Along the way, you'll learn that Dan Rooney is a good listener, a smart business leader, and an honest and shrewd negotiator--not because of what he tells you, but from the results of his leadership of the team, within his family and in the community.  You will also realize that the Steelers rivalry with the Raiders, and Rooney's personal animus toward their owner Al Davis,  isn't just a media brainchild but a sincere and abiding dislike that stands out because it is so out of character.  And while his appointment as U.S. ambassador to Ireland was still in the future when this book was written, you will learn that the position came out of Rooney's political and charitable work and wasn't a sinecure or political payoff.

What is interesting is how many of the worst had design and production roots in the 1970s.  I got my drivers license in the middle of that decade, so I learned to drive in some of these worst, and even then we knew these were badly executed: slow, heavy, unwieldy to steer, lumbering to stop, death traps in accidents, quick to disintegrate.  Just how bad took a generation of retrospection in style and and quantum leaps in design and build quality to realize.

This isn't a great book--the format is too small to do the pictures justice, and it would be nice to have more details about the cars--but a fun one to remember just how automobilely-blessed we are today.

The trust and success (and friendship) is based on what Russell refers to as their '"tribes.". Russell"s tribe was southern, rural, black.  Red's was Brooklyn, urban, Jewish.  Neither was familiar with the others tribe (although Russell's claim he had to ask Red "'What's a Jew?" seems almost impossible) and try to fake knowledge of or membership in the others tribe.  But each respected and came to learn how the other responded within their tribe, even though they never talked much about their past experiences.

Indeed, if Russell's account is to be believed, they bonded without talking much at all.  With some glimpses into his background, and a few anecdotes about Red's coaching style and colorful language, this slim volume could be shelved as autobiography or biography, but is really more of a manual of male friendship.  Russell (or his "written with" coauthor) is a sneaky funny writer who also knows he has a serious subject in mind and delivers it well.  My only wish is to learn more about the sometimes famously-enigmatic Russell and his relationship with his father, who was the central figure in his life.  Fortunately, Russell has apparently written a more traditional autobiography as well.

Meanwhile, poorly matched to deal with both his opponents back in Washington (who favored conciliation and a diplomacy of normalcy) and his charges in Berlin (who violently attacked every American expression of displeasure with Nazi policy) Dodd faced an impossible task.  Concludes Larson: 

"he had done as well as any man can be expected to do, given the strange, irrational, and brutal nature of Hitler's government" (p. 242).

More tellingly, an insubordinate undersecretary on his Berlin staff who actively worked to undermine Dodd's tenure later confessed

"I often think that there were very few men who realized what was happening in Germany more thoroughly than he did, and certainly there were very few men who realized the implications for the rest of Europe and for us and for the whole world of what of what was happening in the country more than he did." (p. 355)

In Larson's hand this is history as noir mystery, with the added punch of awareness of the horror to come.  But he takes no shortcuts, documenting his facts with 40+ pages of notes and 10 pages of bibliography.  This is not fictionalized or dramatized history, just history well done, documenting Dodd's honorable service in his life during wartime.

Jonnes weaves it all together with skill and a quiet style that somewhat belies the "thrilling story" claim of the subtitle.  But the style fits the story without diminishing it by over hyping it.

And throughout this review I have not said the name of the city or country yet every reader knows where this story takes place.  That's the power of Eiffel's Tower.

1).  While many (but not all) of the chapters include a section on the Biblical perspectives, by not leading with these Anderson has allowed the definitions and data current in 1998 to drive the content.  A much more cogent and powerful presentation could have been made by leading with the Biblical perspective and using the data to show the rightness of the perspective.  G. K. Chesterton in his classic study of Jesus The Everlasting Man which I recently read and reviewed, makes the point that Jesus never phrased His message in terms bound by the Roman world,  so that it has remained always relevant and timeless.

2).  A related but the reverse problem is that the "contemporary" definitions and data used by Anderson has in the 15 years since publication become incredibly dated by the warp speed pace of moral change.  Notice I said moral change, not technical change, even though technologies like the internet, social media, and genetic manipulation have indeed outpaced every expectation.   But the real impact of that rate of change is on the moral issues Anderson is attempting to document.   On a scale that is even further beyond expectations the moral boundaries have shifted.  Homosexuality is no longer considered a moral dilemma but an accepted right, and gay marriage is fast approaching that point.   Global warming (briefly hinted at in then section on "Ecology and the Environment") has gone from fringe theory to pet theory (whether proven or not) in political, media, and some scientific circles.

