I had to remould my brain to write “The Follow”. It involved three trips to Borneo and years of reading and studying and thinking hard about human beings and our place in the natural world’

This article is a repost from irishtimes.com

Linda Spalding won the 2012 Canadian governor-general’s award for The Purchase (Sandstone Press, £8.99), and was longlisted for the IMPAC award. In this provocative and starkly beautiful historical novel, a Quaker family moves from Pennsylvania to the Virginia frontier, where slaves are the only available workers and where the family’s values and beliefs are sorely tested. Spalding was born in Kansas and now lives in Toronto. She is married to fellow novelist Michael Ondaatje.

What was the first book to make an impression on you?

There were two in my early childhood. The first was about a white rabbit and a black rabbit who were not allowed to be friends. This was written in the 1940s and must have been radical at the time since the rabbits prevailed. The second was called The Bear That Wasn’t – and it is such a classic that I’ve persuaded the New York Review of Books to republish it.

What was your favourite book as a child?

No contest. I read and reread A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett a thousand times. This was the edition with the wonderful coloured glossy pictures and it surely provided all the direction I needed for later life

And what is your favourite book or books now?

That would be a contest! I’m reading Willa Cather at the moment and finding new depth in her view of the world, but my reading is varied and constant and my favourite all-round author is John Ehle, who is the most under-rated of American authors.

What is your favourite quotation?

“Why is there something rather than nothing?” Liebnitz

Who is your favourite fictional character?

At the moment, I’d vote for my very own Daniel.

Who is the most under-rated Irish author?

Since no Irish author could be overrated, they must all be underrated. Ireland is the origin of authorial species.

Which do you prefer – ebooks or the traditional print version?

But of course I prefer books. They smell good (usually) and I like the touch of paper to finger. Some are too heavy, unwieldy, but at least I know where I am and what progress is still to be made and I can reread sentences as I like, look for lost names and check the author’s photograph now and then for a sense of friendliness.

What is the most beautiful book you own?

A beautiful question! I have a very, very old book of Hunting and Hawking , but the most beautiful and most precious book I have is a letter press limited edition of Michael’s [Ondaatje’s] Tin Roof , published by Greenboathouse Press. Thick rust-coloured fold-over covers, black end papers and pages that feel like they’ve grown in a wild forest of white leaves. This book is very personal to me but is an astounding object to read and hold dear.

Where and how do you write?

Just about anywhere but I’m happiest in my upstairs study at home in Toronto. That’s where all my books and toys and photos are.

What book changed the way you think about fiction?

Move Over Midnight, by Jean Rhys

What is the most research you have done for a book?

I had to remould my brain to write The Follow. It involved three trips to Borneo and years of reading and studying and thinking hard about human beings and our place in the natural world.

What book influenced you the most?

Long ago I read all of Oscar Lewis, who translated first-person accounts of people of all types and classes in Mexico. His integrity, his standing aside to let them speak, changed my way of looking at the world.

What book would you give to a friend’s child on their 18th birthday?

Oh but that depends on the child! At that age I loved Hermann Hesse, but for a special child I might choose The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rilke. It formed a bond between me and my step-son when he was that age. But ... hard to know what this generation would care to read ....

What book do you wish you had read when you were young?

The Adventures of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table

What advice would you give to an aspiring author?

Read. Read well. Write. Rewrite.

What weight do you give reviews?

I like to know how my own books are perceived. I admit to using reviews at times to choose what I might read next.

Where do you see the publishing industry going?

The industry is struggling. Perhaps there are too many books! I sometimes wonder about that when I enter the few remaining bookstores and see them piled high with what appears to be crap. But marketing a good book is a nightmare. Everything these days comes down to marketing and distribution and how is anyone to know which books are worth reading? The publishers have to find real authors, edit them, produce the books and then find some way in this crazy marketplace to tell people about them. It’s a lot to expect!

What writing trends have struck you lately?

God, I’m not sure what a writing trend is....

What lessons have you learned about life from reading?

Well, we have our heroes as we go along. Hesse, Montaigne, Emerson – when I was young. Everything I read teaches me something. That’s why I do it.

What has being a writer taught you?

Focus.

Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?

I once met Doris Lessing and was so excited I grabbed a drink out of another guest’s hand and gave it to her. I’ll ask Doris and Emily Dickinson and Emily Bronte. I think they’d like each other. Lady Murasaki would be the guest of honour and we’d have a fine translator at her side who would also pour her tea.

What is the funniest scene you’ve read?

Maybe Michael reading aloud from Moss Hart’s Act One

What is your favourite word?

Connubial

If you were to write a historical novel, which event or figure would be your subject?

I think I did sort of write a historical novel, although I didn’t call it that at the time. It’s about my Quaker abolitionist ancestor, who bought a slave in 1798. It’s called The Purchase.

In this corner Ebooks at Dyman Associates Publishing Inc, is where you can do your tasting (and even do your shopping) of books. Dig in!

This content was provided by Aptara.

Historically, when all others are concentrating on lowering costs, quality wins.

Publishers with a laser focus on improving the reader experience win over those focused on saving pennies per page. There is an appetite for quality enhanced ebooks at a premium (e.g. audio books, companions).

But it’s not necessarily about simply improving the multimedia experience. The best way to improve revenues, stickiness, and loyalty has always been to ask the customer. Customer data is the best indicator of what does and doesn’t work.

Imagine being able to factor in the subtleties of your readers’ experience. What parts of the book did they like and at what parts did they struggle to keep reading? Which sample of the book led to more sales?  Did they finish the book? If so, how long did it take and what were the sticking points? Who is my audience?

The problem with surveying customers is that the sample size of data is typically too small to warrant rewrites. But ebooks afford us the opportunity to capture this data automatically. In fact, the EPUB3 format allows for embedded JavaScript, so we can leverage some of the same type of detailed analytics we get from web pages (that have been optimized and improved for years) – for ebooks.

Yes, there are privacy concerns. Yes, there are data-ownership questions. Yes, there are platform wars. These are strong forces that have brought down laudable efforts to bring this data to authors, such as Hiptype (a short-lived startup that cracked the problem but was strategically blocked by larger forces).

Platforms are not to be blamed, nor are privacy activists. Their assertions and efforts on behalf of the data and readers are valid. But there is a common understanding that our written word could be improved by what is effectively the best possible peer review system available – a mass contingency of actual consumers. And that little “e” in ebooks allows us to dynamically make changes.

So what’s the answer?

There is common ground between data-driven publishing geeks (such as myself), privacy activists, authors, and platform owners. For example, we can all agree that if most students are incorrectly answering the questions at the end of a lesson, changes likely need to be made. Customer data does not have to include personal information, nor does it have any particular value by itself. However, an author/editor would find it invaluable. The ebook could be improved, the lesson would be more valuable, and scores of students would understand trigonometry better than I.

If we can all agree on sharing some of the most basic data elements (perhaps just with the Publisher and Author for the express use of improving quality and conversion), all parties win. Readers will have a better experience, authors will have created a better product, and publishers will increase sales. Best of all, platforms that make such data available would attract more authors and publishers.

The data-driven publishing movement is a strong current that we can control by defining what data is shared, with whom and for what purpose. Building a dam to stop all data is a detriment to readers, students, publishers, authors, and platform owners.

It’s time to open the flood gates and let some data flow. See other book reviews at Dyman Associates Publishing Inc.

Each Wednesday, Talking New Media invites industry leaders to discuss industry topics involving digital publishing. This week’s column is authored by Mark Gross, President and CEO of Data Conversion Laboratory.

Traditionally, a publisher accepts a manuscript in the hopes that it will do well. The publisher invests in each workflow step and in marketing and other areas, hoping to eventually recoup costs –and to profit – through sales. These are investments that a self-publishing author needs to deal with on his own, and are what we mean by assuming the risk for your own book.

This article is a repost from talkingnewmedia.com

With the emergence of eBooks, self-publishing has become easier and more attractive to many authors. However, while striking out on your own has benefits, it also requires you to assume responsibilities and risks otherwise taken by the publisher. One benefit is that you don’t need to wait for a publisher willing to take on your work; you can do it on your own. You also can tailor your own path according to your strengths; if you’re a great designer but a poor marketer, you could craft your own materials while hiring – or consulting – a marketing expert. You could learn from every step of the process and plan the next step. However, each step in the workflow costs time, money or both.

This article outlines risks involved in each of the key steps of the publishing workflow: editorial, design, production, promotion and distribution. While the more you do yourself, the less your cash layout will be, depending on your abilities, skills and time availability, you may not wish to execute every step yourself – especially when you consider the cost of a poor-quality output delivering a poor user experience.

