Bob's Books

Why this book:  I had read it several years ago, and recommended it to my son, who read it, liked it, and wanted to talk about it during his visit.  My friend Jay also wanted to read it and join our discussion.  It was a great book to re-read.  Though written in 1936, it was required reading when I was at the Naval War College in the mid 1990’s. Interestingly, Hitler also read it and recommended it to his Generals before WW2.

Summary in 3 sentences: The General is a novelized story of Herbert Curzon, a fictional British General during WW1 who exemplified the virtues of courage, selfless service, decisiveness, and loyalty to the values of his institution and his nation. His very strict compliance with traditional values, standards, and protocols, and indeed a good bit of blind luck led to his continued promotion into positions of greater and greater responsibility for the lives of tens of thousands of men n war. His extraordinary sense of duty motivated him to do very well what his country called upon him to do, but his personal life lacked heart and depth, and he was unable to acknowledge and adapt to changes in military science and warfare, and his units and ultimately his nation suffered enormously.

My Impressions: Though Forester claims he did not write The General as a leadership case study, nor with the intent of influencing history, it is indeed an excellent case study and did have an impact, which is why it was required reading while I was at the Naval War College. His protagonist Curzon epitomizes many of the leadership qualities that are idealized to this day in military and government institutions, as well as in private sector leadership courses and institutions. He exemplified the virtues of courage, honesty, decisiveness, leadership by example, selflessness, the good of the institution above one’s own or any individual’s convenience, the importance of tradition and protocols, the importance of leaders being visible and present to their organization- these are all important aspects of great leadership.

And yet his overly rational approach to duty stunted the virtue of compassion, and his lack of imagination could not envision or even acknowledge possibilities outside of the catechism of his 19th century military education and experience.  He insisted on applying old solutions to new problems, doing more and more of the same, with greater and greater effort and discipline,  expecting that simply greater effort would assure a better outcome.  Forester offers the analogy of expending more and more energy and resources trying to remove a screw from a board, by simply applying one’s extensive experience removing nails.  (see the specific quote below)

Forester’s The General reminds us that the traditional approaches to leadership are often not enough. While there is much to admire and emulate in Curzon’s  discipline, courage, and selflessness, no discriminating reader wants to lead nor live like him.  Within a great story in a fascinating historical context, The General makes clear that highly lauded character qualities do not necessarily make a great leader. This story offers an example of a person of great character failing as a leader. And, I might say ultimately, as a man.

And yet – while it may be easy to disparage Curzon by applying today’s insights and standards to his decisions and lack of imagination,  that may not be fair.   He was a product of his times, of his culture,  of the British Army of the late Victorian era, which shaped, molded, and created him.  He bought into and fully committed to the values and ideals of his institution, and they drove everything he did.   His behavior, decisions and actions were endorsed and reinforced by the organizational ethos of the British Army of that era.  This should be a warning to those of us who belong to strong and coherent cultures today.

This story reminds me of an article written by my good friend George Reed entitled “Character vs. Situational Imperatives as the Primary Driver of Unethical Conduct: Implications for the Study of Leadership”  In this short piece, Dr Reed  argues convincingly  that situational factors – environment and culture, as opposed to “character” – play a much larger role in determining conduct and behavior than they are frequently given credit for.  He makes the case that our behavior and our perception of right and wrong are more a  function of the values and imperatives of our environment, than of that illusive quality called “character.”

Some of Forester’s insights and perspectives from The General:  

Good judgment in one context often does not  necessarily carry over into a different context.

Political acumen, and a refined understanding of power and influence are KEY to getting promotions and good assignments in the military, especially at the more senior ranks.  Successful senior officers have a strong sense for cultivating influence – not only in  military but also in political circles.

The social inviolability of class boundaries in Victorian England.  The “officer” was not necessarily of the highest class, but served the highest classes and was expected to comport himself accordingly (still true?)   Crossing class boundaries in friendship and marriage could be very costly. Membership in the highest classes was based on birth alone – and such democratic values as “merit” and character, available to anyone regardless of class or birth, were considered by the English elite to be less sophisticated criteria for judging individuals.

Victorian culture. The General offers fascinating insights into English upper class culture in the last years of the Victorian era and the British Empire.

Attrition Warfare.  When the British Army continued to accrue hundreds of thousands of casualties, and continued to throw more bodies into the slaughter, and then asked for more men and resources, political leaders stepped in. I was reminded a bit of Vietnam. And perhaps of Iraq.

The role of wives, women, relatives of those in power and how gossip in their social circles could influence politics, even decisions about who gets which prestigious positions and assignments in the military.

Dating, love, romance,  and marriage in Victorian England.  Curzon’s courting, marriage to and relationship with his wife were very Victorian and traditional.   Their relationship was cordial and close, but hardly intimate by today’s standards.   We get insights into social and sexual mores of the time – and how these were already in transition in 1914.

Leadership required to lead large conventional military forces is very different from that which is effective in special operations.  Rigid discipline is the norm, but it clearly stifles, if it doesn’t kill imagination and innovation.

The dark side of personal reputation and the value the military culture places on it. There were multiple times when Curzon’s concern for his personal reputation colored his judgment regarding what was right or best for the long term interests of the Army and England.

Shortcoming of the book (from my perspective):   I felt sometimes as if Forester were “leading the witness,” so to speak.  Several times he refers to Curzon’s lack of imagination, or calls him “simple minded” and refers to his “silly sword” toward the end of the book.  It was clear from early on how Forester viewed his protagonist. The book would have been better without the author so explicitly injecting his own perspective  and prejudices into the story, and left those judgments to the discerning reader.

Note 1: CS Forester is most famous for his Horatio Hornblower series about a young naval officer in the Napoleonic wars. He also wrote The African Queen – the book upon which the famous movie with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn is based.

Note 2: My edition of The General has an excellent introduction written by Merrill Bartlett, Lt Col USMC at the US Naval Academy in the early 80s.  Bartlett’s writings were still being used in the curriculum at the USNA when I served there 20 years later. In his introduction, Bartlett writes: “…Curzon is Forester’s caricature of the best and worst of  (British Commanders of the era) : hide-bound, traditional, and utterly devoid of imagination, yet brave and honorable to a fault.”

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Some interesting and representative quotes: (no page references since the edition I read has been out of print for decades)

…most of the great body of rules and precedents dealt not with the training of an army for war, but with keeping it inexpensive and out of the way in time of peace.  The system was, moreover, adapted to the needs of an army  recruited from the very young and the very stupid, officered by men of uniform ideas and training…

(Emily anticipating her honeymoon night)  Emily kept her eyes on the page before her although she could read no word of it; she was making an effort now at this late hour to rally her self-control as became one of her blue blood and to go stoically through the ordeal before her without a sign of weakness, like a French aristocrat on the way to the guillotine.

Her Grace was supremely confident in her share of the universal opinion that it was far better to receive distinctions for being someone than for doing something.

In addition as a born intriguer, Mackenzie could not possibly credit Curzon with ordinary honesty, but considered him as just a  fellow intriguer, an ally worth having and especially a potential enemy worth placating.

It was hard to believe that a wave of disciplined men could not sweep across that frail barrier, and as Curzon began to think of that he found himself believing that it would be better even that they should try and fail than moulder here in unsoldierly idleness – it would be the more appropriate, the more correct thing.

The Brigadier General, General Staff was dark and pale, but his face was stamped with the same truculent and imperious expression as his chief’s, as befitted a man whose word swayed the destinies of forty thousand men. There was the same cold eye, the same slight scowl between the eyebrows, the same thrust-forward jaw and cruel mouth. Yet despite Curzon’s more modest attitude as a newcomer, his face had just the same trade marks, curiously enough.

His anxiety regarding his division prevented him from delegating more of his authority than he was compelled to, and early morning and late night found him patiently reading court martial records and confidential reports on junior officers.

It was his duty to make the division efficient; that was why he slaved and toiled over the business.  His desire for his own professional advancement, his anxiety to stand well in Emily’s eyes and in those of her family were undoubtedly acute, but they were not the motives which guided him.  He had been given a job of work to do, and he did it to the best of his ability, although the desk work made him thin and irritable and spoilt his digestion and his eyesight, and although he could never find time now to have all the exercise for which he craved.

Accustomed only to nails, they had made one effort to pull out the screw by main force, and now that it had failed they were devising methods of applying more force still, of obtaining more efficient pincers, of using levers and fulcrums so that more men could bring their strength to bear. They could hardly be blamed for not guessing that by rotating the screw it would come out after the exertion of far less effort; it would be a notion so different from anything they had ever encountered that they would laugh at the man who suggested it.

