Civilization, The West and the Rest, by Niall Ferguson

According to Ferguson, Western Civilization prospered due to its six "killer apps": namely, competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism, and work.  What's more, the cold war was won because the Soviet Union was incapable of making a decent pair of blue jeans.  I'm not sure if I completely buy all of this, but, like most books willing to tackle big subjects and macro-questions, it is fascinating reading. 

The Storm of War, by Andrew Roberts

"The real reason why Hitler lost the Second World War was exactly the same one that caused him to unleash it in the first place: he was a Nazi."  (That may be one of the best final sentences in any book I've ever read.)  It was, in short, the shortcomings of Nazi ideology which led to Hitler's stupidest decisions of the War.  These would include Hitler's belief that his soldiers were racially superior to the slavic foes they would face in the East, and the anti-semitism which led his nation's brightest Jewish scientists to defect to and assist the West during the conflict.

I've always wondered about the central paradox of WWII.  In fighting to free Western Europe from a totalitarian dictatorship, why did we ally with another totalitarian dictatorship, and allow that dictatorship to take over Eastern Europe?  This book's anglo-centric, and therefore euro-centric, view of the war went a long way to helping me understand the whys and the wherefores that led to that particular outcome.  The Soviets suffered 90% of the Allied casualties, and inflicted the vast majority of the casualties suffered by the Germans, during the war.  In short, the Allied Nations couldn't have won WWII without Hitler forcing the Soviets' involvement by launching a premature and ill-fated invasion of that nation, whose citizens suffered terribly under Nazi siege, and whose soldiers would ultimately avenge that suffering in terrible acts of retribution against the women of East Berlin.  (Plenty of war crimes to go around in this, at time, extremely depressing read.)  At the end of WWII, who would have wanted to suffer the same fate the Germans had just suffered by launching a war against the Russian empire?  Better to contain and hold them at bay as best we could for another 60 years of cold war. 

This was an amazing book about a subject that we can never do enough to understand: the costliest and bloodiest conflict in all of human history.

The Warden and Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope

These are fairly enjoyable books.  But the lightness of their plot, and the ultimate insignificance of the events described, even to those living through them, explains why Trollope doesn't have the modern popularity of say, Dickens or Austen.  Still, if you want to know why Europeans ultimately gave up on religion, books like these can go a long way to explaining it.  Religion in 19th century England, if these books are any guide, seems to have been more about sinecures, societal heirarchies, and nice architecture, than about Christian love, service, or least of all, doctrine.

The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope

It's a shame more people don't read Trollope.  If he were as popular as Dickens then the character of Melmont, from this book would be better known.  And being able to call someone a "Melmont" and have people know what you are talking about (a person who is only treated with respect because he is rich, despite being vulgar, uncouth, and having come by his riches in untoward ways) would be extremely helpful cultural shorthand.

It's also a shame that, in the real world, the Melmonts don't always get their comeuppance.  But when it happens in a novel it's an enjoyable read, especially when you have Timothy West narrating it to you on an audible.com audiobook.  Listening to a great British-accented voice read 19th century British literature is like drinking hot chocolate by a warm fire on a snowy day.  Awesome.

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

I'm a sucker for redemption stories, so naturally I love the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, the best Alma 36 story since Alma 36.  But why read A Christmas Carol when the plot is so familiar from all the different movies, plays, and other adaptations?  For the language.  What bauhaus has done to our architecture, modern writing has done to our language.  Yes, its more effective and utilitarian.  But we've lost something baroque and beautiful in the process.  Here is Dickens describing a marketplace:

"The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory.  There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the the street in their apoplectic opulence.  There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish
Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe."

Metaphor, simile, personification, chain-adjectives, alliteration ("apoplectic opulence")!  When did we stop writing like this?  When did we forget the feats our language could perform?  So sad.  So grateful we will always still have Dickens.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

In my mind, there are three great themes worth studying in American history: (1) the founding: how and why we managed to successfully obtain our independence from Britain, and then create a constitutional government of laws and not of men, when every other country founded in revolution seems to have skipped right over the "rule of law" phase and jumped right into military dictatorship; (2) the quest for racial equality, especially as exhibited in the Civil War struggle to overcome slavery, and the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s; and (3) the fight against totalitarianism: America's 20th Century victories over German National Socialism and Japanese Military Imperialism in WWII, and Soviet Communist Totalitarianism in the Cold War.  (I probably need to read Zinn, so I won't have such a triumphalist view of American history, but I think I'd rather not).

Certain books ought to be read by every American on each of these themes.  And Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is one book that ought to be read on the fight against slavery.  After all these decades, it's still an incredibly moving read.

The Social Animal by David Brooks

This book, the story of married couple Harold and Erica, is supposedly "the happiest story you've ever read."  Harold and Erica are not real people, they are fictional constructs David Brooks has created as the framing device for a book about social and psychological research, much of it truly fascinating.

Thus, we are first introduced to Harold's parents, and as they meet one another, and their attraction develops, we are told what "studies have shown" (the book's most frequent phrase) is going on beneath the surface, in the brain, the psyche, the personality, of each of Harold's parents, which causes them to react to each other the way they do.  As Harold is born and develops, we are told what various studies have shown is going on in his cognitive and character development, and how his genes and his environment are affecting that development, etc.  We meet Erica a little later in life, and follow her and Harold through adolescence, adulthood, and old-age.  Along the way, we are introduced to various personality and psychological studies and theories helping us to understand their lives.

Harold and Erica don't live in real time.  Rather, it is roughly 2010 when Harold's parents meet, 2010 when Harold and Erica go to High School, 2010 when Harold and Erica marry each other, and still 2010 when Harold dies.   Putting Harold and Erica in real history would apparently distract from the purpose of the book, which is not interested in how people's lives have been affected by the actual events of real history, living through the Korean war or the Carter-era recession, say, but is interested in how people's lives are affected by their own psychological and personality traits.

It's a little hard to figure out where Brooks is going with all this, or what larger point he is trying to make.  Apparently it's something about the need to better understand what modern science is telling us about the psyche if we want to make better political choices.  Or perhaps the need to understand the "social" nature of man in order to make better personal choices.  Despite initial headings on Brooks' "Purpose" the overall point is never made very explicit.

But that's not the real problem.  The real problem is that introductory idea that Harold and Erica's lives are "the happiest story you've ever read."  The thing is, Harold and Erica's lives don't actually seem that happy, and Brooks' insistence that we see their lives as an example of what we should strive for to live a happy life rings awfully hollow:  Harold and Erica have no children.  They belong to no church.  They seem to have no real moral code.  They (and their author) use vulgar and crude language.  Harold's high school years are promiscuous, and after their marriage Erica cheats on her husband so Brooks can talk about the psychology of shame. Although Erica becomes involved in a Presidential administration, and Harold takes up his creator's Hamiltonian political ideas, you never get the sense that either have become adherents of some larger social or political cause that gives their lives great meaning.   It is true that Harold and Erica both become extremely successful and prominent, but one never gets the feeling that their lives have been lived for some purpose beyond their own success and prominence.  For "social animals" Harold and Erica have ultimately led pretty lonely lives.  When they die, their existence doesn't seem to have meant anything for anyone but themselves.

The subject matter of this book, what we believe we've learned about the unconscious mind in the last 30 years, was fascinating, and I had a hard time putting it down.  Some of Brooks' satirical social observations about modern life are hilarious and spot-on.  But in the end the book left me with a bad taste in my mouth.  This is not the happiest story I've ever read.  It's not even a particularly happy story at all.  And the claim that I should see it as such left me cold.