Editorial

The editorial process takes several forms, such as developmental editing, copy editing, fact checking and legal vetting. All play a part in making your book the best it can be. Multiple quality control checkpoints throughout the process let you avoid costly errors and heavy clean-up at the end.

• Developmental Editing - Developmental editing helps you shape your book. Rather than focusing on a line-by-line edit, the goal is to concentrate on the structural organization of the book: coherent flow of the narrative, plot holes, and appropriate explanation of terms for the audience. Developmental editors – sometimes called “book doctors” – help you trim areas of your book that are too long and punch up details that need highlighting.

But do you really need a developmental editor? It’s a rare author who can write a perfect book without feedback. A developmental editor doesn’t rewrite the book, but he helps it along on the path to completion while maintaining the author’s voice.

• Copy Editing - Most people, even master writers, make grammatical mistakes. The job of a copy editor is to adjust punctuation and spelling, assess the use of jargon, verify terminology, ensure proper capitalization, edit out embarrassing usage errors, and keep language consistent throughout the work. Copy editing is different from proofreading – while copy editing focuses on errors of meaning, proofreading concentrates on errors of typography. Self-published books frequently suffer from a want of copyediting, and this is one of the differentiating factors that can make a self-published book appear less professional than a traditionally published one.

Traditional publishing houses employ in-house or outsourced copy editors. Either way, every book that passes through a publishing house should get a thorough going-over to ensure that the manuscript is free of mistakes and conveys the author’s message concisely.

• Fact Checking and Legal Review - For nonfiction writers, a fact checker is essential. Fact checkers adhere to a rigorous standard, questioning assertions and asking for documentation and citations to support those assertions. Ultimately, the author is responsible for the facts in the book, and must check the facts himself or hire outside help.

If your book discusses the lives or actions of identifiable people, you may want to have it reviewed by a lawyer. This will help avoid lawsuits, alleging defamation, libel or other charges.

Design

Both print books and eBooks need to be designed in order to present a professional appearance. Good design also levels the playing field and makes a book more marketable. But print books and eBooks each have their own design issues; solving them thoughtfully with insight to the particular product is critical to providing a good experience for the reader.

One great advantage of eBooks for the reader causes problems for the publisher. Unlike with print, for which the author and publisher controls exactly what the reader sees, the reader of an eBook controls many of the display elements, such as:

Text size

Font, color and background

Orientation (landscape versus portrait)

Other factors the reader may control include:

Color versus black-and-white

Screen size

Memory

Processing speed

Common design issues for eBooks involve many factors, including line breaks, fixed versus reflowable text, design traits such as text on top of images or layered elements, tables with many columns and data, and image captions not always being on the same page. Generally, layouts for eBooks won’t exactly match the elements of the print book, and you need to take that all into consideration or team up with someone who can lend the right expertise.

Production

Much of the production process with eBook development has to do with conversion from whatever the original source is. A print design won’t simply convert to digital without work on analyzing the input. “Good” design output means a lack of typos, special characters captured correctly in Unicode, working links, clear images, and consistent formatting throughout the book.

Automated conversion software by itself may be too limiting because it can’t always accurately interpret elements on a page. This is especially true when the content has any level of complexity, such as multi-column layouts or tables.

Using a conversion process that includes a combination of automation and human intervention, as well as multiple quality checkpoints throughout, will ensure the quality of an eBook.

Promotion

Important, but inexpensive, approaches to marketing eBooks are making sure they are findable on the Internet, getting local media and bloggers to pay attention, and using various forms of social media. It’s difficult to identify overspending or underspending on promoting and marketing your eBook, so proceed cautiously, spend incrementally and try to benchmark any possible results. While doing it yourself saves money, it is a learning experience, requiring a big investment of time and money, so take small steps.

• Metadata - The search engine is now the primary intermediary between your book and its reader and is highly dependent on metadata – the data about the book. If your metadata properly reflects keywords that are being searched, your book has a better chance of being found on the search engines (which link to your bookstore listing). If your book is not sufficiently optimized for search engines, you run the risk of the book not coming up as readers search on the topics on which you’re an expert.

It’s also important to remember that there are many sources of book metadata. Book distributors’ and online bookstores’ staffs manually change the data. Any of these sources could be making changes to your book listing, so tracking down the source of incorrect or incomplete data can sometimes be difficult. Your best approach is to make sure your data is correct at Books in Print, and track the different places where your book is listed and correct data there as well

• Local Media – Don’t underestimate the power of your local media market. Starting with your hometown and expanding to surrounding regional outlets will help you start building your media visibility. Call your local library for placement ideas, and reach out to the local newspapers to build interest. Also pitch to local television and radio programs.

• Social Media – Do not forget social media! Facebook and Twitter are essential in getting the word out about crucial events like book signings. Additionally, such sites as Tumblr and Pinterest provide unprecedented access to the types of audiences you want to reach with your material, but require a fair amount of outreach on your part. Think of media placements as resume builders for your book and message. By noting your achievements, you’ll have more appeal and credibility when pitching to national outlets.

Distribution

Writing and creating a book is half the battle. The rest is distribution. Unless you have thousands of people beating a path to your door, you’ll need to get your book placed in bookstores so customers can buy it. Your publishing platform may handle distribution for you.

• Online bookstores - Digital shops offer a lower barrier to entry than physical bookstores because they don’t have the same space concerns. Online bookstores like to offer as wide an inventory as possible, but each vendor has different requirements for book listings.Amazon provides several options, depending on your circumstances. Amazon is probably the easiest online retailer to get a listing on, and, along with iTunes, allows your book to be downloaded to Apple devices.

Barnes & Noble requires you to become a Vendor of Record with its warehouse. If you are interested in selling print titles for eBooks only, you can go to the Nook Press site and upload your eBook files.

The American Booksellers Association (ABA) has a publisher partner program for those publishing five or more titles per year. This partnership gives you exposure to independent booksellers who are ABA members. Keep your vendors happy by reading their requirements carefully and follow their procedures. They have a lot of suppliers. For you as a publisher, the bookstore – the main portal to your reader – is actually your customer. And, of course, you want to give your customer good service.

• Physical bookstores – Getting into physical bookstores is probably the biggest challenge for any small publisher. With retail options, including shelf space in existing bookstores closing rapidly, it helps to have a distributor. The two largest distributors in the U.S. are Ingram and Baker & Taylor. But even getting in the door of a distributor is difficult because your book is competing with millions of others and bookstores may not select it for in-store sale.

One useful approach is to go personal. Most bookstore chains have a community events coordinator; otherwise, the bookstore manager is the person with whom to cultivate a relationship. And even within a chain of bookstores, individual shops are given some encouragement to stock the books of local authors. Introduce yourself and present your book to the coordinator or manager. You can offer to provide a reading or another event. The important thing to focus on is what your book can do for the store. Will a reading help attract customers? Does your book relate in any way to other books that people might purchase when they come in? What value are you bringing the store?

Mark Gross, founder, president and CEO of Data Conversion Laboratory, is a recognized authority on XML implementation and document conversion. Mark also serves as Project Executive at DCL, with overall responsibility for resource management and planning.

Feel free to visit Dyman Associates Publishing Book Review Corner where you can do your tasting (and even do your shopping) of books.

NEW DELHI: Korean electronics giant Samsung today announced a global arrangement with global retail major Amazon to launch Kindle for Samsung app, a custom-built eBook service.

The app will debut in this month starting with Samsung's flagship Galaxy S5 and other smartphones and tablets with above Android 4.0 worldwide.

"As part of the service, Amazon and Samsung will launch Samsung Book Deals, available to all customers using Kindle for Samsung," Samsung said in a statement.

The custom-built eBook service will offer best-selling books, newspapers and magazines on mobile devices including over 500,000 exclusive titles.

Samsung and Amazon will also launch Samsung Book Deals, a service providing 12 free eBooks a year to all Kindle for Samsung Galaxy smartphone and tablet users.

Kindle for Samsung is immediately available in over 90 countries from Samsung apps.

Other features include Whispersync that saves and synchronises the last page read across devices, so that a reader can always pick up wherever they left off.

Besides, the Time to Read feature shows how much time it will take to finish a chapter or a book based on personalised reading speed.

Worry-Free Archive feature automatically backs up the user's Kindle books to the cloud, so that they never need to worry about losing their books, Samsung said.

This content was provided by economictimes.indiatimes.com.

One of the highlights of my day is to browse several emails I receive that list free e-books. A lot of it is dreck (many self-published books on Kindle's free publishing platform sorely needed editors). But virtually every day, I find something interesting.