The Generals round the table were not men who were easily discouraged -men of that sort did not last long in command in France. Now that the first shock of disappointment had been faced they were prepared to make a fresh effort, and to go on making those efforts as long as their strength lasted.

There was no love lost between the Regulars and the others who gayly styled themselves Irregulars. After a short trial it was found impossible for the two sections  to mingle without friction in the social life of the Headquarters mess, and by an unspoken agreement the staff fell into two separate cliques, only coming together for the purpose of work.

Kitchener’s Army found its grave on the Somme, just as the old regular army had at Ypres.

Curzon worked with grim determination during those three months. There was always pressure to be applied to someone – transport officers who said that a thing could not be done, major generals who flinched from exposing their divisions to some fresh ordeal, artillery colonels who pleaded that their men were on the point of exhaustion.  He did his duty with all his nerve and all his strength, as was his way, while the higher command looked on him with growing approval; he was a man after their own heart, who allowed no consideration to impede him in the execution of his orders.

He had been gifted with a temperament ideal for a soldier in the presence of the enemy, knowing no fear and careless of danger, and yet his duty now consisted in never encountering danger, in forcing responsibility on others, in desk work and paper work and telephone work which drained his vitality and sapped his health.

All a successful attack demanded was material and determination.

And he was lonely in his responsibility, too, although loneliness meant little to him.  Save for Emily, he had gone friendless through the world among his innumerable acquaintances.  He would sometimes, during the summer of 1918, have been desperately unhappy if he had stopped to think about happiness. But according to his simple code, a man who had attained the rank of Lieutenant General, was the son-in-law of a Duke, and had a loving wife, could not possibly be unhappy. There could be no reason for it. Unreasonable unhappiness was the weakness of poets, and others with long hair, not of soldiers, and so he believed himself to be happy as the British Army plunged forward into the slaughter of Passchendaele.

Why this book: This was the KPBS 2016 One Book; One San Diego selection and also a National Book Award winner.  My reading group (rightly) assumed it would be a good read.   As  a memoir, this selection was an exception – we normally choose fiction.  But this book reads like great fiction, with the added advantage of being actually true.

Summary in 3 sentences:  We view the world of Havana undergoing the chaos and trauma of Castro’s revolution through the eyes of young Carlos Eire- writing in first person, mostly between the ages  8 and 12 years old.   He is a normal  happy-go-lucky, occasionally naughty  young boy, having fun with his friends, but he shares his fears and anxieties born of strict Catholic schooling and the violence of the Castro revolution,  which upended the comfortable world he had grown up in.  Eventually his family is torn asunder, he and his brother are sent to the states, and we get glimpses of the difficult life he lived as a young refugee in America.

My Impressions:  Beautifully written – Carlos Eire is a poet at heart. As my wife was reading it, she recalled  how Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, in (in a very different setting) evoked the mindset of a young boy viewing a crazy world of adults with some confusion – and perhaps more insight than he realized. Carlos Eire’s story indeed shares that brilliance with McCourt’s.

The story begins while his world is relatively “normal” in Havana, and devolves until everything is in disarray, the Castro revolution has shaken the foundations of all that made sense to him and the world he knew.  He describes Castro’s Orwellian world of double speak and propaganda, and how he witnessed  firing squads and the round up and imprisonment of political dissidents on TV or in person.   Such events eventually became almost routine and unremarkable.

The story is told sequentially, though from early on in the book, we jump from Havana to a few years into the future in the United States where Carlos and his brother Tony were later passed from foster home to foster home after leaving Cuba.   We get brief glimpses of the uprootedness, the fears, the challenges  and uncertainty of their life as immigrants, but then, the story returns to his innocent perspective as a boy in Cuba, unaware of what awaited him.

The story is multi-dimensional.  It is a coming of age story of a young boy in a chaotic and  challenging environment; it is the story of the very painful disruption of Cuba in transition; it is the story of a family with some rather eccentric characters dealing with uncertainty and disruption; it is the story of the shock and loneliness of a young boy being sent away from all that he knew to live in the strange world of the United States.

But what is even more remarkable about this book is  Eire’s writing – how he tells his story.  Almost every chapter  can stand alone as a beautifully written short story.  His chapter 27, about his first experience falling in love as a young boy, is classic.  His humor, his metaphors and imagery, his openness about his fears, anxieties, fantasies, and transgressions are remarkable.  He originally intended to publish this book as a novel, because he was uncomfortable being so transparent about his life and fears.  He was uncomfortable shining so much light into his own thoughts and anxieties, and his family’s life, circumstances, and foibles as a memoir, so he chose to publish it as a novel -to give himself some plausible deniability.  I believe that his intent to publish it as a novel very much influenced the style of his writing – less that of a memoir, more that of a novel.  But since it was all in fact his personal story, his remembrances, as accurate as he could recall, his publisher insisted that it be a memoir, and we are the richer for it.  That is much of what makes this great literature.

Key Takeaways for me:

1. I loved his writing – a memoir as literature.  I was as amazed by his writing as I was by his story.  This book reminded me of other memoirs I’ve read written by poets – Maya Angelou and Robert Service.   Carlos Eire is a history professor at Yale, and though not a poet by profession, he is clearly a poet by temperament….
2. How truly bad, brutal, and self-righteously power hungry Castro and his revolution were.  I had of course heard some of this, but experiencing it vicariously through the eyes of one who experienced it directly,  or was exposed to some of the worst of it indirectly, was eye-opening. I now have a better understanding of the depth of the Cuban-American  hatred for Castro.
3. The amazing resilience and fortitude of people coming to this country with nothing – how the Cuban people in Miami stepped up to take care of those who were able to get out and get them on their feet. And the discrimination of America of the 60s toward anyone who was not Anglo-Saxon.  “Spic” was an epithet Eire got used to hearing about himself and other Hispanics.

I participated in a fascinating live Skype session at the Imperial Beach Library with Carlos Eire specifically to discuss this book.  IF you’re interested in this book, or read it and liked it, I’d recommend watching/listening to an interview with with him on Youtube in which he shares many of the same insights and perspectives. The interview was conducted soon after  Waiting for Snow in Havana was selected as the One Book, One San Diego book for 2016.  It can be viewed here.

A few quotes from the book that struck me (page numbers from the paperback edition)

Good and evil dancing with each other so tightly, only one subatomic particle between them, while indifference looks on, as a chaperone, with her two lazy eyes, neither one of them capable of focusing….they dance so fast, good and evil, these two polar opposites. So tightly and furiously. You can’t dance with just one of these partners. If you cut into their dance, you end up with both, as a threesome.  And if you fear cutting into the dance, and taking a spin with good and evil, you end up dancing with the cross-eyed, ugly chaperone. 70

How great, to be born to one of those families, and to have the children of similar families bring you presents and sing “Happy Birthday”in English as you blew out the candles on your excruciatingly well-decorated cake. 70

That was another very Cuban deal. Mothers stayed around for the party.  None of this drop-off-the kid-thank-God-see-you-two-hours-later American kind of stuff. No. These mothers stayed for the whole party, keeping an eye on things and talking to one another. How well I remember those phalanxes of moms, and my own mother among them. 74

The marble walls were a golden yellowish hue and very shiny, as though polished with a vengeance.  137

Here are some of the ways in which my family thought you could catch pneumonia and die: Standing in front of an open window with wet hair. Going outdoors without a shirt on, except at the beach. Going outdoors in the daytime wearing just a T-shirt, except at the beach. Wearing a shirt without an undershirt. Wearing shorts between November and February. Going outdoors without a jacket between November and February, no matter what the temperature. Taking a shower with water that wasn’t warm enough, no matter what time of the year, even on the hottest days. Wearing shoes without socks. … catching a chill, under any circumstances was a death sentence. 139

What they didn’t know was that it would take only one brief plane ride to turn me from a white boy  into a spic.  160

What I had come to loath the most was the unrelenting barrage of information on the Revolution and its programs. It was like nothing else I had ever experienced, this saturation bombing of the mind.  232

There is nothing in the world like the sound of sacred symbols being pulverized, little by little.  277

Why this book:  Strongly recommended by my friend Jay.

Summary in 3 sentences:  Fascinating combination and convergence of several themes and stores:  The Cretan resistance against Nazi occupation, specifically focused on a single operation – the kidnapping of a German general; the experiences of the author with a couple of fellow British aficionados of the Cretan resistance traveling to Crete to retrace the steps of the resistance fighters on that one famous exploit; the evolution of the concept of fitness and ‘the hero’ over centuries and millennia; modern day research into a healthy diet and and physical fitness which indeed makes more sense than what most of us have grown up with.  All these themes are tied together in this book.

