Assassination Vacation - Sarah Vowell

   2006; 255 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Travelogue; American History; Non-Fiction; Biographies.  Overall Rating: 8½*/10.

 

    Four United States presidents were assassinated during their time in office: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy.  Each time, America was stunned and went into a state of shock and mourning.

 

    In every case, authorities concluded a lone gunman was responsible.  In two of those assassinations, Lincoln and Kennedy, the killer also perished: John Wilkes Booth during the ensuing manhunt, and Lee Harvey Oswald during his incarceration phase. In the Garfield and McKinley slayings, the shooter was put on trial and subsequently hung.  There was no national mourning for any of them.

 

    But then comes the remembering part.  What should you do to memorialize the slain presidents?  Heroic statues of the presidents come to mind, but what about the bullets, the blood-soaked clothes, and a lock of presidential hair?  For that matter, what about those sorts of things taken from the assassins?

 

    Sarah Vowell decided to find out.

 

What’s To Like...

     Assassination Vacation is first and foremost a travelogue.  Sarah Vowell travels up and down the eastern United States, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends when she can talk them into it.  The book of her experiences is divided into five sections, namely:

    00. Preface (page 1)

    01. Abraham Lincoln (page 19)

    02. James Garfield (page 121)

    03. William McKinley (page 187)

    04. Robert Todd Lincoln (page 239)

 

    As can be seen, the biggest attention is rightfully paid to Abraham Lincoln.  He was the first POTUS killed in office, had just finished presiding over a heart-wrenching Civil War, and his killer came from a nationally-known acting family.  James Garfield and William McKinley were presidents that most people, including me, know very little about.  Robert Todd Lincoln was Lincoln’s son, who, through incredible odds, was in the vicinity of all three of the aforementioned slayings.

 

    I loved the historical aspect of the book.  Sarah Vowell gives the reader lots of interesting details about each president – where he grew up, what his politics were, and where his life came to an end.  I was impressed that the author also took time to investigate the lives of the assassins.  What was their life like, why did they do it, how did they manage to accomplish the assassination, and what rationale did they express during the limited time after they were apprehended.

 

    Sarah Vowell has an “informal” writing style that I thoroughly enjoy.  This is not a dry presentation of American history.  The reader gets to hear her thoughts as she rummages through museums and tourist traps, and searches for hard-to-spot memorial plaques on nondescript walls.  She often shares her tastes in music (which I found eclectic and excellent).  Last but not least, the she taught me the proper pronunciation of one of the assassins’ last names:  Leon Czolgosz.  Yeah, good luck guessing that one; we’ll divulge it at the end of this review.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.3*/5, based on 1,176 ratings and 446 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.93*/5, based on 47,128 ratings and 4,142 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    In a museum across town there is another object that is the best indication of the esteem for Lincoln I have ever seen—more than the marble tomb, more than even the marble Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., more than any book, statue, lock of hair, bloodstained collar, top hat, or plaque.

    Any old forgettable rich guy might warrant a marble tomb, an obelisk, or elaborate sculptures after death, but you know you are regarded with a ridiculous, religious amount of awe when they put your dug-up drainpipe in a museum.  (pg. 109)

 

    The wounded president was moved onto a mattress, his head held in the hands of a washroom attendant.  But, as Laurie Anderson put it, “It’s not the bullet that kills you, it’s the hole.”  Garfield might have survived the shooting but for what happened next.  Namely, that various physicians summoned to the scene, especially Dr. D.W. Bliss, searched for the bullet’s location in Garfield’s back by poking their grimy fingers into the wound, rooting around in the presidential innards.  (pg. 160)

 

“You sockdologizing old man-trap.”  (pg. 46, and yes, that’s a real word.)

    There’s just a modicum of cussing in Assassination Vacation.  I counted just ten instances in the entire book, and they were mostly the result of direct quotes from persons Sarah was talking to.

 

    It should be noted that although four presidents have been assassinated while in office, only three are discussed here.  There’s almost nothing about John Kennedy being shot in Dallas.  I was okay with this; I’m old enough to remember where I was when this happened: in 8^th-grade civics class.  But younger readers may be disappointed that his assassination wasn’t investigated for this book.

 

    Also, please keep in mind that Sarah Vowell isn’t shy about voicing her political views in Assassination Vacation.  We won’t say what they are, but right-wingers should probably give this book a pass.

 

    Overall, I enjoyed Assassination Vacation., both for its delightful travelogue aspect and its informative history aspect.  It was easy-reading, witty, and above all, tremendously informative.

 

    8½ Stars.  One last thing.  Per the author, the name “Czolgosz” is pronounced “shol gosh”.  Now you know.