So with the expectation of classroom use for freshman-level survey courses, Anderson made his organizational choices, and now I am reading a 15-year old text book hopelessly out of date that attempts to apply 2,000 year old moral principles that still shine like new.  But I can hardly criticize Anderson for being less of a writer than Chesterton--we all are.  Hence the dilemma of my review title.  I wished for more and got more--or less-- what my daughter warned me to expect.  So, reading this book today is a literal "waste of time", but I've rated it one range higher given the context.

1).  While many (but not all) of the chapters include a section on the Biblical perspectives, by not leading with these Anderson has allowed the definitions and data current in 1998 to drive the content.  A much more cogent and powerful presentation could have been made by leading with the Biblical perspective and using the data to show the rightness of the perspective.  G. K. Chesterton in his classic study of Jesus The Everlasting Man which I recently read and reviewed, makes the point that Jesus never phrased His message in terms bound by the Roman world,  so that it has remained always relevant and timeless.

2).  A related but the reverse problem is that the "contemporary" definitions and data used by Anderson has in the 15 years since publication become incredibly dated by the warp speed pace of moral change.  Notice I said moral change, not technical change, even though technologies like the internet, social media, and genetic manipulation have indeed outpaced every expectation.   But the real impact of that rate of change is on the moral issues Anderson is attempting to document.   On a scale that is even further beyond expectations the moral boundaries have shifted.  Homosexuality is no longer considered a moral dilemma but an accepted right, and gay marriage is fast approaching that point.   Global warming (briefly hinted at in then section on "Ecology and the Environment") has gone from fringe theory to pet theory (whether proven or not) in political, media, and some scientific circles.

So with the expectation of classroom use for freshman-level survey courses, Anderson made his organizational choices, and now I am reading a 15-year old text book hopelessly out of date that attempts to apply 2,000 year old moral principles that still shine like new.  But I can hardly criticize Anderson for being less of a writer than Chesterton--we all are.  Hence the dilemma of my review title.  I wished for more and got more--or less-- what my daughter warned me to expect.  So, reading this book today is a literal "waste of time", but I've rated it one range higher given the context.

The measure of the quality of both movie and book is that even though we know the outcome, each rivets our attention to the story of how the outcome came to be, and even leaves us in suspense as we understand the what but find it hard to believe the how.

Mendez also gives us more background on the Hollywood connection, which further adds to both the intrigue and the entertainment value of the book and the movie.  The characters played by Alan Arkin and John Goodman in the movie are much more than comic relief, and in fact play a very important role revealed in the book.

Not a game-changer, but a fun way to learn and appreciate more about the man and the crazy idea behind Argo.

He grew up in the South, lived with racism but refused later to vocally and visibly support civil rights efforts while fiercely defending his privacy and rights.  He was the first young African-American player (his signing and rapid rise to the majors signaled the death of the Negro leagues, says Einstein) and played with a youthful exuberance and unmistakable laughter, yet was universally respected by players of all races and granted (and accepted) the honor of the unspoken role of team leader.  Later in his career, when his manager gave him a powerful role as a coach on the field, the manager was asked in an accusatory tone at a press conference why he would do that.  "Because Willie Mays knows more about baseball than I do.  Do you have any hard questions for me?"

For readers who lived through the time spanned by Willie's career (1950 through 1973) Einstein's mixmaster style blending presidential personalities, cultural clips, and stark stories of racism in the era spanning Jim Crow, Brown vs. Board of Education, Bull Conner, and civil rights rallies (and riots burning African-American inner cities), this is as much a memoir for the reader as a biography of the man.  Younger readers may be lost in the many passing allusions, reading with Google at hand will help.