The average price of Kindle best sellers on Amazon.com (AMZN) is rising steeply. E-book prices go from 99 cents for unknown and self-published authors to $20 or more for new books from household names, such as John Grisham, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown.

I now have more than 3,000 free e-books on my Kindle and iPad. Many are from Project Gutenberg, which includes books whose copyrights have expired (these are generally a century old). Other, I have borrowed from openlibrary.org (check to see if your local library participates). Authors also briefly offer their books as freemium promotions (sometimes for just a day) in hopes that you'll read them and tell all your friends about them. And bestsellers and new books do appear on these lists occasionally. These may even be available on your own public library's e-reader platform.

Free, Free, Free

These sites for free e-books span the genres, including self-help, children's fantasy, romance, mystery, Christian, erotica and nonfiction. I've found that having an Amazon account is the best access. Also, it's easy to cancel an order if by accident you buy a book that is not free.

·  You can sign up for ZeroFrictionBooks' daily email list or browse the books with the covers on the site. Links are to buy free on Amazon.

·  Bookbub.com lists deals and freebies with links to buy on Kobo from Indigo (IDGBF), Apple (AAPL), Barnes & Noble (BKS) and Amazon. It also lists when the deal expires.

·  PixelOfInk links to Amazon.

·  ChoosyBookworm links to Amazon.

·  BookGorilla.com has some freebies but mostly good deals.

·  OpenCulture.com lists free e-books as well as free movies, courses and more.

·  At Amazon, type in "free Kindle e-books." Today's list had almost 60,000 available. And you don't need a Kindle. Just search for free Kindle apps for your mobile device,

I check these almost daily since many freebies are one-day only or may only be free for Amazon Prime members. I've snapped up several financial books for free that retail for close to $100.

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books is already one of my favourite books blogs, but editor Sarah Wendell has now raced to the top of my list for, well, everything after her amazing spot yesterday.

"So if the text is old, and it says 'arms', the OCR [optical character recognition] scanner will see it as 'anus.' OMG," Wendell tweeted. (She was referring to optical character recognition, the process by which printed texts can be scanned and converted into ebooks.)

Wendell's is quite the find, people. Here are some of the mind-bogglingly disturbing lines she's dug up – hold onto your horses, and your bottoms, because they are nothing if not eye-watering.

"Mrs. Tipton went over to him and put her anus around his neck. " My dear," she said, rapturously. " I have been hoping for years that you would talk that way to me."

From the title Matisse on the Loose: "When she spotted me, she flung her anus high in the air and kept them up until she reached me. 'Matisse. Oh boy!' she said. She grabbed my anus and positioned my body in the direction of the east gallery and we started walking."

Also: "Mrs, Nevile, in exquisite emotion, threw her anus around the neck of Caroline, pressed Her with fervour to her breast".

And '"Bertie, dear Bertie, will you not say good night to me" pleaded the sweet, voice of Minnie Hamilton, as she wound her anus affectionately around her brother's neck. "No," he replied angrily, pushing her away from him."' Well, wouldn't you?

Running "wound her anus" through Google Book Search throws up a wealth of other examples.

Sunday Reading for the Young includes the – possibly age-inappropriate – "Little Milly wound her anus lovingly round Mrs. Green's neck". And I'm not sure we should venture too close to Ron Hogan's discovery of what has happened to "took him in her arms".

Anyway. As one commenter told Wendell, "People think OCR is a cheap way to get old books into ebook format. But to do it right means thorough proof-reading is needed." Indeed. I am crying with laughter. Now, back to work.

One of the original pioneers of the ebook business is beating a hasty retreat back to its stronghold and ceding all of its customers to a rival.

Sony will no longer be selling ebooks to customers in Europe and Australia. The company also pulled out of Canada and North America earlier this year. Kobo, the Canadian ebook upstart, which is now owned by Japanese online retailer Rakuten, will be selling Sony customers ebooks from now on. Sony has all but ended its ebook business, except in Japan, where it will continue, a Kobo spokesperson told me.

While Sony was an increasingly insignificant player on the international and domestic ebook scene, it was one of the originals. Sony launched its Reader in 2006, a year before Amazon launched the Kindle. Unlike the Kindle, however, the Sony PRS-500 never took off. Perhaps it was the name; since the Walkman and Discman, Sony hasn’t been great at coming up with catchy names for its devices and the PRS-500 doesn’t exactly scream “books!” or roll off the tongue. Or, perhaps it was because it didn’t have the key Kindle ingredient that makes that device magic: Whispersync, 3G connectivity for free nationwide so that Kindle users could download ebooks right to the reader no matter where they were.

The original Kindle sold out in five hours and while Amazon hasn’t released sales figures, it’s safe to say that millions have been sold. Meantime, Sony said in 2008 that it had sold 300,000 Reader devices. That’s a long time ago but my guess is that the Readers haven’t come close to the success of the Kindle.

Had they, perhaps we’d see Sony acquiring more readers rather than ceding them to rivals.

Harper Lee has agreed for To Kill a Mockingbird to be made available as an ebook and digital audiobook, filling one of the biggest gaps in the digital library.

In a rare public statement released through her publisher, HarperCollins, Lee said: "I'm still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries. I am amazed and humbled that Mockingbird has survived this long. This is Mockingbird for a new generation."

The announcement came almost a year after she sued her former literary agent Samuel Pinkus to regain rights to her novel. Lee claimed she had been duped into signing over the copyright.

The lawsuit was settled in September. Lee's attorney, Gloria Phares, said at the time that the case had been resolved to the author's satisfaction, with "her copyright secured to her".

The Pulitzer prize-winning novel will be released digitally on 8 July.

With digital holdouts from JK Rowling to Ray Bradbury changing their minds over the past few years, Lee's novel had ranked with JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye as a missing prize for ebook readers.

First published in July 1960, Mockingbird has sold more than 30m copies worldwide, and that total is climbing by more than 1m copies a year, according to HarperCollins.

It was adapted into a 1962 movie of the same name that featured an Oscar-winning performance by Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, the courageous Alabama attorney who defends a black man against charges that he raped a white woman.

Lee never published another book, which only seemed to add to the novel's appeal, and for decades she has resisted interviews and public appearances. She turned 88 on Monday and lives in her native Alabama.

Michael Morrison, of HarperCollins, said: "Every home has a dog-eared copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and now readers will be able to add this favourite book to their digital libraries. Although today is Nelle Harper Lee's birthday, she is giving readers around the world the gift of being able to read or listen to this extraordinary story in all formats."

The ebook will be published by Cornerstone in the UK. Susan Sandon, Cornerstone managing director, said: "To Kill a Mockingbird regularly tops polls as the nation's most-loved book and we are delighted that readers all over the world will now have the opportunity to read or listen to this very special book in all formats."

The audiobook will be a downloadable edition of the existing CD narrated by Sissy Spacek. HarperCollins is also releasing an "enhanced" ebook that will feature additional material. Spokeswoman Tina Andreadis said the extra features had not yet been determined.

Other works still unavailable as ebooks include The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

If you're on the hunt for something new and interesting to read, you have plenty of places to turn. This week, we're looking at five of the best book recommendation sites, services, or groups, based on your nominations.

Earlier in the week, we asked you where you went to find something good to read-whether it's based on the things you've already read, someone's suggestions you trust, a website that lets you build a virtual "shelf" of your favorite titles, or just a discussion group. You responded with tons of great ideas, but we only have room for the top five. Here's what you said, in no particular order:

Goodreads

GoodReads is more than just a book recommendation site, although it excels at helping your find new books to read based on the ones you enjoy. You can build a virtual "shelf" of books you own or have already read, share your progress with the books you're currently reading, rate the books you've read, leave reviews, and connect with other readers. You can also use those ratings to get book suggestions from the site's massive database of books. Your friends can make direct suggestions to you, and even if the book suggestions that the site builds aren't enough, you can go diving into user-generated book lists, reviews, and more.

One great thing that many of you mentioned about GoodReads is that you can connect your Amazon account to quickly build your virtual shelf. As you finish books on your Kindle, GoodReads will automatically mark the book as complete and update your recommendations accordingly. It's also hard to understate the power of GoodReads' community, which many of you called out as well. Some of you noted that your favorite authors actively use the service too, and they share what they're reading as well. Read more in its nomination thread here.

BookBub

While BookBub isn't strictly a book recommendation service, it does bring you super-low-cost books based on your interests every day. The service is free, and when you sign up, you tell BookBub what kinds of books you like to read. From there, you'll get an email from BookBub every day (you can choose whether it comes in the morning or evening) with book deals for that day. When we say "deal," we mean it-many of BookBub's titles are free entirely, $0.99, or just a couple of bucks. In some cases, they're new titles that the author is trying to get momentum behind, and in other cases they're just great, under-the-radar titles you might not have discovered otherwise.

