Red Dog Farm, by Nathaniel Ian Miller

Posted on April 28, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book:  I’m planning to spend a couple of weeks in Iceland this summer and somehow this book came to my attention as a novel which takes place in rural Iceland fairly recently. I read it as part of my mental prep to get the most out of this trip, and help me appreciate the land and people I’ll be visiting. 

Summary in 3 sentences:  The story is told from the first person perspective of a young man about his life growing up on a remote, hard-scrabble farm in southern Iceland. He vividly describes the hard work and challenges of ranching cattle in that world, to include from the character of the land, the inclement weather, and the often uncooperative animals themselves, all while he wrestles with what he will do with his life as he enters adulthood.  His father is beaten down by the hardships, his mother is a professor at a local university and our young protagonist eventually goes through the classic challenges of falling in love and creating a relationship with a young woman, all while things on the farm and in his family are not going well. 

My impressions:   I loved the book – the story, the writing, and indeed the sense it gave me of farm life in rural Iceland.  I read the book primarily as an introduction to Icelandic culture, but what a bonus in that the story was so compelling and seemed genuinely authentic  to me. The book is told as a retrospective from the protagonist looking badk from his late 20’s on the events he describes. 

I listened to the book, and am glad I did. The reader clearly has native fluency in the Icelandic language, which added to the authenticity of the book, in his pronunciations of place names and other words of Icelandic origin. 

Characters in the book are interesting and believable.  I liked all of them.  Principle characters were our protagonist Ourie (sp?), his Papi, his Mama, his Ama (grand mother,)   Runa, their drunken neighbor’s daughter, Mihan, Oure’s  girlfriend,  and Riku their loyal and very intuitive farm dog,

Our ptotagonist is an introverted adolescent, an only child working with his father on the farm until  he goes off to the university in Reykjavic – something his parents expected and wanted him to do . His father because he wanted a better life for his son than the unrewarding drudgery of working the farm, his mother because she came from a university educated family and wanted her son to have that path open to him.    He’s not crazy about being a student, and when his father is injured and  struggling with the work on the farm, he willingly takes a leave from being a student and stays on the farm to help out.  

But it’s clear that he enjoys farm work, much  more than his father, and misses it when he’s in Reykjavic.  He doesn’t particularly like school and doesn’t enjoy the hustle and bustle of city life.  

Sub plots –

  • How the tension below the surface between Oure’s parents would resolve itself.
  • Whether Runa would be able to find a female partner 
  • Whether Oure and Mihan would ever get past their communications difficulties and become a couple.
  • Whether his father would ever get over his antipathy toward farming.
  • Whether Oure would go back to complete his degree program or stay and work the farm.

These sub plots are driven to a conclusion by an unanticipated event, that forces all concerned to make decisions that they were unwilling to make without being forced to. As the book concluded, I wanted more, and would enjoy a sequel.  

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Replay, by Ken Grimwood

Posted on April 16, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book:   Selected by my Science Fiction reading group.  Though it was written in 19886 it won several awards  to include Worrld Fantasy Award for best novel in 1988.  Also apparently was the inspiration for the movie Ground  Hog Day.  I listened to it and was impressed with how the narrator read it. 

Summary in 3 Sentences:  Our protagonist Jeff Winston, has a heart attack at age 43 and watches himself die – then suddenly wakes up  aa himself,  at 18 years old in 1963 in his college dorm room with all of the memories he had as a 43 year old, and with the opportunity to start life anew as himself at age 18.  The story is of his choices and new adventures until he reaches the same date, and time again in 1988 and again dies and awakens again, somewhat later in is life than the first time.  This happens again and again, dying at the same date/time in each reliving, but waking up later in his original life.  In one of his lives, he finds and meets a woman who is having the same experience, and each life she lives ends at the same time and date as his.  They are able to meet again in future “replays” and much of the book is about their lives and traded insights dealing with this very surprising and strange fate. 

My Impressions:  I really enjoyed this book – engaging and fun to read as it progresses in profundity from Jeff Winston’s-  our protagonist’s – ability to live out all his adolescent/young man’s male fantasies of money/sex/power in his first cople of reincarnations, or “replays,” to a point where he seems to have fully scratched that itch, and his issues and  goals become more profound in their implications.  By the end of the book he is a man in his 40s but with a couple of centuries worth of experience. 

This book was published in 1986 and Jeff’s relived experiences coincide with much of my life -from 1963- 1988.  He re-experiences the John/Robert Kennedy assassinations, MLK’s assassination, the Vietnam War protests of the 60s, and the Cold War of the 70s and 80s.  He enjoys (again) the rise of the Beatles, and other popular music of the 60’s 70’s and 80’s, the counter-culture and sexual revolutions of the sixties and seventies and then the rise of the Yuppies in the 80s. And after he experiences them again and again, they become tireseome.  Most challenging to him was that he couldn’t share this experience and its challenges with anyone without being subjected to ridicule and potentially being committed to psychiatric care. 

The most powerful part of the book for me was when he connected with Pamela, a woman who was also in a replay cycle.  In trying to sort out their common experience and unravel and understand the implications of the replay phenomenon, they fell in love. And then they would both die again – on the same day in 1988 and each time they vowed to reconnect in their next life, beginning again 20+ years earlier. But that got complicated when they realized that they were being reborn in different times later in their lives – what they called the “skew”.    He might begin his next replay at age 23 and she, perhaps at age 16.  But in each case, when they were reborn in their next replay, they remembered all the lives they’d lived before, found a way to reconnect, but the skew made it each time more complicated – esp when one or the other had gotten married while waiting for the other to begin their replay -not knowing when or where. 

Again, lots of fun reading this book.  A very engaging and touching romance between Jeff and Pamela, dealing with truly difficult issues related to their unique experience.  Issues that came up for me were the superficiality of fulfilling primal desires for sex, pleasure, power and wealth,  and the ultimately lack of fulfillment from the freedom that comes with those.  Love, marriage, intimacy, loneliness, life purpose are all subtly issues in this fun and fascinating book.  What would I do were I reborn at age 18 – how different would it be from what Jeff did?  And if reincarnation is real  (it could be…) how complicated would it be to know all that one had experienced before, in previous incarnations, with whom, consequences and emotional impact.  

Really enjoyed this read – highly recommended for thoughtful people with a senee of fun. 

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The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt

Posted on April 8, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book:  Selected by the SEAL book club I help run.  We had previously read Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind and found it insightful and enlightening. 

Summary in 4 Sentences: This books makes a strong case with impressive amounts of data, that giving children and teenagers unfettered access to smart phones and social media is harming them and society. He has separate chapters on impact on boys and girls, noting that girls have had the most negative consequences of full access to social media in their late childhood and teenage years, as evidenced in the significant increase in suicide attempts and other psycho-social disorders, but boys have suffered as well, but differently. He also makes the case that smart phone usage and helicopter parenting are reducing the amount of free play that he believes develops confidence, autonomy and adaptability that youth will need as adults.   He concludes by offering four  solutions to how to fix this negative  rewiring of American youth – what government, schools, parents can do to reverse these negative trends. 

My Impressions: An excellent and well documented treatment of the impact that smart phones are having on youth in America – and all over the affluent civilized world.  Haight writes for both the social scientist and the lay person – he offers the data, the charts, graphs and resources for the social scientist, but also provides a personalized touch with his own anecdotal observations for the lay reader.  He also makes the book easy to skim and review by offering bulltetized summary points at the end of each chapter.