One final anecdote on how the older Mays ended up seemingly out of place in a Mets uniform to end his career.  Giants owner Horace Stoneham was going bankrupt and couldn't afford to pay Mays what he asked for during a final contract negotiation, so he dealt Mays to the Mets for a minor leaguer, even at that point in Mays's career an imbalance so obvious that reports assumed that the Mets also paid cash for Mays to help keep Stoneham and the Giants afloat.  Einstein reports that in fact Stoneham wanted to deal Mays to a team that could afford to give him a lucrative long term contract to take care of Mays after his playing days, and that the Mets, the National League New York franchise like the Giants when Mays started there 20 years before, were the only acceptable option.

Years later, Einstein asked Stoneham how much money he actually got from the Mets in the Mays deal. 

"He said, 'There was no money.'
'None?'
'None.  Do you think I was going to give him up for money?'"

In Willie's time, some things were more valuable than money could buy.

Killeen makes good use of the few words he has room for here.  I learned that the big historical divides are more complex and deeper than I had known before.  Not just Catholic vs Protestant and English vs Irish, but

• Old English vs New English
• North vs South
• Crown vs colony
• landlord vs tenant
• unionist vs nationalist
• political activists vs militant revolutionaries
• Anglicans vs Presbyterians
• New Light charismatics vs Old Light Calvinists
• Gaelic revivalists vs English cultural adopters

The brevity leaves little room for documentation of cultural and literary interest, influences, and ideas except where they intersect with the political history.  Yeats gets four brief mentions, and musical superpower U2 none.  Indeed the last two decades seem summed up in a rush.  Perhaps another  50 pages to cover this ground in more depth could have been allowed within the title's adjective.

But Killeen provides exactly what is promised and satisfies the reader's desire for a basic grounding in Irish history.  And he provides recommendations for deeper dives with a bibliographical essay on sources at the end.

Yes, there is an echo of Plato in that statement, but as Chesterton writes, the living doctrine of Jesus is more than a philosophy (of idealism or any other ism), and is in fact more than an  outline but the story of history.  Man and civilization may have started in a cave, he concedes, but Man was already drawing pictures on those cave walls and building pyramid monuments when we meet him full on in history, and Jesus the Everlasting man was born in a cave and destined to undermine and transform the civilizations above.

Like other Chestertons I have read his writing here is incredibly compact and dense.  He writes with the sparing efficiency of a deadline-driven, column bound journalist, the sure logic of a practicing philosopher, and the clear-eyed passion of an intellect certain of its right to speak and its  reason to be heard.  It is a style that seems almost startlingly direct and impossibly authoritative to our less certain and less capable modern eyes.  Indeed, the time required and committed to really read and understand Chesterton's arguments is rewarded with blinding insights into the world outside the eye's window and the reader's mind and heart within.

The temptation to quote Chesterton at length or read out loud to the nearest companion (my apologies to Vickie and thanks for her forbearance for not telling me to stop already) is great.  Perhaps even worse is the attempt to summarize in less capable words his arguments for the ages, but let me hazard a brief recap, if you will.  In the first section of the book he describes man and human history, in terms of cavemen, kings, gods of mythology, philosophers and demons.  The central feature of the story is not "the absence of the presence of God," but the "presence of the absence of God" (p. 92 of the ancient paperback edition I read).  In other words, in the minds and vision of these thinkers, God was not dead but missing, and mythology while not a doctrine or form of religion ("Mythology was never thought, and nobody could really agree with it or disagree with it" p. 161), was a search (p. 173) that ended in another cave with another caveman.  

That cave was the stable of Bethlehem, where Chesterton begins the second section of the book.  "The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic; it was not a place of myths allegorized or dissected or explained or explained away.. It was a place of dreams come true.  The shepherds had found their Shepherd." (p. 173)

From this position, Chesterton goes on to describe the power of the life, actions, words, church, and especially death of Jesus on the story of man.  And He uses the word story purposefully.  It is not a scientific diagram, the "childish" drawing of the myth makers, or the pattern of the philosophers.  "Religion is really not a pattern but a picture." (p. 136).  And "the story of Christ is the story of a journey, almost in the manner of a military march." (p. 207).  It is a story and a march headed in one direction--Jerusalem and the cross:  "There is in this buried divinity an idea of undermining the world, of shaking the towers and palaces from below, even as Herod the great king felt that earthquake under him and swayed with his swaying palace" --referring to the murder of the infants in an attempt to kill the Cave-child causing the quake (p. 180).