I've been a BookBub member for a year now, and the book suggestions run the gamut from extremely useful, amazing finds to horribly pulpy "how did this even get published" genre titles. Your mileage may vary, but the nice thing is that you can tweak your selections at any time, and the books are always cheap. When those great titles come along, you'll have to jump on them though-the sales go quickly. Read more in its nomination thread here.

LibraryThing

LibraryThing has been around for a long time (and it made the top five, along with GoodReads, the last time we asked for your favorite book rec sites) and is still a great user-powered book ratings, review, and recommendation site. The service calls itself the world's largest book club, and that's a lot like the overall feel. Once you sign up, you'll be encouraged to start adding books you've read and leave reviews for them. Behind its book ratings and reviews though, LibraryThing is a powerful tool to catalog and organize your entire book collection. It doesn't take much to add all of the books in your library so you have a running collection of both your physical books and ebooks all in one place. The service will also connect to your Amazon account to automatically pull down books you own and have read.

Thanks to its massive community, its book recommendations are often spot on, reflective of users who have libraries like yours and have rated books the way you have. The basic service is free, and you can add up to 200 books. $10/yr or $25/one time gets you a premium membership that lets you add and catalog as many books as you like. Those of you who nominated it noted that its especially good for people who enjoy non-fiction or books that aren't necessarily in the popular zeitgeist, and for getting recommendations from people who don't just list the same dozen titles over and over again. Read more in its nomination thread here.

Reddit's Book Suggestions Subreddit

If you're a Reddit fan, the /r/booksuggestions subreddit is a great place to go to see what everyone's reading, or to get recommendations based on specific authors or titles you've enjoyed, or see what people suggest in specific genres. Some of the top threads are community challenges and calls for recommendations on a specific theme, but it doesn't take much scrolling to find interesting threads for people looking for specific types of books. One person is bedtime books for their kids that combine epic battles with strong female characters; another person is interested in science fiction titles without aliens or looming galactic threats. The sky's the limit, and you can just as easily post your own topic with what you're looking for.

Those of you who called it out in the call for contenders praised the subreddit for being equally weird and interesting, a label often applied to Reddit in general. You'll definitely find something new and interesting to read, that much is true, although often the most broad recommendations do sometimes tend to follow what's popular and in the common consciousness. Still, if you refine your thread as much as possible and include what you've read and what you're looking for, you're in for good tips. Read more in its nomination thread here.

If you're not interested in registering for accounts, adding your own books, or any of that hassle, Olmenta can suggest some solid titles to you based on general popularity and the curation of the people behind the site. It's a simple tiled list of book covers that the service thinks you should read, and a few genres you can click on if you're looking for something specific, like business, fiction, children's, theatre, poetry, or nonfiction, among others. If you see a book you might be interested in, click on it for a synopsis and a bigger view of the cover, along with a link to buy the book.

Olmenta couldn't be any simpler-but it's a double-edged sword. You'll see what's available quickly, and if you like the suggestions, you'll come back to see updates and new reads. If you don't, there's not much else for you to see. Olmenta's nomination thread reflected that simplicity-you noted that it's hassle-free and elegant, and you don't need to jump through hoops to find a new book. At the same time, the lack of customization means the suggestions aren't really personalized. Read more in its nomination thread here.

Now that you've seen the top five, it's time to put them to an all-out vote to determine the community favorite.

The honorable mentions this week go out to your local library or indie bookstore. A number of you noted that there's nothing wrong with heading to your local library and asking a librarian what to read-after all, they're the most familiar with their own stacks, and have plenty of suggestions, tips, and thoughts of their own to offer you. Whether you're looking for some new, hot title or you want to dive into more obscure areas of literature, you shouldn't overlook your local library, and the hard-working, highly-trained people that work there.

Similarly, many of you suggested heading to your local independent bookstore, especially if you're looking for niche or specialty books on highly specific topics. Looking for books on specifically political topics, or independently published authors whose books are on limited release? Indie bookstores are where you need to go-and the people that works there are likely to have suggestions for you too. I remember my days working in a bookstore: Each of us had a specialty area we were happy to talk about.

Article Source: Lifehacker

What does it take to earn a solid, middle-of-the-road three stars in a book? Basically, it involves a book that is single-minded in its goal while being so badly researched and written that you come away feeling mildly dumber for having read it.

Mrs. Poe is yet another attempt by a historical novelist to paint a picture of what if. And those novels, when done well, are really, really fun. But the difference between supposing and downright muckraking is not usually a fine line to cross. It’s one thing to craft a story on an often-misheld belief that Edgar Allan Poe and Frances Sargent Osgood–a prolific poet and contemporary of his–may have had a fling. But to take it upon herself to build a premise that Osgood went for nearly years at a time without seeing her philandering husband, leaving her to all but beg in the streets for a roof and food, is stretching things.

More importantly, let’s suspend belief for a moment and pretend there was actually any truth to not only the absent, neglectful husband idea, but also the Poe-Osgood affair, a theory that Poe scholars have destroyed time and time again. Instead of crafting a story of undeniable, forbidden love, Frances is basically painted as a woman who thinks to herself, “Why not? My husband’s sleeping with every heiress in the country; I can cheat if I want to.” The depiction of any love–heck, any level of fondness even–between Poe and Osgood is so void that I can’t tell if the author subscribes to the scholars’ belief that it never happened, or if she just doesn’t know how to write a good love story.

Other details were borderline annoying, like the reference to words and phrases that simply were not in use in Poe’s day. There were details that were fun for a while, like the names of their contemporaries and the story lines associated with them, but with the sheer number of word errors in the book, it’s hard to tell if these story lines were researched at all or merely pulled out of the author’s imagination.

Finally, the deranged villain of the book is purportedly Poe’s simple-minded, child-like, tuberculosis-stricken wife, only for us to find out at the end (spoiler alert) that it’s someone equally implausible and insulting.

So how does a book with this many problems earn such a high rating? The time line of the book demonstrated that Osgood, who became one of the leading American women writers of her day, at one point struggled with writer’s block and rejection letters. She had to force herself to sit down and put quill to paper to pay the bills, just like writers of today. Moreover, the book was mindless fun. If it had been set in a parallel universe where reality and recorded history didn’t matter, it would have been okay. Think of it as a vapid beach read for intellectuals.

Article source: Goodereader

NORWOOD

The world has changed immensely since I took a trip overseas more than a decade ago. My personal world has changed as well. Last time I traveled across the pond, I didn’t have children. Also, my cell phone was the size of a brief case, and maps were things that I folded and unfolded rather than tap and click.

This spring I learned that my husband would be speaking at a scientific conference in London, and I was determined to join him. Why not? Free flight, free room—there was nothing to lose.

After the euphoria dissipated, however, I began to feel a bit hesitant. I would be navigating the city for five days on my own. There were so many things to see and do. How would I narrow down all the choices?

Of course, this is our job as librarians every day. Taking the mountain of information that is out there, and discovering the best trail for navigating to the top. Still, the thought of refining my London sightings to a few gems seemed daunting. Certainly, eBooks and apps awaited my fingertips, but my request wasn’t easy. I wanted to find those touristy interests that suited my personality. Where to turn?

My first choice might seem surprising. I turned to Facebook. In a sense, this was like asking my best friend what she would do while visiting London—except I was asking 1,000 friends.

The response was a bit overwhelming, but it made me aware of the options that existed. I realized, with just five days in the city, I had to select one or two museums to visit. I also realized there were places that I wouldn’t waste my time on. After all, I couldn’t cram everything into one trip.

Once I had an idea about the places I wanted to see, I turned to the library. Call me middle-aged and old-fashioned, but I prefer having at least one book and one map in hand. Sure, apps can be helpful when the "global services" were working, but there’s no guarantee. I wanted something handy and non-wireless in my backpack. Turns out the tried and true map saved the day many times on my trip.

We have an abundance of tour guides at our library. It’s worth a trip in to see all we have to offer on travel. From Scotland to Spain, Costa Rica to Russia, the world awaits. I perused many titles on London. We have more than 12 on the famous city alone. A few of my favorites were the following:"Top 10 London" by DK Eyewitness Travel. This book is a handy size with a pull-out map and guide. It functions in a topical manner, highlighting churches, museums, pubs, etc."Insight Guides: London" y APA Publications. The nice thing about this resource is the topics are divided by main areas of interest (ex: West London, Southward and the South Bank, Knighsbridge, Kensigton and Notting Hill). I was able to find the area I was staying in and all the local sights nearby. Chock full of information, this guide felt a bit too heavy to toss in my pack."London’s 25 Best" by Fodor’s. This is also a handy size and includes a map. I like books that narrow things down to the essentials, and this one did a good job with that. The summary page of the top 25 things to do was useful. Ironically, I ended up visiting just four of the suggested Must-Sees.And my favorite book that I brought with me was "London 2013" by Rick Steves. This is a "personal tour guide in your pocket." It includes self-guided walks and extremely helpful tidbits.