My impressions:  I started by trying to read it, but struggled a bit, since the author was going back and forth between his multiple themes.  He just seemed to be all over the place, and I couldn’t follow it.  Jay told me that didn’t surprise him, especially if I were trying to read the book in 10-15 minute increments.  He  noted that the whole requires a more extended visit to the book than brief, incremental reading sessions.  So I bought the book on audible – listened to it while driving and loved the story and message.  If your attention span is compromised, for whatever reason, I recommend listening to it. It’s very engagingly told as a recited story, and fun to listen to.

The story of the Cretan resistance and the kidnapping of the German general begins and concludes the book, and it ties the entire book together.  McDougall frequently leaves  Crete and WW2 and take us on what seems to be a digression about how concepts of fitness have evolved, and then he comes back to our heroes planning and conducting amazing operations against the brutal Nazi regime in Crete.  The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) commandos helped organize and support the Cretan resistance to sabotage Nazi efforts to make Crete a reliable logistics support base for their Eastern Europe offensive.  They made life difficult for the Nazis in Crete, thus providing  critical support to the Allied fight against the Nazis.  Many argue that the tenacity of the Cretan resistance delayed the German invasion of Russia by two months, significantly undermining the success of that operation.  The resistance heroes are both British and Cretan;  as an American special operator, I can appreciate the risks and heroism of the British agents, and I am amazed and inspired by the tenacity, resilience, and sacrifices of the Cretans.

But the book is really about health, courage, fitness, nutrition, and a life style full of a creative and “useful” movement.  The story of the Cretan resistance is a backdrop which helps him make his points: How could these unlikely commandos, untrained in the military arts, not particularly fit or athletic by modern standards, pull off one of the most daring special operations in extremely difficult and remote terrain? What where the physical and physiological, mental and emotional elements that enabled these heroes to succeeds?  All of this comes into play in this book.

Some of the transitions between the various themes were awkward or occasionally strained, and he may have tried to do too much with the book to do it all well, but it was a very interesting and creative look at all of his themes.   I loved listening to it. And I learned a lot that I’ll not soon forget.

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Some of his key points and my take-aways:

Exercise and Diet.  Our bodies evolved primarily in the hunter-gatherer world of our pre-historic ancestors, and they function best when to whatever degree we can, we are able to simulate the types of exercise and movement of that environment – to which our bodies were optimized.  Early in the book, he introduces us to the development of parcours running and looks at the evolution of fitness and health training through the 20th century. In the process, he disparages the gym/fitness industry and the focus on bodybuilding and appearance, rather than agility, speed, and more “useful” manifestations of physical ability. Women will be impressed and inspired by his comments and examples on the relative equality of the sexes in matters of general fitness and capabilities.

Later in the book he spends 3 chapters on nutrition.  Our metabolism developed and evolved with our bodies during that same hunter-gatherer period, and he claims our bodies are ill-suited to the modern high-calory/high-carb diet that most Westerners live on.   With numerous examples of the world’s best ultra-endurance athletes switching to the diet high in fat, protein and complex carbohydrates,  he points out how not only health but performance is optimized.  He also advocates endurance training conducted primarily in the (relatively) low hart-rate – “aerobic” zone, keeping one’s heart rate at no more than 180 minus one’s age. I’d heard/read all this before, especially in the book Primal Endurance, but he makes the case more convincingly and with more flair than others.  He disparages with particular vehemence the sports-drink  and food industries as having profited mightily from leading people astray with clever advertising on what constitutes good fitness and good health.

Greek and Cretan culture: McDougall regularly returns to Greek mythology and the heroes  of classical Greece in his description of heroic living and heroic lifestyles.  But his focus is on Crete – especially the Cretan people as they rose to the challenge of Nazi occupation. Hitler expected Crete to fall to the German juggernaut in 2 days. It took months and many more resources than they had planned for the Nazis to sufficiently subdue Crete to use it as a logistics staging base.  We learn of the toughness, the loyalty, the intrepidity of the Cretan farmers and shepherds, and how they did not hesitate to risk everything to fight the Nazis.  Raiding, stealing and smuggling  had been part of their culture for generations, which had bred a level of independence and cleverness that the Nazis couldn’t control.  Fiercely independent they resisted all efforts by the Nazis to manage and subdue them. I was inspired by the degree to which the Cretans hold each other accountable to an ethic of courage, freedom, and loyalty that is uncommon in much of the West. I particularly enjoyed his description of the Greek value of Xenia –  the moral obligation to help and be hospitable to visitors, strangers, or others in need.  “Xenophobic” is from the same word.

Concept of the Hero: Having thought and written some about heroes and “Living Heroically” I was intrigued by his writing on heroism as being tied to a concept of the whole man – or whole person.  Most of those who played key roles in the Cretan resistance and Greek mythology were men, but in his updates and stories from recent research and examples include women in his concept of whole-person heroes.

He talks about the idea of heroism as a practical skill that can be learned, and that heroes are “useful” to those around them and to their larger communities.  Such usefulness requires the hero to be fit, agile, healthy, and adaptable – as well as having the more classic qualities of courage and selflessness.  This requirement for the hero to be adaptable and “useful” is part of his argument against current fitness models emphasizing large muscles or specialization, in areas which are not agile, adaptable or useful.

He refers often to Odysseus who was sneaky and clever and innovative, not just willing to march to his own drummer, but to do so while also protecting himself and ensuring his own survival.  He relates how other Greek heroes and gods exhibit these same qualities, representing the cultural values of ancient Greece and Crete.   The British and Cretan heroes in the story of the Cretan resistance were not our classic made-in-Hollywood heroes.  The Brits in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) were individuals who in many cases were rejects from conventional military training, sometimes eccentric, often people who wouldn’t have succeeded in the very structured and hierarchical world of the conventional military.  The Cretan farmers were often peasants and shepherds who simply, and without question, stepped up when called upon to risk everything for their cause.  These independent Cretan peasants who were raised to be hard, hardy, and loyal,  he called  “natural born heroes.”   The British unconventional warriors who were assisting them were more like T.E. Lawrence than James Bond or Sylvester Stallone – often they were poets and classics professors, accountants and others not from classical “heroic” backgrounds.

Quibble:  As with many books like this – my quibble is that he makes his arguments too strongly and doesn’t present counter positions, or potential alternatives to his position on health, diet, and fitness.  There remains some controversy about his positions.  I spoke with one of the nutrition/health specialists at Naval Special Warfare who had read the book and liked it. But his quibble is mine –  his case for  high fat diet and low-hear-rate training do not take into account performance or life-style goals where these might not fit, or always be optimal.  He doesn’t talk about how athletes must train at high heart rates for certain sports.  SEALs for example need endurance, but just as importantly, need explosive strength, which requires different training.  In noticing this, I assume that he left out other parts of the story with the Cretan resistance that may not have fit his narrative.  That said, I still really liked the book.

Why this book: Sebastian Junger and Seth Godin  strongly recommended it in Tim Ferris’s podcast interviews with them. Then my friend Jay read it, and also insisted that it is a ‘must-read.” So I had to move it to the head of the line – which I did by buying the audio and listening to it while driving.  Twice through.

Summary in 3 Sentences: This book is a biological and anthropological analysis of the evolution of the human species. He briefly but engagingly covers pre-history, when there were multiple species of humans , and why it is believed that Homo-sapiens dominated and eliminated other humanoid species, and then gives an analysis of how human society,  cultures and values have evolved to become our current civilizations.  The book finishes with a wary look at the future of Homo-sapiens as the species as we now know, given the rapid development of genetic manipulations, and mechanical and computer based additions to augment human capabilities in bionic and cyborg-like components.

My Impressions: An incredible book, with a huge scope and message, with implications and insights that have changed the way I think about myself and the world.  I listened to Sapiens on audio, and when I completed it, I started over from the beginning, and listened to it in its entirety again-there is SO MUCH there, that I wanted to hear it all again. Then I bought the  hard-copy version of the book as well.  I have just read the chapter on happiness, entitled “And they lived happily ever after,” and though I’ve heard it read on audio twice before, I still found it new and fresh.  I plan to read several more of the chapters in print and expect the same reaction.  I’ve found that reading print really is a different experience of assimilating “knowledge” and content.  On my recommendation, my  wife is currently reading it, as are my son and daughter.

In his Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind, Harari has an agenda and a perspective, and though he clearly seeks to be intellectually honest and as close to objective as possible, he also is viewing our species through his  a certain lens, with certain values – which he leaves the reader to deduce.   He nearly always attempts to provide a fair representation of alternate perspectives than his own,  but we are left in little doubt of his values and where he stands.  Given the similarity of his lens and mine, that he and I are both fairly well educated  (he much more so than I), middle class, Western males, with somewhat refined moral and “liberal” sensibilities,  I find his perspective convincing.  I use the term “liberal” in the sense of advocating maximum individual freedom, not its political sense.