Who was this Jesus? 

He was exactly what the man with a delusion never is, he was wise, he was a good judge.  What he said was always unexpected, but it was always unexpectedly magnanimous and often unexpectedly moderate. . . . Divinity is great enough to be divine, it is great enough to call itself divine.  But as humanity grows greater, it grows less and less likely to do so.  God is God . . . but a great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it.  That is the paradox, everything that is merely approaching to that point is merely receding from it.  Socrates, the wisest man, knows he knows nothing.  A lunatic may think he is omniscience, and a fool may talk as if he were omniscient.  But Christ is in another sense omniscient if he not only knows, but knows that he knows. (p. 203)

He knows.  He is the Everlasting Man.

This is a hard message for the world to accept and the reason Jesus Christ has been a lightning rod drawing the power and fire of Heaven and earth in His favor and in fatal attack that led to His crucifixion.  And this event divides the world and energizes the Church:

There are people who say they wish Christianity to remain as a spirit.  They mean, very literally, that they wish it to remain as a ghost.  But it is not going to remain as a ghost.  What follows this process of apparent death is not the lingering of a shade, it is the resurrection of the body.  These people are quite prepared to shed pious and reverential tears over the Sepulchre of the Son of Man, what they are not prepared for is the Son of God walking once more upon the hills of morning.  These people, and indeed most people, were indeed by this time quite accustomed to the idea that the old Christian candle-light would fade into the light of common day.  . . .  It was all the more unexpected, and therefore all the more unmistakable, that the seven-branched candle-stick suddenly towered to heaven like a miraculous tree and flamed until the sun turned pale. (p. 257-258)

The Everlasting Man, the Cave-man, the Son of Man, the Son of God.  God is all of these.  The sun fades in comparison.

1.  we don't realize how poorly organized, staffed, and prepared America's law enforcement, military, and intelligence communities were for just such a confluence of events, despite the warning shots like the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centers and the mounting record of terror against American targets in the middle East afterward.

2.  we aren't aware of how many possible followups to September 11 have been averted by the heightened readiness since then.

While Ashcroft gives valuable insights into these topics, writing in 2006, he is limited in what he can say by his closeness to the events in both time and position.  His first draft of history is therefore written in broader brush strokes than I would have liked, both to protect the intelligence aspects of the war on terror and, I suspect, protect and defend his own role in it.  Which gets to my biggest hesitancy in recommending this book.  From day 1 of his account, which starts with his lost reelection campaign for the U.S. Senate against his opponent tragically killed in a plane crash just weeks before the election, Ashcroft seems too defensive by half and sitting on a tripwire waiting to accuse everyone of being against him for his campaign decisions, his religious beliefs, his political stances, and maybe his choice of tie color and style on a given day.

Granted, as Ashcroft goes through his account of the bitter confirmation hearings battle, the attacks on his character for being pro-life while upholding the federal law defending abortion, and charges of both underacting and overreacting in the war on terrorism, he was certainly under intense scrutiny and faced often unfair criticism.  But those were sensitive days and emotionally charged issues and periods of history; a man more confident and sure of his motives, beliefs, actions, and abilities might have been more forgiving and less defensive.

In the end though, judging Ashcroft by the outcome, he did his job better than we American citizens could have hoped, and better than anyone else might have.  Near the end of Never again he makes the best statement anyone could make in defense of his actions in the war on terrorism, a statement that still rings true and resonates powerful today as American men and women in uniform remain in harm's way on battlefields across the globe: 

Why should we send our young people into danger around the world in our fight against terrorism if we are going to coddle and succor terrorists in our own country?  It would be a travesty if because of our lack of moral resolve and the will to won we turn our own country into a haven for terrorists that they no longer have in other lands.

Well said and well done, Mr. Ashcroft.  Never again.

Peterson has been in the bike business as a professional race rider and shop owner for many years, and the book is his list of sometimes contrarian ways in which racers have ruined biking for the rest of us.  But Peterson doesn't set out to be difficult, he just wants the rest of us to know we don't need $5,000 bikes with pencil thin tires or $200 shoes with clips and cleats, and that we don't need to be megamilers or regimented gear freaks to just have fun and be safe and healthy riding a bike. 