He has two themes and he gives significant attention in mulitple chapters to each of these:  

  • The Decline of Play-based childhood, which addressees the need that children have for free space to play, take risks, learn to play with others and how these opportunities are declining for children, esp in America.
  • What he calls “The Great Rewiring” – the rise of the phone-based childhood and the wide variety of dangers that presents. 

Then he concludes the book with recommendations – what we can do about these challenges. He makes four major recommendations to each of us as parents, grandparents, citizens  witha  chapter on each:

  • Preparing for Collective Action
  • What governments and tech companies can do now
  • What Parents can do know
  • What schools can do now.

The book is filled with convincing data that shows that a significant percentage of American youth have become increasingly depressed, unhappy, too often with  suicidal ideation or attempting or committing suicide in the last decade.  He describes what he calls the “tidal wave” of  the conjunction of the proliferation of smart phone usage with social media activity on the part of pre-adolescent and adolescent youth.  More social media time almost always means less in-person contact with others, less outdoor play time, less quiet thoughtful time. And he convincingly argues that these areas which smartphone/social media have reduced are fundamental to healthy maturing and to becoming happy, productive adults. 

He has a chapter entitled The Four Foundational Harms – “Social Deprivation, Sleep Deprivation, Attention Fragmentation, and Addiction.”  In this chapter he points to these as multi-faceted harm and collateral damage resulting from extensive smart phone and social media use.  Each of these have key negative impact on the development of children and adolescence. None of this surprised me, but the massive amount of evidence he gave drove home the point. 

One of the chapters which I didn’t expect, but which grabbed my attention was one he called “Spiritual Elevation and Degradation.” There is a lot in this chapter about how extensive smart phone and social media use distracts all of us, but particularly young people from the quieter, more transcendental aspects of living on this planet.  He notes how a “phone based life distracts us from aspects of living that engender a pull to the more profound, to spiritual values.”  “As we’ve seen before, our phones drown us in quantity while reducing quality   You watch a morally elevating short video, feel moved, and then scroll to the next short video, in which someone is angry about something….If we want awe and natural beauty to play a larger role in (our children’s) lives, we need to make deliberate efforts to bring them or send them to beautiful natural areas.  Withoug phones.”  (p215)  

HIS CONCLUSION:  He concludes the book with chapters entitled: “What Governments and Tech Comapnies Can Do Now,”  “What Schools Can Do Now,” “What Parents Can Do Now,” and a final chapter entitled “Bring Childhood Back to Earth.”

SEALBOOK CLUB reaction   The 30+ SEALS who joined the discussion were overwhelmingly positive on the message of the book.  Author Jonathan Haight  joined us for about 30 minutes of the discussion and a number of the active or former SEALs asked questions about how best to implement his recommendations at home with their kids. JH gave advice essentially right out of his book, and recommended making many more fun alternative activities available for them to do, as many as possible outdoors..  Other interesting things that came up in our discussion.

  • JH pointed out that the movement to reduce and manage smartphone use by youth and adolescents has been one of the fastest social change movements he’s ever seen.
  • Since his book came out, he’s seen more parents acting, schools acting, and family time has become a fight over “screen time”. The biggest success is more and more people are buying into no smartphones before high school.
  • He pointed out, as he did in the book, that forbidding phones in class is not a solution, since, between classes, at recess, at lunch, kids will be on their phones instead of interacting in person with their friends. And in class, they will be thinking about what they will do on their phones as soon as the bell rings. Phones need to be forbidden for the entire school day.
  • He pointed out one of the biggest collateral damage effects of smartphones and social media, being always connected (and this applies to adults as well as youth, is what he called “attention fragmentation.” 
  • Multiple countries have legislated against smart phone availability and use during public school time.  I recall Australia and some European countries.  In the US, 12 states have legislated against smartphones in school.
  • Regarding his advocacy for more free play and parents giving their children more freedom and responsibility, this is a price parents have to be willing to pay. Helicopter parents have to be willing to accept measured risk. Also, parents need to work together and cooperate in this, and local governments have to loosen up child protective service guidelines
  • JH points out teens are terrified of being socially cut off. Terrified of being left out. Terrified of becoming “socially dead.”  They are very susceptible to FOMO – and this is driving  teenagers to stay engaged on their phones and with social media.
  • One person calling in from Brazil noted that Brazil is one of the most active countries in the world on social media.
  • JH was quick to point out that he believes AI and Generative AI will have by far the most profound changes in Western Society, eclipsing all concerns about Social media and smart phone culture. And he warned us to keep our eyes open – this tranformation – for good, ill, or whatever is already beginning to take place and will be very evident in less than 5 years. 
  • One retired SEAL pointed out that the research cited in the book describing the nefarious influences of smartphones and social media on youth encompass probably less than 1/3 of Gen Z.    This officer and a few others in the group noted how their experience with more select groups from Gen Z  eg Naval Academy, Elite High Schools, SEAL trainees – is that they are incredibly accomplished and capable, compared to previous generations.  Bill McRaven separately in an interview refuted the narrative that Gen Z are all pampered, self centered wimps, noting that his experience has him very much admiring Gen Z.  That doesn’t necessarily argue against JH’s thesis, but points out that it is more complicated – than simply stating that smart phones and social media are ruining our youth.  It’s clear that social media and smart phone access affects different people differently – some social groups more than others. 
  • In support of that last point, JH pointed out that the negative impact of excessive use of smartphones and social media seem to disproportionately impact the lower income and less affluent populations in America, where there is a single parent,  or both parents are  working, not able to give adequate attention to what their children are doing during their free time. The smart phone becomes an un supervised and easily corruptible babysitter.
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The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng

Posted on April 6, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book:  While I was reading All the Beauty in the World, this book kept popping up on my google and Amazon feeds – if you liked All the Beaurty, you’d probably like this.  I looked it up, the story sounded intriguing so I got it on Audible  and listened to it. 

Summary in 3 Sentenes:  The story is told in the first person from the perspective of a Malaysian woman of Chinese descent whose story we hear from her perspective as an old woman looking back on her life, sharing her story as a young woman working for a renowned Japanese gardner in the mountains of Malaysia, and  as a prisoner in a Japanese slave labor camp during WWII. The story bounces around in the timeline, but the meat of it was when she worked as an apprentice to the Japanese Emperor’s former gardner, helping him buid his masterpiece garden in the mountains of Southern Malayia

My Impressions: Loved this book. It moves slowly, but in a deliberate manner.  At first the slow pace was a bit off-putting and I wasn’t sure what was happening, but patience won out and I”m so glad it did.  Like a great, unhurried meal, it offered tidbit apetizers to let you warm up to the main course,  and by the time it started picking up, I was entranced and very engaged.   It never really got to be a so-called “page-turner,” but the story was powerful and told in a way that will appeal to most sensitive intelligent readers who are not looking for a “fast food” novel.  When I finished the book I wanted to spend more time with the woman whose story I’d been listening to for weeks. It wss nominated for and received many awards.

Given that I listened to it, it’s worth commenting that the reader did an awesome job of creating different voices for not only the main character in different stages of her life, but also for the multitude of men and women of different nationalities who came into her life. 