The Philosophy Book - Will Buckingham

   2011; 774 pages.  Full Title: The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained.   New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Philosophy; Biographies; Non-Fiction; Reference.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    Quick, what exactly is the definition of the word “Philosophy”?  My best try would be something like “Trying to know the Unknowable”, which is both oxymoronic and pretty useless.

 

    The Philosophy Book, by Will Buckingham has a better answer, and it comes in both a long and a short version.  The long one is:

 

    “Any sustained rational reflection about general principles that has the aim of achieving a deeper understanding.”  That’s not much better than mine.  The short one is:

 

    “The love of wisdom.”

 

    I like that one much better.

 

What’s To Like...

    The subtitle of The Philosophy Book is worth noting: Big Ideas Simply Explained.  At 774 pages, this book introduces the reader to an incredible array of philosophers and philosophies from all parts of the world (not just Western civilization) and down through the ages (from 750 BCE to the present).  Altogether, 107 philosophers are examined, and in a roughly chronological order.

 

After an introductory overview, the book is divided into six sections:

    01. The Ancient World  (700 BCE – 250 CE)

    02. The Medieval World  (250 – 1500)

    03. Renaissance and the Age of Reason  (1500 – 1750)

    04. The Age of Revolution  (1750 – 1900)

    05. The Modern World  (1900 – 1950)

    06. Contemporary Philosophy  (1950 – present)

 

    The template for presenting each philosopher is:

First Page

    Catchy Aphorism

    Philosopher’s Name, Year Born, Year Died

Second Page

    Branch of Philosophy

    Approach

    Those “Before” who influenced the philosopher

    Those "After" who were influenced by the philosopher

Text

    Introduction to the philosopher

    Flow Charts (usually)

    Quotations (occasionally)

    Discussion of philosopher’s main tenets

    Biography

    Key Works

    “See Also”

    Pictures (usually)

 

    Additional sections in the back include a Directory (great for looking up any philosopher, famous or obscure), a Glossary (great for looking up any of the -isms, -ologies, and other technical terms coined in the book), and Contributors, which lists all those who helped Will Buckingham write this book.  All of the writers are English, so you occasionally run across spellings like: sceptical, judgement, defence, furore, no-one, artefact, and fulfil.  But curiously, some effort seems to have been made to Americanize the text, with spellings such as judgment and color.

 

    I liked that the book didn’t limit itself to European and American philosophers; there were a sizable number of Arab, Eastern Asian, and African philosophers included.  Ditto for Women and Black philosophers, at least when we got to modern times.

 

    “Felicific Calculus” made me chuckle; it’s an algorithm by which you can supposedly calculate happiness.  I loved reading about Rumi and Sufism with the “Whirling Dervishes”.  Mozi was new to me, but his thoughts resonated with me.  I enjoyed getting reacquainted with the mystic Moses Maimonides, whose works I read way back in my Metaphysical Days.  And I was amazed to read that the first Atomic Theory was developed strictly through reasoning and put forth in the fifth century BCE!

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.6/5 based on 3,237 ratings and 583 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.17/5 based on 4,779 ratings and 364 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    We may think it is not “good” to make a fool of ourselves in public, and so resist the urge to dance joyfully in the street.  We may believe that the desires of the flesh are sinful, and so punish ourselves when they arise.  We may stay in mind-numbing jobs, not because we need to, but because we feel it is our duty to do so.  Nietzsche wants to put an end to such life-denying philosophies, so that humankind can see itself in a different way.  (loc. 4270)

 

    In the introduction to The Second Sex de Beauvoir notes society’s awareness of this fluidity: “We are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women.  It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman.”  She later states the position explicitly: “One is not born but becomes a woman.”

    De Beauvoir says that women must free themselves both from the idea that they must be like men, and from the passivity that society has induced in them.  Living a truly authentic existence carries more risk than accepting a role handed down by society, but it is the only path to equality and freedom.  (loc. 5626)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Philosophy Book sells for $8.99 at Amazon right now.  Will Buckingham has at least 10 other e-books available, in a wide variety of subjects, including Philosophy, Self-Help, and Children's Tales, ranging in price from $3.99 to $46.50.

 

“When one thinks like a mountain, one thinks also like the black bear, so that honey dribbles down your fur as you catch the bus to work.”  (loc. 5763)

    It’s hard to find things to nitpick about in The Philosophy Book.  Some reviewers groused about the lack of depth in the book, but hey, if you’re going to cover 2,700 years and 100+ philosophers in the book, I am happy the text limited itself to just the basics.

 

    The flow charts and pictures added a nice touch to the book, but that came at the cost of a huge file size.  Amazon lists it as being 192,824 kilobytes.  Think twice about downloading this if your Kindle is almost full, maybe opting for the paperback version which right now is only a couple dollars more than the e-book.