His 89 statements cover equipment, riding styles, health, safety and maintenance and concludes with this simple reminder:  "Your bike is a toy.  Have fun with it."   Even if you are like me and could care less about racing, you still might benefit from the reminder not to obsess on frame weight (Peterson's take:  the engine--that's you--weighs much more than any couple of pounds weight difference for a much more expensive frame that won't last as long or be as comfortable to ride in a broader range of conditions) or counting miles to judge the quality of a ride (Peterson:  count days, not miles, even if you only ride a couple of miles).

Remember the point:  the bike is a fun toy and sometimes practical way to go A to B.  Peterson will help you relax and have fun with it.  Note that while he does include some maintenance and gear tips like how to check chain wear or size cranks, this is not a maintenance manual and  not a replacement for one if you like to do your own maintenance.   And yes, Peterson has an opinion on that, too (do as little as possible until it makes funny noises--your bike, I mean).

So as I sit here in early February Illinois looking out at 30 degree days with 20 MPH winds, my bike sits lonely and waiting in the kitchen for me to ride again.  Come on, Spring!

Still, while not great writing, this is a fun companion volume to the DVD double feature I just enjoyed:  Chinatown and L. A. Confidential.  The booming desert town on the edge of the Pacific was the real star of both movies, and for twenty years it was Mickey's town.  The center of the action was the Sunset Strip, where the divided jurisdiction of L. A. county and city made for lax and uncertain enforcement and marginally legal businesses like those Cohen ran to front his real moneymakers could flourish.  And it is fun to learn about some of the real life haunts we see in those movies, like the Pantages Theatre.   And Tebera's book provides some useful background that makes L. A. Confidential's action make sense, such as the corruption within the LAPD and the police forces war against out of town gangsters, especially those from Cleveland (Cohen earned his gangster
stripes there, and may have been controlled by Cleveland  crime families even during his L. A. time).

Teresa does include an extensive bibliography, where it appears that most gangsters were busier telling their stories to ghostwriters than they were strong arming legitimate businesses or muscling in on rival gangs.  Much like the outlaws of the Wild West, it appears that the gangsters of the following century were at least in part products of their own publicity.  So you can dig deeper and read the accounts from the primary and secondary sources Tereba cites if you really want the truth behind the headlines.

But if you just want the headlines from today's "Hollywood Nite Life" (Cohen's tabloid mouthpiece) just hit play on Chinatown and L. A. Confidential and flip to page one.

Throughout this story from his birth with a serious birth defect in a small town into a broken home all the way through his 10-year NFL career and the broadcasting career for which he is now best known. Summerall tells the story with the voice he used in the booth.  Speaking quietly and steadily with the minimum number of words to convey the meaning, Summerall covers his playing career on less than 50 pages but spends 75 on "The Reckoning" as he calls his recovery experiences.

A quick check of Wikipedia today show Summerall (now 82)  is still alive but still paying the price for his years of alcohol abuse in physical ailments, but as he says in this book, his focus is on telling others of the healing grace that saved his soul and repaying the human compassion to the family of the young boy who provided the transplanted organ that kept his voice alive.

The Pat Summerall revealed in his words is a man who lives up to the image of quiet professionalism he projected all those years.  And knowing the story behind the image makes him an even stronger and more heroic person than the image.  Well worth the reading.

The journey and the companions are the destination here, as the mystery and the eventual resolution are straightforward stuff when Sayers gets around to it.  But the waiting is worth the waiting for.

And the fictional components such as the love interests of the idolized Larkin are cliched, clunky, and at time cringe-worthy.  Not the worst I've ever read (see Clive Cussler for that, or better, just trust me that it can get worse than this) but far from good literature.

But the history is interesting enough that the time spent is at least not painful. Just thinking that like truth is stranger than fiction, so is history better than fiction in this instance.  Reward yourself with that and skip Uris.

