Pun Salad

The author, David T. Beito, is a history professor emeritus at the University of Alabama.

A random thought I had while reading this book: You know how New Hampshire's motto, "Live Free or Die" was borrowed from its French Revolution counterpart, "Vivre Libre ou Mourir"? Maybe the USA's motto should be similarly derived from "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose". Or "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

That would be tough to fit on a penny, though. We'll probably stick with "In God We Trust".

This book is good antidote to more hagiographic depictions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It's not really a "warts and all" history; it's just warts, concentrating on FDR-era abuses of civil liberties. But (see the subtitle) it's an "untold story" in the sense that none of this is secret, FDR's participation and acquiescence in the abuses is just neglected. And—plus ça change—I was struck by how many of those abuses have their counterparts in more modern controversies.

The biggie, of course, is the WWII roundup of west-coast Japanese and their relocation to inland concentration camps. Beito notes the cognitively-dissonant treatment by FDR-sympathetic historians: "Over and over again, they leave the impression of two very distinct Roosevelts. The first was the Roosevelt of the New Deal and World War II foreign policy: decisive, bold, humane, and dedicated to advancing the four freedoms. The second was the Roosevelt of internment: a passive and reactive, and somewhat clueless, prisoner of events." Not a particularly accurate, or even coherent, potrayal, and Beito provides some needed corrections.

Other chapters concentrate on different aspects of how FDR's minions in Congress, regulatory agencies, and local political machines cracked down on opponents of the New Deal, court-packing proposals, and pre-WWII foreign policy. Telegrams were mass-snooped in fishing expeditions. A bill was proposed to felonize newspapers who printed as "fact anything known to the publisher … to be false". (Disinformation! Fake news!) Mailing permits were arbitrarily yanked from publications.

The relatively new technology of broadcast radio had been socialized, unfortunately, by Herbert Hoover, with the permission of Calvin Coolidge; this allowed the Feds to demand that the frequencies be used in the "public interest", i.e., uncritical of the state. (Many broadcasters were, of course, were complaisant.) Administration critics were silenced. (To be fair, one of them was the disgusting lunatic Father Coughlin. Although he didn't get into serious trouble until he turned against FDR.)

Democrat-controlled congressional committees dragged in political dissidents for intrusive and unfair "investigations". (It's clear that Joe McCarthy learned his tricks by observing such Democrats.)

For a lot of these attacks, the ACLU, whose upper ranks were filled with New Dealers, was conspicuous in its reticence; many left-leaning opinion magazines remained quiet, or gave encouragement.

Reader, Beito does not even touch FDR's neglect of European Jewry and his associated anti-Semitism. To be fair, that's a little outside the scope of the book. But, once again, plus ça change…

I really liked two previously-read S. A. Cosby novels, Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears. This is, unsurprisingly, another page turner.

The protagonist is Titus Crown, Black sheriff of a Virginia county where a lot of white residents haven't gotten over the results of the Civil War. He's returned home to his widower father and sorta-criminal brother after a promising FBI career ended in bloody disaster. (We don't get the gory details on that right away.)

Titus's job is tough enough, with all the simmering racial resentment. But then things get very bad, when what starts out as one of those school shootings turns out to be something else entirely: a falling-out between two participants in serial killing, involving the torture and murder of Black children. Those two are dead by page 20, but that leaves the "Lone Wolf", the dangerous evil mastermind behind the killings. Who happens to enjoy taunting Titus, and threatening his loved ones.

So it's pretty good. Cosby's portrayal of the local white racists lacks any complexity or sympathy, and verges on the cartoonish. If they had mustaches, they'd be twirling them. At one point, Titus, while verbally jousting with one of them, refers approvingly to the "white folks who don't carry water for Robert E. Lee or worship at the shrine of Ronald Reagan". Hey, S. A., I liked Reagan a lot, and I don't appreciate being lumped in with Confederacy-lovers.

Another one down on my "Reread Heinlein" project. Four left to go!

It was originally published in Astounding, in two parts, five months apart, in 1941. It's a masterpiece of plopping the reader into a bizarre tech/social setting, and only eventually revealing "what's really going on".