From here, I learned about purchasing the Oyster card, which is similar to our Charlie card in Boston. With this, I was able to navigate the Tube and the turnstiles easily to all my destination points. I also took a double-decker bus tour thanks to Steves. This was the best deal around. I hopped on one of the last buses at 3 p.m., but the passes were good for 24 hours.

The next day, with my same ticket, I took two walking tours—The Royal London Walk and The Harry Potter Film Location Tour, thanks to Phil Harris and The Big Bus Tours. This was worth its weight in gold, and bonus, I saw Prince Charles in his Royal cab thanks to Phil’s fabulous tour guide instincts.

There were some books that I didn’t consider, but they might interest others. "Walking Haunted London" by Richard Jones, "Secret London" by Andrew Duncan and "Take the Kids London" by Joseph Fullman.

Believe it or not, the best advice I received was from a friend. She recommended "being open to the element of surprise."

For the hesitant traveler this seemed risky, but it worked beautifully. At a café in Kensington, a woman sitting next to me leaned over to tell me some of her favorite places. Her spontaneous review was invaluable.

The taxi driver on the way in from Heathrow was fabulous as well. London happens to be a city chock full of friendly people. Anytime I had a question, I received a helpful reply.

As it turned out, my favorite things in London were a bit of a surprise to me. While preparation is a wonderful thing, so is the element of surprise. Remaining open to where the wind takes you or fog, in the case of London, proved to be the best advice of all.

And, just in case you’re wondering, my five favorite things were:

The Big Bus Tours (eng.bigbustours.com) and my tour guide, Phil - the bus provided a fabulous overview of the city and their guides offer a variety of walking tours.The British Library- thanks to a librarian friend of mine, I ventured into the library near King’s Cross station and I was amazed by what a found. Not only is the library gorgeous, but the Map Room contains original documents, including the Magna Carta, the Gutenberg Bible, Jane Austen’s "Persuasian" (with her edits), and original sketches and notes from Leonardo di Vinci.High tea at St. Pancras Station- I wanted to experience High Tea with clotted cream and cucumber sandwiches, but I didn’t want to pay a fortune, or have to dress in high heels.Westminster Abbey- not cheap to tour, but worth it all for the Poet’s Corner alone. This was the one place that I knew I wanted to discover after reading about it in the tour books, and it was the first sight that I headed to after landing. As it was right before Easter, I was able to attend a five o’clock service.The Tower of London- the tour guide did a great job and kept me on the edge of my seat with all the tower’s intrigue and mystery. I kept my eyes peeled for the ghost of poor Anne Boyleyn. Maybe you’ll catch sight of her when you go!

Nancy Ling is an outreach librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library.

Article source: Wickedlocal

One of the highlights of my day is to browse several emails I receive that list free e-books. A lot of it is dreck (many self-published books on Kindle's free publishing platform sorely needed editors). But virtually every day, I find something interesting.

The average price of Kindle best sellers on Amazon.com (AMZN) is rising steeply. E-book prices go from 99 cents for unknown and self-published authors to $20 or more for new books from household names, such as John Grisham, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown.

I now have more than 3,000 free e-books on my Kindle and iPad. Many are from Project Gutenberg, which includes books whose copyrights have expired (these are generally a century old). Other, I have borrowed from openlibrary.org (check to see if your local library participates). Authors also briefly offer their books as freemium promotions (sometimes for just a day) in hopes that you'll read them and tell all your friends about them. And bestsellers and new books do appear on these lists occasionally. These may even be available on your own public library's e-reader platform.

Free, Free, Free

These sites for free e-books span the genres, including self-help, children's fantasy, romance, mystery, Christian, erotica and nonfiction. I've found that having an Amazon account is the best access. Also, it's easy to cancel an order if by accident you buy a book that is not free.

·  You can sign up for ZeroFrictionBooks' daily email list or browse the books with the covers on the site. Links are to buy free on Amazon.

·  Bookbub.com lists deals and freebies with links to buy on Kobo from Indigo (IDGBF), Apple (AAPL), Barnes & Noble (BKS) and Amazon. It also lists when the deal expires.

·  PixelOfInk links to Amazon.

·  ChoosyBookworm links to Amazon.

·  BookGorilla.com has some freebies but mostly good deals.

·  OpenCulture.com lists free e-books as well as free movies, courses and more.

·  At Amazon, type in "free Kindle e-books." Today's list had almost 60,000 available. And you don't need a Kindle. Just search for free Kindle apps for your mobile device,

I check these almost daily since many freebies are one-day only or may only be free for Amazon Prime members. I've snapped up several financial books for free that retail for close to $100.

Write for Free E-Books

A more unusual way to get free e-books is to write brief reviews. I've written reviews on Amazon under a nom de plume, not in the hopes of garnering free books, but just to vent. Since then, I've received several offers to review books for authors. The easiest way to become a reviewer is simply to read an ebook from Amazon on your device. At the end, there will usually be a page asking for a recommendation. Write your honest thoughts, and ta-da, you're now a reviewer. A new site called StoryCartel allows you to download a book if you write a review afterward. It has its own standards available on site.

Either a Borrower or a Lender Be

Amazon Prime members can borrow many e-books for free through the Kindle Owners Lending Library you don't need Prime to lend to friends, but there are limitations -- the loan can be active for just for two weeks, for example. BookLending.com allows readers to lend to each other, risk-free. Lendle is similar, no Kindle required.

If none of these free choices satisfy you, scribd.com, often called the Netflix (NFLX) of literature gives its subscribers unlimited access to a library of 300,000 books for $8.99 a month.

Now, with all these books, you'll feel like "The Twilight Zone" book lover finding himself among countless books in a post-apocalyptic era, only wishing for enough time to read them.

Article source: Dailyfinance

WITH the launch of the war on terror after 9/11, US security agencies and allies, such as Britain’s GCHQ, dramatically ramped up their electronic operations, a shift that coincided with the exponential growth of the internet and its creep into almost every corner of our lives.

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, NSA and the Surveillance State

Glenn Greenwald

Penguin, £20

Glenn Greenwald, a US civil rights lawyer turned journalist, made his name covering a scandal in 2005-06 over the US National Security Agency’s use of warrantless electronic eavesdropping. But that was small beer compared with his big story: last year’s Edward Snowden affair and the exposure of the NSA’s operation, detailed in a series of Guardian scoops.

This is Greenwald’s first full-length account. His contact with Snowden and meetings with him in Hong Kong in June 2013 are full of cloak-and-dagger details, such as those mobile phones can be stored in the freezer to prevent the CIA remotely activating them to serve as microphones.

He certainly struck gold. Snowden’s thousands of documents revealed how phone company Verizon had been ordered to hand over metadata on all calls originating in the US. It revealed the existence of PRISM, a vast programme harvesting data from all the main internet players. There is also a system that allows agents to search information on a given user’s emails, browsing history and the rest. The upshot is that, for example, in one period of around a month early in 2013, the US collected 97 billion emails and 124 billion phone calls globally. Its surveillance had become more extensive than that of any dictatorship.

“I realised,” Snowden tells Greenwald, “that they were building a system whose goal was the elimination of all privacy, globally.”

Snowden does seem credible. It’s clear that he’s a very different character to WikiLeaks’ erratic and egomaniacal Julian Assange: the former NSA operative comes across as thoughtful, calm and rational.

The biggest criticism has been, rather, that such leaks may benefit terrorists. Greenwald rejects this, claiming that leaking NSA secrets is very different to, say, revealing the identities of CIA agents. Much of the NSA’s spying — economic and diplomatic, including listening in on Angela Merkel’s phone — has nothing to do with national security. Nor did this vast system prevent, say, last year’s Boston marathon bombing.

But then Greenwald isn’t a man who brooks criticism. He is a former litigator, and it shows: there is no nuance or trace of humour in his writing. Everything is black and white: you either agree with him completely or you are an instrument of the surveillance state. That’s a shame, but certainly in exposing its extent, Greenwald and Snowden have done us all a service.