The collection starts with "Major Barbara", Shaw's comparative study of the religion of Christianity (in the form of the social evangelism of the Salvation Army) and Capitalism.  Study is really too polite of a term for Shaw's scorched-earth brand of forceful argument and extreme rationalism.  Shaw never meets a shade of gray he can't paint black.  The only way to fail to understand a point Shaw was making would be to willfully choose not to accept it; few contemporaries did, a transparency which caused Shaw political and critical problems when his arguments were unpopular, such as during the Great War.  Yet his most honest critics like Chesterton found his humor and consistency friend-worthy.

After his study of medical economics and ethics ("Dilemma") comes his most famous play "Pygmalion", where Henry Higgins the overbearing elocutionist represents Shaw (according to his own admission).  It was with this play that I was able to finally understand Shaw's choice of the play format--like no other art form it allowed him to directly and unambiguously illustrate his arguments through the  dialogue and movement of the characters in a world (the stage) of his own creation and control.  Indeed Shaw's stage directions are so precise and at times non-visual and ideological that it is clear that Shaw intended for the plays to be read.  The control over the character's thought, dialogue, action, and movement is so precise that at one point in this collection when an apparent stage movement is not marked off by the usual typographical convention I was not entirely sure whether it was a typo or Shaw's allowance of the character an ironic self-awareness of her controlled fate.

It is interesting, too, that Shaw as Higgins is so unrelievedly unlikeable. Few writers have the consistency and confidence to make a self-based character so sour, to the point that even the reader wishes he could soften Higgins's edges.  I have never seen the play performed or seen the movie My Fair Lady based on it, but I would be most interested now to see the script realized on stage-but not the film version, which would lose the three-dimensional stage-reality of the characters in the same room as the viewer.

It is also interesting that Shaw doesn't end "Pygmalion", but after resolving the linguistic and psychological conflict to his satisfaction abruptly cuts to an afterward where he spends 15 pages documenting the conflict and outlining how Eliza Doolittle would have worked out the rest of her life including her complex relationship with Higgins.

The collection concludes with "Heartbreak House", an allegory of World War I.  While the introductory essay is a powerful summary of the decaying state of English politics, economics, class, and culture in the years leading to the war, the play is the least satisfying of the four, as Shaw's attempts to represent the tottering European democracies is too complex and mediated for our current knowledge of the politics and international relations of the time.  This play does highlight that the previous plays in the collection are not in any sense allegorical but are in fact Shaw's ideas embodied, not allegorized.   

What makes these plays and essays so powerful was that Shaw was a "writer" first, not just a scientist, theologian, economist, or political theorist.  It is a skill too often overlooked in today's landscape of thought, and a refreshing blast of recognition of how well written the classics really are.

Amateur sleuth Lord Wimsey and his police friend Charles Parker are interrupted by a restaurant patron who overhears their discussion of a doctor's responsibility if he suspects foul play.  This unknown gentleman just happens to be a doctor with a tale from his own recent past that serves as the catalyst for this mystery.  From this casual beginning the story builds slowly at first, and rises to a classic and classy climax.

Along the way, the focus is on logic, conversations, relationships, and humor.  The murders (yes, from the simple suspicion arise a compound complex of crime) all take place off-camera but there is real danger and suspense in the resolution.  And Sayers is able to work in profound and humorous references to Dickens, Shakespeare, religion, and issues of gender (two pairs of female partners hint at female independence if not at subtle suggestions of lesbianism), and the towering genius of the still-recent Sherlock Holmes.

With this introduction I will continue to work my way through both the fiction and nonfiction entries in the Sayers catalog.

The most interesting story for me was the lesser-known one of the Glastonbury Spiral in the southwest part of England, at the center of a region of mysteries (including Stonehenge, Glastonbury Abbey, and others discussed separately in the book).  The spiral is a tor or hill thought to be either natural or shaped by millennia of farming into terraces--but the authors present compelling evidence that the hillside is a man made maze that spirals up the hill to a holy area that may have played a role in the life (and death) of a historical King Arthur, and may even be the mythical Avalon.

Another shocking story is the Amazons, that mysterious tribe of female warriors who have been typically dismissed derisively, but probably have a historical basis far from the river that bears the name of the tribe.  There are 600+ pages of this kind of history here.