But I'll tell you, stop reading if you object:

A slower-than-light starship, designed to travel to a distant star system over a couple generations, has gone horribly wrong. A mutiny has killed most of the crew, leaving the worst in charge. Over the years, the survivors breed, some of them mutated. The cylindrical ship still rotates, providing "gravity" to the inhabitants. "Lower" high-gravity levels are occupied by the non-mutated. The "higher" levels hold the "muties". Conflict is common, and cannibalism is practiced. The origin and purpose of the ship gets lost in mythology. The world is the ship.

Into this comes Hugh, a wannabe "scientist". He's captured by the muties, and one of their clan, a two-headed "twin" named Joe-Jim, takes him to the Captain's Veranda, where he can see the stars. Gasp! And so starts a plan to fulfill the ship's mission. But there's a lot of bloodshed along the way. (This may be Heinlein's most violent book.)

According to the Wikipedia page, Heinlein revealed the ship's ultimate fate in Time Enough for Love. So I'm looking forward to that.

I was inspired to put this on my to-read list thanks to a couple books by Derek B. Miller, The Curse of Pietro Houdini and Radio Life. Both acknowledged a debt to A Canticle for Leibowitz as an inspiration.

Which makes sense. Like Radio Life, this book drops us into a dystopic Earth, with human civilization nearly wiped out, without much explanation. And, like Curse, the action centers around a monastery. (The author, Walter M. Miller, Jr., no relation to Derek, participated in the bombing of the Italian monastery at Monte Cassino in WWII.)

I've had this book (a 75¢ Bantam paperback) since 1968 or so. Guilty admission: I can't remember if I previously read it. I might have a dim recollection of a certain character who, um, wanders throughout the book, but that's about it. (I may be confusing him with a continuing character from Neal Stephenson novels, but—hey, is he the same guy?)

The novel stitches together and revises three novellas that Miller wrote for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the 1950s. It won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1961. The three sections are spaced centuries apart.

In the first, young Francis is on a desert vigil when (with the assistance of that wanderer) he discovers an ancient shelter containing lost technological knowledge, the "Memorabilia", saved from the anti-technological post-apocalypse jihad by "Saint" Leibowitz. Things don't work out well for him.

In the second part, hundreds of years later, the budding scientists and engineers of the day are analyzing the Memorabilia, making some crude progress toward generating electricity; it's a time of political intrigue as well.

And in the last part, another few centuries on, mankind has re-developed technology in full, with starships. And nukes. The monastery searches for some way to preserve the church in the face of another Armageddon.

My paperback's front cover quotes the Chicago Tribune review, which calls the book "terrifyingly grim". I see their point, but there's also some funny stuff, especially in the early going. But, on the whole, it's kind of a downer. A good, well-written downer, but still.

I enjoy reading Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Zach Weinersmith's online comic. He also illustrated Bryan Caplan's book Open Borders, his defense of, well, open borders. And I also liked Soonish, Zach's 2017 collaboration with his wife, Kelly, on possible future technologies.

And so this was a must-read too. Another Zach/Kelly effort. And, although they don't mention it, it might just solve the Fermi Paradox: where are all the intelligent aliens that should have visited us by now?

Reader, it could be that their species had their own Zach/Kelly writers point out that space is an incredibly hostile environment, it's extremely difficult to exploit for riches, self-sufficient settlements are problematic, mere curiosity isn't an adequate excuse for the massive expense involved, and … well, there are a lot of downsides. Or (alternative explanation) the aliens might have, accidentally or on purpose, sent a local asteroid crashing into their home planet.

I know, all that's kind of a downer, especially if you (like me, and also like Zach and Kelly) have been caught up in the romance and excitement of exploring and living on other worlds. But they have done their homework. The technical issues are explored, areas of our ignorance (there are a lot of those) are revealed, and it's all pretty interesting. Even the poisonous Martian dirt.

The only weak spot in the book for me was their lengthy discussion of the legalities involved in space colonization. The authors look at existing treaties governing the use of outer space, and also (sorta) analogous situations on Earth (seabed mining, Antarctica). This seems to work against everything else in the book: space is way different, and I'd think it would require way different legal and political arrangements. There's an entire chapter, for example, on "company towns", and how they might work on the Moon or Mars.

Reader, company towns are pretty much over on Earth; the problems they were designed to solve were solved, and we've moved on. And lunar/Martian "towns" wouldn't look like that anyway.

Also Zach and Kelly aren't the least bit skeptical about involving the United Nations in coming up with treaties and governance. One look at the membership of the UN Human Rights Council, which includes Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, … might argue that a different approach might be called for.

