it.  He also offers other examples from his career where he felt he fell short and what he learned from those examples.  

His message can be muddy – intentionally so, since there is no easy formula for defining and developing good character.  As one of my philosophy mentors (Dr George Lucas) once told me, philosophers and thinkers have been arguing for millenia over three questions: What is good character?  Can it be developed? If so, how?   McChrystal doesn’t provide a pat formula for good character, admits that it’s messy, often can be situationally dependent, but he always emphasizes that it is important, that we need to think about our own character, and realize that any and every decision we make contributes to and says something about our character. This should be a consideration that should always be part of one’s decision making process. 

He points out that much that affects us in our lives is beyond our control.  But how we deal with circumstances and what our decisions say about our character are two very important factors that only we control.  Both the existential and stoic philosophies emphasize that “what is important is not what happens to us. What is important is how we deal with what happens t us.  Our character is not a function of what we say or believe – it is a function of what we do and how we behave.  He argues that our character defines the essence of who we are.  He notes that our reputation reflects what other people think of us; our character reflects who we really are – what the angels think of us.

He argues that it is important that we think and think deeply about our values and convictions. What do we most value? What are the things, behaviors values most important to us?.  But our true values are not what we think or say they are, rather they are reflected in how we behave and act, the decisions we make.  Creating and maintaining alignment between what we believe are our values and what we do and how we behave is a lifelong project, and all (or nearly all) of us fail sometimes.  It is part of being human.  Discipline and commitment are necessary, if  constantly improving our character is important to us, 

He offers us examples of when he believed his character fell short.  McChrystal is much more disciplined than the vast majority of people I know, but he humbly admits to having failed many times and how he still struggles sometimes with behaving in a way that is consistent with his values.  But he argues that is part of the point: If character is important to us,  we will always struggle to some extent with aligning our decisions and actions with the values we profess to believe in.  

A couple of chapter titles are clues to some of his more intriguing discussions:   “Opportunity or Opportunism,” “On Patriotism,”  “Anger and Frustration,” “Monuments.”  In each, he shares personal stories and perspectives, all of which are thoughtful, many are surprising.  

A couple of things I didn’t see in his book that I’d liked to have seen.  He didn’t address the Pat Tillman controversy in which the role he played remains somewhat controversial,  and which continues to bubble in the media.  I’d also have liked him to address the cultural dimension of character.  Stan McChrystal’s views on character and values have a uniquely American flavor – how much of his definition would fit in very different cultures like Asian or Middle Eastern?  In fact, even within the US – his vision and idea of character have a strong US Army Ranger flavor  – certainly understandable – that’s his background and frame of reference and is a bit more strict than works for me.   Does that ideal work for most of  Americans?  I suspect he would respond that his message is not that we follow his version of good character, but that we’ve thought about it, have identified our values and strive to do our best to live by them.  

Given the tough decisions he’s had to make, I would also have liked for him to have addressed the “Dirty Hands” challenge that political and military leaders (and perhaps all leaders) face when given a choice between multiple bad options, all with bad consequences, but having to pick one.  One cannot (or at least in my view,  should not) say simply, “too bad.  The ends justify the means,” and then feel ok. The wrong and bad results remain, and the leader is still accountable for them.  

His book succeeded in challenging me to reflect on my own values, behavior and character.  I liked his personal stories, his openness and humility,   and how he made this book a personal reflection vice an academic study. 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx

Posted on July 30, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book: Selected by my literature reading group – several had already read it and wanted to read it again.  It is one of a handful of novels that won the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in the same year. the Pulitzer Prize.

Summary in 3 Sentences: It begins with a 36 year old man living in NY whose life is a mess – he is unfulfilled and unsuccessful at work, his wife with whom he is completely infatuated, disrespects him and is carousing with other men, and he has no prospects.  When his wife is killed in a car accident, he is devastated but his aunt insists he packs up his 2 children and accompany her to Newfoundland where their ancestors were from. In Newfoundland he slowly begins to make a life for himself, as he finds his footing and integrates with the eccentrics in the small town where they live.

My Impressions: Interesting, different, and the story a bit quirky.   The writing is idiosyncratic – interesting, not hard to follow, just creative and different. 

The “story” is about Quoyle – something of a ne’er do well – not a bad or evil guy, but someone who clearly has “issues,” his life is a mess, he lacks self confidence and one might say he is emotionally unstable.    And then he moves to Newfoundland Canada to try to start over.  His life after he arrives in Newfoundland is the heart of the story.