 

    My last nit to pick is a personal one.  How come Martin Buber wasn’t included in the 107 philosophers selected??  His magnum opus, “Ich und Du” (“I and Thou” in English) was required reading in a Sociology class I took in college, and the professor’s favorite reference book.  To be fair, Buber does get mentioned in The Philosophy Book, but only in passing.

 

    Enough quibbling.  The Philosophy Book is a fantastic reference source for anyone who wants to learn more about what all those thinkers have been thinking about for the past 27 centuries, but who don’t want to have to wade through their voluminous tomes.  That was me, and I am totally glad I read this.

 

    9 Stars.  We’ll close with an excerpt that, in a way, illustrates why I don’t read a lot of books about philosophy.  We’re quoting directly from the Glossary of The Philosophy Book.

 

 Metaphilosophy: The branch of philosophy that looks at the nature and methods of philosophy itself.

 

    How perplexingly tautological.

The Complete Maus - Art Spiegelman

   1997; 296 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Graphic Novel; Biography; Holocaust History; Non-Fiction.  Laurels: 1992 Pulitzer Prize: “Special Award in Letters” (winner), 10 other awards won plus 2 other award nominations (listed at Wikipedia).  Overall Rating: 10*/10.

 

    What was it like to live under the iron fist of Nazi Germany before and during World War 2, aka “The Holocaust”?

 

    Unfortunately, six million Jews, plus millions of Poles, Russians, gypsies, and Communists are unable to give an answer, since they perished in the concentration camps and ghettos, being beaten, shot, starved, and gassed to death.  To find out what it was like, it’s necessary to find those few who beat the odds and somehow survived.

 

    Art Spiegelman is an Jewish-American cartoonist, artist, and editor.  He had an “in” when it comes to researching the Holocaust: his father, Vladek Spiegelman, was a survivor, not only of the pre-war Jewish ghettos in Poland, but also the death camps of Auschwitz, Dachau, and several more.

 

    In 1978, Art began interviewing his dad, with the result being Maus, both the history of the Holocaust and Vladek’s biography, rendered in graphic novel format, and serialized from 1980 to 1991.

 

    Oh, and banned by a Tennessee school district earlier this year because it contains “profanity, violence, and nudity”.  Of course that caused it to become an instant bestseller, in such high demand that it took Amazon three months to be able to ship me a copy.

 

What’s To Like...

    There are two main storylines in The Complete Maus.  The first, biographical, is the recounting of Vladek’s hellish Holocaust years, where the tasks of staying alive and keeping one’s family alive, were almost impossible to achieve.  The second, autobiographical involves the present-day strained father/son relationship between Vladek and Art, as the latter tries to coax out his dad’s painful WW2 memories while trying to live up to papa’s expectations, an almost impossible combination to achieve.

 

    The Complete Maus combines two volumes published earlier by Art Spiegelman: Maus I – My Father Bleeds History, and Maus II – And Here My Troubles Began.  It’s done in graphic novel format, which is very unusual for a work of non-fiction.  Timeline-wise, Art’s arrival at the Auschwitz death camp is the dividing line between Maus I (1986) and Maus II (1992).

 

    The artwork is in black-and-white, with little shading, and in a “minimalist” style: eyes, for instance, are nothing more than dots.  The characters are rendered as heads of animals atop humanoid bodies.  The choice of animal identifies its type: Jews are mice, Germans are cats, Poles are pigs, Americans are dogs, French are frogs, Swedes are reindeer, Roms are gypsy moths, and Red Cross workers are birds.  The book cover shows Hitler as a cat, but I don’t recall his image appearing in the text itself.

 

    I got a nice “feel” for Jewish home life, and learned some interesting Yiddish vocabulary that was sprinkled throughout.  A couple examples are given below, plus there’s the ever-so-popular “Oy gevalt!”

 

    I was impressed by the story’s evenhanded approach to characters.  Vladek may be the protagonist, but a strain of racism runs through him.  He is not so much heroic as pragmatic, he’ll do whatever needs to be done to stay alive, including bribery, black-marketing, and occasionally cozying up to Germans.  Art renders himself with equal objectivity – the tenseness in the father/son relationship is just as much his fault as Vladek's.

 

    The main reason for reading The Complete Maus, obviously, is to experience the Holocaust.  In this respect, the book succeeds superbly.  The reader experiences the hopelessness and helplessness that millions of Jews felt when they were trapped in Nazi-held lands.  Vladek and other Jews don’t just instantly go from living normal lives to dreading a trip to the gas chamber.  It was a gradual process, carried out one outrage at a time by the Nazis.