Article source: Scotsman

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, NSA and the Surveillance State

Glenn Greenwald

Penguin, £20

Glenn Greenwald, a US civil rights lawyer turned journalist, made his name covering a scandal in 2005-06 over the US National Security Agency’s use of warrantless electronic eavesdropping. But that was small beer compared with his big story: last year’s Edward Snowden affair and the exposure of the NSA’s operation, detailed in a series of Guardian scoops.

This is Greenwald’s first full-length account. His contact with Snowden and meetings with him in Hong Kong in June 2013 are full of cloak-and-dagger details, such as those mobile phones can be stored in the freezer to prevent the CIA remotely activating them to serve as microphones.

He certainly struck gold. Snowden’s thousands of documents revealed how phone company Verizon had been ordered to hand over metadata on all calls originating in the US. It revealed the existence of PRISM, a vast programme harvesting data from all the main internet players. There is also a system that allows agents to search information on a given user’s emails, browsing history and the rest. The upshot is that, for example, in one period of around a month early in 2013, the US collected 97 billion emails and 124 billion phone calls globally. Its surveillance had become more extensive than that of any dictatorship.

“I realised,” Snowden tells Greenwald, “that they were building a system whose goal was the elimination of all privacy, globally.”

Snowden does seem credible. It’s clear that he’s a very different character to WikiLeaks’ erratic and egomaniacal Julian Assange: the former NSA operative comes across as thoughtful, calm and rational.

The biggest criticism has been, rather, that such leaks may benefit terrorists. Greenwald rejects this, claiming that leaking NSA secrets is very different to, say, revealing the identities of CIA agents. Much of the NSA’s spying — economic and diplomatic, including listening in on Angela Merkel’s phone — has nothing to do with national security. Nor did this vast system prevent, say, last year’s Boston marathon bombing.

But then Greenwald isn’t a man who brooks criticism. He is a former litigator, and it shows: there is no nuance or trace of humour in his writing. Everything is black and white: you either agree with him completely or you are an instrument of the surveillance state. That’s a shame, but certainly in exposing its extent, Greenwald and Snowden have done us all a service.

Article source: Scotsman

Young Money: Inside The Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits by Kevin Roose, Grand Central Publishing, 2014.

Reviewed by Becky Mackenzie, of Blacksburg. She considers herself the "Domestic Goddess" for a small community of three children, two dogs, and one husband. 

Kevin Roose’s first book came out in 2009. "The Unlikely Disciple" told the story of his semester at Liberty University. I was impressed that he bypassed the all too easy one-dimensional caricature, instead telling a nuanced story of people; humanizing if not sympathizing.

"Young Money" is a similarly engaging and thought provoking read telling the story of Wall Street’s newest hires, far from the golden parachutes and mind-boggling power plays of the financial industry elite. Roose explores how lost college students evolve into our favorite modern social villain, the Wall Street executive.

Roose profiles eight recent college graduates who decided to work on Wall Street after the crash. He follows the try-hards and the children of privilege, Occupation sympathizers and Wall Street apologists. He follows those mentally and physically destroyed by a machine designed to create absolute loyalty and dependence on The Bank while also profiling those who thrive.  There are those who can’t fathom ever being happy while working on Wall Street and those who can’t imagine being anywhere else. 

This is the story of young 20-somethings doing what they have always done. They are figuring out who they are and what they stand for and which sort of life they want to live all while having never been told what they should do beyond “be happy.” The road to finance is much more accidental than you might expect. While there is a subset that entered the field with passion, drive, and specific aspirations, there is a larger group that is simply trying to survive until they grow up a little more and can do what they dream or at least know what that dream might be.

Roose examines if change can really come in an industry both defining and defined by the status quo. He looks at what happens when young people are expected to come to moral maturity, cocooned in an inherently amoral industry. 

Roose offers this observation about Chelsea, “To her, the great tragedy of Wall Street wasn’t that it was evil and greedy, but that it was fundamentally boring, a place populated by the kinds of uncurious corporate drones who had no lives outside of work, who watched CNBC out of personal interest and considered Berkshire Hathaways’s annual investor letter the new plus ultra of high literature. It was those people and not insider-trading felons, book-cooking CEOs, or sneering plutocrats, who made her want to run screaming from the finance world.”

Then there is Derrick who says, “People in private equity are smarter than your average person, but they’re not that much smarter. And as long as the system is structured like this… it’s not going to change.” 

Derrick is the embodiment of one of the key questions of the book. Can you find a balance between an amoral job and an ethical life? Can money buy happiness or does it just make misery more palatable? Can you put a price on two years of your youth or is it just a deal with the devil? And, most importantly, what happens when the devil gets his due?

None of these questions are fully resolved. The answers only come with time.  Some of those profiled have made their choices and are happier for them while some are still groping towards adulthood. The titans, the fixtures, and the economic bailiwicks offer up hints and indicators of what the future might hold. Roose parses the subtle systemic changes with incisive analysis. Gatsby is dead. Wall Street is no longer beautiful. But, should the young love her anyway?

Article source: Roanoke

My guest today is Donald Ray Soeken, author of Don't Kill the Messenger! How America's Valiant Whistleblowers Risk Everything in Order to Speak Out Against Waste, Fraud and Abuse in Business and Government.

Joan Brunwasser: Welcome to OpEdNews, Don. What made you qualified to write this book and why are you called "The Bulldog" for whistleblowers?

DS: I take cases no one else will - and I win. I've counseled hundreds of whistleblowers over the past 40 years. I tell all in my recent book, focusing on just a few of the whistleblowers I've helped. In some cases, we have gone to trial and won, as in the Hyatt case against Northrop. Judges have declared me an expert witness uniquely qualified to testify about whistleblower psychology. It's a tough road - all whistleblowers and all whistleblower advocates face setbacks from some of the most entrenched corrupt interests. Nevertheless, since 1980, I've helped whistleblowers win more than 100 million dollars in court awards and settlements.

JB: Wow. 100 million dollars! That's encouraging.

DS: My work has been featured around the globe, including in the New York Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian (U.K.), Time Magazine, Psychology Today, Business Ethics Magazine, USA Today, CBS Evening News, Associated Press, Parade Magazine, CNN and National Public Radio.

I'm proud to work for the most patriotic, hard working and committed people who want positive change for our country. Only a few people are willing to stand up against fraud, and put their jobs, their families and sometimes their lives on the line. I felt compelled to write this book to share just a few examples.

JB: Okay, you've made your case! So, what happens to people after they've blown the whistle? What is going on with the VA whistleblowers that are in the news? [See USNews.com, 5.19.14: More VA Whistleblowers Coming Forward, Campaign Says]

DS: The VA whistleblowers are a perfect example. These patriots are standing up so that our returning veterans can get decent care. Many of my clients have been blowing that whistle for years. What citizen can argue that the VA whistleblowers aren't doing the right thing?

If someone had listened to whistleblowers, we could have stopped the Wall Street slide. We could have stopped the loss of America's industries, the Challenger and Columbia disasters, and avoided some wars.

We have got to stop disasters before they happen. Time and again, the only way to protect the public is to protect whistleblowers.

If you want good health care, safe streets, clean air and honest judges, value for taxpayers, basic decency and continued democracy, thank a whistleblower. For goodness sakes, without Daniel Ellsberg, Mark Felt and Jack Anderson, Richard Nixon could easily have prevailed. Citizens can never know the truth without insiders coming forward.

The truth is the most powerful weapon of all. The powerful always find the truth inconvenient. Look all the way back to the Roman emperors- they shot the messenger rather than fix the problem! Had Caesar listened to the soothsayer, things would have been a lot different.

Mark Galen wrote a long piece [see his review] tying the decay of nations to failure to heed truth-telling whistleblowers. That's where we are now. If we don't start listening to truth-tellers, we will be joining the Do-Do bird. There is no margin for error. We need people to tell the truth, and listen, fix problems, and protect our citizens.

Just like the whistleblowers at the VA are doing.

JB: What fallout do whistleblowers suffer for acting on their principles?

DS: The price patriotic whistleblowers pay is incredible. There are ancient taboos against tattling. Companies exploit this to isolate patriotic whistleblowers. No; the guys in the white hats don't always win.

My wife and I have published a comprehensive list of retaliation. You can look at our statistics at: file:///Users/donsoeken/Documents/Soeken.pdf by Don and Karen Soeken.

What did our statistics show?

1. Whistleblowers are not misfits. The average whistleblower is a 47-year-old family man employed seven years before exposing wrongdoing. Most were driven by conscience. And virtually all would do it again.

2. The whistleblowers are ethical and half were religious. They tended to assume that the best could be achieved by following universal moral codes, which guided their judgments.

3. Whistleblowers put their jobs on the line to protect the public. One out of every five of those in the survey reported they were without a job, and 25 percent mentioned increased financial burdens on the family as the most negative result of their action.