I was surprised to learn that the author is male – the voice of the female protagonist Yun Ling was very convincing. 

This story introduces us to Malaysia in the period from before  WWII until the 1980s.  We learn something about Malaysia as a British colony, the anglophone Chinese subculture of British Malaysia, then how the Brits abandoned Malaysia to the Japanese and the brutality the Japanese Army imposed on Malaysia (and the rest of it’s conquests,) to include their treatment of PoWs in slave labor camps.  And then the aftermath of the War – the brutal communist insurgency in Malaysia, how the British sought to suppress it, how the British and the Malaysian Chinese  were distrusted by the native Malaysians as they worked  together for Malaysian independence from Britain.  We also learn of  the existence of Indigenous Malaysians who lived separately and were somewhat disenfranchised by the Brits and elites of Malaysian society.  We also got various different views and perspectives of different Japanese involved in the war. 

And of course we learn a lot about different philosophies and art of Japanese gardening, as Aritomoa explains its nuances to Yun Ling.  Also surprisingly we learn about the Horimomo – the esoteric art of Japanees artful tatooing,  

All of that was background and setting for the protagonist’s story – how after the war and her traumatic experiences in a Japanese slave labor camp, she left a promising legal career in Kuala Lumpur to fulfill a promise to her sister who had died in the slave labor camps. Yun Ling and her sister had made elaborate plans to work together to build a Japanese Garden together after the war.  After leaving Kuala Lumpur, Yun Ling dedicated herself to fulfilling this dream she and her sister had had.  At her request, Yun Ling becomes an apprentice to Aritomo a master Japanese gardener who had formerly been  Emperor Hirohito’s gardener prior to the War. Aritomo had been let go and gone into exile in Malaysia, and was creating “Yugiri” -his own ideal garden in the Highlands of Southern Malaysia. Yun Ling initially has a difficult relationship to Aritomo, as she clearly suffers from PTSD based on her experiences in the Japanese slave labor camp.  Aritomo is patient when she erupts with animus left from that experience. Slowly she grows, matures,  and is less consumed by her anger.  

Much of the book centers around Yun Ling’s strained but evolving relationship to Aritomo as she learns more about the art of the Japanese garden, and about the quiet and mysterious Aritomo himself. Also included in the story are several other colorful charactrs – Magnus – a close friend of Aritomo’s and eventually of Yun Ling, and his nephew Frederick – both expats from South Africa. As the book progresses, we learn more about and get to know Yun Ling, Aritomo, Magnus and Frederick. There are indeed some surprises.  The more I got to know these characters, especially Yun Ling the protagonist, the more I became immersed in the story and loved what it was telling me.  I was sad to finish the book.

Not everyone’s cup of tea, but I loved it and will read more by this author.  

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Self and Soul – A Defense of Ideals, by Mark Edumndson

Posted on March 22, 2025 by schoultz

Why this Book:  I had not heard of this book when Doug Watterson sent it to me as a gift, with the note that it was one of the best books he’d ever read.  Doug is an infantry officer in the Army, who used to be in the Navy.  Respecting Doug, I said, OK – I’ll read it.  Glad I did

Summary in 5 Sentences: The author discusses in three separate chapters, three fundamental human archetypes (he doesn’t use that word) that he has identified as representing ideals in Western Civilization: the Hero, the Saint, and the Thinker.  These archetypes he associates with the Soul – concern about and willing to sacrifice oneself and one’s worldly well-being for something bigger than oneself. He also identifies another archetype which he believes has some Ideal qualities –  romantic love as portrayed by the Romantic Poets of the 19th century.  In contrast to these, he discusses the cult of the Self  which entices us away from such ideals – the pragmatic striving for what’s good for me- comfort, security, health, pleasure, longevity. And he offers two separate chapters on individuals who he identifies as legitimizing this very pragmatic (and human)  approach to life, arguing that selfless ideals are unrealistic, often misguided, and not natural to us:  Shakespeare and Freud. 

My Impressions:  Engrossing and powerful. Thought provoking and challenging. The author is thoughtful and very well versed in the humanities and makes a convincing case based on empirical evidence, and his thorough study of the examples he cites. At the bottom of this post, I argue a bit with his premise. 

I have recommended this book to my most thoughtful friends who I believe are introspective enough to be willing to challenge  and reexamine their own values and decisions in life – because indeed this book challenges the life style and values most of us have chosen.  Most people are unwilling to look too closely at such issues – though church leaders, and secular moral leaders regularly challenge us to do so.  

Two sentences of his that I believe sum up much of this book: 

  • “Often throughout this study, Self has been understood as the state that stifles Soul.  The pursuit of power and pleasure and social ascendancy block the hope of achieving unity-of- being through contemplation, compassion, bravery, or the use of imagination.” (p217)
  • “Self often yearns for Soul. Those who live in the State of Self – the state that takes the fulfillment of desire as it’s ultimate horizon – understand, on a level often too deep for words, that their lives lack an essential quality.”  (p217)

I chose to read Self and Soul  first thing in the morning, when I was fresh, after a cup of coffee (or two,) and  could only read 10 or so pages at a time.  I highlighted a lot of it as particularly cogent, insightful and useful for me to consider.  There is a lot in this book.  Below is a brief summary:

The Heroic Ideal – also often represented by the value of “courage” is exemplified by Homer’s Achilles, who chose to live up to his ideal of the courageous warrior, though he knew it would cost him his life.  He sacrificed the opportunity for family, secuity comfort and life to live up this ideal. He contrasted Achilles with Odysseus, the ultimate practical man.

The Saintly ideal – also represented by the value of “compassion” is exemplified by Jesus, Buddha, and Confucius. Each of these in different times and cultures, explicitly renounced Self as defined in this book (what I’ve previously called WIIFM – What’s In It For Me?)  in order to show compassion for and take care of others, and to pursue a higher purpose.  Each chose to live a life consistent with their ideal values that subordinate personal comfort and well-being to the well-being of others and the greater good. 

The Thinker Ideal – also represented by the search for Truth, is exemplified by Plato, Socrates, and Nietzsche.  He discusses at some length also Emerson and Thoreau as well.   This is the contemplative ideal – the person who will not abide any deception – to self or others.  The thinker’s pursuit of a clear eyed view of reality and Truth – as best we can know it – are paramount.    If we think of the loner philosopher we are confronted with Socrates who was very social – to the point that it cost him his life.  He would not compromise his freedom to explore and search for Truth in return for any comfort, including to save his life.  The author notes that the thinker is often a wanderer, who is afraid that marriage and family would be a poison that would force him to compromise his  search for Truth with the demands of Self – and family. 

The Romantic Poets:  represented selfless romantic love as a source of energy and motivation for subordinating Self to the other.  Edmundson is equivocal on this point but points to how certain of the Romantic Poets – Blake and Yeats in particular – sublimated their erotic passions toward their beloved to humanity and the greater good.  The willingness to put the other – and then the others – above oneself, was worth noting as selfless ideal.