 

    The ending is an oxymoron: a happy tearjerker.  To say more would entail giving spoilers.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.8/5 based on 8,029 ratings and 1,489 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.55/5 based on 177,310 ratings and 10,687 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Nu (n., Yiddish) : an interjection that can mean a number of things, including “Well/”, “So?”, “Come on.”, and “Go on.”

Others: Gefilte Fish (n., culinary); Meshugah (adj., Yiddish).

 

Excerpts...

    One time a day they gave a soup from turnips.  To stand near the first of the line was no good.  You got only water.  Near the end was better – solid things to the bottom floated.

    But too far to the end it was also no good.  Because many times it could be no soup anymore.

    And one time each day they gave to us a small bread, crunchy like glass.  The flour mixed with sawdust together – we got one little brick of this what had to last the full day.

    And in the evening we got a spoiled cheese or jam.  If we were lucky a couple times a week we got a sausage big like two of my fingers.  Only this much we got.

    If you ate how they gave you, it was just enough to die more slowly.  (pg. 209)

 

    In the morning they chased us to march again out, who knows where.  It was such a train for horses, for cows.  They pushed until it was no room left.  We lay one on top of the other, like matches, like herrings.

    I pushed to a corner not to get crushed.  High up I saw a few hooks to chain up maybe the animals.

    I still had the thin blanket they gave me.  I climbed to somebody’s shoulder and hooked it strong.  In this way I can rest and breathe a little.

    This saved me.  Maybe 25 people came out from this car of 200.  (pg. 245)

 

“It was nothing to eat, and nothing to do, only to wait and to die.”  (pg. 253)

    The Complete Maus was a fantastic read for me, so coming up with quibbles is difficult.  The art style is admittedly “spartan”, but I think that adds to the only stark tone of the message.  There was nothing pretty about living through the Holocaust, and if you were shipped off to Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, Dachau, or Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Vladek spent time in all these death camps), it was pretty much assured that you were going to die in the near future.

 

    Some critics disliked the using of animals to denote ethnic identity.  I suppose if I were a Pole, I wouldn’t appreciate them being typecast as pigs.  Ditto for the French being rendered as frogs.  But I don’t think Art Spiegelman was intending racial slurs by this.  In his minimalist style, he’s making it easy for the reader to figure out what nationality any given character is.

 

    I'll give The Complete Maus a rare 10-star rating.  Its portrayal of the horrors of the Holocaust is bone-chilling.  Maus won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, the only graphic novel ever to do so.  This should be required reading in every high school or college class teaching  20^th Century History.

 

    10 Stars.  One final exercise: let's evaluate the McMinn Country Schools decision to remove The Complete Maus from its shelves.

    Profanity.  I counted 16 instances in the entire book, mostly scatological or eschatological terms.  That’s remarkably clean.

    Violence.  There are corpses.  There was a war going on.  At one point, prisoners are burned alive.  The Holocaust was by nature inhumanely violent.  To depict it otherwise would be a lie.

    Nudity.  I only recall two times (pgs. 185/86 and 218).  Both involve only adult male prisoners, and both were drawn in the author’s minimalist style.  If these offend you, or worse yet, arouse you, seek professional help.

Come As You Are - The Story of Nirvana - Michael Azerrad

   1993 (except the last chapter); 358 pages.  Full Title: Come As you Are – The Story of Nirvana.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Music; Biography; Grunge.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    Nirvana was a three-man band from the greater Seattle area consisting of Kurt Cobain (lead singer & guitarist), Krist Novoselic (bassist), and, after five or six others early on, Dave Grohl (drummer).

 

    Nirvana is arguably the poster-child for the alt-rock subgenre “Grunge”, which first sprang up in the late 80’s and 90’s in the Seattle area, fusing together elements of heavy metal, pop, and punk-rock.  Nirvana is certainly not the first band to be labeled “grunge”, but it’s fair to say that they were the ones who propelled it forward from a local phenomenon into the mainstream music market via their incredibly popular album Nevermind, 

 

    Inherently, Rock-&-Roll needs to go through periodic revitalization in order to keep it fresh, vibrant and worthy of each new teenage fanbase's attention.  Punk had done this a half-dozen years earlier, providing an “in-your-face” alternative to the bland, rock-pop songs marketed by record companies for their mass appeal to listeners of all ages.  But now commercial success had tamed the punk rockers, and it was grunge’s time to give voice to the next generation of music-lovers looking for something new, raw, and edgy.

 

    Nirvana’s rise in the grunge scene was meteoric, but also sadly short-lived, ending abruptly in 1994 with Kurt Cobain’s suicide.  Come As You Are is their biography, as told by the respected music journalist Michael Azerrad.

 

What’s To Like...