——-a bit more detail—–

I got so much out of this book that it is hard to write a review/summary.  Though there is little new or revolutionary in this book, how Harari tells the stories to explain his points and their implications truly make this a valuable and engaging read. Here are a few of the perspectives/insights that impressed me (page numbers refer to the 2015 hardback edition):

Genetically, we are hunter-gatherers. We evolved over nearly 2 million years to be hunter gatherers – and it was only about 30k years ago that we began cultivating agriculture and living in villages and cities.   Then as a species, for thousands of years we were largely a mix of farmers living in small villages and small urban centers, until just a couple of hundred years ago, when the industrial revolution began a much more rapid urbanization.   In the last 100 or so years, the environment in which most people live has changed dramatically, but we all still have a genetic code that evolved adapted primarily to a hunter-gatherer world. He explains the many implications of Homo sapiens having a genetic make-up which evolved to thrive in one context, is now somewhat maladapted to the environment in which most of us live.   He suggests that “the transition first to agriculture and then to industry has condemned us to living unnatural lives that cannot give full expression to our inherent inclinations and instincts and therefor cannot satisfy our deepest yearnings.” 378

Homo Sapiens are environment changers and destroyers.  We learn how wherever Homo sapiens have ever gone, going back tens of thousands of years, they have significantly altered the flora and fauna of the world they move into.  The most dramatic example he offers was when Homo sapiens came to Australia some 45 thousand years ago.  “The moment the first hunter-gatherer set foot on an Australian beach was the moment that Homo sapiens climbed to the top rung in the food chain on a particular landmass and thereafter became the deadliest species in the annals of planet Earth.”  64  He describes how within a few millennia after arriving in Australia, the large mammals disappeared – the giant koalas, the marsupial lions,  450 lb six foot tall kangaroos, giant wombats and lizards.  These were major food sources for the newly arrived hunters, and these large mammals reproduced far too slowly to make up for their decimation by marauding hunters.  He tells a similar story of how the arrival of Homo Sapiens on the American continents foretold the eventual extinction of the large mammals that roamed those land masses – mastodons, woolly mammoths, saber tooth tigers, and more.  The wooly mammoth in Asia also thrived until its habitats were shared with increasing numbers of Homo Sapiens.  What happened thousands of years later to passenger pigeons, and nearly happened to American Bison was ‘merely’ a continuation of a trend with our species.

Money, credit, trust. This is a fascinating chapter – how barter and trade evolved over a few thousand years into creating money as a means of commerce with a commonly agreed upon value, eventually backed by the power and authority of the state.  Money alone has little practical value without trusting that others will value it, and be willing to exchange labor, services products for it, trusting that they can then use it to purchase products and services from others who also trust in its value. Take away that trust, take away people who are willing to trade goods and services for it, and it is merely pieces of paper or metal, of little value.  Today most “money” is in the form of data stored in computers, traded by those who “trust” in the basic integrity and equitability of the system of exchange.

The evolution of credit begins pretty simply but has evolved into a much more complex system with promises, built on promises, built on more promises, kept track of first by ledgers and now by computers – again all based on trust, in a system of common values, and based on trust in an authority which will hold people and institutions accountable for honoring  promises (credit) extended at the agreed upon value on the agreed upon terms.  Take that trust and enforcement authority away, and our economic system collapses.

Myths upon which society is based.  He points out how the main difference between Homo Sapiens and other intelligent mammals is our ability to discuss, believe in and build a social structure based on things that don’t actually “exist.”  Like rules, laws, customs and social conventions.  Like human rights.  Like cultures, values  and belief systems.  These “exist” only in the minds and imaginations of people.  Complex civilizations require vast numbers of people to believe in these myths, and to behave accordingly.  He points out how these myths include moral obligations to people we don’t know, and will never know.  As society has become more globalized over the last millennium,  agreeing on  common values (myths) has been essential for people of different cultures to trade, work and even live together.  No other species exhibits this ability to coordinate activities among so many different members of the species.  And this collaboration of large masses of people depends on belief in common mythologies – such as the importance of rule-of-law.

Religion, paganism,  polytheism, manichean dualism, monotheism. There is a fascinating section on the evolution of religious beliefs over millennia.  Early Homo sapiens clearly believed in forces outside their control that needed to be appeased.  Belief in the power of rocks and mountains and nature evolved into the polytheism that we are familiar with in ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. In the middle East and eventually in the Roman empire there was a wide belief in a Manichaeans creed that life is a constant battle between forces of good and forces of evil. He points to how when a new religion comes into a region, it frequently absorbs and incorporates the beliefs of the old.  When Christianity became widespread and eventually adopted as the state religion of the Roman empire, Christian monotheism absorbed much of the polytheistic practices that the local populations believed in by including the worship and honoring of saints. The widespread belief in Manichaeans dualism was absorbed by including the Devil and Evil into Christian ontology.

How we treat animals:  Harari makes the point that over millennia Homo sapiens have met their own needs by exploiting animals, often cruelly.   If we measure the success of a species by how well its genes have survived and multiplied, the most successful mammals are cattle and sheep, and of birds, chickens. But if we measure success by how well the species fulfills the purposes for which their genes have evolved, then these animals are indeed poor examples of “success.”  Two centuries ago, there was very little outrage and concern for how slaves were treated and exploited to serve the needs of the more dominant of the Homo sapiens.  Today there is little outrage or concern about how animals are treated  and exploited  – kept in tiny pens their whole lives, quickly fattened and slaughtered – to meet the demands of the market for meat protein. The movement toward free-range chickens and free-range and grass-fed cattle is the beginning of a recognition that if Homo sapiens have a moral obligation to other Homo sapiens, they may also have a moral obligation to other species.

“Over the last two centuries tens of billions of (laboratory monkeys, dairy cows, conveyor-belt chickens) have been subjected to a regime of industrial exploitation whose cruelty has no precedent in the annals of planet Earth. If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history.” 379

Happiness. The second to the last chapter in the book looks at the idea of happiness and asks the provocative question, “Have all of our advances and the progress of civilization made people happier?”  And then he tackles the obvious question imbedded in that question:  What do we mean by “happiness?”   He notes that “The generally accepted definition of happiness is ‘subjective well-being’.”  He laments that historians have neglected to look at how people’s happiness has “evolved” or changed, or devolved, over time.  He asks, “…have the seventy or so turbulent millennia since the Cognitive Revolution made the world a better place to live?  Was the late Neil Armstrong, whose footprint remains intact on the windless moon, happier than the nameless hunter-gatherer who 30,000 years ago left her handprint on a wall in Chauvet Cave? If not, what was the point of developing agriculture, cities, writing, coinage, empires science and industry.” 376  It is not a rhetorical question – he spends much of the chapter exploring the implications of this question.  The chapter on happiness includes fascinating and provocative sections on measuring happiness, happiness through drugs or chemicals, the meaning of life, and self knowledge.

Future of Homo Sapiens:  The final chapter entitled “The End of Homo Sapiens” is fascinating and disturbing.  Harari provides example after example of how genetic engineering is a genie out of the bottle and advances in genetic mapping and genetic therapies are happening at mind-boggling rates.  Science is so rapidly expanding the scope of human power and capabilities that most of us are barely aware of what is happening, nor do we have much of an inkling of where these new capabilities and knowledge will take us. Many are very concerned about the rapid advances in artificial intelligence, to the point that within a generation, we’ll have computers that are so close to being human that it will be difficult to tell the difference – but the computers will be much, much more “intelligent” and capable. Bionic limbs, cyborg-like humans are already a reality with exciting and concerning implications for the future.  He speaks of the Gilgamesh project where biologists and geneticists believe that within a few generations, they will be able to defeat death as a natural outcome of the process of aging.  The prospect of eugenics and genetic manipulation, of computers that are “conscious,” of defeating disease and death, these prospects opens many doors for exciting and terrifying outcomes.   Stay tuned.

My minor quibble:  Harari gives almost no attention to the possibility of a reality that science has yet to accept, much less embrace.  In describing how how people and chimpanzees have been trained to operate artificial limbs with their minds – and in some cases in locations far apart from the individual, he doesn’t address the implications of such power of the mind.  Nor does he refer to the many documented cases that science simply can’t explain because they can’t duplicate them – people having clear visions of events before they happen, children speaking languages they have never heard before, children and adults under hypnoses providing detailed descriptions of people, places, events that were completely outside their experience and even outside their lifespans.  And of course there is more.