But he is ambivalent. He concludes this chapter noting that the Romantic quest has possibilities which have not been “completely explored, it’s validity far from decided. Is the Romantic quest ultimately an affair of Self or of Soul? We do not entirely know. But we still live within its dangers and possibilities. ” (p216)

Advocates for the primacy of Self:

Shakespeare. Edmundson makes a case for Shakespeare as the people’s voice for middle class practical values.  He explores many of Shakespeare’s best known and some lesser known plays and  points out how the idealists seem never to prosper and are always victims to the schemes and cunning of the more pragmatic actors in his plays.  He was playing to his audience and amplifying their prejudices – his audience consisted mostly of poor and lower middle class attendees who had little love for, and good reason not to trust the supposed elites who claimed to espouse high ideals.  “For though it may be difficult to see what Shakespeare valued …it is palpable what he condemns:  chivalry, honor, nobility, the heroic code.  Titus, Hotspur, Othello, Macbeth, Timon, Coriolanus, Caesar, Lear, Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, and the entire sorry cast of Troilus and Cressida leave this beyond doubt'” (p 172)  But there is an exception.  “To this rule there is a salient exception. In Hamlet – the poet’s greatest creation -one often encounters the free play of intellect. At times he thinks pragmatically…..But he can also think in quest of the Truth…to explore what might be true for others, true perhaps for all men, at all times.”  (p174)

The chapter is entitled “Shakespeare and the Early Modern Self” and Edmundson makes the case that Shakespeare is the best known early voice of the movement toward the modern, practical man, setting the stage for Dickens, Freud and others later.  “Few can be as enchanted with honor as the man who has had to thrust it aside in order to get where he is going in the world….Hal (Prince Henry, Henry V) is Shakespeare’s primary man – and he is, perhaps , the future.” (p183)

Freud.  Edmundson states that “Freud took the Soul State seriously. He feared it and in some measure, was drawn to it.”  But after close examination, Freud decided that its allure was a pie-in-the-sky deception and could only lead to disillusionment and unhappiness.  So he put forth a version of the integrated Self as his Ideal.   Edmundson calls Freuds authentic man “the antiheroic hero.”  

This chapter goes into Freud’s  triumvirate of the Id, Ego and Super Ego. Through psychoanalysis, Freud seeks to bring those three into harmony – the Id being reality and the external world that each of us must confront and live in;  the Ego being how one lives in the world, striving to fulfill one’s desires and goals, and to find compromise and balance between the demands of the world and other people;  and the the Ego must contend with the often tyrannical demands of the Super Ego – the parental overseer, always judging and harassing.  The Ego he argues must be “the great negotiator” between these three forces.  Freud believed that we are not born, nor designed to be “happy” and psychoanalysis helps us accept and learn to live with dissatisfaction, unhappiness, not getting our way – and to be “less unhappy” than most of us actually are.  Freud has dismissed the joys of State of Soul as a fantasy and a mirage. He advocated investing in self, in such a way that helps us live in this challenging world of practical limitations. 

My thoughts: This book challenged me. That’s why I liked it so much.

I think the author makes an excellent case for how Western – especially American – culture has evolved.  We prize and honor those who are winners – no matter how they win.   Except in the most egregious cases, character doesn’t seem to matter as much as one’s ability to win and succeed.  Aristotle had a great phrase:  Clever men know how to get what they want. Wise men know the right things to want.  It seems we honor cleverness more than character and honor. This book is about the tension between the two.  

The book implicitly begs each of us to ask when, and how often we fudge our values, fudge the truth, or don’t do what we know or believe to be the really “right” thing. We avoid the hard right decision, for convenience, in order to get something we want or to avoid accountability.  Hard question to ask ourselves,  and for those of us who are honest, the answer is often uncomfortable. 

And while I honor and respect Edmundson describing this Soul – Self duality,  he doesn’t until the very end point to where these are not necessarily two absolutes.  I was waiting for this, and it was not until the end that he recognizes that the realities of daily life require practical skills and compromises, and notes in reference to a woman struggling with the practicalities of Self required to take care of her family, that “in every act of courage or compassion or true thought, she will feel something within her begin to swell, and she’ll feel a joy that passes beyond mere happiness…intimations of a finer and higher life…and she’ll feel then the resurrection of her Soul.” (p 259) 

I believe he is saying we need to have and hold on to Ideals, that we must feed our Souls by listening to and honoring them, rather than discarding them as most people expect us to do, in  order to follow the practical path to meet social expectations and do well for our Selves.  We should hold on to the ideal of the State of the Soul in order to at least sometimes to get beyond What’s In It For Me. To have a family and live in society, compromises are often necessary.  But the tendency is to “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” and give up ideals entirely or compromise them to such a degree that they are never an inconvenience..

A couple of other quibbles> 

  • I could argue that some of those who seem to follow the ideal are actually largely driven by ego – and I’d claim that about Achilles.  His “Self” was all about his reputation and his legacy – about him becoming immortal as an icon.  I know of people who went to Vietnam with the explicit intention of earning a Medal of Honor – out of Self motivations – while many/most MoH recipients indeed abandoned all hopes for Self in the inerest of duty and their fellow soldiers/sailors.  
  • He doesn’t mention artists or musicians – or those people so dedicated to creating beauty that they forgo most pleasures of civilized life. Great musicians who refuse to make popular music that would earn them a living; great artists who paint what inspires them and fits their own visions of beauty. So many such artists and musician have lived their ideal and created in obscurity and gone unappreciated in their own lives. 

Of course we need practical men and women  in the real world.  We need those who are willing to make some compromises to achieve a greater good for the greater number.   Idealists who are unwilling to compromise to fulfill pragmatic objectives do not get elected to public office, nor succeed if they do. Politics is the art of compromise, and while those idealists who Edmundson praises serve as noteworthy examples for our character, leadership that hopes to make a difference in the real world, has to have a very pragmatic component. 

I see the Self – Soul tension as being not bipolar but on a spectrum. There are some things even the most vile of us won’t do out of principle, and there are some compromises that the most principled of leaders will choose, out of respect for the greater good, or those who may not share their spotless idealism. The salient question for me is not whether I am a self-centered pragmatist, or a self-sacrificing idealist, but where on the spectrum between the two I most try to live my life.  I am sure I’m not alone is admitting that there have been times when I was more one than the other. Where am I now? Where do I want to live in the future?

In ethical philosophy this tension is described as being between the philosophy of Deontology as professed by Immanuel Kant (principle is everything), and Utilitarianism, as professed by John Stuart Mill (consequences are everything.). The debate between the principled act and what’s best for the greater good for the greatest number has been going on for centuries.  Even the most principled leaders must sometimes sacrifice principle for the greater long term good. 

I would have liked this book more if he’d looked at some more modern well-known characters – like Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt, or Bertrand Russell, or Elon Musk, or Greta Thunberg, or Conrad Adenauer or even Woodrow Wilson – and how their pragmatism served their idealism.  I’d like Edmundson to discuss where they were pragmatic on some issues in order to fulfill more important or significant ideals.  Or when they had to violate one principle in order to serve another more important one. 

I recently saw Kevin Costner’s special on Yosemite which included a short piece on how John Muir influenced Teddy Roosevelt. John Muir was an idealist in the mold that Edmundson describes – something of an ascetic, very much self sacrificing for his ideals. Teddy Roosevelt had a huge ego and his ideals were tied to his ego.  Teddy Roosevelt was inspired by John Muir and then had the practical political skills to fudge the rules, bypass bureaucratic restrictions with some half truths, in the interest in the greater good of protecting our natural spaces, and which eventually resulted in creating our national park system.