That aside, though, the book is thorough and accessible. And full of humorous asides. And some PG-13 speculation on, um, reproductive issues in space. Not at all titillating, because once you work out the, um, kinks of the procreative act, things we don't know about space obstetrics would fill an even bigger book than this one.

I liked Ruth Ware's previous novel, The It Girl, pretty well. This one I liked even more, because the narrator/heroine, Jacintha ("Jack") Cross, is kind of a computer geek. ("You mean she's an IT girl?") Her story is chock full of nerdy goodness.

Jack and her husband, Gabe, do security consulting for companies concerned about bad-guy hackers creeping into their sensitive databases. They do "pen (penetration) testing", attempting white-hat breakins to their clients' infrastructure. Jack has mad physical intrusion skills: document forgery, lockpicking, impromptu social engineering, stealth, agility, etc. Gabe is a tech whiz, knowing common weak spots, turning them into garage doors for information.

It all starts when Jack breaks into the offices of their latest client, an insurance company. Gabe remains at their home office, abetting Jack's activities over the phone, guiding her to the company's server room.

It's a pretty good, suspenseful opening act. Jack is almost home free, until she gets nabbed, and hauled off to the police station. Some time is consumed until the company confirms that, yes, even as a hacker, she wears a white hat. But then things go really wrong when she returns home to find that Gabe's been brutally murdered.

And then things get even worse: the police consider her to be the prime suspect. Fortunately, she slips out of their clutches, vowing to find the actual culprits. And she does, but it takes some time, and a couple of very close calls. Think of Jack as a female-geek version of Richard Kimble in The Fugitive. There's even an analog of Gerard in DS Malik, who's obsessed with Jack's capture.

Looking back on my report on The It Girl, I mentioned that I could have done without the many, many descriptions of the protagonist's inner mental turmoil. That's a thing here too. And she undergoes a nasty injury on page 107 that (literally) festers throughout the book. I would have given up and gone to the emergency room around page 150 or so.

Jack overshares with the reader, Even to this extent (p. 175):

I winced as my bare skin made contact with the freezing toilet seat […]

Reader, I'm pretty sure this is an observation that Philip Marlowe, Elvis Cole, et. al. never made.

But it really is a very good, suspenseful mystery/thriller. There's also a very good twist near the end.

A really excellent book, obtained via the wonderful Interlibrary Loan service of the University Near Here library. All the way from Kansas State!

The authors, Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, are self-described "bleeding-heart libertarians". In fact, they were major contributors to the same-named website, which was founded in 2011, and continued until 2020, when they decided they had said everything they needed to say.

The book is an "intellectual history" of libertarianism, dealing with the origins, development, and current state of the ideology. Or rather: the various tribes and factions that comprise something that is far from a unified philosophy. Libertarians love to point out the evils of statism; they also love pointing out the evils of other libertarians. (The episode where Ludwig von Mises declared "You're all a bunch of socialists" before stomping out of a meeting of the freakin' Mont Pelerin Society is recounted.)

Rest assured: despite being firmly in a subset of the big (circus) tent that is libertarianism, the authors treat the other members fairly, even while making clear their personal dissents.

But even given the internecine squabbling, the authors identify six "markers", areas of general agreement: "private property, skepticism of authority, free markets, spontaneous order, individualism, and negative liberty." The primordial thinkers are examined: Bastiat in France, Herbie Spencer in England, both horrified by creeping socialism. The American thinkers had a different motivating, but equally horrifying, issue: slavery. In all cases, though, the struggle to develop a positive philosophy—OK, we know what you're against; what are you for—gave rise to a broad agreement.

The authors trace the development of those "markers". Is there a coherent justification for acquisition of private property, does it make sense to talk about "mixing one's labor" with it? Is any sort of state permissible, or must a consistent libertarian be an anarchist? Does our enthusiasm for free markets mean we have to be fans of big business? Can poverty be alleviated without coercive wealth-redistribution? Does a thoroughgoing individualism involve ignoring racial injustice? And what, generally, does libertarianism imply for people outside our borders: foreign policy, international trade, and immigration?

All thorny issues, right?