In the breadth of his look at Homo Sapiens,  I believe unknowns and  unknowables deserved mention. Colin Wilson, a skeptic, was asked to investigate strange occurrences with the intent of debunking them.  Subsequently, after exploring and examining these unexplainable events and occurrences, he had his mind changed – and wrote a book entitled The Occult in which he describes a wide variety of documented events  for which there is no scientific explanation.    He doesn’t provide explanations, but notes that he is convinced that there is a dimension of reality that we clearly don’t (yet) understand. Scientists still have yet to explain Stonehenge, the Pyramids, Easter Island, and even some voodoo-like occurrences. Harari never alluded to any of these mysteries in Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind nor in his discussion of religion, happiness, life’s meaning.    To not acknowledge nor address the unexplainable at all is a notable omission, especially considering that he went to great pains to present his arguments and perspective from an intellectually honest perspective.

Why this book: Selected by my literature reading group. One of our members had read it and loved it. Also, it continues our recent trend of reading Pulitzer Prize winners.

Summary in 3 Sentences: The book follows a family back and forth from their origins in the Dominican Republic, living under the brutal dictator Trujillo, to their lives as immigrants living in Paterson NJ in the NYC metropolitan area. Oscar Wao is one of a number of characters of the family we get to know in this book, and in the process come to understand something of the culture of the Dominican Republic, the terror of the Trujillo regime, and the world of hispanic immigrants in New Jersey.  The story is about Oscar Wao’s search for maturity, love and adulthood within this cauldron of people fighting for dignity and meaning in these two chaotic and often unforgiving worlds.

My impressions:  This is a book I won’t soon forget – not like anything I’ve ever read before.  Modern, fast moving, interesting, provocative – the book cover describes  Diaz’s writing as “adrenaline-fueled” which is a fair, but insufficient description. The writing is amazing – fast moving, colloquial, clever, imaginative, evocative.  It is hard to describe what this book is about – in fact in reading it, I wasn’t quite sure – until the end.   The characters are rich and varied, and the action and stories go back and forth between New Jersey and Santo Domingo – the context is alive and chaotic.

The writing is crazy – includes lots of Spanish vernacular – some of which I understood, but that which I didn’t, the context was usually enough.  The addition of healthy amounts of colloquial and even vulgar Spanish, mixed in with colloquial and vulgar English clearly gave the intended impression – these people are products of both worlds – the barrios of Santo Domingo and the lower class gringo world of New Jersey.  The language says more than simply the words.

Oscar is a fat nerdy kid who desperately wants a girlfriend, but no girl is interested in a very self-conscious, obese, science fiction nerd.  So Oscar dreams about his fantasy girlfriends, and writes his own Sci-Fi stories – continuously.  He falls in love repeatedly, but it is never reciprocated.  Then the author leaves Oscar, and we spend quite a bit of time getting to know his mother and her traumatized childhood and early adulthood in the Dominican Republic before she emigrated to the US.   And then we get to know Oscar’s fiercely independent older sister, then we come back to Oscar, and then to his Grandmother in Santo Domingo.  And their crazy inter-connected lives.

The narrator becomes one of the characters in the book – part of Oscar Wao is written in first person and reflects the narrator’s personal perspective and role in the story.  The author/narrator is a Dominican Republic macho dude, who tries to help Oscar, but is very much a contrast to him – an athlete, quite a “player” with the women, and in love with Oscar’s sister Lola.

In thinking about this book, it seems to be about so many things. It is about the Dominican diaspora, life under the brutal dictatorship of Trujillo, the chaotic and insecure world of hispanic immigrants in the greater NYC area, the role of curses and superstition in Dominican culture.  It is about the romantic, sexual, emotional  frustration of being an isolated fat-kid nerd in a world driven by a very macho ethic, and standards of attractiveness set by  Madison Avenue.

But, the theme and thread that runs throughout this book and ties it all together, is love –  in its very many manifestations.  In this book, we see it as obsession, infatuation, purely physical/erotic, manipulative, possessive, violent, fearful, parental, protective, insecure, and finally even unconditional and spiritual.

It all comes together in the end.  While I never quite new where the story was going, it was worth the effort to make the trip to get there.   A very powerful ending. One friend in my group commented “I don’t know if Oscar was a saint or a fool.”  Clearly some of both. I felt uplifted by the book in a very strange way – which I believe is what Diaz intended.

Key Take-aways: 

• Love has many, many manifestations.   Some are harmful to those whom it touches; others are sources of great beauty and selflessness.
• Trujillo and his lackeys were a brutal caricature of what we would consider a banana-republic, self-centered, megalomaniacal Dictatorship.  He and his henchmen exploited the Dominican Republic – people and resources – purely for their personal pleasure and egocentric desires. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic – hadn’t caused so much pain, suffering, and death, and cost the world so many good and talented people.
• The world of young hispanic men and women in America is very different from the world I grew up in.

Some quotes, one-liners, and expressions that caught my attention.  I offer them here to give you a feel for the book – page numbers from the paper-back edition:

…that oh-so-famous First Nation exterminating Colt.44, heavier than bad luck and twice as ugly. 46

His head contained zero, a perfect vacuum.  47

..before he even realized what had happened, he had buried himself in what amounted to the college version of what he’d majored in all throughout high school:  getting no ass. 50

It’s never the changes we want that change everything.  51

Not touching because it was not their way.  Respectability so dense in la grande that you’d need a blowtorch to cut it, and a guardedness so Minas Tirith in la pequena that you’d need the whole of Mordor to overcome it.  Theirs was the life of the Good People of Sur.  78

…<She was> as stubborn as the Laws of the Universe themselves. 102

…in a Latin America already a year and a half into the Decade of the Guerrilla – a student was something else altogether, an agent for change, a vibrating quantum string in the staid Newtonian universe. 110

He had an immaculate head of hair and Hector Lavoe glasses and the intensity of a South  Beach dietician. 111

At first, Beli had her reservations about the Gangster. Her ideal amor had been Jack Pujols, and here was this middle-aged Caliban who dyed his hair and had a thatch of curlies on his back and shoulders. More like a third-base umpire than an Avatar of her Glorious Future. 124

We postmodern platanos tend to dismiss the Catholic devotion of our viejas as atavistic, an embarrassing throwback to the olden days, but it’s exactly at these moments, when all hope has vanished, when the end draws near, that prayer has dominion.   144

In those days the cities hadn’t yet metastasized into kaiju, menacing one another with smoking, teeming tendrils of shanties.  145

Is my brother there? was all she ever said.  Cold as Saturn.  181

And I wonder: what hurt him more? That I was never really his friend, or that I pretended to be? 181

Dude, you don’t want to be dead. Take it from me. No-pussy is bad.  But dead is like no-pussy times ten.  193

In a better world I would have kissed her over the ice trays and that would have been the end of all our troubles.  But you know exactly what kind of world we live in. It ain’t no fucking Middle-earth.  194

Of course…nobody wanted to room with him. – what a surprise (we all know how tolerant the tolerant are.) 195

She’d sit alone, erect as a lectern.  198

But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.  And that’s what I guess these stories are all about.  209

Why this book: It was selected by our All American Leadership reading group as our bi-monthjly selection.  Also, the author, Mike Lerario is part of our team.

Summary in 3 sentences:  As he notes on the cover, Mike wrote this book addressed primarily to emerging and high potential leaders, but it has insights that leaders at any level can use.  He divides leadership into four domains,  and then makes the point that each domain demands that leaders understand their own strengths, weaknesses and proclivities AND understand the context in order to get the best result in each situation.  The “balance” in Leadership in Balance is finding the “fulcrum” which provides the best application of the leaders abilities within the specifics of a particular situation.

My impressions: Mike is unapologetically Army in his approach, but his approach to leadership applies in any context. He uses many examples from his career as an Army infantry officer to make his points, but also applies his methodology to the corporate sector, where he is also an experienced consultant.  I like that he emphasizes self-understanding, and broad contextual understanding as key to exercising effective leadership – noting that no two people are alike, and no two situations are alike – so at least theoretically, every interaction between a leader and the challenge s/he faces is unique.  He places a large emphasis on judgment – based again on self knowledge and contextual understanding.

The four domains of leadership discussed in the book are Communications, Adaptability , Focus, and Influence. Each gets a chapter with explanation and examples of successes and failures, often from the author’s experience in the Army.