Paul Petzold coined a term which has become the foundation of the National Outdoor Leadership School which he called “Expedition Behavior” or EB.  EB requires that the good of the group be paramount, BUT each of us must take care of ourselves, often first, in order to be a productive and contributing member of the group. If you are part of a group or team, if you don’t take care of yourself, you become a liability to the group. The good of Self and Soul merge.  Edmundson’s book was clearly not concerned with people not taking care of themselves, but lamented the loss of ideals of the Soul as a counterbalance to what he sees as primarily Self serving, pragmatic behavior and values in today’s culture. 

Back to Aristotle.  Ideally we want the Wise AND Clever man or woman to lead us.  They are hard to find…..How to live in the world, with friends, family and community AND ALSO have the joys of communion with higher values, ideals, and the ineffable. 

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All the Beauty in the World, by Patrick Bringly

Posted on March 14, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book: Recommended to me by my friend Francine, which I convinced my book club to select, since it was a shorter and a relatively easier read than our last selection, which was One Hundred Years of Solitude. 

Summary in 3 Sentences: Written as a personal memoir of a brief period in the author’s life, when he worked as a guard at the Metropolitan Musuem of Art.  After college he worked briefly at the New Yorker, then after caring for his brother dying of pancreatic cancer, he left the New Yorker and opted for a quieter, more contemplative job as a guard at the NYC MET. From his narrative we learn about the culture of the guards at the MET, background and his impressions on the art in the various sections of the Met, his impressions and interactions with the many visitors, and ultimately how the 10 years he spent there positively shaped his growth and quality of life. 

My Impressions: Loved this book!  Through his experience and perspectives, the author treats us to a meditation on the intersection of life and art as seen through the lens of a thoughtful  and well educated layman. He is writing for laymen like me – who know enough about art to superficially appreciate it, but don’t really understand it.  He describes his impressions of a number of pieces of art, some great masterpieces, others less well known,  and shares his reflection on what the artist may have been thinking, feeling, trying to convey, and what a particular painting, sculpture or other objet d’art says about the author’s as well as our life and times. 

There is no action or plot – it is not a page-turner – it would appeal to someone sympathetic to a Buddhist perspective on life and the universe (I am) but that said, it held my attention and I always looked forward to opportunities to listen to it.  The author himself reads it, so his voice and inflection add to the depth and sincerity of his text.  The writing is superb. 

To help me appreciate this book, I purchased a coffee-table book The Masterpieces of the MET which my wife and I have enjoyed.  A nice addition, but not necessary to appreciate the book, but a pleasant and informative reminder of how spectacular and diverse the collection of art is in the MET. But a friend subsequently send me a link which incldes pictures of many of the pieces discussed in the book   It is at https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/all-the-beauty-in-the-world/

Super Summaries does well at summarizing the main themes of  All the Beauty in the World.  They list 3 main themes below with my comments impressions: 

  1. The ineffable nature of art – how words are poor tools to describe and evoke the experience of art – whether it be looking at, listening to, or touching, tasting whatever.  Describing it is a poor substitute, though it can augment, the experience of art is ineffable. One quote from the book that makes this point:  “… I experienced the great beauty of the picture even as I had no idea what to do with that beauty. I couldn’t discharge the feeling by talking about it—there was nothing much to say. What was beautiful in the painting was not like words, it was like paint—silent, direct, and concrete, resisting translation even into thought. As such, my response to the picture was trapped inside me, a bird fluttering in my chest.”
  2. Art and Mortality. The paintings, sculptures, pottery, etc that we experience in the MET or anywhere, are like the footprints left by humans who are long dead.  In contemplating each piece, his mind goes to the person who created it, to his/her life and times, long past, reminding us that our  experience of this persons art is  also an ephemeral moment in our lives, in time.   His experience of his brothers death was a constant reminder to him and us of the privilege we have of being able to enjoy life and art. A quote: “The frenzy of the day has passed and only the death remains, the blunt fact, the impenetrable mystery, the immense and immovable finality. As a watchman I can use this picture in something like the way it was intended to be used, and for that I am grateful.”
  3. Museum as Sanctuary Life and routine in the museum are apart from the hustle and bustle of what goes on outside the museum.  He takes us outside to the street during his breaks, to a pub with his fellow guards, to home with his wife and child – all of which contrast sharply with the calm and stable experience  of being inside the MET.  It is indeed a sanctuary from the tensions and conflicts which we face in our daily lives. 

To conclude – All the Beauty in the World is a great read to ground the reader in a quieter, more spiritual retreat from the many trivial as well as important and critical issues we deal with in our daily lives. It is short – 6 hours to listen to -which was satisfying to me; only 200 pages to read.  I echo my friend Francine who recommended the book to me, when she told me she now really looks forward to going to NYC and visiting the MET.  I will re-read the book before I do. 

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Spider World #5 The Magician, by Colin Wilson

Posted on March 14, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book: The next book in Colin Wilson’s Spider World Series, following The Desert, The Tower, The Fortress, and The Delta. In some configurations of the Spider World series, the first three books are combined into one, entitled The Tower, The Delta is number 2, and this book is number 3. 

Summary in 5 Sentences: This book begins with Niall now recognized as the lord emissary of the plant goddess who the spiders recognize as their worldly and spiritual leader, and as such,  Niall is given full authority and treated as a demi-god.  The truce between the Death Spiders and humans is based on an agreement that Spiders would not harm humans and vice versa. But when one of the Death Spiders is found murdered, the treaty and the Death Spiders’ trust in Niall’s willingness and ability to fulfill it is in jeopardy and Niall cecomes the lead detective investigator to find out who killed the spider and why.  In his research, Niall slowly realizes that there is another threat to the peaceful world he rules – and it appears to come from a different group of beings that live outside Spider World, led by a powerful leader  called The Magician who apparently has supernatural and paranormal powers that exceed Niall’s or the formidable powers of the Death Spiders

My impressions. This volume of the Spider World series is a who dunnit as Niall desperately needs to solve the murder of one of the Death Spider’s guards in order to protect the fragile treaty that he had negotiated with the Death Spiders to free the humans from their role as workers and slaves subject to the Death Spiders.  In Spider culture it was inconceivable that another Spider could have murdered one of the guards to the Death Spider’s palace, but it was inconceivable to Nial that a human would choose to, much less be physically capable of murdering a spider.

Niall metaphorically puts on his Sherlock Holmes hat to investigate the murder, looking at the evidence, pursuing the clues, considering all possibilities.  In this process we learn more about the Death Spider culture, its history and the city they live in.  We also are introduced to more of the mental powers the spiders have, how energy and communication can flow between beings mentally, and how the Spiders are able to project images and scenes of what they recall telepathically to others – to Niall as well as other Spiders.  And we learn that in this world, objects can carry and transmit energy from powerful beings who are physically offset from that object  – like an amulets or a talisman in the Occult world.

Niall knows he’s up against something powerful and evil, but he doesn’t know who or why.  He goes into the white tower to consult the Steegmaster, and sensors inside the white tower also pick up something different and possibly nefarious that seems now to be in play.  His investigation leads to Niall being given the privilege of being able to interrogate the memories of long dead Spider Lords who explained to him the long history of the Spider world, who their antagonists were several centuries ago, when the Spiders were indeed at war with a group in the mountains,  but for centuries, they hadn’t bothered one another. Then this murder. Why? 