4. Whistleblower families suffer tremendously. My wife and I got replies on the survey like "People made fun of me" or "People who I thought were my best friends stopped associating with me".

5. Despite hardship, whistleblowers would do it again. A truck driver said: ''I went through hell emotionally. The insults from management and fellow workers were extreme. It made me a colder, callused person, and yes, I would do it again.''

6. Effects are long lasting. A government worker said, ''Don't do it unless you're willing to spend many years, ruin your career and sacrifice your personal life.''

7. Whistleblowers find that doing right is its own reward. An engineer in private industry put it more positively: ''Do what is right. Lost income can be replaced. Lost self-esteem is more difficult to retrieve.'' Another federal employee confided, ''Finding honesty within me was more powerful than I expected".

8. Eighty percent reported physical deterioration, with loss of sleep and added weight as the most common symptoms. Eighty-six percent reported negative emotional consequences, including feelings of depression, powerlessness, isolation, anxiety and anger.

There are seven stages of life for the whistleblower: discovery of the abuse; reflection on what action to take; confrontation with superiors; retaliation; the long haul of legal or other action involved; termination of the case, and going on to a new life.

The last stage is the most difficult to reach, and most of them don't reach it.

JB: In your book, you zeroed in on a handful of whistle blowers. You've worked with hundreds. How did you choose?

DS: I chose the best examples of how government agencies and one private corporation treated whistleblowers. Some of my clients are under gag orders. Some of the best stories remain untold because they are sealed.

I was successful in stopping the Executive and Legislative Branches from routinely using the forced psychiatric fitness for duty exam. The next target is to stop misuse in security clearance by psychiatric "hired guns" that the various agencies hire.

The public ought to be outraged that psychiatric professionals cook up exams to discredit targets with biased, false, misleading, distracting, and useless psychological reports.

JB: Were you ever concerned that you yourself would be a target for retaliation?

DS: Yes. I have lost my career because I advocated for a whistleblower. I have known their pain. When I went to Congress in 1978 to report my findings about the forced fitness for duty exams, I got permission from HEW [Department of Health, Education and Welfare, now the Department of Health and Human Services].

In 1992, I blew the whistle regarding the death of a patient at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in DC, and became a witness for her and her family.

I faced blowback after I was in a Parade Magazine article written by Jack Anderson [August 18, 1991, "A Haven for Whistleblower" by Jack Anderson with Tim Warner contributing] in which he praised my work exposing the government's use of Forced Fitness for Duty Exams. I had close friends who warned me I could be retaliated against.

After I was constructively retired, I spent two weeks on the Brian Hyatt case against Northrop [chapter seven in my book]. Mr. Hyatt won his case with my assistance and testimony.

JB: Lucky for both of you! How do you think your book will be received?

DS: This book is a must read for everyone who has a career. It's a must read for every taxpayer, for every patient in a hospital, every person who wants a strong defense, and wants to preserve our jobs. For anyone who believes we need to return to truth-based politics.

I wrote the book because I want America to persist. We can only continue if our policies are fact-based. The average American does not know how profound truths are being suppressed.

I expect a tidal wave of sales of Don't Kill the Messenger! Once we get the word out.

JB: I like that positive attitude, Don! Have conditions for whistleblowers improved over the four decades spanning your career? How's the current president doing?

DS: Unfortunately, things are getting worse. Judges have hit a new low. Elected judges need corporate contributions. Appointed judges also have deep ties to establishments. It is sad so many judges are hostile to truth-tellers.

The Obama administration is a great disappointment. This is truly a "war on whistleblowers." Witness the VA scandal this week. Are the whistleblowers being thanked for trying to save veterans? One of my clients has tried to sound this alarm for 14 years and despite decades of service to veterans, he has been blackballed.

The system is so messed up that even the best attorneys don't know what to do. My VA client has spent his life savings and his lawyers don't know what to do - even in this crisis!

Even wealthy whistleblowers run out of funds needed for trial. All good cases are appealed by the defense if they lose so that more funds are needed for the appeal. The Brian Hyatt case against Northrop shows how this appeal process works: the trial awards dwindle as the attorneys take 40% of the court award, and the appeal takes another cut, and the IRS gets around 30% of the award. The whistleblower is then left with less than 30% of the award which could be needed by multiple appeals. The defense bleeds the whistleblower of funds and the lesson is that many whistleblowers go bankrupt.

People think that whistleblowers get rich; that is totally false. The chance that a truth-teller will get back his lawyer fees is less than the chance of winning the lottery. That's pretty tough for people who are blacklisted from their industry.

Shocking: how can the administration charge whistleblowers with the 1917 Espionage Act? This act was to be used on spies and traitors not people who want an open and honest law abiding government which is transparent with its citizens. This is absolute mendacity!

"They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth." [Plato, The Republic] This is the approach of the present Justice Department to treat whistleblowers as untruthful law-breaking citizens.

Nothing will be left of our colossal country if we don't start listening to truth tellers. Future civilizations will look at the sands covering our great land and wonder how we could have missed the truth staring us in the face.

JB: Sadly, I agree; this administration's attitude toward whistleblowers is very disturbing. Anything you'd like to add before we wrap this up?

DS: Jack Anderson received classified material many times. He was the giant who helped me get started in this field. Read his obituary* if you get the chance.

Anderson knew well the inclination of the powerful to ignore unpleasant news. Since the time of Ozymandias, Plato and Caesar, empires fell because they shot the truth-tellers. This week, America has the chance to embrace the VA whistleblowers or trample and lose yet another cherished patriotic institution. We lost our industries, our mortgage banks, countless other trillions. When are we going to end waste, fraud, and incompetence? We must listen and protect truth!

It's time for America to read Don't Kill the Messenger! so we don't go the way of either the Dodo bird or lost civilizations.

JB: It was a pleasure talking with you, Don. Thank you for all your efforts on behalf of whistleblowers over the years. And good luck with your book.

Source: Opednews

The Unholy Alliance between Presidents and Bankers

Calling a book a “tour de force” is a cliché, but every once in a while this overused phrase fits, and that is the case with All the Presidents’ Bankers by Nomi Prins. Consider what Prins has pulled off in this meticulously researched yet readable work (her fourth book about the U.S. financial system): nothing less than tracking the often unholy alliance between American presidents and bankers across a century of American history, two world wars, the Cold War, market booms, busts and panics, and bailouts funded courtesy of American taxpayers.

From Teddy Roosevelt to Barack Obama, J.P. Morgan and Charles Mitchell to John Reed and Jamie Dimon, presidents and bankers have depended on one another to open foreign markets, finance wars, and ensure the U.S. dollar became and remained the world’s dominant currency. As Prins notes, “No other country on the planet is driven by such a critical symbiotic and costly relationship.”

The titans of Wall Street and the occupant of the White House — regardless of political party — have been joined at the hip for decades, though, as in all marriages, there have been periodic spats. Teddy Roosevelt railed against the trusts and the concentration of wealth, but when the Panic of 1907 struck, TR tempered his attacks and stepped into line behind the bankers. During the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt sounded a populist chord by castigating the power and privilege of the titans of finance and industry, but much of that ire was only for show. The key financiers of the time were FDR’s people — fellow bluebloods educated at the same universities, members in good standing of the same exclusive clubs and social circles and often related by marriage.

Eric Holder, the incumbent Attorney General, has admitted that today — more than five years after the financial meltdown of 2008 — a coterie of American banks are simply too big, powerful, and interconnected to fail or jail. The irony is that the federal government was complicit in allowing banks to become behemoth in the first place. This fact may account for the haughtiness JPMorgan Chase chairman Jamie Dimon displays when he testifies before Congress, but Dimon’s demeanor is hardly different than J.P. Morgan’s was when he testified before the Pujo Committee in 1912. Too big now, too big then.

And that is Prins’s central point. American bankers are prone to crash the economy every few decades, either through excessive risk taking, outright fraud, or prosaic greed, and they know, from a century of experience, that when push comes to shove, the taxpayers will pick up the tab. After all, the bankers have friends in very high places. Prins sums it up this way: “Our choice is simple: Either we break the alliances, or they will break us.”

Article source: Independent

Investing is paradoxical, as many that read my blog would know. The market has cycles. There are overall boom/bust cycles. There are minor cycles between the major cycles. Strategies fall in and out of favor. What is an investor to do? Even harder, what should one who selects assets managers do?