The only things that might have improved the book are better maps to enable readers to locate the mysteries in today's world.  And an updated edition would be welcome.   The 1999 date means the theories of China's treasure fleet being an early discoverer of America are missing here, as are Jared Diamond's Collapse, where he explains Easter Island and the Mayans from his excellent study of societal collapses.as symptoms of environmental failure.

But the real tension is driven by culture, particularly as we learn the back story of newsman Ishmael Chambers and Hasue Miyamoto.  And the tension is sharpened by the war, when the island's Japanese-American population was shipped to mainland concentration camps, and the aftermath of the war, when men from both cultures return as wounded war veterans.  Some wear their wounds (and their culture-the irony of islanders of German heritage calling those of Japanese heritage by nature suspect citizens is not lost here) on their sleeve, others bury them behind protective barriers.

While nominally a mystery, this is really a novel about people at war.  And as the outcome often does in war, the outcome here will turn on what the characters do at the moment of decision.  The ending may not surprise, but neither will it disappoint.

Keneally unfolds the tale so quietly that it feels like a whispered remembrance from an acquaintance we haven't seen in years.  The author's note calls it a "true story" told using 'the texture and devices of a novel," and it reads like the best of a classic without embellishments.  It is tempting to say the story writes itself, until you compare it to other attempts at the genre, and until you realize that no one had told this story in the 35 years since it happened.   So the book earns its classic rating on both the power of the story and the power of the telling of it.

At different points of the story, Keneally steps outside the account and asks the question of motive, for the Oscar  Schindler of history and this story is neither saint nor hero.  He is a German business man who profits from his Jewish slave labor and his SS contacts, he is a corrupt business man who bribes and parties with his Nazi suppliers and buyers, and he is an immoral man who cheats openly on his wife with multiple women at once.  Yet he gambles his business and his life for his workers, arrested and jailed three times even as he promises them safety and life after the madness ends.  He openly faces down the bureaucracy that enriches him, rejoicing in his anarchic victories large and small.  He is a clear-eyed business man who sabotages his factory output to deprive the German war machine of the material it needs to finalize its ultimate solution.

At most and best it must be said he was the right man in the right place with the right abilities and contacts to make a difference--and he did.  He promised his workers life, and he gave it to them.  At the very end, as the German army scattered, the feared Russians approached from the east, and the Americans paused to the west, when the risk was at its greatest because of the vortex of fear in the center, Schindler managed his transition from boss to prisoner and coached his workers in how to survive the coming freedom his list had won for them.  "Though no one quite understood it, it was the instant in which they became themselves again."

That was the gift worthy of the pain and the joy and makes this book and movie such classics.

It is most fitting, then, that this founder, who has no monument in Washington, DC to mark his place in the pantheon of patriots, is memorialized in McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography.  Lest you think perhaps that Adams' forgotten status is overstated you need only do two things to correct your view:

1.  Quick list the Founding Fathers in the order you recall them!  Franklin, Jefferson, Washington . . . . Adams--and even then you might ask John, or Sam (John has no microbrew named for him, either).  John seemed fated to be overlooked by his

• personality (alternately New England granite and prickly self-defensive), 
• role (years spent out sight/out of mind in Europe participating in arduous negotiations),
• geography (Virginians were the aristocrats, Pennsylvanians the populists),
• family (while the Adams family became the first great family in American politics, John Adams is the progenitor, not the beneficiary, of that family prominence),
• and politics (Adams was consistently his own man and no party's man, even as the American two-party system was building to predominance with startling rapidity).

• perhaps too virtuous to a fault in his refusal to play politics,
• too self-defensive to accept and deflect criticism in instructive exchanges with his opponents,
• but also too incorruptible to bow to temptations that were available and diverted the abilities of some his contemporaries like Jefferson, Hamilton, and Burr. 