In the twentieth century, the libertarian hostility to totalitarianism formed an uneasy common-enemy alliance with conservatism. But even then, the cracks showed; for example, Whittaker Chambers' famous pan of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged in the pages of National Review. (This didn't stop opponents from labelling libertarians as "right-wing".)

Murray Rothbard's pinballing ideology is examined closely. I always thought Rothbard wanted to be to libertarianism what Karl Marx was to communism; this led him to a certain degree of hucksterism, a continual search for unlikely allies, from the "New Left" to paleoconservatives. This odd odyssey is (again) fairly presented in the book, although you can almost see the authors sadly shaking their heads.

Speaking of head-shaking, the book concludes with the takeover of the Libertarian Party by the so-called "Mises Caucus", a group that (frankly) has other things on its mind than liberty. Leaving folks like me even more politically homeless than before. Ah, well.

Bottom line: this is a great, very accessible, look at the messy, but inspiring, history of libertarianism. Unlike recent caricatures (e.g., A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear or Burning Down the House) it is sympathetic, fair, and honest.

An impulse grab off the "New Nonfiction" table of the Portsmouth Public Library. Hey, I'm an American! And (some days) I am (kind of) an anarchist! When I read about Biden, Trump, various Congressional clowns, … could anarchy possibly be worse? Then I read about Haiti, Somalia, … yeah, I think probably it could.

The author, Michael Willrich, is a history prof at Brandeis.

Coincidentally, I'm also reading The Individualists by Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, an intellectual history of libertarianism, which includes the anarchist flavor of libertarianism. So far, there's not a lot of overlap! Willrich mentions (briefly) Henry George and Benjamin Tucker, that's about it. If you want to read about Lysander Spooner or Albert Jay Nock, you'll have to go elsewhere. (Like The Individualists; it's really very good.)

Willrich concentrates on Emma Goldman and her ideological soulmates, mostly immigrants, many of them Jewish exiles from Tsarist Russia. To the extent they had a coherent philosophy, it was in the mode of Pierre-Joseph "Property is Theft" Proudhon and Peter Kropotkin.

Goldman and her ideological cohort were bitter foes of capitalism; one of Emma's early efforts at "activism" was in plotting the murder of Carnegie Steel's VP, Henry Clay Frick. Her boyfriend, Alexander Berkman, made the attempt, but Frick survived. He went to jail, she didn't. At least not for that.

At the time, US authorities were quite concerned with the possibility of labor unrest mixed with the communistic philosophies of the anarchists giving rise to violent revolution, like in Russia. That fear was not totally unfounded. Fun fact: Wikipedia has a "category" page devoted to anarchist assassins. Thirty-five of them, including (of course) Leon Czolgosz, who did in President McKinley. Czolgosz claimed to have been "set on fire" by a speech he attended, given by, yup, Emma Goldman.

(Willrich barely mentions anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, convicted and excecuted in proceedings largely considered unfair. He doesn't go into whether they were actually guilty. They probably were.)

That fear of anarchist activity quickly turned into the authorities trampling on all kinds of civil liberties, paired with law enforcement's proclivity to thuggish tactics. And that combined with America's entry into World War I; anarchists quickly painted this as a war designed by capitalist plutocrats to defend their ill-gotten privileges. Legislation was passed to (essentially) outlaw dissent, and the anarchists were judged to have run afoul of it. The net was cast wide; to get in legal trouble, you just had to have (at some point) joined an organization whose leadership arguably held (at some point) unacceptable beliefs. You didn't actually need to have expressed those beliefs yourself.

Some non-anarchists were aghast. Others not. After a massive raid carried out by Woodrow Wilson's Department of Justice, the Washington Post regretted the legal hoops law enforcement had to jump through to get these pesky anarchists, and opined "A firing squad would be much more effective and impressive."

Bottom line: many of those anarchists, including Goldman, were eventually deported off to the fledgeling Soviet Union. Not that the USSR was any more congenial to their beliefs. Goldman was surprised and disappointed by Lenin's totalitarianism; he was even more intolerant of anarchist dissent than the American authorities. (I know, quelle surprise, right? I live in the future too.) She wound up bounced out of Russia, living her remaining life in more capitalist countries.

New Hampshire's own Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is a relatively minor character in the book. Willrich doesn't mention her intellectual odyssey, which went from Goldman-style labor activism to full-fledged Communist and Stalinist fangirl.