    In preparation for his book Come As you Are, Michael Azerrad spent more than 25 hours interviewing Kurt Cobain, starting in February 1993.  The book was published the following October.  There were 18 chapters, the title of each one being a short quote from that chapter.  The book closed on a tenuous-yet-hopeful note, then Kurt committed suicide a half year later, on April 5, 1994, forcing Azerrad to add a nineteenth chapter.  I was struck by just how many suicide “clues” (Azerrad rightly calls them “announcements”) Kurt gives during the interviews, although of course I had the advantage of knowing how it would all turn out.

 

    As the title states, this is a story of Nirvana, not just Kurt Cobain.  Michael Azerrad also interviewed Krist and Dave, plus several ex-members of the band.  The result is an even treatment of some of the more-sensitive band-related material.  When Kurt laments that he had to fire one of the former drummers, said drummer remembers it differently – he says he quit.  Azerrad details intra-member band tensions the same way, which results in some enlightening insights.  Kurt may grouse that he has to do all the songwriting, but Krist and Dave point out that Kurt never asked for their input.  Courtney Love’s role in the rise and fall of Nirvana is similarly revealing.

 

    The book is a trivia buff’s delight.  You’ll read how Nirvana once got kicked out of their own record release party and learn that not one Nirvana song ends with a fade-out; why the author calls Frances Farmer (who?!) “the Cobains’ patron martyr”, that the name “Cobain” is a corruption of the name “Coburn”, and that people who live in Kurt’s hometown of Aberdeen are called “Aberdonians”.    Michael Azerrad also gives brief reviews of every track on every Nirvana studio album (plus the demo tapes), explaining the meaning of the lyrics (when there is one), and how each song, album title, and cover art, came to be.  Scattered throughout the book are some great photos (taken mostly while on tour) and some of Kurt’s sketches.

 

    Michael Azerrad namedrops a slew of other bands – some local, some “grungy”, and some Nirvana's touring partners, and I loved that.  Kurt adored some of these, such as Sonic Youth, but openly mocked others, such as fellow grunge bands Pearl Jam, and Guns N’ Roses, particularly Axl Rose.  I was surprised to learn that Nirvana in the early days covered songs from diverse genres, including CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising”, Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”, and even Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves”.  Equally astounding was the fact that Tori Amos once did a piano version cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 233 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.05*/5, based on 8,346 ratings and 190 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Finally, the band settled on Nirvana, a Hindu and Buddhist concept which Webster’s defines as “the extinction of desire, passion, illusion and the empirical self and attainment of rest, truth and unchanging being.”  (,,,)

    “I wanted a name that was kind of beautiful or nice and pretty instead of a mean, raunchy punk tock name like the Angry Samoans,” says Kurt.  “I wanted to have something different.”  These days Kurt isn’t so crazy about the name anymore.  “It’s too esoteric and serious,” he says.  And later on, he’d have to pay another band fifty thousand dollars for a name he didn’t even care for that much.  (loc. 1157)

 

    One night, Kurt and Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill had gone out drinking and then went on a graffiti spree, spray painting Olympia with “revolutionary” and feminist slogans (including the ever-popular “GOD IS GAY”).  When they got back to Kurt’s apartment, they continued talking about teen revolution and writing graffiti on Kurt’s walls.  Hanna wrote the words “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit.”  “I took that as a compliment,” says Kurt.  “I thought that was a reaction to the conversation we were having but it really meant that I smelled like the deodorant.  I didn’t know that the deodorant spray existed until months after the single came out.”  (loc. 3448)

 

Kindle Details…

    Come As you Are presently sells for $14.99 at Amazon.  Michael Azerrad has two other e-books for you, both in the “rock music” genre: Our Band Could Be Your Life for $2.99 (which is a fantastic price), and Rock Critic Law for $8.99.  There are various biographies of Kurt Cobain and/or Nirvana by other authors, most of which seem to be in the $2.99-$11.99 price range.

 

 

“All in all, we sound like the Knack and the Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath.”  (loc. 3007 )

    The tone of Come As you Are is at times gritty and events - both good and bad - are presented in a matter-of-fact fashion.  For me, this approach heightened the book’s believability.  As expected, there is a ton of, and an incredible variety of drug-&-alcohol use/abuse.  The mood turns somber when it details Kurt's assertion that his shooting up heroin was okay because it relieved his stomach pains, something that even Michael Azerrad is skeptical of.  Things get even sadder when Kurt and Courtney are both addicted to heroin and going in and out of rehab while trying to raise their child.

 

    There’s a fair amount of cussing, although not as much as I expected in a book filled with direct quotes from a grunge band's personnel.  I counted 17 instances in the first 20% of the book.