Niall follows leads, gathers clues that he must  put together before he can  decide how to keep this murder and potential future murders or assaults on the Spiders from destroying the  peace treaty he’d negotiated with the sSpiders.  He came to understand that the leader of the mysterious and powerful hostile force is known as The Magician who it seems lives in an underground city deep in the mountains outside and away from the Spider City. The Magician is powerful enough to be able to remotely influence, control or do damage to people and things a great distance from his city.  Niall is helpless to save one person who had been hexed, and his own brother is in a precarious state of health, a victim of the Magician’s pwoer. 

The book concludes with Niall deciding that he had to personally go find and confront the Magician. 

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Spider World #4 The Delta, by Colin Wilson

Posted on March 1, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book: The next book in Colin Wilson’s Spider World Series, following The Desert, The Tower, and The Fortress.

Summary in 3 Sentences: After Niall and his co-conspirator Doggins face the masters of the world they were living in (the Beetles and the Death Spiders) they are given a choice to give up their Reaper weapons in exchange for guarantees of safety and other perks, but they reject that offer out of 1. distrust, and 2. their primary goal being to free humans from domination and servitude. So they are escape to The Delta – a mythical and mysterious world many miles across the water,  at the center of which they believe they’ll find the key to the Spiders’ power.  Arriving there with stolen spider balloons, they head inland and  confront many strange and dangerous creatures, powerful carnivorous plants and animals, and have many near misses.  Niall using his psychic senses follows his intuitions, is able to find the power behind the strange phenomona, and establish a telepathic connection and rapport with it.  This allows him and his team to return to Beetle and Spider world, where tensions are high, but Niall’s newly enhanced psychic and telepathic powers allow him to achieve a breakthrough in the tension between the humans, spiders and beetles. 

My Impressions: In this book, Wilson continues to develop Niall’s psychic and telepathic skills and power, through which he is able to connect to a much greater spiritual power.  Niall is still human but is able to tune in to mystical forces that help him not only survive, but defuse tensions between others, and survive threats to himself and his comrades. 

The Delta picks up right where The Fortress leaves off.  With the peace treaty between the Beetles and the Death Spiders in jeopardy,  Niall, Doggins and a small team of their compatriots realize that their position is untenable, and secretly and without permission activate the balloons they had captured from the spiders and escape.  With their powerful Reaper weapons, they float the many miles over the horizon to the strange world known as The Delta, which they believed may be the source of the Death Spiders’ powers.  The Delta was known as a mystical place, and they believed that with their Reaper weapons, they might be able to destroy this power source and gain leverage over the Death Spiders. .

Much of the book is about their journey inland to find this source of power of the spiders. They trudge by foot through swamps and over mountains, and grassy plains.  However it seemed that nearly every plant or tree they came to that appeared to offer shelter or sustenance was actually carnivorous predator luring them in.  Simeon an older man who’d been at The Delta,  before was able to warn them about some of these threats,  but there were many close calls – these strange plant-animal creatures had fascinatingly deceptive tools  to lure in their prey – and Niall, Doggins and their team realized that in The  Delta, they were clearly prey.

After a couple of days of travel, a couple in their group were injured or incapacitated from their near-misses with the creatures trying to prey on them, and while Simeon stayed back in a base camp with two of the injured,  Niall and Doggins went ahead.  When they were fairly close to their objective, Doggins was incapacitated and needed to sleep and recover, so Niall trusted his instincts and went on alone.  All throughout this journey,  Niall is tuning in to his intuitive psychic powers sensing danger and safety,  and using these same senses, he chose to climb alone at night to the top of the mountain that appeared to be the center of the island and potentially the source of the energy he was feeling – and seeking.   

When he got there, he rested, noticed a different feeling, and as he slipped into that liminal space between being awake and being asleep, he found himself tuned into a telepathic conversation with the Plant Goddess who indeed was the Source.  She explained to Niall how she got to where she was over millions of years of evolution, and shared insights about how to survive in The Delta. She also gave him some perspectives on the Death Spiders and how to find a resolution when he returned to Spider World.  

Niall, Doggins, Simeon and their team were able to return to their balloons and then to Spider World, where Niall imbued with new  insights from the Plant Goddess and enhanced psychic power and will, was able to navigate to a a successful interaction with the Master Beetle and Master Death Spider.  The Source power protected him from the Death Spider’s psychic attacks, and they ultimately recognized him as an envoy from the Plant Goddess and bowed down to him as representing her authority.  They recognized him as their new leader and agreed to his demands for harmony between Spiders, Beetles and humans –  that heretofore no one had thought possible.

Niall is then recognized as the legitimate leader of  human, Spider and Beetle worlds, and as a very young man, struggles with how he would handle his new status, and keep the harmony that he had brought about on a positive trajectory. The book concludes with Niall returning to his desert hovel to bury his father. 

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The Women, by Kristin Hannah

Posted on February 25, 2025 by schoultz

Why This Book: I have read many books about the Vietnam War, but almost all from the soldier’s or fighter’s perspective.  A lady friend of mine – also a nurse – told me that this was good and was worth readking.  I had read some good reviews of it, and thought this would be a good different perspective on that war.  It was. 

Summary in 6 Sentences: This novel is about a sheltered young woman who decides to follow her Naval Academy graduate older brother to Vietnam as a nurse in 1965/66. When she finally gets to Vietnam, she quickly realizes that she is completely unprepared for the austere and unpleasant working environment, the long work hours and the horror of the wounds and treatment she’d have to deal with – none of this was covered in nursing school. Over the course of her time in Vietnam she grows up and rises to her many and increasingly difficult challenges, with the support of her more worldly fellow nurses, and is inspired by the sense of mission and duty of the other medical personnel.  The second half of the book is about her struggle to adapt to coming home, having her service and experiences not recognized as being significant, and finding that much of the public blamed anyone who’d been in Vietnam for the immorality of and in the war.  As her life at home spirals out of control, she deals with all the classic symptoms of PTSD before it was recognized as a legitimate reaction to the trauma of war.  The final part of the book is about her difficult journey getting to a place where she finally comes to terms with her experiences in Vietnam.

My Impressions. This is a powerful book that takes the reader back to a window of turmoil and conflict in America -the height of the Vietnam War and its immediate aftermath. Through the eyes of Frankie McGrath, the novel’s protagonist and a nurse in a combat trauma unit, we experience much of the horror of the Vietnam War, then when she returns to the US, the challenges of coming back to one’s home country, and her service being not only unappreciated and unacknowledged, but also reviled by many.  Through her eyes and experiences, we return to this very tumultuous and chaotic time in American history when the country was torn apart by the VIetnam War.  Frankie  makes her own challenges worse by being unwilling to talk about her her experiences and emotions, by trying to deny them, or by numbing  herself through alcohol and pills.  This was not an easy part of the book to read.  

There are a lot of things I liked about this book, and several I didn’t care for.  I am glad I read (listened to) the book -it made a powerful impression on me.    We experience the dramatic culture shift occasioned by this very unpopular war,  from the perspective of a young woman who had grown up pampered in a well-heeled, upper class family in Coronado, Ca,  who volunteers to serve in Vietnam as an Army nurse. She chose  to follow her brother there in hopes of making her patriotic father proud.  She spends two years becoming an extremely competent surgical and OR nurse, treating severe and often mortal injuries of the soldiers who were brought in from combat, and she sees a lot of death, to include some with whom she is close.  And then upon returning to America, we experience her self doubt, insecurities, her anger and her inability to adapt her experience to the very different version of America she returned to.