Margaret Sanger also appears, as cooperating with Goldman in efforts to inform the public about the details of birth control, another sore spot with the authorities. Willrich doesn't go into their embrace of eugenics, something even Planned Parenthood acknowledges these days. (You'd think that would be something a Brandeis prof might find worth mentioning in these days of wokeness, but no.)

In other spots, Willrich wanders into TMI-land. On page 172, we're informed that a primary lawyer for the anarchists, Harry Weinberger, was appointed to be commisioner of deeds by alderman Frank J. Dotzler, who (in turn) "won the Tammany Hall steak-eating contest in 1910 by putting away eleven and a quarter pounds of meat." As near as I can tell, Dotzler does not figure elsewhere in the Willrich's narrative, but if I had been writing the book, I'd have added this 1920 news story: 340 lb Santa Stuck in Chimney. Yep, that was Frank.

Willrich does however, to his credit, reflect on the "great irony" of Goldman's legal struggles with American authorities relying so much on the legal framework of the Constitution. Which her ideology claimed was a sham, designed to protect the oligarchy. Ironic, sure, but how opportunistic and cynical was that strategy? I don't think Willrich goes into that.

For a while there, I thought a better title for this book would have been Wyoming Jaws. Page 9 (or so) spoiler: Young Clay Hutmacher, Jr. is out trout fishing in the Twelve Sleep River, thinking about his imminent marriage proposal to (also young) Sheridan Pickett. It is literally the last thing on his mind, as his skull gets crushed by an attacking grizzly bear who's developed a fearless animosity to human invaders.

Obviously, a job for game warden Joe Pickett. (Do I need to explain that Sheridan is Joe's daughter? If so, stop reading this right now, get a copy of Open Season, start reading.) But that's not all: it turns out that one of Joe's surviving former nemeses, Dallas Cates, is being released from the Wyoming State Pen. Which is a dreadful mistake, but them's the rules. Cates is looking for revenge on the people who (he thinks) did him wrong. That includes Joe, Nate Romanowski, their families and friends, … Cates is picked up by a pathetic convict-groupie, and also (unexpectedly!) teams up with a different Joe-nemesis from a previous book.

The body count gets pretty high, because Cates and his entourage are as amoral about human life as that grizzly. And they come up with a pretty ingenious (by which I mean: ludicrous) plan to divert blame from their trail of carnage to that rampaging bear.

That body count includes some folks that I am going to miss. And (slight spoiler) there is considerable setup for the next book (books?) in the series. I'm there.

This book made the WSJ's best-mysteries list for 2022. And it's not too shabby, a definite page turner. Even though I was turning some of those pages pretty fast to get to the action I knew was coming up at some point.

It's a fictional take on the life of Mila Pavlichenko, a very deadly sniper for the USSR during World War II. Once a bookish Ukrainian student looking to become a historian, her career plans are knocked for a loop when Germany invades. She immediately volunteers to defend her homeland. Fortunately, she's got mad sharpshooter skills, and a knack for stealth. She becomes known as "Lady Death".

The war story intertwines with a thriller plot. Her 300+ confirmed kills bring her to the attention of Moscow, and in 1942 they send her off to America as part of a delegation to lobby FDR to open a "second front" in Europe to take pressure off the USSR. This actually happened as well. But, fictionally, there's a nasty assassination scheme afoot! An anonymous hitman, also a sharpshooter, has been hired to take out FDR and frame Mila for the deed. Thereby wrecking USA-USSR relations, sowing isolationism, and setting the stage for a fascist coup. The actual details about the plot's string-pullers, and how this was all supposed to work are left hazy.

While on tour in America, Mila becomes acquainted with Eleanor Roosevelt. I couldn't help but wonder if Eleanor would attempt to make her an intimate acquaintance, if you know what I mean. No spoilers here!

There's also a (heterosexual) romantic thread! In her teens, Mila was cruelly seduced and impregnated by Alexei, an egotistical doctor. Alexei is a full-time cad, has no interest in being a dad, so they separate but never quite divorce. Mila becomes intrigued with a charismatic Red Army officer…

So there's a lot going on. There are occasional resigned nods to the reality of Stalinism, one brief mention of the Holodomor. I found myself wondering if we'd get a neat plot twist: the Kremlin is revealed to be behind the assassination plot, placing USSR-sycophant Henry Wallace in the Oval Office. But no.