 

    The ending (the post-suicide chapter) recaps the events that transpired in the months after the book’s first publication up to Kurt’s suicide on the fifth of April, then jumps to the details of a public vigil (“memorial service”) held later that month.  But you’ll find very little about the suicide itself.  I suspect that the 25 hours of interviewing forged a close bond between the author and Kurt, and having to research and write about the suicide would’ve been just too painful.

 

    Full disclosure: I knew very little about Nirvana’s music (other than “Smells Like Teen Spirit”), and certainly nothing about the band’s history and any of its members other than Kurt.  I'm also leery of labeling any biography book I read (and even more so, any autobiography) “non-fiction” because usually it consists of some famous person, or his biographer, telling his version of events from a biased perspective of self-interest.  Here, Michael Azerrad also gives you the “other sides" of the story, and that impressed me.  Overall, I found Come As You Are to be both enlightening and believable.

 

    8½ Stars.  We’ll close with Nirvana trivia question:

    Q.: How many (full-length) studio albums did Nirvana put out over the course of their career?  (the answer is in the comments)

Galileo's Dream - Kim Stanley Robinson

   2009; 534 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Science Fiction; Historical Fiction; Biography, Time Travel.  Overall Rating : 6½*/10.

    Galileo Galilei.  What a brilliant astronomer and physicist!  I read about him back in high school science class.  He was born in 1564, and died in 1633.  They called him “the first scientist” because he relied strictly on making detailed measurements concerning something, then developing conclusions and equations from his data.

    I remember that he studied the speed and acceleration of things as they rolled down an inclined plane.  He also climbed up in the Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropped objects from there to the ground, carefully measuring how long they took to fall.  His conclusion was that objects always fell at the exact same speed, regardless of their mass,

    He didn’t invent the telescope, but he greatly improved it, to the point of where he could see the moons of Jupiter, and eventually plot their courses.  He also studied sun spots and phases of our moon.  This eventually got him into trouble with the Church, since he concluded that Copernicus was correct – the Earth revolved around the Sun, not vice versa.  This contradicted scripture, and we all know God’s Word is infallible.

    He was brought to trial by the Roman Inquisition in 1633, and given a chance to recant his heretical views.  But Galileo was a proud soul, and was unrepentant.  He was burned at the stake in 1634.

    But wait!  I just read the Wikipedia article on him, and his biography reads differently there.  That’s impossible!  I’m sure I’m right.  Something’s changed!

   I wonder how that happened.

What’s To Like...

    Galileo’s Dream is Kim Stanley Robinson’s ambitious blending of science fiction into the biography of Galileo Galilei.  It starts at the point where he discovers (or “invents” as he asserts) the telescope, with some timely help from a mysterious stranger.  Galileo becomes passionate about observing the skies at night, which leads to some unexpected space traveling, followed by some head-butting with the Church.

    I liked the way Galileo is portrayed.  Yes, he is a brilliant polymath, but he is fully aware of this and full of himself.  He knows he’s smarter than anyone around him, and assumes that he can boss them around, win all debates with them, and subtly mock them without them being aware of it.  He’s right about those first two, but dangerously wrong about that last one.

    To a certain degree, this is “hard science fiction”; the mechanics of the time-traveling is done quite innovatively via the use of syncopes.  Yeah, I had to look that word up too.  The fact that the aliens are from 3020 AD means Kim Stanley Robinson can infuse quantum physics into the story.  So things like multiverses and the ten dimensions of time/space crop up.  The biographical parts are well-researched; I read Wikipedia’s page on Galileo after finishing the book and was surprised how many of the story's details were historically accurate.

    The storyline flip-flops between Galileo’s life on Earth and a crisis up on Jupiter into which he’s drawn.  The aliens may be far more technologically advanced than us, but they suffer from the same human foibles present in both our and Galileo’s time.

    The text is a wordsmith’s delight.  A couple of the more prominent fancy words are given below, but there were dozens more.  If you’re looking to expand your vocabulary, this book’s for you.  Learning the nuances of déjà vu, presque vu, and jamais vu was enlightening, as was attending a Jovian Carnivale with some Dionysians.

    I thought the ending was so-so, but that’s probably because I was already familiar with Galileo’s life.  The final chapter deals with events going on a century after his death, and I thought it was quite powerful.  The “Author’s Note” after that is well worth reading.

Kewlest New Word ...

Syncope (n.) : a temporary loss of consciousness by a drop in blood pressure.

Others: prolepsis (n.); analepsis (n.); anno mirabilis (n., phrase); ephemerides (n., plural).

Excerpts...