And in McCullough's model narrative style, you will not only learn to overlook Adams at your peril, you will also meet an amazing man of humor, learning, curiosity, science, law, and passion.  His letter exchanges with Abigail hint at their marital passion and love for their children, grandchildren, and wide and expanding extended family.  Surely he was a rock-ribbed New Englander, but he was also a great friend, traveler, and ultimately joyful and optimistic observer of the fallen world he inhabited with grace--a grace perhaps most visibly displayed in the powerful correspondence he picked up with his fellow founder Jefferson in the last 15 years of their lives.  Despite their geographic and political differences Jefferson had been a one-time friend in Continental Congress in Philadelphia and in the diplomatic courts of Paris, but became a bitter political enemy of President Adams, attacking him viciously through direct and indirect channels of party and journalistic communication, stooping to the level of paying for false witness against Adams' presidential policies, actions, and character.  While open to the charge of petulant self-defensiveness, few then or now would have shown the forbearance of Adams.  Then, with both men in retirement, Franklin began, through mutual friend and founder Benjamin Rush, the great letter-writing campaign that left an irreplaceable record of the conception of the American experiment, and its tenuous survival in those founding years.  When both great men died within hours on July 4, 1826 at the 50th anniversary of this birth, they were forever linked as comrades in liberty.

So spend a few precious hours with this great man (who of all the fathers seems likely to have been the best friend we all would want) in this deserving monument to his greatness.

The novel is the unadorned tale of how each survives, Inman on his pilgrimage across  a torn and tortured landscape populated by strange and violent men and women, Ada on her journey toward subsistence and awareness of her surroundings under the guidance of semi-orphaned mountain child Ruby.  While Inman's journey seems at first the more central and more eventful, the reader comes to realize that both journeys are necessary, powerful and emotionally and physically wrenching.

And all the while Frazier's spare storytelling keeps any hint of pretense and preshadowing of the future off the page.  This is indeed a Great American Novel written in lowercase. Even the eventual reunion is handled without fireworks or romanticized soft-focus.  These are clear-eyed heroes of a real, hard world.

1.     Climate change
2.     Environmental damage
3.     Hostile neighbors
4.     Friendly trade partners
5.     Society's responses to environmental problems

• creation in a literal six days
• A "young earth" 6 to 10 thousand years old
• a catastrophic global flood
• creation of species with natural selection driving only evolution within kind, not generating new species

The watchman, he lay dreaming
The damage had been done
He dreamed the Titanic was sinking
And he tried to tell someone

A man's opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter.  . . . Everything matters--except everything.

In the fifteenth century men cross-examined and tormented a man because he preached some immoral attitude; in the nineteenth century we feted and flattered Oscar Wilde because he preached such an attitude, and then broke his heart in penal servitude because he carried it out.  It may be a question which of the two methods was the more cruel; there can be no kind of question which was the more ludicrous.  The age of the Inquisition has not at least the disgrace of having produced a society which made an idol of the very same man for preaching the very same things which it made him a convict for practicing.  

"Liberty" . . . is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. . . .  "Progress" . . . is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good.  . . . "Education" . . . is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good.  The modern man says "let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace liberty." This is, logically rendered, "Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it."  He says "Away with your old moral formulae; I am for progress." This, logically stated, means "Let us not settle what is good, but let us settle whether we are getting more of it."  He says, "Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lie the hopes of the race, but in education."  This, clearly expressed, means, "We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it to our children."

Everything else in the modern world is of Christian origin.  . . . Physical science is of Christian origin.  The attack on Christianity is of Christian origin.  There is one thing, and one thing only, in existence at the present day which can in any sense accurately be said to be of pagan origin, and that is Christianity.

• They came from the same place, Brooklyn, and their paths even crossed briefly, when the high school coached by Lombardi beat the high school team featuring Paterno at back.
• They came from similar roots:  large families of recent Italian immigrants.  Lombardi's parents had come from Italy, but adopted their new country and culture whole, insisting on English being spoken in the home.   Even so, both Paterno and Lombardi valued and cherished their heritage.
• Perhaps because of that heritage, both men hated discrimination in any form, and were among the first to welcome and encourage African-American players into their largely white communities in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
• They shared similar interests, both reading widely in literature and history, both putting the lie to the "dumb jock" image of players and coaches, and maintaining their wide range of interests throughout their lives. 
• Both languished long years before reaching the pinnacle they were both so ambitious and certain they were capable of reaching.  Paterno's long years as an assistant at Penn State were matched by Lombardi's long journey from Catholic high school head coach to college assistant (at Fordham and then West Point) to NFL assistant (leading the New York Giants offense while Tom Landry lead the defense, certainly the strongest assistant coaching pair in NFL history).