So, what did I like and not like about the book?  I and my wife lived through that window of American history, and while we both remember the aspects of America she describes, we both felt her version was much more dramatic than our own memories and experiences.  The author seemed to give Frankie McGrath a concentrated experience of the worst of America’s reaction to Vietnam.  Frankie McGrath’s nurse friends adapted to their return to America in a more balanced manner, and represented a less traumatic reaction, so I’m not sure to what degree Frankie McGrath’s dramatic downward spiral upon return to America was representative.  

That said, you’ll see in the following that i found a lot of redeeming qualities in The Women, that in my mind outweigh those aspects of the book that I didn’t care for.   

What I liked – redeeming qualities: The reader experiences: 

  • the panorama and wide scope of what was happening in America during a time when I was a teenager and young man, regarding the impact of the Vietnam War on American culture and its people.  For me it evoked a lot of personal memories; 
  • the horror of the Vietnam war from the perspective of the medical teams in the trauma units;
  • the shock that young people felt when they arrived in Vietnam for the first time;
  • the challenges of the environment – the heat, rain, mud, humidity and lack of so much of what we take for granted – hot water, cleanliness, a comfortable place to sleep and relax;
  • the incongruity between rural village life and life in Saigon.
  • how the men and women engaged in the war were drawn to each other to combat their personal loneliness and need for human connection – both from others of their own gender and  from the opposite sex.
  • the sadness and helplessness of being with a wounded man who clearly isn’t going to live;
  • how the medical personnel had to harden themselves to the horror and sadness and do their jobs as best they could for each person;
  • how the medical people doing Medical Civic Action Programs in the villages were sad and frustrated to find children and others victimized by the war who needed so much more than the CAP Americans  could give..
  • the level of dedication of the nurses and medical people to their jobs and patients.  Frankie McGrath “re-upped” for a second year long tour, rather than leave her trauma unit understaffed and with only  inexperienced nurses;
  • how women can be quite loyal in taking carer of each other – Frankie’s nurse friends in Vietnam continued to be loyal to her and supported her long after they had left Vietnam, and when all were back in America;
  • the challenges that returning soldiers had reintegrating into a civilian society which didn’t appreciate, much less acknowledge their sacrifices.  
  • the traumatic effects of the protagonist’s PTSD, leading to self-destructive behavior and an inability to integrate with old friends or other social groups.  
  • the turmoil in America of the passionate anti-war marches and protests, and the discord that caused between the generations and between those who supported and opposed the war;
  • how the women who served in the war felt unrecognized and even disrespected – this was only a man’s war – women either weren’t there or were not important; 
  • the inadequacy of the VA’s response to our protagonist’s outreach for help.   PTSD was not widely accepted as a legitimate concern for those returning from Vietnam, especially not for women who were not directly engaged in combat. 
  • how smoking and alcohol were so much a part of recreational life in American culture at that time, and how easy it was for alienated returning vets to use alcohol to numb and self-medicate against PTSD.  
  • the power of  campaign to bring PoWs in the Hanoi Hilton home and the powerful impact it had when they finally did return.
  • the scope, emotion, and power of the Vietnam Vets Against the War marches against the war- how disparate were the participants.  
  • We are reminded that. many years after the war, many veterans were still struggling to cope with their experience and find a positive role to play in society. 
  • At the conclusion of the audible version, the author in her own voice shares what inspired her to write the book and named the individuals who were sources for her stories and  advised her on the book.  It is  an impressive list and adds a lot of credibility to the message she is conveying through the experiences of fictional Frankie McGrath.

What I didn’t care for:

  • To me it, The Women read like a book written by a woman not just about women,  but also FOR women. The book is almost exclusively from women’s perspectives and in language that made me feel at times like I was not the target reader;
  • The men in the book are often cardboard  stereotypes or caricatures, who served as little more than accessories in some way to the life of Frankie McGrath, the protagonist in the story. As a man, I would have liked to see more of their perspective and thought that mattered more than we got from the author. The men mattered too;
  • I often felt myself being led down a path that would lead to an emotional response to an upcoming or anticipated event – I could sometimes predict what it would be.  To enjoy the book, I let myself be led – but felt slightly used. 
  • I felt the author tried to jam too much about the Vietnam experience into this novel. The dead and wounded anonymous soldiers, the deaths and wounding of loved ones, the dysfunction of families because of the war, PTSD, social alienation, marching and protests against the war, POWs in Vietnam, the sexual revolution, alcoholism and drug abuse  – all are jammed into Frankie McGrath’s experience.
  • Poor Frankie McGrath had it all happen to her, except being herself physically wounded in the war. Her experiences with men seemed to be one bad luck event or bad decision after another. With each new relationship,  I just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop – and it usually did.  And each time, her disappointment set her back – WAY back, again.  To be honest, reading about all of her bad decisions regarding her family, the men in her life, her options to move forward, and then her woe-is-me-I’m-a-victim responses to where she found herself, began to exhaust me.   When is this woman going to own her life and take responsibility for herself?!!!  A couple of times I had to force myself to stay with the book.  

But I’m glad I did.  In the end, she finally does get the help she needs (though indeed it is forced upon her) and begins to heal.  It felt to me a bit like seeing the sun come up after a long, dark, cold night – and as I was approaching the end of the book, my hope was revived that things might work out.  I was pretty sure the author wouldn’t end on a negative note.   I was pleased with the end of the book and how the author brought a few loose ends together in a satisfying manner.   

The conclusion  caused me to revise upward my assessment of the book.  Hannah’s  writing is eloquent and compelling, but at least the second half of the book was not an easy read, given the plethora of bad experiences and trauma that she has us wade through.   That said, it made a strong impression on me, and for those interested in understanding the perspective of a woman Vietnam veteran, and that period of American history, Iwould indeed recommend it.  

The Audible is ably read by Julian Whelan, who credibly gives the various characters their own voices.  

OTHER REVIEWS

In looking at other reviews, the majority are very positive, and apparently it was #1 on the NYT combined fiction best seller list for 10 consecutive weeks, and was one of the most borrowed books in American Libraries. It was however panned by the Boston Globe for patronizing its readers with cliches from the era of the Vietnam War.

Many reviews I read,raved about the insights into women’s experiences in the Vietnam War, and during the counter-culture movement during and and immediately following war.  I read a number of reviews that echoed my criticisms of the the second half of the book of the amount and degree of anxiety and emotional trauma we had to experience suffer along with the protagonist.  The reviews I read in Reddit were mixed as well, for the same reasons.   81% of Amazon reviewers give it five stars,  14% gave it four  stars,  and 5% three or less.  

As noted above, I had mixed feelings, and go back and forth between 3 and 4 stars, but believe the positives well outweighed the negatives, and it was definitely a memorable experience.    I would give it 4 stars. 