    He had been so sure that the tides on Earth were the result of the ocean sloshing around in its basins of stone, shifting as the Earth both rotated and flew around the sun, creating differential speeds.  But here they said it was not true.  In that case, what causes tides?  The tug of celestial bodies – but that was astrology all over again.  And yet they seemed to be saying it was so.  Was astrology right, then, with its celestial influences and its action at a distance, action without any mechanical forces applied?  He hated such nonexplaining explanations.  (loc. 2851)

    “Galileo has always had a remarkably strong sense of proleptic intuition.  Indeed, when judged by that rubric, of anticipating future developments, I’ve read commentaries that rate him as the third smartest physicist of all time.”

    “Third,” Galileo scoffed.  “Who are these supposed other two?”

    “The second was a man named Einstein, the first a woman named Bao.”

    “A woman?” Galileo said.

    Hera shot him a look so full of contempt and pity, disgust and embarrassment that Galileo cringed.  (loc. 3055)

Kindle Details…

    Galileo’s Dream sells for $4.99 at Amazon.  Kim Stanley Robinson has a couple dozen other e-books for your reading pleasure, all of them in the science fiction genre, and ranging in price from $2.99 to $13.99.

“If I have seen less far than others … it is because I was standing on the shoulders of dwarfs.”  (loc. 2906 )

    There are some quibbles.  There’s a lot of cussing, and while I’m sure people in the 1600s swore just as much as we do today, I didn’t feel it added to the story in any way.

    The sci-fi-to-biography ratio is skewed heavily to the latter, so if you’re in the mood for some epic science fiction, you may be disappointed with Galileo's Dream.  There are a bunch of historically real Italian characters to meet and greet, and it was quite the challenge to remember who was doing what.  In fairness, I think Kim Stanley Robinson’s attention to historical accuracy at times constrained what he could do with the storyline.  A number of characters who really existed die at untimely times.

    Also, the history-tampering ploy seemed obvious to me.  It’s the same literary device as was used by Jasper Fforde in The Eyre Affair.  But to be fair, if I hadn’t read that Fforde novel, I’d be praising the way Galileo’s fate was handled here.

    Last, and most importantly, the Jovian crisis is never tied up.  We do get some hint at what's causing all the grief, but the conflict is still there by book's end.  Still, if you think that 2001 - A Space Odyssey had a great ending, you'll probably like this one as well.

    6½ Stars.  Add 1 star if you have no idea who Jasper Fforde is.  Don’t let my quibbles deter you from reading Galileo’s Dream.  This was my first Kim Stanley Robinson novel, and I have a couple others of his on my Kindle.  They look like they’re straight-up science-fiction, so I’m looking forward to reading them.

27 - Howard Sounes

   2013; 307 pages.  Full Title : 27 – A History of the 27 Club through the Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Non-Fiction; Biography, Music History.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

    It’s music trivia time!  Here’s a couple of tidbits that you might not know about the lives of some of the biggest names in rock-&-roll.

Brian Jones.  One of the founders of the Rolling Stones, he was both asthmatic and bipolar.  He was one of the first British musicians to use LSD heavily.  He had his girlfriend stolen from him by bandmate Keith Richards.

Jimi Hendrix.  His birth name was Johnny Allen Hendrix, and he was part Cherokee.  He played guitar left-handed.  At one time he was an “item” with Janis Joplin.  He served in the army, but got discharged by telling them he was gay.

Janis Joplin.  For a while she golfed at a country club.  She was an “item” with Jimi Hendrix, but had a fight with Jim Morrison, and was once slapped by Jerry Lee Lewis. She was bi.

Jim Morrison.  He wanted to be a poet, not a singer.  His father was a US Navy admiral.  He was an avowed “Dionysian”, and once had a fight with Janis Joplin after he'd acted like a jerk.

Kurt Cobain.  He played guitar left-handed.  At one point early in his career, he was a “sofa-surfer”.

Amy Winehouse.  She was bulimic.  Her favorite book was Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.

    Oh yeah.  They all died when they were 27 years old, which is the central theme of Howard Sounes’ book, “27”.

What’s To Like...

    I liked the book’s structure.  Howard Sounes divides it into two roughly-equal sections: Life (Prologue and chapters 1-7) and Death (chapters 8-13 and Epilogue).  Basically, you get to watch each star’s meteoric rise, and then watch them crash-&-burn.  Sometimes a chapter is devoted to a single person, other times a chapter features several stars.

    It is not a spoiler to say that statistically there is a “spike” for rock stars dying at the age of 27, but it’s not an anomaly, no matter how you manipulate the data.  Still, six mega-stars dying at the same young age is noteworthy, and  Howard Sounes searches for common factors in their all-too-brief lives to explain this.  Here are a couple of the commonalities:

    Heroin use (5/6)

    Little contact with their families growing up (5/6)

    Brushes with the law  (4/6)

    Early success in life (6/6, and yes, that’s a tautological concept since the book is about famous people who died at 27).