Within each of the four leadership domains he identifies two extremes that leaders must balance.  To be effective, they must find the fulcrum between the two opposing tendencies,  in finding the best, most effective response.   In the domain of Communications, it is transmit vs receive; for Adaptability it is rigid vs flexible; for Focus it is selfish vs selfless; for Influence it is command vs control. In each of these domains,  leaders must find the fulcrum to balance their personal style at the right point between these two “extremes” that is most effective to meet the demands of a particular situation.

I found the discussion of focus most interesting.   It is important to include in the discussion of leadership how and why the leader must take care of him/herself, and not always be “selfless.”  I was happy to see him repudiate the idealistic notion that leaders must always be selfless – always sacrifice themselves and their own needs on the alter of taking care of others.  Leaders must also take care of themselves, in order to take care of their teams and others.   In order to advance in one’s career and have a larger impact, the leader must pay close attention and occasionally make sacrifices to “selflessness” in order to advance.  This is a useful discussion.

I found the distinction between “command” and “control” very valuable.  He describes these as two ends of a spectrum of how we “influence” our team to work together to achieve what it wants.  In the common vernacular, command-and-control are used together as a single concept associated with a military, top-down, directive style of leadership. Not so, says Mike. He says that the operative word in command is “why,” while in control, it is “how.”   Below is a diagram from the book.

I felt that the chapter on communication had so much in common with the introvert-extrovert personality types in the MBTI that “introversion” and “extroversion” as basic personality types deserved a mention. But the content was quite good.

The idea of finding a “golden mean” between two extremes is an idea with a pedigree that goes back to Aristotle’s virtue ethics – where Aristotle described a “virtue” as the golden mean between excess and deficiency in a specific behavior -and whatever the virtuous  golden mean might be, differed depending on the the individual and the context.  Mike applies this idea to the virtue of good leadership.

Included in the book is a personal style assessment the Leadership Fulcrum Assessment available on his website www.bethefulcrum.com .  Those who purchase the book get a code which makes the assessment free of charge.  The assessment is ideally is taken before reading the book. but I took it afterward and found it interesting and valuable. The LFA is a self-assessment, and I and others think it also has great potential as a 360 instrument.  Mike agrees and is continuing to develop it.

Leadership in Balance is a short book – just over 100 pages and I’d give it 5 stars for what I believe Mike intended – to provide insights, perspectives and a framework to serve as a basis for in depth discussion of leadership for rising and mid level leaders.  I’d give it 4 stars for the insights it provides for more experienced leaders at more senior levels of organizations – still valuable, still insightful, still challenging, but probably most valuable for more junior and mid level leaders.

Key Take-Aways:

1. It reinforced the importance of understanding one’s self and the value of personality and style “tests” to help one lead well.  I’d add to this the importance of  leaders seeking dispassionate feedback on their style and tendencies, in order to make better decisions in a particular situation.  So few leaders are as self-aware of their tendencies, proclivities, strengths and weakness as they need to be. This book reinforces how important that is.
2. It reinforced the “situational leadership” principle of adapting one’s response to the specifics of a situation. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to inspiring others and getting the most out of a team.  Some principles work better, more often in more situations, but almost nothing (that I can think of) always works, always gets the best result, all the time, in all situations.
3. There were a number of nuggets in the book that I will be able to use in my own work. For example, I mentioned his discussion of command and control. I relearned the parable of Napoleon’s corporal.  I loved the quote from Jefferson: “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” There are many more such nuggets in this book.

Why this Book: Though all of us had read it before, my three-person reading group agreed to read this wonderful little book again.   By Man’s Search for Meaning, I refer to his  Experiences in a Concentration Camp (about 100 pages) and not the follow-on longer piece explaining Frankl’s “Logotherapy” that normally accompanies it.  Man’s Search for Meaning has been recognized by many sources as one of most influential books of the 20th century.

Summary in 3 Sentences:  Viktor Frankl was a young Jewish psychotherapist practicing in Vienna, Austria, when he and his wife were arrested by the Nazis, crammed into a cattle car and sent to Auschwitz.  This book is Frankl’s  memoir of his experiences and how he dealt with the brutality, deprivations, suffering, and dying, that surrounded him and  became his life as an inmate in several Nazi concentration camps during WW2.  He shares his message of how a sense of purpose, facing one’s fate with courage and determination can give meaning and nobility to one’s life in the most austere and brutal of circumstances – when everything has been take away except the “last of human freedoms” – the ability to “choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.”

My Impressions: This is an inspiring and positive book, in spite of the darkness of the world he describes.  The darkness is the context, but the focus is the light – the determination to survive, as best one can, holding on to one’s humanity, as best one can, when it seems that Love, Good, and Charity have abandoned one’s world.  The lessons he shares in the extremes of the concentration camp apply to all of us – even in our very comfortable civilized lives  – since psychological suffering takes many forms.

He discussed the experience of coping wth the concentration camp experience, in three phases:

• The shock of entry into the concentration camp, when everything was taken away from them, and “all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence.”
• The second phase was the resignation of being in the camp, “the phase of relative apathy in which we achieved a kind of emotional death,” in the face of the the horror, the suffering, the torture and the dying.
• And the third phase was release and starting life anew, after they “literally lost the ability to feel pleased, and had to relearn it slowly.”   Frankl writes “Step by step I progressed, until I again became a human being.”  

In about 100 powerful pages in Experiences in a Concentration Camp Frankl gives us the essence of what he learned about himself, about others, and about suffering in each of those three phases.

This was perhaps the fifth time I’ve read this book.  I try to read it every 4 or 5 years and every time, it takes my breath away. Though there is almost no religion in this book,  the spiritual lessons are palpable.   Frankl’s story and his lessons from it remind me to invest in and reinforce the spiritual dimension of my own life.  It was really great to read it with Jay and Emily who had both also read it  before, and who were grabbed (again) by different quotes, scenes, and lessons than was I.  I did not read the Logotherapy piece with them again – they found, as I had when I read it 10 years ago, that it philosophically reinforces the message of Frankl’s story in Experiences in a Concentration Camp.

Viktor Frankl gives 3 simple rules as the source of true happiness:

• Do work that matters
• Love unconditionally
• Grow from adversity.

We see all of these in action in Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl’s own words capture the essence of this short book much better than can I.

Some (of the many) Powerful Quotes:   (no page numbers because I’m reading an out-of-print edition, and it has been reprinted so many times…)

Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself, or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.  Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success; you have to let it happen by not caring about it.  (from the preface to the 1984 edition)

We knew that we had nothing to lose except our so ridiculously naked lives.

At such a moment, it is not the physical pain that hurts…it is the mental agony caused by the injustice and unreasonableness of it all.

Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one’s own life and that of the other fellow.

 In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen.  Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain… but the damage to their inner selves was less.  They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom. Only in this way can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy make-up often seemed to survive camp life better than did those of a robust nature.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers.  The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.  Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved.  It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

The intensification of inner life helped the prisoner find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past.

Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation.

We were grateful for the smallest of mercies…The meager pleasures of camp life provided a kind of negative happiness, – “freedom from suffering,” …Real positive pleasures, even small ones, were very few.

Everything that was not connected with the immediate  task of keeping oneself and one’s closest friends alive lost its value.  Everything was sacrificed to this end.    A man’s character became involved to the point that he  was caught in a mental turmoil which threatened all the values he held, and threw them into doubt.

It was, therefore, in an attempt to save one’s own skin that one literally tried to submerge into the crowd.

..fate was one’s master…At times lightning decisions had to be made, decisions which spelled life or death.  The prisoner would have preferred to let fate make the choice for him.

We all had once been or had fancied ourselves to be “somebody.”  Now we were treated like complete nonentities.  The consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher, more spiritual things, and cannot be shaken by camp life.  But how many free men, let alone prisoners, possess it?   Without consciously thinking about it, the average prisoner felt himself utterly degraded.

There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed.  Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic  and physical stress.

We  who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of  bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis, it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. …any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually.  He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.  Dostoyevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”

…The way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement.  It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.  Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.

He may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation, he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of, or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

It is true that only a few people are capable of reaching such high moral standards. Of the prisoners only a few kept their full inner liberty and obtained those values which their suffering afforded, but even one such example is sufficient proof that man’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.

It is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself.

The prisoner who had lost faith in the future -his future – was doomed.  With this loss of believe in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.

The typical reply with which  such a man rejected all encouraging arguments was, “I have nothing to expect from life any more.”  …We had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.  …Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering, he is unique and alone in the universe.  …His unique opportunity lies in the  way in which he bears his burden.

Long ago we had passed the stage of asking what was the  meaning of life, a naive query which understands life as the attaining of some aim through the active creation of something of value.  For us, the meaning of life embraced the wider cycles of life and death, of suffering and of dying.

I said that someone looks down on each of us in the difficult hours – a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God -and he would not expect us to disappoint him.  He would hope to find us suffering proudly – not miserably – knowing how to die.

We all said to each other in camp that there could be no earthly happiness which could compensate for all we had suffered.  We were not hoping for happiness – it was not that which gave us courage and gave meaning to our suffering, our sacrifices and our dying. And yet, we were not prepared for unhappiness

Why this book: Highly recommended by a friend of my mothers.  I was intrigued, bought it, and Mary Anne read it while I was engaged in other reading. She loved it. I was between reading group books, and decided to pick it up.

Summary in 3 Sentences: Jim Williams grew up in England, served in WW1 and signed up to work for the Bombay Teak company, deep in the jungles of Burma harvesting teak trees. This is the story of his amazing life – but most importantly of his special relationship with the elephants and the Burmese elephant handlers who were working for him. The book highlights  key events and anecdotes of his life, his special relationship to all animals, but especially with the elephants he was working with, his close relationship with the Burmese, culminating with his courageous service as a LtCol in the British Army leading elephants supporting the British Army fighting the Japanese in WW2.

My impressions: A wonderful book, beautifully written.  It is essentially the biography of Jim Williams and his experiences working in the jungles of Burma with Asian elephants and Burmese elephant handlers, called uzis.  Jim had a gift for connecting with animals in general but with elephants in particular.  The story was an inside look at the life of a British colonialist working in the Burmese jungles between the wars, but also a fascinating look at a very interesting and principled character who represented the best of what the British empire brought to their colonies, while working for a company  engaged in some of the worst of what the British inflicted on their colonies.  But the real story was about Jim Williams and the elephants.

In the introduction the author states: “…he discovered in the elephants virtues he would work to develop in himself: courage, loyalty, the ability to trust (and the good sense to know when to be distrustful,) fairness, patience diligence, kindness and humor. ‘Not a bad way to learn,’ he said, because ‘the elephant takes a more kindly view of life than we do.'”

Jim Williams grew up in Cornwall, England,  served with distinction in WW1 and then, like many adventurous young men in Victorian and post-Victorian Britain, sought adventure out on the fringes of the British empire. He signed up to leave England and go to Burma to help extract teak from the jungles.   We learn of his struggles with the old school leaders of the Bombay Teak company, how very quickly he revealed himself as a gifted animal handler.  He taught himself to do fairly advance veterinary work on his elephants, and also looked after his Burmese workers and their families. We follow him through his career, his eventual marriage to an amazing woman, his advancement to a fairly senior position – all the while staying as close to the elephants as he could, and spending as much time in the jungle as he could.

A sub-theme of the book was Jim Williams’ relationship with one particular elephant – Bandoola – who was clearly an extraordinary animal – an “alpha male” in elephant society.  The two of them shared a special connection, and drew strength from each other. Throughout Elephant Company, Williams’connection with Bandoola was one of mutual respect and admiration.

The book concludes with Williams being in charge of elephants supporting British General William Slim’s efforts to resist and then drive the Japanese out of Burma during WW2.   There is one operation in which Williams led a team of Burmese and elephants on an evacuation and overland movement that many still marvel at, which saved the lives of not only the elephants but dozens of refugees.   Bandoola was a key leader in that expedition. At the end of the war, the Bombay Teak company was finished in Burma, due to the post-war revolution that resulted in Burma’s  independence.  Williams and his family returned to Britain, where he struggled to find meaning in his life – to satisfy his love of taking care of animals and people.

The book is beautifully written. I loved the way the author tells the story -with not only understanding and excellent research, but also clear compassion for Williams, his family, the elephants and others affected by the tribulations of the time.  I have thoroughly enjoyed biographies of Victorian and post-Victorian English adventurers, such as Sir Richard Francis Burton (not the actor) and Ernest Shackleton, and Williams is cut of something of the same cloth.  Williams courtship of his wife Susan was beautifully told, and she was clearly an amazing woman herself – I just wish the author had told us more about her, and about her life.  At the end of the book I was left feeling like I was cheated of getting to know Susan Williams better.

Key Takeaways for me:

1. Jim Williams sense of adventure and perseverance were part of what helped him not only survive, but thrive in the really difficult and austere environment of the Burmese jungle.   Key strengths of his were his belief in himself, his very positive attitude, and the love he showed for the people and elephants he was working with, and his appreciation for the beauty of where he was.
2. Williams loved animals and clearly had  a special connection to them – they sensed that.  His respect for them allowed him to learn from them many of the virtues which made him a uniquely well-respected and impressive role model.

A few quotes: (page numbers from the paper back edition)

“It is impossible to understand much about tame elephants unless one knows a great deal about the habits of the wild ones,” Williams wrote.  46

From the men, there was regular talk of ghost tigers and tree and water spirits.  Williams himself often sensed that certain areas in the jungle felt hallowed, and usually he would discover that they were, in fact, holy places to the local people. To  walk these forests, he noted, one had to accept phenomena that were beyond logic. 88

<“Musth” is the condition of a bull elephant in heat, during which they become very aggressive and exhibit certain changes to their physiology.>  Bigger, stronger males NOT in musth will generally defer to a smaller one who is.  Bulls have even been observed running in the opposite direction when just catching a whiff of a musth bull. Receptive females, on the other hand, are attracted to them.  97

Like his counterparts back home, < Williams> as a young workingman, was learning to negotiate the adult world.  But here in the jungles of Burma, elephant society was his model.  He didn’t emulate middle-aged bankers or scholarly old college dons.  For him it was matriarchs and bulls.  106

Here on the bank of the river, was another of life’s lessons from the elephants that could be applied to people:  Dominance is not leadership.  From  animals, Williams said, people could learn about taking “authority without being a bully.”  129

As eager as Susan was to settle in, it would have to wait.  There wasn’t time to unpack boxes from England, as the couple were about to embark on their first jungle tour together. This is what Jim had been dreaming of for a decade: his life among elephants shared with his true love.  177

Why this book: Selected by one of the reading groups I’m in.

Summary in 3 sentences: A classic children’s story with lessons that are important for adults as well.  A young prince from another planet meets our narrator – a downed pilot in the deserts of North Africa – and with complete innocence and wonder The Little Prince tells him what he has experienced of the Universe, and asks lots of questions about why things are the way they are on earth. The two develop a friendship that transforms each of them.

My Impressions: I read this in college when it was cool -regarded as a kids book that had great insight and a piece of the wisdom of the ages -like Alice in Wonderland.  It’s short, cleverly illustrated and fun and easy to read.  My other two reading group members read it to their kids. It is clever and nicely done and makes some well-worn points about what is truly important in life, and how most people miss those things, being too busy with chores, making money, whatever.  It reminded me a bit of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, in how it exposes how ridiculous so much that we take for granted appears to someone whose sensibilities have not been corrupted or made numb by our social and cultural practices and prejudices.

The story begins with a pilot who has crashed in the desert and is frantically trying to repair his airplane before he dies of thirst.  A young boy stumbles upon him in the desert and claims to be from another planet.  Most of the rest of the story is the young boy telling the pilot – the narrator of our story – how he got there.

He tells of the very small planet he grew up on – he was essentially alone and lonely on the planet but eventually became friends with a rose – which on this planet could talk and had a personality. He and the rose loved each other, but were different and struggled to get along, so The Little Prince goes on an expedition through the galaxy and visits various planets that represent different personalities that magnify human strengths and craziness.  We learn of his experiences meeting and talking to a king, a vain man, a drunkard, a businessman, a lamplighter, and a geographer. Each was a strangely preoccupied individual, living alone on their planets. He meets, talks to, and tries to understand each,  before he comes to earth, and meets our downed aviator.

The aviator gets his plane fixed but is concerned for The Little Prince, who wants to get back to his planet and his rose.  The Little Prince was looking for water and meets a snake who tempts him and a fox who shares with him great wisdom.

Eventually The Little Prince is ready to return to his planet and our aviator/narrator is sad to see him go. But then the snake bites him – and he falls down and disappears.  Does he really go back to the planet?  Or does he die in the desert?  The story concludes with the aviator looking at the stars and thinking that the dreams and innocence and goodness of the Little Prince are there and always to be had by looking at the stars.

This little book is full of metaphors which are sometimes quite clever, other times just a bit too obvious, but then this was written as a children’s book.  My friends who read it to their children found that their kids didn’t have a lot of patience with what 70 years ago was an exciting and fascinating story -today’s world moves so fast and is so constantly exciting and stimulating, it’s hard for kids – and even fro most adults – to slow down and enjoy a simple little story.

This is short and a fun one for good friends or a family to read and discuss – as long as all are willing to take Saint Expupery seriously -and think about what he was trying to say. Antoine de Saint -Exupery indeed disappeared over the Mediterranean while flying a mission in WW2.

Some Quotes: (page numbers from the paperback edition)

If you tell grown-ups, ” I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the window nd doves on the roof…, ” they won’t be able to imagine such a hose.  You have to tell them “I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs.”  Then they exclaim, “What a pretty house!” 10

And I might become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but numbers.   12

“I know a planet inhabited by a red faced gentleman.  He’s never smelled a flower. He’s never looked at a star.  He’s never loved anyone. He’s never done anything except add up numbers. And all day long he says over and over, just like you, ‘I’m a serious man! I’m a serious man!'”  20

“In those days, I didn’t understand anything. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words.  She perfumed my pant and lit up my life. I should never have run away!  I ought to have realized the  tenderness underlying her silly pretensions…. But I was too young to know how to love her.” 25

He didn’t realize that for kings, the world is extremely simplified: All men are subjects.  33

“If I were to command a general to turn into a seagull, and if the general did not obey, that would not be the general’s fault.It would be mine.” 29

To vain men, other people are admirers.  33

But the vain  man did not hear him. Vain men never hear anything but praise.  34

The only things you learn are the things you tame” said the fox. “People haven’t time to learn anything.  They buy things ready-made in stores.”   60

“Yes, ” I said to the little prince, “whether it’s a house or the stars or the desert, what makes them beautiful is invisible!” 68

And at night I love listening to the stars. It’s like five-hundred million little bells…81

Why This Book: Chosen by my literature reading group because 1. we have been on a great run of Pulitzer Prize winners, 2. it’s relatively short, and we were looking for something good AND short.

Summary in 3 sentences: Reverend John Ames is in his mid seventies and has a severe heart condition which he knows will kill him soon.  He knows he won’t be there to see his young son grow into maturity, so this book is the journal he writes as a letter to his son to share his thoughts about his own life and life in general for him to read when he is an adult.   In this letter/journal, we learn of Ames struggles to be a good man and live up to his and his community’s expectations of him, of his struggles with his faith, family and values, and of the wisdom of a life well lived which has helped him to appreciate life’s small pleasures and to accept what comes his way.

My impressions: A very powerful book.  Reverend John Ames is a thoughtful, well-read, and very self-aware man in his mid 70s who knows that his heart is very weak, he hasn’t much time left.  He intends for  his son to read the words he is writing when he matures into adulthood many years later.

John Ames is a congregationalist minister and his letter to his son reflects his struggles to understand and reconcile his very liberal and non-traditional  theology with the world he lives in.  While he is very devoted to his faith and Christianity, he is also very willing to question and challenge his own views and he does in his letter to his son.    Throughout his life he preached and sought to live as a spiritual example to his congregation, and  he shares with his son that he never quite lived up to his own standards.

Ames is writing this letter in the 1950s, in Gilead, Iowa, where he grew up and lived his whole life.  The town is small and not very affluent, was founded as a place for abolitionists to aid  runaway slaves on the underground railroad. Ames’ grandfather was a  zealous abolitionist, supported John Brown in his Kansas campaign prior to the Harper’s Ferry disaster. The abolitionist background of his family and the town of Gilead is a recurring theme in the book.   Ames’ very religious and righteous grandfather was a central figure in his upbringing.

Three characters appear regularly in Ames’s letter to his son:  Lila, Ames’ wife and his son’s mother;  Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames best friend and a minister in the Presbyterian church in Gilead;  and Reverend Boughton’s son named for Ames himself, John Ames Boughton, known as Jack.  They are only mentioned in Ames’ journal-letter to his son and he shares brief vignettes about each of them, but we don’t get to know them very well.   Marilynn Robinson resolves this shortcoming by writing separate novels that fill in the gaps: Her novel Home is about the Boughton family, and was named by the Washington Post as one of the best books of the year for 2008.  Her novel  Lila is about the life of  John Ames wife prior to and during her marriage to  John Ames and won the 2014 National Book Critics Award.

One theme that Ames returns to throughout his narrative is his preoccupation with his relationship to his namesake John Ames  Boughton, the troubled adult son of his best friend.  There are unresolved tensions between the two, that both of them awkwardly seek to resolve.  Throughout the book we get more background on Jack Boughton and Ames’ relationship with him.

At the end of the book we are brought back to Ames special relationship to the town of Gilead, its people and and the life he has lived and savored there.   The joy he has found in the simple town of Gilead is part of the joy he has learned to find in so many small and on first blush, insignificant activities.  And  we get a sense for why  “Gilead” is indeed a fitting title for this book.

I’ll finish wth what my friend Gary wrote after finishing the book:

“It was difficult for me to read the last few pages of “Gilead” because of my farewell tears to a good and wise friend.  The book brings to mind Ecclesiates, the parables of the prodigal son, the lost coin, and the lost sheep; Henri Nouwen’s essay about Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son, and a bit of Oedipus Rex.

Above all else this is a love story–God’s love for his creation, people’s refection of God’s love by loving and forgiving each other, and the centrality of the commandment for children to honor their parents as the connecting tissue between God and man. (A corollary must be for parents to honor their children.)

 “Gilead” is an essay on many of the ineffable and eternal topics such as the existence of God, the nature of sin, the power of loneliness, the need for sound relationships with people and God, the vast range of emotions brought on by love, our power to hurt and heal people we love; the efficacy and justice of wars between the Civil War and WW II, and our never ending sin of slavery.

What I missed:  Reverend John Ames never mentions in all his narrative about his life, any struggles with his sexuality. This strikes me as odd, from a man whose first wife died when he was in his early 20s and who doesn’t marry again, nor apparently have any lovers, until he meets and marries Lila in his late 60s.   John Ames makes no references, discretely nor obliquely, to missing physical intimacy with women, nor to that as part of his relationship with his own wife – the mother of his son – apart from the obvious implication of what led to the conception and birth of his son.  This is either a misunderstanding by Marilynne Robinson of men, or a deliberate omission by a woman author writing from a man’s perspective.  While I found the spiritual and intellectual dimensions of this book inspiring, thought provoking, and powerful,  I did feel that  Ames’ story deserved a bit more testosterone.

For another interesting perspective on growing old, I recommend an article from the New Yorker Magazine written by a 93 year old man (he’s now 96 as of November 2016, and is still alive and writing!)  The article is entitled This Old Man. 

A few quotes:

<referring to his grandfather> When someone remarked in his hearing that he had lost an eye in the Civil War, he said, “I prefer to remember that I have kept one.”

He was just afire with old certainties, and he couldn’t bear all the patience that was required of him by the peace and by the aging of his body and by the forgetfulness that had settled over everything.  He thought we should all be living at a dead run.  I don’t say he was wrong.  That would be like contradicting John the Baptist.  32

<after an unexpected hardship, his mother>…closed one eye and looked at me and said, “I know there is blessing in this somewhere.”  35

To be useful was the best thing the old men ever hoped for themselves, and to be aimless was their worst fear.  49

It was the most natural think in the world that my grandfather’s grave would look like a place where someone had tried to smother a fire.  50

Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our behavior, and the reaction of God to us might be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgmental in the ordinary sense. 124

If you think how a thing we call a stone differs from a thing we call a dream – the degrees of unlikeness within the reality we know are very extreme…143

Your mother wanted to name the cat Feuerbach, but you insisted on Soapy. 143

I would advise you against defensiveness on principle. It precludes the best eventualities along with the worst.  154

To say a thief is a brother man and beloved of God is true. To say therefore a thief is not a thief is an error.  156

Sinners are not all dishonorable people, not by any means.  156

I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness…A moment is such slight thing, I mean, that its abiding is almost a gracious reprieve.  162

Don’t look for proofs .. because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp….It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a doctrine….179

He could knock me down the stairs and I would have worked out the theology for forgiving him before I reached the bottom.  But if he harmed you in the slightest way, I’m afraid theology would fail me.  190

We fly forgotten as a dream, certainly, leaving the forgetful world behind us to trample and mar and misplace everything we have ever cared for. That is just the way of it, and it is remarkable.  191

Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the runs of any number of preceding civilizations…197

You can spend forty years teaching people to be awake to the fact of mystery and then some fellow with no more theological sense than a jackrabbit gets himself a radio ministry and all your work is forgotten. 208

The Lord absolutely transcends any understanding I have of Him, which makes loyalty to Him a different thing from loyalty to whatever customs and doctrines and memories I happen to associate with Him.  235

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient. 243

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance – for a moment or a year or the span of a life.   And then it sinks back into itself again and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light.   245

Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration.  You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.  Only, who could have the courage to see it? 245