We meet Quoyle in NYC where he is in his mid 20s, and we learn that his father berated and belittled him as a child and his parents fulfilled a suicide pact.  No wonder he was screwed up! In his “nowhere man” life, he meets and falls madly in love with Petal,  apparently the first woman who has ever paid any attention to him. Petal turns out to be a very self-centered, narcissistic,  manipulative, unstable sex addict, and Quoyle is smitten by her attention and eroticism.  He asks her to marry him, which she does – clearly as a free meal ticket for herself with no intention of truly becoming “married.”   We get glimpses of their lives over the next few years – she has two daughters (we assume by Quoyle, but we don’t know,) , while she still aggressively plays the field with many lovers, bringing some home, which Quoyle knows and accepts – he doesn’t have the self confidence to confront or challenge her. 

She apparently pushes all the child rearing and housekeeping chores onto Quoyle, which he passively accepts as the cost of keeping her in his life.  We don’t get much of a glimpse into this very dysfunctional family until Petal is killed in a car accident while taking off with one of her lovers, after selling their children to a black market (probably sex-trafficking) adoption agency for $6K. That was the back drop for the rest of the story.

This is where the story of The Shipping News truly begins.  Quoyle is broken hearted and emotionally distraught when he learned of Petal’s death, (while I and other readers are thinking “good riddance!”) and now he doesn’t know what to do. In steps his Aunt, who suggests that he accompany her to Newfoundland and start over where their family had lived for generations before emigrating to America.  They travel to Newfoundland and it is the Aunt’s intent to move into and renovate the old Quoyle home that had been abandoned out on the coast for nearly 40 years.  Quoyle finds work in a dysfunctional local newspaper (the local rag) which highlights scandal, car wrecks, sexual assaults and other salacious news –  whatever will grab the attention of the local boreed, blue-collar audience.

Over the rest of the story, Quoyle slowly integrates himself into this backwater community, makes friends and finds a way to fit in, which he never had before. His Aunt pursues her own life, finding work upholstering yachts and ships, while the two daughters get into school.  In this process, Quoyle learns about the small community, some of its darker secrets and also some darker secrets of his own families past. He meets and befriends a  young woman who is a widow with a disabled child and the two seeming outcasts trying to raise children alone find common ground helping and supporting each other. Their friendship begins to blossom as Quoyle slowly finds some success in his efforts to integrate and create a life for himself.  Eventually he and his Aunt have to  confront some of the darker secrets of the Quoyle family history, which the older people in the community know, but he and his Aunt didn’t.  

What appealed to me in this book is that there are no heroes – regular people, living an isolated, rather unexciting life in a small remote town in Newfoundland.  We see how people can become rather eccentric – even unstable –  living in a small bubble like that.  Those living there accept as normal what might drive me crazy – but they learn to live together and take care of each other in their own way. And we see how alcohol becomes a primary source of entertainment and a social lubricant – often to the detriment of the community.

This was an interesting and good book – different –  but not a great book from my perspective.  It provides interesting insights into life today in a remote coastal village in Newfoundland, and perspectives on people who have ended up there, or chosen to live there.  

My wife and I watched the movie which we thought was an excellent adaptation of the book – staring Kevin Spacey as Quoyle, Judy Dench as the Aunt, and Julianne Moore as the woman freind and eventual love interest. I’d say the book and the movie complement each other – I recommend both together.   

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Woman, Captain, Rebel – The Extraordinary True Story of a Daring Icelandic Sea Captain, by Margaret Willson

Posted on July 24, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book: I was planning to travel to Iceland for a hike and wanted to learn about the people and its history. This book was strongly  recommended by two women on the hike.

Summary in 4 Sentences:  The book is a biography of  Thurídur Einarsdóttir (1777-1863) who was born and lived in a remote rural fishing village on the southeast coast of Iceland.  She was intrepid and ambitious from a very young age, and wanted to join the boys and men in the fishing that was the lifeblood of her community, and so became a capable deckhand as a young teenager.  She evolved to become one of the most successful fishing captains in her region, but the book goes into her private life, how the men of power resented her and undermined her success.  The author takes us through her entire life until the end, and the reader is inspired by her resilience and character, and we learn not only about her life, but so much also about the culture of rural Iceland in the 18th and 19th centuries. 

My impressions:  This book was a very pleasant surprise – thoroughly enjoyed reading it and was fascinated by the world the author describes that provided the context for Thuridur’s life and successes. She was born in a remote fishing village in Iceland in  1777,  started going to sea with her father when she was 11 and was fully qualified to captain a fishing boat by the time she was 17. These fishing boats were open, powered by men pulling six, eight, or ten oars with no protection from rain or sea spray.  It was tough work.   She lived an amazing life, a successful fisherman for over 50 years, including in the winter, a career that was matched by few men and no women at that time. 