    Also, most of them died at night, and all of them were heavily into booze, meds, and other drugs.

    There are 30 pages of “Source Notes" in the back, plus a five-page Bibliography, which gives you some idea of the extent of Howard Sounes’ research for this book.  What’s unique, though,  is that he seems to have done extensive interviewing of friends, family, music business associates, and bandmates to supplement the previous documentation.  I liked this, although admittedly it leaves the door open for unsubstantiated gossip and slanted recollections.

    I enjoyed learning what the “Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy" and the “Yoko Ono Syndrome” are, as well as why we’re still seeing “new releases” by Jimi Hendrix more than 40 years after his death.  There are 16 pages of photographs of these rock stars, some of them less than flattering.  You’ll learn the origin of the band names “The Doors” and “The Rolling Stones”, neither of which was what I had thought.

    Howard Sounes is a Londoner, thus the book is written in English, not American.  Besides spelling differences, here are some of the “English” phrases used that I encountered:  Indian takeaway, sloping off, bunk off, Jack the Lad, tipped up, Readers Wife, bodged, full of beans, tetchy, and rowed.  That last one means “argued”, and the first one is what we Yanks call "takeout food".  I can only guess at the rest.

    The Epilogue does a nice job of bringing closure to these six mini-biographies.  Howard Sounes discusses the size of each star’s estate and how it was handled, since a lot of them didn’t leave a will.  Death brings out the worst in some people, especially when the deceased is famous.  Death is also great for just about any artist’s career, and Sounes updates you on how each of these artists is doing commercially nowadays.  In all cases, it’s better than you’d think.

Excerpts...

    “Just how do you get down after the show so you can sleep? (…) [A] few stiff drinks and a sleeper sped you on your way.  But plane time would come long before the sleeper wore off, hence the leapers.  But the flights are terribly boring when you’re up, so a creeper rounds off the edges and a lot of drink takes a bit of the cotton wool out of your mouth.  But booze (…) makes life a bit grim, so “just a bit” of acid makes you feel all tingly and good.  But it’s hard to concentrate on acid, so a quick sniff of coke (…) brings the brain briefly to attention while you smoke some grass or hash to take the nerviness out of the coke.”  (pg. 119)

    Visitors to Jim Morrison’s grave are a mixed bunch, of all ages from all over the world, not necessarily fans of the Doors.  Rather, the grave has become one of the sights to see in Paris.  “It’s an iconic life – live hard, die young,” observes Kyle Fisher, a middle-aged man from Ohio, visiting with his daughter in 2012.  “I think he was in the 27 Club.”  Peter Niedner from Germany believes that the number 27 is important.  “The two and the seven is a nine, and nine is a special number,” he says enigmatically, at the graveside.  “What I think is amazing is that he is more than forty years dead and you can come whenever you want and you see fresh flowers.”

    “Plastic.”

    “Yeah, but someone put them there.”  (pg. 293)

Tragedy is so romantic when people write about it, but it is horrible to see.  There’s nothing pretty about a person destroying themselves.  (pg. 123 )

    About ¼ of the Amazon reviews for “27” are negative – 3 stars or less.  A lot of the criticisms seemed to fall into three categories: too much cussing, not enough attention to conspiracy theories, and “too much Amy Winehouse”.

    There is cussing, but most of it is when the author is giving a direct quote from one of his interviewees.  Sounes does take the time to debunk some of the wacko conspiracy theories, which frankly ignore Occam’s Razor.  Personally, I rather like conspiracy stories, but here, the evidence of a.) excessive drug-use and alcoholism, b.) mental issues, c.) suicidal thoughts, d.) the soul-destroying grind of near-constant touring, and e.) the jaded despair when finding out that fame early in life doesn’t bring happiness all are far more believable causes for the demise of these six than murderous intent.

    Finally, it is true that the book  devotes more attention to Amy Winehouse than the others, but I suspect that’s because her death is a lot more recent and there are a lot more people worth interviewing around for her than for the earlier subjects.

    In closing, I found “27” to be an enlightening book.  The “warts” that are revealed about the dead six rock stars may not be flattering, but they do show that they were real, albeit flawed, human beings.  There are lessons to be learned here about fame, partying, friends, family, and substance abuse that just might save someone’s life.

    9½ Stars.  If six deaths seems a bit scant to you, Howard Sounes gives a “Long List” of fifty music-industry people who died at age 27 in the back of the book.  If fifty deaths seems a bit scant to you, Wikipedia has its own list of seventy-plus stars who died at 27 as well.  The link to Wiki's list is here.