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Unreasonable Hospitality – the Power of Giving People More than they Expect, by Will Guidara

Posted on February 17, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book: Selected by my SEAL book club, based on several strong recommendations

Summary in 3 Sentences: Will Guidara’s first-person account of growing up, deciding at a young age that he wanted to go into the hospitality business, and then, after a lot of experience, being given the opportunity as a young man  to manage a prominent restaurant in NYC.  The book relates how he developed his ideal of over-the-top hospitality and how he began to implement it at Eleven Madison Park (EMP) in NYC, in a way that took that restaurant from two Michelin stars to four, and ultimately being ranked #1 restaurant in the world. The book relates how his leadership philosophy evolved over the years, experiments that succeeded and failed, mistakes  made and short and long term consequences. 

My Impressions: My new favorite leadership book!  It is mostly about building a great culture – which takes time and patience.  Not so much “what” to do, but “how” to do it.  Though the context of his personal journey is the restaurant hospitality business – in NYC of all places – his approach and passion, and his philosophy will work in any context where the leader wants to build a strong and enduring culture of commitment, excellence and caring. but it takes time and persistence.

It is very much a personal/autobiographical story.  I read the book, but many of my friends listened to it and very much enjoyed that – since Will Guidara himself reads it, telling his own story. And several of my friends who listened to it, then bought the hard copy so that they could review and highlight the many ideas and principles he relates in his story of how he built a great culture which took him and his team to the top.  

For someone who just wants a sense of his message, Will helps us out with his chapter titles, section sub-titles within the chapters, and then he boldens/highlights key ideas and insights in his book. It may be tempting for someone in a hurry to just skim the chapter and sub-chapter titles to get the gist of the book – but the impact of those ideas and principles comes from the stories he tells about how he arrived at them and the impact they had on him and his team.  For example: 

Chapter titles include:

  • Restaurant-smart vs Corporate-smart
  • Breaking Rules and Building  a Team
  • Creating a Culture of Collaboration
  • Relationships are Simple.  Simple is hard.
  • Earning Informality
  • Learning to be Unreasonable.

A few of the many, many section subtitles within the chapters: 

  • Invite your team along
  • Leaders Listen
  • Find the Hidden Treasures
  • The Way you do one thing is the way you do Everything.
  • Keep the Team Engaged at all Costs
  • Language creates culture
  • Find the Third Option
  • Persistence and Determination alone are Omnipotent.
  • Make it Cool to Care
  • Slow down to Speed up

What is clear in reading this book, is that a key to Will Guidara’s success in implementing his approach to leadership was his passionate belief in it, and his willingness to live and lead by the example that his philosophy lays out. This is not a “paint-by-numbers” approach to leadership – do these things and you will succeed. That approach has it’s utility – but gets you paint-by-numbers employees – who’ll follow rules, do what they’re told, but without passion, commitment, or creativity. His approach is clearly about passion, commitment, and an intuitive love for people and the process. 

In this book we see clearly that Will Guidara believes passionately that great hospitality will lead to success – however one measures it.  But Unreasonable “hospitality” is another way of saying unreasonable “caring” for others – taking care of customers and other people – beyond what our culture normally expects.  The subtitle of this book is “the remarkable power of giving people more than they expect.”

One of the really fun things about this book are the examples he gives of “unreasonable” hospitality – examples of how and when he, vis-a-vis his employees, and his team,  vis-a-vis their customers go WAY out of their way to do favors and make them feel especially valued.  This is not always rewarded, but it very often is, when such gestures becomes part of the culture, you have  a culture in which people care about much more than their own immediate short term comfort.  In the culture that he created, the members on his team sought ways to one-up each other in hospitality gestures, within the guardrails that he created (they still had to make a profit!) 

It’s a reasonable question whether this approach could work in a large corporate organization.  He addresses this indirectly by pointing out that the CEO of the corporate group that owned his restaurant EMP encouraged and exemplified most of the principles that Will uses in his book, and this CEO gave him the latitude to be unconventional, creative, and to experiment. But even large organizations are made up of a multitude of teams.  It is worth considering what it would be like if a CEO’s executive team lived by the principles of Unreasonable Hospitality amongst themselves and toward their subordinate teams.  What would that do to organizational culture and cohesion?

I was pleased to see that he emphasized what I used to emphasize when I spoke and consulted on creating a great corporate culture:  that is, the importance of the hiring and onboarding processes. He personally was involved in all hires – at least initially, and with aspiring employees, emphasized the mindset and values his team expected and would hold each other accountable to. There are a lot of  competent and capable people looking for work, who look good on paper, but who would not be able to adapt to a culture based on innovation, caring, and “unreasonable hospitality.”     Guidara points out that he was always looking for people of strong character, who would be willing to experiment, had the capacity to care for others and put the team before themselves.  The right people he could teach the skills to do the job he needed done.  With few exceptions, everyone started at the bottom as a server/bus boy and proved themselves inorder to work their way up their hierarchy.  

Will’s creative approach to his job, willingness to try new approaches, innovate and experiment was what led to so much of their success. But Will was not a starry eyed idealist.  He was very much into and obsessed with details and finance, and meticulously went over the P&L records.  Not all of his or his team’s experiments/innovations worked.  He tracked the financial costs of each of his experiment and was willing to take some losses that might yield long term gains to their culture as well as their bottom line.  He saw that the costs of occasional failed  experiments were the price of fulfilling his vision of leading a  restaurant known for innovative and unreasonable hospitality, where people would love to eat and return to. 

I was reminded of one of my other favorite leadership books that I read a few years ago: Loonshots, by Safi Bahcall. In it, Bahcall noted that the best organizations have a balance between its artists and soldiers. The artists are the creative and imaginative ones, who generate new ideas, who want to experiment and maybe find a better way. The soldiers focus on efficiency and making shit happen, here and now, and they usually see the artists as time wasting nuisances, simply good-idea-fairies.  Experimentation often comes at the expense of short term results and efficiency.  Bahcall noted that a great organization needs both artists and soldiers, recognizing that there’s almost always a tension between those two groups.  But in the BEST organizations, the leader is a bridge, brings the two together and teaches both groups to respect each other’s contributions.   It seemed to me that Will Guidara is unique in that he seems to be strong in both qualities – artist and soldier. 

It may be surprising to some that a SEAL book club would select,  much less be over-the-top impressed with a book about leadership in the hospitality industry – but this book was a winner, with even the most hard core of the SEALs who attended the session.  They all appreciated the value that Guidara put on building a cohesive team with a common purpose and which teammates care deeply about each other and their mission. As noted, at least a few both listened to and read the book, and a couple who are now active in the corporate world wanted to contact him to speak to their teams. 

A couple of our SEALs knew Will, reached out to him and he agreed to join us (by zoom) for the discussion of his book.  A highlight of  that session was that one of the SEALs attending had worked for Will at EMP for four years a decade ago, but had since left, joined the Navy, gotten through BUD/S served in a SEAL team and then been selected to serve at our most prestigious SEAL Team.  This SEAL stated unequivocally that his time and what  he learned working for Will at EMP had been a significant contributor to his success as a SEAL.  He shared how at one point he was not doing well as an employee at EMP, that others were getting promoted and he was being left behind.  He shared how Will’s very professional and straightforward counseling got him on the right track.  One of Will’s principles: criticize the behavior or actions, not the person. The back and forth between Will and this SEAL was compelling and was a highlight of our session.

It should at this point go without saying that I strongly recommend this book to anyone who leads an organization and is open to a different but proven approach to building a strong and successful  culture.  

 

 

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