As a young girl, she recognized that fishing was the lifeblood of the small community where she lived and she wanted to be part of it – volunteering as a young teenage girl to work with her father on his fishing boat.   Clearly, she was a boldly independent woman from a young age – and chose against convention to wear trousers and men’s clothing, because it was more practical in the work she was doing.  As she grew older, her wearing of trousers indeed became a part of her identity and one of many things which set her apart.  But for her independence of spirit, she was not only admired, but also feared and resented by some men in her community, and she depended on a few powerful people to protect her from the wealthy community leaders who resented the respect and influence she had earned, and who deliberately sought to undermine her reputation and ability to work.

She was married three times but none of the marriages worked out.  Her husbands wanted  a more traditional subservient wife, a role that did not fit her character,  and because she refused to be the compliant, passive wife that her husbands demanded, her marriages did not last.   So for most of her life, she had to earn her own living.  She insisted on freedom and autonomy, and always defaulted to a path which, though not lucrative in financial or physical rewards, gave her the most freedom and the fewest restrictions.

 Though she had had great success as a fishing captain, she was never wealthy, and had to carefully manage her expenses, but spent much of what little she had taking care of others who had no guardian or sponsor – including her own mother when her married sister refused to take care of her, and her disabled niece when that same sister refused to take care of her own daughter.  There were many key inflection points in her life when she made decisions based on her compulsion to do right and protect the weak and vulnerable, even when it cost her.  Her independence, and refusal to be cowed into subservience annoyed the rich and powerful men in her community, and they succeeded in spreading rumors and lies about her that turned her community against her.  Eventually she chose to leave rather than live in that emotionally hostile environment.  

When she left her village of Stokkseyri, she was able to find work in Thorlakshofn a nearby town, and the only town on the south coast of Iceland with a natural harbor. Though a small town, it was (and is) much larger and more cosmopolitan than Stokkseyri.  There she fished and also worked for a young man she’d helped in Stokkseyrie many years before who’d moved to Thorlakshofn and managed a store.  She became well known and well respected in that town, and as she aged, though well into her 60s and beyond, she remained strong and fit, and earned extra money guiding visitors to into the back country or on overland routes to other towns along the coast. After several years living in Thorlakshofn,  she longed to return to the Stokkseyrie where the small-town controversies and envy that had forced her departure had subsided and many of her enemies had died or moved on.  When she returned to Stokkseyrie in her later years, she was welcomed and recognized as a significant figure in their community. 

By this time she had given up fishing and spent the last years of her life mentoring other independent young people, including those who marched to their own drummers, as she had. One such young man who she mentored was  outside the Stokkseyrie mainstream, who was what we today might consider a book geek, not a macho fisherman.   Thuridur took a liking to him and the feeling was mutual.  The young man spent much time with her and wrote down the stories she told him, which many years later he published as a book which contributed significantly to this book.  Eventually in her old age, she lived with relatives in Eyrarbakki, the next town over from Stokkseyrie, where she died at the age of 86 – a very ripe old age for that time and for having lived in those very tough conditions.

On my trip to Iceland I with several friends was able to visit Stokkseyrie, which it is an exaggeration to call a village – just a few homes, a convenience store and a community center.  Several decades ago, the community built a replica of the fishing huts that fishermen including Thuridur, lived in during the winter season, and they built it in triubute to Thuridor, on the site where she had her own hut toward the end of her life.  Below are pictures we took of that hut.

I loved learning about Thuridur, her life, and about the challenges and idiosyncrasies of life in a rural fishing village in the Iceland of two plus centuries ago.  I and my friends who read the book greatly admired her strength of character, her resourcefulness and resilience in the face of adversity.  Her self confidence, integrity and Stoic strength of character allowed her to survive and thrive under very challenging conditions.  She is the embodiment of the Icelandic term I learned (which they consider a national motto) “Petta Reddast” which means:   It will work out, things will be Ok. 

Also I was amazed at the detail that the author was able to find and share with us. How did she get so much detail?  Here’s a piece of an interview with the author that I found on line: 

…what we found— that just farmers wrote about their neighbors. When I first started doing this research, there was one book written by— started by a 16 year old boy who had no education, who started interviewing Þuríður when she was older—phenomenal! And he spent 50 years putting this together, and he did a series of newspaper articles in the late 1800s, which were put together in an edited book in 1945, about Þuríður, actually. It’s amazing. And I thought that’s all there was practically. Not so. Because she was such an amazing person, everybody wrote about her. There’s just tons, both in the archives as we going through these archives, page by page, we come across more and more and more and more about her, and in books in the library, old books, where people— they have these books like Saga of Stokkseyri or some town, that people talk about their own towns and record what people say or these occurrences. And so people recorded, they remembered and wrote down verbatim conversations. And they wrote about adulterous affairs. They wrote about children who were born that weren’t really supposed to be born to that person. They wrote about fights. They wrote about betrayals. They wrote about love. It’s phenomenal the detail with which they wrote. So you know, we were lucky.*

*https://scandinavian.washington.edu/crossing-north-23-woman-captain-rebel

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment