Bob's Books

Why this Book: Selected by my literature reading group, based on reviews we’d read.

Summary in 3 sentences: The focal point of this story is the death of Lincoln’s son Willie a year after Lincoln assumed the Presidency and just as the Civil War was picking up momentum.  But there are many themes in this book, ranging from Lincoln’s character, to the mood of the country at the beginning of the Civil War, to the trivialities that consume most of us during life, to a rather bizarre fantasy look at how those in purgatory after death consider their own lives and the lives of those still living.  The book is a morality tale about what is important in life, how we take so seriously issues which from a larger perspective are trivial, told in the context of a key window in American history, centered around the suffering of one of America’s great leaders.

My impressions:  This book is not for everyone – it is not a page-turning “fun” book to read.  It is a very different book, written in a style that is a combination of poetry, drama, and short vignettes. It was not difficult to read, and I in fact found the unique style interesting, and part of the author’s message. But it is not exactly a page-turner. I’d recommend it to a thoughtful person who thinks a lot about life and death, is willing to experiment with a different style of literature, and does not demand that a book (or a television show, or movie for that matter) be attention-grabbing entertaining to be edifying.

The story takes place over a single night in a cemetery in Washington DC, and consists largely of conversations between “residents” of the cemetery – those who are stuck there in purgatory, after death, but not yet ready for whatever comes next.   It also includes views of what was happening in the world of the living with excerpts from letters, diaries, first person accounts of people close to Lincoln, or from those who observed or were reacting to him while he was dealing with the illness and death of his son.  It also includes reactions to him as President at the early stages of the Civil War, which reveal how he was hated and vilified by many who did not support the Civil War.    The story is built around the historical fact of Lincoln actually going alone in the middle of the night to visit the crypt where his son Willie had just been buried, the night after the funeral.  The book includes passages from witnesses that verify that visit.

While the centerpiece of the story is the death of Willie Todd Lincoln, and Lincoln’s visit to his crypt, the book is about so much more. A key aspect of this book was the character of Lincoln: his devastating sadness after the death of his favorite child, but also at the enormity of death that he foresaw resulting from the war over the Union and slavery.  We are also given passages that offer clues about the chaos and challenges of his family life, and later in the story, the ghosts in the cemetery get into Lincoln’s head and we get clues about his youth and events that shaped him.

The short excerpts of letters and impressions from actual people of that day create an image of a much divided America and a President under siege,  unsure of his ability to govern well in these very turbulent times.  When his son died, Lincoln lost a major source of joy in his family life, which added enormously to his stress under the turmoil he was experiencing as President.   The impressions of his actual contemporaries and of the fictional ghosts in the cemetery repeatedly emphasizes how sad Lincoln was, and how he steeled himself to continue, with a strong sense of duty and principle.

Through the letters and remembrances of Lincoln’s contemporaries and the stories of the ghosts, Lincoln in the Bardo offers us many insights into the culture of America in the first half of the 19th century.  The crypt where Willie Lincoln’s casket was placed was in a  white upper class cemetery, but was adjacent to a black cemetery, and ghosts from the black cemetery join into the interactions surrounding Lincoln’s visit.  We get to know them, and their unwillingness to let go of anger and sometimes horrific abuses they experienced in life, as well as the continued bigotry and attachment to a sense of racial superiority of some of the ghosts in the white cemetery.

The ghosts in the cemetery, share not only how they perceive Lincoln as he visits his son,  but also their own lives, their petty grievances, the things that they remained attached to from their already-lived lives:  their loved ones, their angers and resentments, guilt, their unfulfilled ambitions and dreams, their sadness.   These attachments from their incomplete lives were what held them in purgatory – willingly.  They chose to stay there – they were attached to their attachments.   We see in the story how giving up the things that were unfinished in their lives, was essential to their moving on.  The book never reveals just what “moving on” meant – to what – whether “heaven” or back into the cycle of  birth and rebirth, or something else.  But in Lincoln in the Bardo Saunders makes clear that being stuck in purgatory is not a place where one evolves – spiritually or otherwise.  One is stuck there, until one is ready to, decides to, let go.

Evolving spiritually is a key theme of this book.  Some die and seem to go straight to that next stage – whatever that is – and some stop briefly in “the Bardo” before they move on.   Others – like most we meet in this book – are stuck there for as long as it takes for them to be willing to let go of whatever passion or attachment holds them there, before they can  move on. Many were unwilling, but some attained insights during this story, and with a “poof” – what Saunders referred to as the “bone chilling fire-sound of the matterlightblooming” – they disappeared – moved on to that next stage, leaving whatever remnants of their earthly life behind.  The message – we can always learn and evolve – if we’re willing.

While Lincoln is the central figure in this story, his son Willie is a key figure as well.  In fact, Willie lands in the Bardo because of his strong attachment to his father, and this attachment is mutual.  Willie is much admired by the ghosts in the cemetery and they want to protect him from some of the pathologies of those still inhabiting the cemetery.   In the end, we see that both Abe and Willie Lincoln have to let go of each other to move on – Lincoln to get back to being the head of his family and to leading the country, and Willie to move on from “the Bardo,” to whatever comes next.

“Bardo” is a sanskrit word for “in between state” and comes from the stages of the afterlife described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead and other Buddhist scriptures. One can read more about the Bardo and the Buddhist stages of the afterlife by googling “Bardo.”

Lincoln in the Bardo recalled to me four other books I’ve recently read:  Our Town by Thornton Wilder features people in a cemetery looking back on their lives, struggling with letting go, and dismayed by how little they appreciated what they had while they were still living.    Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Masters is a book of one page prose/poems,  each “written” by the person under the headstone in a cemetery in a small midwestern town, sharing their angers and unfinished business from unfulfilled lives.  Man and Superman, by George Bernard Shaw is a conversation between interesting, charming, and gregarious people enjoying the good life of earthly pleasures in hell, arguing that hell is a much more fun place to spend eternity than heaven.  Why would anyone want to go spend eternity contemplating spiritual beauty and God?  And finally in The American Book of Living and Dying, by Groves and Klauser a minister describes how he helped eight terminally ill people prepare for their own peaceful deaths by helping them to let go of passions that were so important to them in life, but which were keeping them from dying in peace.

One final note.  In the Lincoln in the Bardo, Lincoln opens the casket of his dead son and gazes upon him and actually holds him – though it is never clear if this act was actually verified. To us this seems a strange, even macabre thing to do.  But Ralph Waldo Emerson, three decades earlier,  is known to have done the same with his deceased first wife Ellen, whom he dearly loved and who had died of tuberculosis at age 20 soon after they were married.  So perhaps at the time it was not as unusual as it might seem to us.

Why this book: I’d heard good things about it, and proposed it to one of my reading groups. We were looking for something of quality, but short. This fit the bill – only a bit over 200 pages.

Summary in 3 Sentences: In 1870, an older man (72 yrs old) is making his living reading articles from newspapers to townspeople in Texas when he agrees to return a 10 year old girl who had been captured by Kiowa Indians several years earlier to her family  She resisted this effort, didn’t want to return to white culture and he really didn’t want to take her the 400+miles from North Texas to the San Antonio region, thru country still subject to attacks by bandits, and hostile Comanche and Kiowa Indians. The story is about their adventures and  evolving friendship through the tribulations of making this trip together.

My impressions:  I enjoyed reading this book – it was short, a simple but nicely done story, and provided a fascinating look at the almost anarchic conditions in post Civil War Texas.  The evolving relationship between the older man and young girl was predictable but HOW it evolved and the challenges they faced together that brought them together made the story.

After being returned to white culture after only 4 years with the Kiowa, the young girl Johanna was unwilling to return to white culture, or give up her Kiowa way of living. But slowly she did – in large part due to the patience and sensitive  manner in which our protagonist – The Captain (the title from his service in the Confederate Army) – slowly and with great respect eased her into the white way of living.  His patience was often in contrast with the attitudes of more strident people he met along the way on their journey south, who wanted to impose white standards by force onto the young girl.

The context of the book is fascinating. The story takes place in unreconstructed Texas, where small townships sought to build stable civilized lives for themselves, while surrounded by countryside controlled by Indians, bandits, and occasionally, the occupying army of the United States.  As the story unfolds, we experience the anxiety and vulnerability of an older man and a young girl traveling in a wagon on roads through these ungoverned and dangerous areas to get from town to town.  They confront and must deal with a myriad of potentially life threatening challenges. When they did reach the towns, we get glimpses of life in the small and somewhat isolated settlements that existed in the great stretches of land between North and South Texas.

There are only two characters who we get to know in this book:  We get to know The Captain best, as we are inside his head as he worries  making enough money to survive, about surviving the hazards of being vulnerable in dangerous territory, taking care of the details of the trip, and taking care of the girl.  Johanna we observe from the outside. She is a mystery – to him and to us – since she has fully assumed the Kiowa mindset and is wary of all things from the white culture. And while she is in some ways very independent, courageous and resourceful, in other ways, she is still a scared, lonely 10 year old girl.  We see both sides of her. The other characters in the book show up, play their roles and disappear.

The Captain is indeed an interesting character.  As a very young man, he had been active in the Seminole wars in Florida, then made a living as a printer and raised a family. His life was disrupted by the death of his wife and then the Civil War, in which he fought for the South.  As the story begins, his daughters were married and living in Georgia, trying to survive in the reconstruction South, while he made a meager living traveling from town to town informing and entertaining isolated people by reading newspapers that were weeks and months old that he had picked up on his occasional visits to larger towns.  People paid a dime to spend an evening listening to him read articles he selected from various newspapers he carried with him.  He selected articles for each group,  based on his understanding of the interests, prejudices,  and mindsets of the people in the town he was visiting. He is a cross between an educator, a news anchor, and entertaining speaker.  Eventually on his way south to deliver Johanna to her relatives, she learns to help him by sitting at the door and collecting dimes from those who come to spend an evening having their horizons broadened while they are entertained.

In the afterward, Paulette Jiles tells us that the main character is based on a real figure who is the ancestor of a friend of hers.  And she shares that most children who were taken hostage by American Indians did NOT want to return to white civilization – even if they only lived with the Indians for a year.  There was something in the sense of community,  culture, purpose, connection to nature that they did not want to leave.  Most people in white culture did not understand this; they saw it as a simple choice between primitive barbarity and and the pleasures of civilization.  Sebastian Junger explores this theme in his book Tribe (which I review here) in which he tries to explain the phenomenon of whites being drawn to the Indian tribal life by noting that the organization and structure of civilization have taken us away from our primal need for a tight sense of belonging within a smaller community.

I read this book immediately after reading A Gentleman in Moscow  and I enjoyed that both stories were built upon the moral development of an older man who reluctantly took on the care of a young girl who was separated from her parents.  In both books, the relationship served both the older man, and the younger girl well.  In each, our male protagonist provided kind, patient, and occasionally stern guidance, which was key to the development of the young girls. And serving as a mentor/father figure provided a sense of purpose and focus for the wisdom of the older men.  The young girls inspired the older men with their energy, creativity, focus and ambition, and with the strength and power of their femininity.  The writing style of A Gentleman in Moscow was elaborate and descriptive, reflecting the refinements of the educated class in Europe of the late 19th, early 20th century.  The writing  style of News of the World is simple and sparse, reflecting the hard and austere life styles of the people in the story and the environment in which they lived.

Why this Book: Selected by my All American Leadership Reading Group.

Summary in 3 sentences:  This book is a no-holds-barred look at our efforts to find “ecstasy” – that magical state where we are so engaged in an experience, that all of our senses are heightened – even supercharged – to the point that we forget ourselves.   The authors look at everything from individual and team flow, to extreme and high risk sports, to super-charged sexuality, to psychedelic and mind altering drugs, to meditation and yoga, and even touches on what we might call “mystical experience” – all of which the authors claim are our efforts to  “get out of our head.”   The authors argue that this desire to get out of our head is our fourth natural impulse, behind water, food, and sex, but just like the other three, must be moderated to help sustain and improve life, or it can lead to ruin.

My impressions:  This book is a fun as well as scientific joy ride through various ways humans choose to suspend their thinking minds.  It is playful and irreverent while also being a well researched and scientific exploration of various ways by which we seek the the joy and ecstasy of  “ecstasis” – the Greek word for “stepping beyond oneself” and (obviously) the etymological source of our word  “ecstasy.”   The title “Stealing Fire” refers to Prometheus in Greek Mythology stealing fire from the gods and sharing it with humans.  Fire represented the knowledge, insights and capabilities previously possessed only by the gods, but necessary for humans to build civilization.  Obviously, ecstasis is an experience that brings us closer to the gods, or to God.   Zeus did not intend to give humans those powers, and so was not happy.  He punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and having eagles eat his innards for eternity.

In Stealing Fire, the authors explore the rich rewards that come from the ecstasy of getting out of our heads.  They share research that ties peak performance in sports and other endeavors to the ecstatic experience of suspending our analytical minds, drawing  from Kotler’s previous work exploring the state of “flow” in his book The Rise of Superman.   They discuss how conventional society has sought to limit and control our access to this experience, which can easily seduce us away from doing our chores. They identify the church, our views of the limitations of our bodies, and the state as primary forces restricting further exploration and experimentation of ecstasis.

Stealing Fire points to how we seek the experience of losing ourselves in a variety of ways, from the joy of being part of an enthusiastic crowd at a rock concert, a religious revival or political rally, to ecstatic sex, to hallucinogenic or other drugs, to computer games, to high risk activities.   They even look at how the intense focus of combat can create a version of this ecstasis.  They begin the book with stories from SEALs deployed to Afghanistan switching on as a group with an interconnected focus that can lead to peak performance in groups – that group flow that professional sports teams all know and try to engender when it counts.

Kottler and Wheal break Stealing Fire  into three main parts:  Part One: The Case for Ecstasis  in which they make their case that this impulse is the source of innovation, creativity, and peak human performance.   Part Two is The Four Forces of Ecstasis  in which they look at  1. Psychology of our drives toward religious ecstasy, sexual ecstasy, Near Death Experiences, and more;  2. Neurobiology – how the brain creates the ecstatic  experience, 3. Pharmacology – the use of psychedelics and other mind altering drugs as short cuts to ecstatic experience;  and 4. Technology – how technological breakthroughs are facilitating greater access to ecstasis. In Part Three: The Road to Eleusis, they look at the various movements to legitimize these trends, especially the annual Burning Tree experience in Nevada.

In Stealing Fire we read about many of the various forms – licit and illicit  – that the new search for ecstasis is taking.  Those who are sticking to the old methods  – alcohol, coffee, meditation/prayer, rock concerts and team sports – of escaping the chiding parent in our heads, may feel left out of the adventure.  Indeed the book’s introduction concludes with,  “ …this book is about that revolution.”

The authors conclude the book by advising that in seeking our own preferred pathway to ecstatic experience,  we should consider the following formula: Value = Time x Reward/Risk.  Your best path depends on how much time you have, how much risk you are willing to take, and how great a reward are you seeking.  In any case, they are insistent that we stay grounded in the reality of the world as we know it, as we look for brief opportunities to understand it better ,by stepping out for a while.

A criticism:  While I thought it interesting how the authors found a common drive behind the various routes to “ecstasis,”  I believe there are distinctions that are significant that they didn’t address. I believe the experience of Team flow in a SEAL platoon, or a basketball team, or the use of hallucinogens, or the ecstatic experience of sex, or the complete focus of high-risk extreme sports, or the experience of satori or samadhi associated with religious enlightenment have differences that the authors didn’t address.   The commonalities are interesting, but then, so are the differences.

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Some representative quotes from Stealing Fire (page numbers from the 2017 hardback edition)

So in the same way that the biological mechanisms underpinning certain non-ordinary states are remarkably consistent, our experience of these states are, too…..we find four signature characteristics underneath: Selflessness, Timelessness, Effortlessness, and Richness, or STER for short.  36

When you think about the billion-dollar industries that underpin the Altered States Economy, isn’t that what they’re built for? To shut off the self.  To give us a few moments of relief from the voice in our heads..… Or more specifically, the inner critic we all come with: our inner Woody Allen, that nagging, defeatist, always-on voice in our heads.  You’re too fat. Too skinny. Too smart to be working this job. Too scared to do anything about it. A relentless drumbeat that rings in our ears.  37

The benefits of selflessness go beyond silencing our inner critic.  When free from the confines of our normal identity, we are able to look at life, and the often repetitive stories we tell about it, with fresh eyes. Come Monday morning, we may still clamber back into the monkey suites of our everyday roles – parent, spouse, employee, boss, neighbor – but by then, we know they’re just costumes with zippers.  38

With these developments, psychedelics, have begun moving from recreational diversion to performance enhancing supplement. 50

During ecstasis, our sense of being an individual “I” gets replaced by a feeling of being a collective “we.”  68

Communitas is the term University of Chicago anthropologist Victor Turner used to describe this ecstatic sense of unity….But it’s a double-edged sword. When we lose ourselves and merge with the group, we are in danger of losing too much of ourselves.  68

As Buddhist scholar Alan Watts puy it, “Western scientists have an underlying assumption that normal is absolutely as good as it gets and that the exceptional is only for saints, and it is something that cannot be cultivated.”….But many of the same interventions that can help us get our heads above water can just as effectively be devoted to raising our heads above the clouds. 90

So while ecstatic states (which are brief and transitory) aren’t the same as developmental stages (which are stable and long lasting,) it appears that having more of the fomer can, under the right conditions, help accelerate the latter.  In short, altered states can lead to altered traits.  93

When we can consistently see more of “what is really happening,” we can liberate ourselves from the limitations of our psychology.  We can put our egos to better use, using them to modulate our neurobiology and with it, our experience.  We can train our brains to find our minds. 114

Researchers have been pondering this for a while now, and have concluded that intoxication does play a powerful evolutionary role – “de-patterning.”

And these newly discovered mechanisms (fMRI) shed more light on two of the fundamental characteristics of ecstasis: selflessness, and richness.  Earlier in the book, we explored how the deactivation of key parts of the brain, what’s called transient hypofrontality, is largely responsible for selflessness.  125

But say what you will about pharmacology being a cheat code to the mystical, there’s no question it works.  128

Ecstasis only arises when the attention is fully focused in the present moment. 136

And whether you’re judging by the growth of our meet-ups, the millions of dollars hitting this market, or the technology that’s already available, lots of us are really interested in spiritual innovation…”Consciousness-hacking technology is going to become as dynamic, available, and ubiquitous as cell phones.” 148

“We learned that when you take a bunch of really bright, diverse people, explains Rosenthal, “and let them share a dynamic immersive experience, you get powerful results. Lifelong friendships were formed.  It removed the tedious, transactional nature of networking.   170  (Note: This is the point of our NOLS Executive Leadership Expeditions)

By realizing that non-ordinary states are more than just a recreational diversion and can, in fact, heighten trust, amplify cooperation, and accelerate breakthroughs, a new generation of entrepreneurs, philanthropists and activists is fundamentally disrupting business as usual. 174

At the tail end of the twentieth century, we started moving from the selling of ideas, a so-called information economy, toward the selling of feelings, or what author Alvin Toffler called the “experience economy.” …the next step: the move from an experience economy to what author Joe Pine calls the “transformation economy.”   In this market place, what we’re being sold is who we might become….195

Open-sourcing ecstasis remains one of the best counterbalances to private and public coercion.  And once we do take these freely shared ideas and use them to unlock non-ordinary states for ourselves, what do we find?  A self-authenticating experience of selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness, and richness.  In short, all the ingredients required for a rational mysticism.  200

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year, ” Bill Gates once said, “and underestimate what they can do in ten.”  205

In 2014, Ryan Holiday released a bestselling book on exactly this subject, The Obstacle is the Way.  It offered an update to the Roman Stoic Marcus Aurelieus’s claim that “the impediment to action advances action. What stand in the way become the way.”  And this is certainly true of the ecstatic way. All that “effortless effort” takes a lot of work.  …And no matter how tempting it is: Don’t become a Bliss Junkie. 206

Invariably, in those same conversations, someone always asks “but what’s the best way to get into the zone?” To which we respond: it depends.  It depends on your tolerance for risk, and how far over the edge you’re willing to hang.  It depends on your sense of urgency, and whether your goals can be reached in minutes or decades. And it depends on how reliably  your preferred approach delivers actionable information and insight….Value = Time x Reward/Risk    211

“the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” William Blake once wrote.  216

There’s one final caveat worth keeping in mind.  Namely, there’s no escaping the human condition.  We’re born, we die, and figuring out the in-between can be brutal.  As Hemingway reminds us, “the world breaks everyone.”  216

And this may offer the greatest hope of all. We no longer have to rely on someone stealing fire for us….Finally, we can kindle that flame ourselves.  222

Why this book: Karl Marlantes is scheduled to speak at USD and though I will not be in town, I’ve strongly encouraged several friends to read the book and attend his remarks.  I hope to discuss the book and his remarks when I meet with my friends afterward.  This was my second time reading this book.

Summary in 3 Sentences: In the mid 1960s, Karl Marlantes was a 2nd Lt in the Marine Corps at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, when he chose to leave Oxford early and go to Vietnam, even though he strongly disagreed with the war.  The book is his effort 40 years later, to come to terms with the psychological, physical, moral, spiritual trauma that his experiences in Vietnam had on him.  He draws on psychology, anthropology, philosophy, religion, the classics to help him extrapolate from his own experience generalizations about man’s experience in war. He argues that war fulfills fundamental human needs of men and women, and that if we are to seek more constructive/less horrifying ways to fulfill those needs, we need to look at and recognize what it is about human nature that can find war so appealing.

My impressions: While on first blush this book is about war and combat, in reviewing it again, I realize that it is really about life – all of our lives – not just military men in combat.  Marlantes’ bigger message is that combat gives us in a very primal context, many of the same challenges that we face in every day life, but which we often don’t recognized because our every day context is “routine,” while combat  is extraordinarily intense, and the stakes are very high.    Every day each of us faces decisions in which our values are challenged by expediency or what feels right at the time.   If we look closely at  his stories of  high-intensity, high-stakes combat, we see Marlantes shining a light on challenges we all face.  There is much wisdom in this book – not just for warriors.

In league with The Warriors, by J. Glenn Gray (about WW2) and War by Sebastian Junger (about Afghanistan) What it is Like to Go to War is one of the finest books I’ve read that seeks to understand and explain man’s experience in war to a thoughtful reader.  All three of these books are by and about Americans at war; we should therefore be  cautious about drawing too many universal generalizations from them, but I’ve found each to be extremely insightful.   Of the three, I probably relate best to  What it is Like to Go to War, given that Marlantes is generally of my generation, and I spent much of my early adult years in the military trying to absorb and learn from seniors and elders, the lessons of the Vietnam War.

While I have been sent to “war,” and have been on operations where I was prepared to kill or to be killed, I never experienced the intensity of combat that Marlantes or many warriors did in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.  I prepared for combat for most of my adult life by intense training, and by reading first person accounts like this one – of how others have experienced and dealt with the fear, stress, horrors, and demands of war.   Marlantes’ book adds not just powerful personal stories, but also gut-wrenchingly honest self-criticism, and insightful philosophical, psychological and spiritual perspectives.

His chapter titles give you a sense for his approach.   Chapter titles such as Killing,  Guilt,  Numbness and Violence,  The Enemy Within,  Lying,  Heroism.  Each chapter draws insights from Marlantes’ own experiences, while also drawing from a wide range of other sources.   His final chapter Relating to Mars bookends his first chapter Temple of Mars, by distilling his key insights about men at war into lessons he believes can help us deal with the challenges we face in fighting today’s wars.

Much of this book is about helping the reader to understand how human nature reacts to the context of combat, and the struggles warriors have juxtaposing the values they have learned in civilized society with the horrors and demands of the battlefield.  In the dynamic interplay between environment and character in driving our behavior, he  emphasizes the power of the combat environment.   The brutality of combat is a strong force which naturally seeks to pull us into a world of amoral carnage and violence.  Marlantes argues that character must  resist the temptation to surrender to ruthless brutality and wanton killing, resist being pulled down into the primal brutality that characterizes so much of combat.   One of the key points of this book I thought was that the conscious, ethical warrior must be aware of this on-going  dynamic between context and character, and to do his best to reinforce character in this constant struggle.  But he has a lot of sympathy for how difficult this can be, sharing his own failings, and those of others.

In a section on atrocities, he shares how one man who he calls “Mike” surrendered to his inner rage and did horrible things to a prisoner.  He says, “I become very uncomfortable when I’m around people with a superior and self-righteous attitude – a conviction that they could never have done such a thing as Mike did.”  After showing some sympathy and understanding for what drove Mike to such cruelty, he says, “Still we can’t let the Mikes of the world off the hook…But when we punish, the correct attitude should be not self-righteousness but sorrow. There, but for the grace of God, go I.” 107

A constant theme throughout the book is that while we must own, understand, and embrace the warrior spirit in each of us,  we must do all we can to channel that power and energy in positive, civilization-enhancing directions.  If we deny and sublimate it,   as many guardians of civilization’s values would have us do, it emerges in often dark and unnecessarily violent ways, and we lose control of it.

“It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”  Robert E. Lee

Quotes and Insights (page numbers from hardback edition printed 2011.  This list is rather long because I expect to refer to it regularly in reviewing the wisdom in this book.  I hope this rather extensive list of quotes may also serve you.)

Mystical or religious experience have four common components: constant awareness of one’s own inevitable death, total focus on the present moment, the valuing of other people’s lives above one’s own, and being part of a larger religious community….All four of these exist in combat.  The big difference is that the mystic sees heaven and the warrior sees hell.  7-8

In a combat situation you wake up from sleep instantly aware that this could be the last time you awake, simultaneously grateful you’re alive and scared shitless because you are still in the same situation.  17

What I’m arguing is that the chances of transformative psychological experiences are decreased enormously when you wage war with all the comforts of home. 19

There is a very primal side to me. I suspect we all have this, but are so afraid of it that we prefer to deny its existence.  This denial is more dangerous than acceptance because the “Killer,” that mad primitive chimpanzee part of us, is then not under ego control.  30

Empathy comes with years, and most fighters are very young.  This is why politicians and generals need to see these kids as their weapons and use them with care and  consciousness.  Ideally, I would hope that in spite of the adrenaline, I’d at least stay conscious of a terrible sadness while I burned these people.  But burn them I would.  42

When you dedicate the work… it means acting in the name of a universal spiritual, ethical, or political principle.  Dedicating the work is precisely what I and many others did not do in Vietnam.  55

There will still be less guilt if you kill for these wrong transpersonal reasons than if you kill for selfish ones….If we perform with a noble heart and dedicate our efforts to some higher good, we minimize the suffering of guilt afterward, (but) this unfortunately will not eliminate the suffering of mourning. Guilt is different from mourning. 56

I don’t think (Lincoln) felt guilty about fighting to save the Union or end slavery.  He mourned the dreadful cost. If I were able to choose, I’d choose sadness over guilt.  57

In the divine play of opposites the warrior knows only one thing for certain, that a side must be chosen.  Once a side is chosen, the actions have to be dedicated to what is beyond the world of opposites. 59

Having chosen a side, we cannot do so thinking we are knights in shining armor.  59

There is no foolproof formula for choosing the right side, there are only guidelines.  The warrior operates in extreme zones.  The more removed a situation like combat gets from every day life, the less applicable the guidelines get. This is why we must rely so much on character rather than rules when discussing and experiencing extreme situations like war.  60

The least acknowledged aspect of war, today, is how exhilarating it is.  This aspect makes people very uncomfortable. Not only is it politically incorrect, it goes against the morality taught in our schools and churches.  62

What’s scary is that it is far easier to take the path of transcendence through destruction than to take the path of transcendence through creation.  63

The easier the path of destruction gets, the more likely we’ll be to take it. This is another reason why warriors, above all, must fundamentally be spiritual people, that is, people who are on a different path to start with. 64

Self – righteousness is one of the best ways invented to fall into the rapture of violence: witness the terrorists who are waging holy war and taking “justified revenge.” 73

Everyone has his or her equivalent of “the gook inside.” It’s what Carl Jung called the shadow.  People who say they don’t have one have an even bigger one. 82

If you go to war singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” you’re going to raise the devil.  87

We all have shit on our shoes.  We’ve just got to realize it so we don’t track it into the house. 88

We have an idea of what is right and wrong.  And we can debate moral issues as ideas.  But moral standards are not ideas; they exist in the form of observable measurable behavior. 112

Behavior stets standards, not ideals….We talk about moral ideas.  We operate on standards. 113

The answer to fallen-standard kinds of atrocities is quite simply to never allow behavior to differ from what is stated publicly. We do this by very quickly punishing even small lapses.  We punish with compassion and understanding. War is cruel. People crack under its pressure.  But we punish – and we try to help the one who failed to unravel the complex feelings afterward.  113

One of the greatest tests of character is telling the truth when it hurts the teller.  114

Why don’t decent people stand up and scream?  It’s because there’s nothing in it for them. They’re in a system in which they wish to survive. 118

When the system starts seeking goals that are out of line with individual values, the individual, who is usually trapped in the system, can either get hurt or survive by lying. We all like to survive and people lie all the time because of this.  119

Cynicism is simply the flip side of naïveté.  You’re no more mature, just more burned. 120

For me, my loyalty was to the mythic/historic/psychological projection called “the unit.”  It has a thousand specific names….You know that tens of thousands of people before you have listened to thousands of similar asses and still gotten the job done. You would be letting down all those bighearted ghosts who waded in and did the job in spite of the idiots.  141

(on the dark side of great loyalty to the unit) There’s a dark side to this surrender, however.  You impair and in some cases lose altogether, your ability to make sound judgments as an individual, whether in the mud of war with all these frightened kids around you or in the battle for corporate survival.  142

The primary reason you don’t make sound judgments in combat is that you too often are exhausted and numbed. There is little that can be done about this except training under extreme duress to learn how to function at such times – one very strong reason why I deplore ignorant attempts by civilians and noncombat veterans to make boot camp more “humane.”  There is nothing humane about dead kids because someone cracked under pressure. 142

We are generally delighted to be cogs. 143

The more narrowly defined the unit, the more often one will get into situations of conflicting loyalties and murky ethical water.  143

Troops won’t fight for oil.  They will fight to stop murder and torture of other human beings and to stop terrorism and threats of mass destruction to their people.  “Diplomacy by other means” is going to have to line up with nineteen year old psychology or it will fail.  This is not at all bad.  150

When you are confronted with a seemingly painless moral choice, the odds are that you haven’t looked deeply enough.  154

(Bill) Moyers then asked (Joseph) Campbell, “Doesn’t heroism have a moral objective?” Campbell replied, “The moral objective is that of saving a people, or person, or idea. That is the morality of it. Now, you, from another position, might say that ‘something’ wasn’t worth it, or was downright wrong….But that doesn’t destroy the heroism of what was done.  171

The psychology of the young warrior is, I think, almost entirely related to hearth and kin. 179

The hyper masculine warrior energy has to be balanced by feminine energy, but it must come home to this. 186

It is primarily women who reintegrate the warrior back into society, the energy of the queen, not the king.  Women carry this queen for most young men.  Joking about men getting in touch with their inner woman aside, this is healthy, but it usually doesn’t happen until they’re quite mature, at least in their forties.  When a young man comes home from war, he’s all testosterone and he’s scary.  190

There is also a deeper side to coming home.  The returning warrior needs to heal more than his mind and body.  He needs to heal his soul. 196

The spiritual component, however, must never take second place to the physical – always a danger in a society dedicated to separating religion from government and a culture conditioned to favoring the practical over the impractical.  Training must move beyond here’s how you kill. It must include why you kill, and here’s how killing fits in the great scheme of things, and here’s how you are likely to feel afterward.   202

You’ve got to engage the bodies of these young warriors, before you engage their spirits. 206

When the child asks, “What is it like to go to war?” to remain silent keeps you from coming home.  207

If you can’t or won’t talk about it, you can’t get clear about it.  213

Warrior energy is fierce and wild. It upsets men who don’t have it, and women who are afraid of it, primarily because the only form of it they know is the negative one that is a result of repression. 218

Society needs veterans to express all sides of their experience, the guilt and sorrow and the pride. Cut off one and you cut off the others.  218

Without integration of the positive and negative sides of war, the experience isn’t transmitted in any practical and meaningful sense, and we will continue to seek the glory of war unchecked by wisdom about all the costs of war.  219

Choosing sides is the fundamental first choice that a warrior must make… The second fundamental choice of the warrior is to be willing to use violence to protect someone against intended or implied violence. 222

Doing the above eliminates any need to use the adjective “ethical” in front of the noun “warrior.” A warrior, by my definition, acts ethically.  Using violence other than to protect makes a person a bully or a murderer.  222

This is the warrior’s dictum: “No violence except to protect someone from violence.” 223

A warrior cannot commit to combat tentatively. 225

Without such character the ego simply abandons ship when it faces this situation.  There’s no ego strength left to control the unconscious forces that come ripping through the abandoned channels of the body and mind.  The loss of this “I” is, according to most mystical traditions, the way to ecstasy, but it can also be the way to horror. 235

“Command thyself” is the second great principle of the ethical conscious warrior. 237

How can we kill to protect without releasing the dark warriors of pseudo-speciation, racism, hatred, and slaughter? 237

Repressing natural aggression until it becomes passivity works only temporarily; the aggression will be released as unconscious rage years later, through either physical violence or ugly, damaging verbal aggression. 239

The message is that aggression is bad.  It doesn’t recognize the healthy aspects of aggression. 239

We also need to teach the difference between empathy and sentiment.  Warriors need empathy but a warrior must not fall into mushy sympathy.  241

Women choosing the military as a profession are going to have an immense struggle not to become pseudo-men.  It’s not just a woman’s problem, however. There are a lot of male pseudo-men in the world, still behaving like forty year old frat boys. A pseudo-man, whether male or female, can be an effective killer but cannot be a conscious warrior. 243

We will find ourselves increasingly embroiled in wars where the primary goal is to restore or even establish for the first time, civil order and a workable system of justice, not to defeat a clearly defined enemy who is trying to harm us.  It behooves us to recognize the difference in order to make it clear whether troops are acting in the role of warriors or the role of police… Warriors choose sides.  Police cannot choose sides; they must be on the side of the law.  252

The offspring of Ares and Aphrodite is Harmonia, harmony….what I think the mythology is telling us is that inner harmony, personal harmony is the result of the union of Aphrodite and Ares, the integration of love, sex, justice and war.  Without this union there is no harmony. 254

(After a battle…) Leaders should say a prayer, out loud, thanking these dead on both sides for their fully played part in this mysterious drama. We should allow people to curse the dead for murdering their friends, and then, if the younger ones can’t, the older ones, officers and NCOs, should be trained in conducting the rituals of forgiveness and healing. Something like:

Bless these dead, our former enemies, who has played out their part, hurled against us but the forces that hurled us against them. Bless us who live, whose parts are not yet done, and who know not how they shall be played. Forgive us if we killed in anger or hatred.  Forgive them if they did the same. Judgment is Yours, not ours. We are only human.  79

Why this book: I had read and loved Elephant Company,  by Victoria Croke, but felt that the author gave short shrift to Jim Williams’ wife Susan. I found this autobiography written by Susan, published in 1962, and ordered it through Abebooks. It has not been reprinted so far as I can tell.

Summary in 3 sentences:  The is an autobiographical account of Susan Williams life as wife of Jim “Elephant Bill” Williams in Burma. The first part of the book is very much her perspective and impressions of living in Burma – it’s all her. The latter part of the book, after they separated after their harrowing evacuation from Burma, is more about her version of what her husband   experienced. The last chapter of the book is a recap of their final years together in Cornwall after they returned from Burma after the War.

My impressions:  I loved the first 3/4 of the book when she openly shares her own impressions and experiences, and the book is indeed very autobiographical.  We get to know Susan Williams as an amazing, passionate and resilient woman and she writes beautifully.  She begins her story as a young woman growing up in England and at about 18 years old accepts an offer from an eccentric uncle to become his assistant in Burma.   A brave, intrepid, resilient and compassionate woman emerges from her descriptions of arriving in Burma, working for her uncle, then meeting, being courted by, and marrying Jim Williams.  Then she tells of their first years with Jim Williams living and working in the remote jungles of Burma.  From Elephant Company (my review is here) I was familiar with most of the story as told by Victoria Croke, but I found Susan Williams writing and descriptions superior.  She had a gift of unpretentious sincerity and a gift for simple and evocative language.

She wrote of their life together including months moving through the Burmese jungles with her husband, checking on the harvesting of teak, taking care of the elephants and their Burmese handlers, describing how the elephants did their work and how amazed she was with their incredible intelligence and sensitivity. She clearly shared her husbands love of animals and people and they both had a special gift for acquiring their trust.  She transmitted an utter amazement of and respect for the elephants she spent so much time with.

She told how young Burmese oozies – elephant handlers – were assigned to a baby elephant when the elephant was about 5 years old.  The oozie would often stay with the elephant for all or most of his live, and the elephant would be not just a work animal but a quasi-member of the family, after the oozie later married and had a family.  She told of how the elephants learned to understand and comply with human language to a remarkable degree.  She told how an oozie family would have their elephant baby-sit their baby by putting the baby on the ground, drawing a large circle around it, and the elephant would gently nudge the baby back into the circle when it tried to leave, while the family went and took care of other chores.

Susan talks briefly about her and Jim’s trauma after losing their first child to a sudden disease, and then later of their joy in raising their son Treve, who, with the loving care of his parents and of Burmese care givers, thrived in what some might consider a harrowing environment to raise a child.

Susan Williams was perhaps typical of strong women of that era, raised with essentially Victorian sensibilities, self-effacing and humble, but clearly a force of nature in her own right. And she clearly loved and admired her husband and the world in which they spent their first 10 years of marriage.

The later part of the book was a bit disappointing since it was more about her husband’s experiences as she recalled him telling about them, than her own.  At one point she recommends that the reader read his version for a better description of some of what he did to support the British Army in Burma fighting the Japanese.  And because I was already familiar with the outlines of the story from Victoria Croke’s Elephant Company, and had come to so like and admire Susan Williams, I was disappointed when she shifted the narrative to describing his experiences rather than her own. I would have liked to know what she was doing, experiencing, feeling, while her husband was rounding up elephants to help General Slim fight the Japanese.

The book concludes with a very brief description of her and Jim’s efforts to make a life for themselves in Cornwall after the political environment in Burma made their former work and lifestyle untenable.   Susan was raising two of her own children and a nephew and niece while Jim tried to find work in the UK that satisfied him.  Ultimately he wrote a book Elephant Bill about his experiences in Burma which became quite a hit and he was in much demand as a speaker and lecturer. There were satisfactions in their life, but it was certainly an anti-climax after leaving Burma.  He died suddenly in 1958 during an emergency appendectomy. This book was published four years later.  In some ways the last part of the book seemed like a eulogy to her husband.

I really liked Susan Williams as she comes through in this book. I would like to know how the rest of her life went – but have yet to find anything more about her.

Why this Book:  Strongly recommended by a member of my literature reading group.

Summary in 3 Sentences:  Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov,  an educated man of culture, charm and discretion and a member of the aristocracy in pre-revolutionary Russia, is sentenced to “house arrest” in the Metropole Hotel in Moscow, with the warning that if he were ever step outside of it, he would be shot on sight. The Metropole is an oasis of culture and refinement in the new proletarian ruled Soviet Union, and we get to know Count Rostov and a cast of fascinating characters over the next 30+ years, as he makes a rich life for himself within the walls of the hotel – a life in which he finds a way to live fully in accordance with the values that represent the very best of what the Russian Revolution swept away after World War 1.

My Impressions:  I loved this book – from the very beginning and all the way through it.   I’d put it in the top 5 in literature I’ve read in the last 10 years.  It is exquisitely written – I loved Amor Towles use of the English language to capture the feeling of culture and sophistication that Count Rostov represented.  His tightly circumscribed life within the walls of the hotel is in stark contrast to the chaos and turmoil taking place outside the walls of the hotel in Russia at the time, as Stalin collectivized the farms and dissidents were executed, sent into exile or simply disappeared.  All of this is going on in the background of a life well lived in forced internal exile.

The center piece of the story is the character of the urbane Count Rostov whose warmth, sense of manners and propriety, respect for the history and traditions of his culture and the great achievements of cultivated society he retained, even when reduced to living in a 10×10 room in the attic of a hotel.  He continued to live with integrity and class, befriending many – while still holding on to his appreciation for the finest in culinary cuisine, wine,  culture and the best in people – no matter what their background.  He found a way to live fulfill two fundamental imperatives of a life well lived – to be useful and kind. Amor Towles in an interview on Youtube said that his wife wished that he were more like the Count. My wife would wish the same of me.

The Count was an example and a mentor to many. He lived humbly and simply, but always with the utmost in integrity, manners, and character. He mentored many people in the book, to include a child at the beginning, and then he became a surrogate father to an orphan in the second half of the book. These relationships were key to his character and to the story as it evolved.

The world of Count Rostov inside the Metropole included many fascinating characters and beautifully nuanced metaphors for the world we the readers live in, with (seemingly) much greater freedom of action.  The worlds of pre-Stalinist, Stalinist, and post-Stalinist Russia intrudes regularly into the Metropole as close friends visit, acquaintances and interesting guests come and go, and activities are scheduled at the hotel that reflect the tumultuous political world outside its walls – the Kremlin is within sight of the hotel.   The Metropole hotel serves as a meeting place for influential people from around the world, where Western values and conveniences are (mostly) retained, and therefore change comes much more slowly than outside, but indeed the vulgarization of life outside the walls of the hotel walls inevitably creeps in.

For example:  The Metropole had an extensive wine cellar with wines of every type and vintage. A great story is when the apparatchiks decided that it was a bourgeois vanity to prefer one wine over another, an anachronistic reflection of individual differences in a world which was moving toward sameness and homogenization.  And so, the newly appointed manager directed that the labels be taken off of all the thousands of bottles of wine in the best wine cellar in Russia, in order that customers could only order red wine or white – and that was all anyone needed to know.   Of course the Count and the other sophisticated patrons of the hotel were appalled, but could say nothing.

The richness of the story  in A Gentleman in Moscow is hard to do justice to in a brief review. I will say in conclusion that the ending was a surprise – but was appropriate to the quality of the rest of the book.

An interesting and unexplained aspect of the book:  All of the chapter titles begin with the letter “A” – and we get no explanation – but it is a charming nuance.

Interesting or otherwise Great Quotes:

It was the Grand Duke who took the young Count aside and explained that he must be strong for his sister’s sake; that adversity presents itself in many forms; and that if a man does not master his circumstance then he is bound to be mastered by them. 18

His model for mastering his circumstance would be a different sort of captive altogether; an Anglican washed ashore.  Like Robinson Crusoe stranded on the Isle of Despair, the Count would maintain his resolve by committing to the business of practicalities.  Having dispensed with dreams of quick discovery, the world’s Crusoes seek shelter and a source of fresh water; they teach themselves to make fire from flint; they study their island’s topography, its climate, its flora and fauna, all the while keeping their eyes trained for sails on the horizon and footprints in the sand.  29

Ever since its opening in 1905 , the hotel’s suites and restaurants had been a gathering spot for the glamorous, influential, and erudite; but the effortless elegance on display would not have existed without the services of the lower floor….33

For standing at the edge of his table was the young girl with the penchant for yellow- studying him with that unapologetic interest peculiar to children and dogs.  40

“Manners are not like bonbons, Nina. You may not choose the ones that suit you best; and you certainly cannot put the half-bitten ones back in the box…”52

Having systematically made an impression in every corner – with a weighty remark here, and a witty remark there – he now excused himself “for just moment.”  67

Here indeed was a formidable sentence – one that was on intimate terms with the comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard.  68

“Poetic concision demands the avoidance of a pair of words when a single word will suffice.” 69

For it is a fact that a man can be profoundly out of step with his times….For such a fellow, forget any chance of romance or professional success; those are the provenance of men instep with their teams….But events can unfold in such a manner that overnight the man out of step finds himself in the right place at the right time.  86-87

For after all, if attentiveness should be measured in minutes and discipline measured in hours, then indomitability just be measured in years.  Or, if philosophical investigations are not to your taste, then let us simply agree that the wise man celebrates what he can.  110

…then attaining tor the upper hand on the field of battle is measure in the instant.  111

And as she talked, the Count had to acknowledge once again the virtues of withholding judgment…After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met… Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration but our reconsideration….120

If the bread was somehow earthen, brown, and brooding, the honey was sunlit, golden , and gay. But there was another dimension to it…An elusive, yet familiar element…A grace note hidden beneath, or behind, or within the sensation of sweetness.  `127

After all, an educated man should admire any course of study no matter how arcane, if it be pursued with curiosity and devotion. 134

Yes, a bottle of wine was the ultimate distillation of time and place; a poetic expression of individuality itself.  Yet here it was, cast back into the sea of anonymity, that realm of averages and unknowns.  144

As we age, we are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade. 144

But if the Count took pride in knowing that everything was in order, he took comfort in knowing that the world would carry on without him -and, in act, already had. 154

The sense of loss is exactly what we must anticipate, prepare for and cherish to the last of our days; for it is  only our heartbreak that finally refutes all that is ephemeral in love.  184

Nina always was and would be a serious soul in search of serious ideas to be serious about. 186

“Then you must trust in her. And even if she is single-minded to a fault, you must trust that life will find her in time.  Fore eventually, it finds us all.”189

Or like the Count and Anna, one may simply join the Confederacy of the Humbled….a close knit brotherhood whose members travel with no outward markings, but who know each other at a glance.  196

“But I do like to think there is a difference between being resigned to a situation and reconciled to it.” 211

(On Jazz – the Count) … had been raised to appreciate music of sentiment and nuance, music that rewarded patience and attention with crescendos and  minuendos, allegros and adagios artfully arranged over four whole movements – not a fistful of notes crammed higgledy-piggledy into thirty measures….. And yet, the art form had grown on him.  216

The two men took each other in from heel to hair – both practiced at confirming at a glance their worst suspicions of each other. 218

…four stalks of celery lying in an orderly row waited like Spartans to meet their fate. 219

..at half past midnight the chef hadn’t the slightest doubt that the sun would shine tomorrow, that most people were generous at heart, and that, when all was said and done, things tended to work out for the best.  219

Why this book:  I’ve been thinking about this topic for years. I heard Tim Ferriss interview Sam Harris and I liked what I heard, so I started listening to Sam Harris’s pod casts.  I find I agree with him a lot more than I disagree with him, and I agree with him on substantive matters.  This sounded like a book that might help me. I was right.

Summary in 3 (rather long) sentences:  Sam Harris takes a look at what spirituality is and can be, and concludes that for him and many others, it is NOT (necessarily) associated with religion, nor with the “mythology” that is associated with most religions.  Harris rejects religion as a pathway to spirituality for himself personally, and argues that spiritual experience is available to anyone through disciplined practice in studying and understanding consciousness, whether a believer in a religion or God or not.  Waking Up talks about the brain and the mind,  the illusion of self, explores what he calls “the transcendent self” and argues that meditation and mindfulness can create a key hole through which we can move beyond being “lost in thought” to tune in to a more “self-less” connection to our world.

My impressions:  Some books I read are interesting, some are well written, some are entertaining, some are enlightening and have a real impact. This one was all of those.  I have been for decades trying to find a spirituality that works for me.  This book had an impact on me – it doesn’t serve as my “bible” nor is it meant to, but Sam Harris provides well explained insights that help me significantly in my search.  And I’m at a point in my life when I want to give this search more priority.

I have become a fan of Sam Harris through his podcasts, in which he explores ideas with some of the great thinkers in the English language, discussing matters related to philosophy, religion, science, reality, the cosmos – and, well –  whatever interests him.   This book expounds upon ideas I’ve heard him share in his podcasts.

He states in the introductory chapter “Spirituality” that, “Nothing that a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu can experience – self-transcending love, ecstasy, bliss, inner light -constitutes evidence in support of their traditional beliefs, because their beliefs are logically incompatible with one another. A deeper principle must be at work.  That principle is the subject of this book: The feeling that we call “I” is an illusion.”  p 9

Waking Up is not long but covers a lot of ground .  The opening chapter “Spirituality” is a fascinating look at “spirituality” and what he considers it to be.  I offer a number of quotes from that chapter below (those listed up thru the quote on p 51).  This chapter is truly worth reading alone.  For those interested in Sam Harris’s well-thought out take on “spirituality,”  he offers his opening chapter free in written form or as a podcast  here.

The subsequent chapters, entitled “The Mystery of Consciousness,” “The Riddle of the Self,”  “Meditation,” and “Gurus, Death, Drugs, and other Puzzles” offer fascinating discussions of other aspects of spirituality and spiritual practice.

The chapter on The Mystery of Consciousness is an insightful look at this really challenging concept.  In this chapter he explores the relationship between what we conceive of as consciousness, and the brain itself, with some very interesting cases of how injury or medical impairments to the brain have affected this key aspect of who we think ourselves to be.

He continues this discussion in the chapter on The Riddle of the Self, and convinces me that the “self” is indeed a very problematic concept.   Harris seems to say that we are like  a hurricane (this my analogy, not his) but in the middle, where we conceive our “self” to be, the self we believe  ourselves to be,  is the eye – nothing.  Yet we identify with all the clouds and turmoil spinning around – quiet, calm, clear skies, nothing.  He says that while we may identify with our thoughts, our emotions, our personal history, these are like clouds and wind – not stable – and agrees with the teaching of Buddhism, that there is no stable self that is carried along from one moment to the next. There is no “self” behind our eyes, housed in our brain, which observes the world.  The “self” that we identify with is merely the contents of our consciousness.  And nothing more.  Two weeks ago, I visited two different good friends of mine, both a bit older than I. With them were their wives, who are struggling with Alzheimers and hardly the women I’d known well when I and they were much younger.  This experience drove home the challenges of the idea of an immutable “self.”

In the chapter on Meditation he discusses how meditation can help us to step away from the swirling of the hurricane, find our way out of the storm when we are “lost in thought,”  and at least momentarily get into the calm and quiet at the “eye of the hurricane” more easily.  With practice it gets easier, and we can stay for longer periods.  He shares experiences from his many years studying meditation in India.  He briefly describes different types of meditation, and why he believes that meditation is an excellent means for us to better understand our minds and our consciousness.  Meditation can help us transcend the idea of the self – and when we need to, can help us to become less self-centered and more “self-less” in relating to our world.

His chapter on Gurus, Death, Drugs, and other puzzles was great fun. He described how Westerners have often falsely identified great mental powers and the ability to focus and meditate, with wisdom and virtue. He shared some amusing and occasionally startling stories of Eastern mystics  coming to the West as Gurus and behaving  badly when given access to the temptations of Western affluence – particularly adoring young women.  He is quite transparent in describing how hallucinogens can tell us a lot about our brains and our consciousness, and can give us insight into what is possible. For him, drugs opened a door to allow him to briefly experience what meditation can allow him to experience on his own, and with much less risk.

His concluding chapter sums up a lot, and the journey through the book to get there is very worthwhile. He again addresses what he sees as the tenuous and often unjustifiable link between religion and spirituality.  In his conclusion, he state that “Happiness and suffering, however extreme, are mental events.  The mind depends upon the body, and the body upon the world, but everything good or bad that happens in your life must appear in consciousness to matter…..During the normal course of events, your mind will determine the quality of your life.”  204

I liked the analogy he makes of us living our lives as if we are caught up in the movie of our lives – totally absorbed.  “Waking up” is to to simply become aware that we are watching a movie, and that awareness can take us, at least for a moment, out of the drama on the metaphorical screen.

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Where I think I disagree (slightly) with Sam Harris: I say “I think I disagree,” because I’m not sure.  Reading between the lines in his writing, and other things I’ve read about Sam Harris lead me to wonder if  we may be more in synch than I think.  This is the same quibble I had with Sapiens.  (btw, Sam Harris will be interviewing Yuval Harari, author of Sapiens,  on his podcast soon, and that will be very good.)

My quibble is this:   Sam Harris states repeatedly that our experience of the world – in moments of ecstasy, spiritual bliss, or drug-induced wonder or terror only tell us about the potential of human consciousness, and nothing about the cosmos or metaphysical reality.  Got it. And yet…. the plethora of unexplained phenomena that do not fit a Newtonian understanding of the universe, and that cannot be accounted for by coincidence or chance, indicate to me at least, a reasonable  possibility that there may indeed be a larger principle at work than Newtonian physics can explain, and that spiritual practice may be able to tap into this principle. Though it is true that such phenomena cannot be reliably and repeatedly reproduced in a lab, phenomena which can’t be explained with current theories of physics happen repeatedly.  By such phenomena I include clearly clairvoyant insights, remote viewing, children who claim to remember events from past lives which research validates occurred, telepathy, etc.

I agree with Sam Harris that amazing mental powers are probably amoral, and we need an approach to spirituality that does not depend on an “unseen order of things” (the name of my brief essay on this idea,) and yet,  to not address this other possible dimension of reality in a discussion of spirituality I believe short-changes the discussion.  Where I do agree with Sam Harris is that our lives and how we live should withstand scrutiny (primarily our own) whether there is a God, an afterlife, karma, Jesus, Bodhisattvas, or whether indeed what we experience in this life is all the we get.   We don’t know.  And our lives and spiritual practice need to work for us,  whatever the case.

Some illuminating quotes from Waking Up (page numbers from paperback edition):

Perhaps I should speak only for myself here:  It seems to me that I spend much of my waking life in a neurotic trance.  My experiences in meditation suggest, however, that an alternative exists.  It is possible to stand free of the juggernaut of self, if only for moments at a time.  11

…what contemplatives throughout history have discovered is that there is an alternative to being continuously spellbound by the conversation we are having with ourselves; there is an alternative to simply identifying with the next thought that pops into consciousness. And glimpsing this alternative dispels the conventional illusion of the self.  14

On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound that an ability to follow one’s own advice. 15

Seeking, finding, maintaining, and safeguarding our well-being is the great project to which we all are devoted, whether or not we choose to think in these terms.  15

Cognition and emotion are not separate.  The way we think about experience can completely determine how we feel about it.  16

Our struggle to navigate the space of possible pains and pleasures produces most of human culture.  16

We seem to do little more than lurch between wanting and not wanting. Thus the question naturally arises:…. Is it possible to find lasting fulfillment despite the inevitability of change?  Spiritual life begins with a suspicion that the answer to such questions could well be “yes.”  17

Being wisely selfish and being selfless can amount to very much the same thing. 31

There is now little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes.  31

We manage to avoid being happy while struggling to become happy, fulfilling one desire after the next, banishing our fears, grasping at pleasure, recoiling from pain –  and thinking, interminably, about how best to keep the whole works up and running….We crave experiences, objects, relationships, only to grow bored with them.  And yet, the craving persists.  I speak from experience, of course.  34

The problem is not thoughts themselves, but the state of thinking without knowing that we are thinking. 37

Most of us spend every waking moment lost in the movie of our lives.  38

It is quite possible to lose one’s sense of being a separate self and to experience a kind of boundless, open awareness – to feel in other words, at one with the cosmos.  This says a lot about the possibilities of human consciousness, but it says nothing about the universe at large.  43

The traditional goal of meditation is to arrive at a state of well-being that is imperturbable, – or if perturbed, easily regained.  The French monk Matthieu Ricard describes such happiness as “a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind.”…The near goal, therefore, is to have an  increasingly healthy mind- that is to be moving one’s mind in the right direction.  44

I have never met another person who denied that some of us are stronger, more athletic,  or more learned than others. But many people find it difficult to acknowledge that a continuum of moral and spiritual wisdom exists, or that there might be better and worse ways to traverse it.  46

It seems to me that a healthy spiritual life can begin only once our physical, mental, social, and ethical lives have sufficiently matured.  46

Some people are content in the midst of deprivation and danger, while others are miserable despite having all the luck in the world.  This is not to say that external circumstances do not matter. But it is your mind, rather than circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life….Given this fact, it makes sense to train it.  47

In my view, the realistic goal to be attained through spiritual practice is not some permanent state of enlightenment that admits of no further efforts but a capacity to be free in this moment, in the midst of whatever is happening.  If you can do that, you have a already solved most of the problems you will encounter in life.  49

Investigating the nature of consciousness itself -and transforming its contents through deliberate training is the basis of spiritual life.  51

…it is obvious that consciousness is never truly confined by what it knows. That which is aware of sadness is not sad. That which is aware of fear is not fearful.  The moment I am lost in thought however, I’m as confused as anyone else.  137

It is important to realize that true meditation isn’t an effort to produce a certain state of mind….The deeper purpose of meditation  is to recognize that which is common to all states of experience, both pleasant and unpleasant.  140

…meditation requires total acceptance of what is given in the present moment….it is important to  distinguish between accepting unpleasant sensations and emotions as a strategy – while covertly hoping that they will go away – and truly accepting them as transitory appearances in consciousness.   149

One of the first things one learns in practicing meditation is that nothing is intrinsically boring – indeed, boredom is simply a lack of attention.  156

The truth is that, whatever happens after death, it is possible to justify a life of spiritual practice and self transcendence without pretending to know things we do not know. 186

As a general matter, I believe we should be very slow to draw conclusions about the nature of the cosmos on the basis of inner experiences – no matter how profound they may seem.  192

Changing your perception of the world is often as good as changing the world. 204

….there is no compelling reason to believe that the mind is independent of the brain..A middle path exists between making religion out of spiritual life and having no spiritual life at all. 205

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.”

————

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.

——-

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.