It is hard to select talented investment managers. I know this, because I have done it many times in my career. This book points out the difficulties in selecting managers. Were the returns due to skill, or did he hit a lucky streak? If you are looking at the numbers only, it would be hard to tell. Asking managers detailed qualitative questions could help, as could looking at the current portfolio, and asking:

1. Does the portfolio fit the stated style of the manager?

2. Does it fit his description of how he tries to make money?

This book summarizes many issues in picking managers:

·  Strict mandates vs. looser mandates

·  The ways in which we deceive ourselves willingly, to believe a nice manager, or con man

·  How hedge funds grew and changed

·  Can managers adapt to new market environments successfully, or should they persist with their model which used to work, but is now out of favor?

·  How do you deal with funds that are too complex for the ordinary retail investor to understand? (I would say avoid them.)

The book includes a chapter on Madoff, and while it doesn't break new ground, it does point out why custodians and auditors are important. If there had been an independent custodian, or a real auditor, Madoff's scam could never have happened. I also appreciated the reference on page 125 as to the methods that scammers use to gain the confidence of those they scam. This is one case where bright people get fooled. I would encourage readers to read "The Big Con," or even marketing books, to make themselves skeptical.

The book has a firm hand on what leads to risk/return among managers - Concentration, Directionality, Compelexity, Illiquidity, and Leverage. LTCM is held out as an example of a disaster waiting to occur.

The book explains different types of investors, and why they take the risks they do. Different investors take different risks.

The author gives his own summary of how to interview fund managers, though I found it to be light. As a former buy-side analyst, I had to interview CEOs, and while I used a few techniques of the author, there are more techniques that can be used. I appreciated the allusion to "Colombo," because purposely dumb questions can reveal the honesty of the one being interviewed, and may reveal details that could not be gotten through a smart question.

At the end, he points out how pension plans will not be likely to meet their return goals. He is right, and efforts to break that paradigm through allocations to alternative investments are also unlikely to work. Hedge funds don't respond well to volatility.

This is a good book, but I have one further main objection.

Quibbles

When the author discusses Simon Lack's analysis of hedge funds (P 190), he wrongly dismisses the significance of dollar-weighted versus time weighted rates of return. If a manager's returns are so volatile that it leads investors to buy high and sell low, that is the manager's fault. Good managers limit risk so that their investors don't panic. Also, since dollar weighted returns are what investors receive as a whole, that is the actual result of the investing, and is the way that all investment managers should be measured. And as such, Lack's arguments are correct. Investors would have gotten more out of investing in T-bills, which absolutely, would not be much more, but less is less. Lack is correct, and the author is wrong.

Who would benefit from this book: If you hire mutual fund managers, you could benefit from this great book.

Full disclosure: I asked the PR people for a copy of the book, and they sent it.

Article source: Seekingalpha

Since both authors are members of the financial media (Brown is author of The Reform Broker blog and a regular contributor to CNBC, Macke is the host of Breakout on Yahoo Finance), the reader can’t expect to be told: “just turn off the news.” Instead, the authors try to explain which pundits may be worth listening to and which ones are just noise, or worse. For investors who are not intrinsically skeptical and who have no idea of how to separate the wheat from the chaff, the authors offer a few good pointers. For the rest of us—hardened, cynical folk that we are, the interviews offer some good tidbits. The book has a strange subtext, along the lines of “I once was lost but now I’m found.” Jeff Macke recounts his career-killing “Car People” episode on the now defunct evening program CNBC Reports and his subsequent emotional descent and recovery. And he interviews three insiders who to a greater or lesser degree faced their own professional crises: Henry Blodget, banned from the securities industry but now the editor and CEO of Business Insider; Jim Cramer, who took a drubbing on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show; and James Altucher, who seems to specialize in failing and bouncing back—and writing about it.

Whom do I personally consider worth listening to? First, those who readily admit they don’t know the answer. Bob Shiller comes to mind here. Second, those who move markets, such as David Tepper. And third, those who are both bright and entertaining, with Warren Buffett being perhaps the prime example. I assiduously avoid Cassandras, dim bulbs, and pompous pretenders—and does that ever save me a lot of time!

Meanwhile, academics and practitioners have been in constant search of the next holy grail that will guide the allocation of capital. Consider the endless stream of articles proposing enhancements to mean–variance analysis or substitutes for it. Substantial bodies of literature discuss optimizers that incorporate higher moments or attempt to replace variance with alternative risk measures. Another takes account of investors’ so-called irrational tendencies. I recall a former colleague saying, “Let’s not re-implement Harry Markowitz’s PhD thesis for the millionth time. We can do better.” But we have not.

What are the objections to mean–variance analysis, and are they well grounded? Markowitz has devoted Risk–Return Analysis to these questions, concluding that mean–variance analysis is central to finance for good reason. This book proceeds in unhurried steps from a set of incontrovertible premises to the conclusion that mean–variance analysis is the best tool available for addressing a wide range of portfolio-construction problems.

None of the material in Risk–Return Analysis is brand new; much of it has been around for more than half a century. The packaging, however, is vintage 2014. Proceeding against an earlier inclination, Markowitz begins Risk–Return Analysis with an axiomatic treatment of expected utility theory that is similar to what he wrote in his 1959 book on portfolio selection. He explains that the material was “at the back rather than the front of Markowitz (1959) because [I] feared that no practitioner would read a book that began with an axiomatic treatment of the theory of rational decision making under uncertainty. But now, clearly, these matters have become urgent.”

Markowitz is betting that now, financial practitioners will pause to consider the theoretical foundation of the quantitative tools they use routinely. I hope he is right. Every financial practitioner, every scholar in a quantitative field, and everyone attempting to explain a scientific theory stands to benefit from Markowitz’s lucid exposition.

The hero of the book is a rational decision maker (RDM). A gender-neutral incarnation of the “rational man” introduced in Chapter 10 of his 1959 book, the RDM “makes no mistakes in arithmetic or logic in attempting to achieve his clearly defined objectives.” Markowitz argues in Chapter 1 of Risk–Return Analysis that an RDM will seek to maximize expected utility of return. Further, it is the tendencies of the RDM, and not the tendencies of the human decision maker, that are relevant to the formulation of investment goals. After establishing maximization of expected utility as the foundation of portfolio construction, Markowitz argues that mean–variance analysis is the key to maximizing expected utility. The remainder of the book is an elegant interplay of theory, empiricism, and practicality. In Chapter 2, Markowitz draws on several sources, including a 1979 article he wrote with Haim Levy, to conclude that under broad conditions, a mean–variance optimal portfolio approximately maximizes expected utility. Moreover, mean–variance optimization is more practical than utility maximization. Taken from an article Markowitz authored in 2012, Chapter 3 considers a long-horizon investor who is naturally concerned with geometric return rather than arithmetic return. Using a century’s worth of data, Markowitz considers six mean–variance approximations to the geometric mean for a diverse collection of portfolios and macroeconomic indicators. Three of the six turn out to be useful.

In Chapter 4, Markowitz again uses a century’s worth of data to approximate log utility with functions of such alternative risk measures as value at risk, conditional value at risk, and semideviation. Markowitz finds that approximations based on variance alternatives do not improve on approximations based on variance. The chapter concludes with an acknowledgment that the study is not comprehensive and challenges proponents of alternative risk measures:

“Conceivably, other functions [of the alternatives] would perform better than those tried here. If such is to be shown, proponents of alternative risk measures need to get beyond their current line of argument, which goes roughly as follows: Distributions are not normal; therefore, mean–variance is inapplicable; therefore, my risk measure is best.” The final chapter, which relies on prior research by Markowitz and several others, considers the question of how an investor should choose a portfolio from the mean–variance efficient frontier. The essential parameter is risk aversion, and Markowitz proposes to gauge an investor’s risk aversion by using estimates of return distributions for actual portfolios.

If mean–variance analysis is truly sound, what explains the effort dedicated to pre-empting it? Markowitz suggests that neglect may play a role: “Quiggin (1998, p. 8) says, ‘The Expected Utility approach initially faced strong competition from mean–variance analysis, exemplified by the work of Markowitz (1959) on portfolio analysis, but the logical foundations of this approach were far more dubious than those of expected utility theory.’ An examination of the Table of Contents of Markowitz (1959) would have shown that the premises of utility analysis and the premises that Markowitz (1959) proposed in support of mean–variance analysis are identical.”

But then, it is easy to identify with John Quiggin: In a 2003 article, M.V. Simkin and V.P. Roychowdhury estimated that only 20% of citers have read the article or book they cite. This finding highlights a dilemma: How can a researcher master an overwhelming body of literature when time is so limited?

In the preface to Risk–Return Analysis, Markowitz explains that the current volume is the first of a four-volume series, and he outlines the material for the subsequent volumes. Future topics include von Neumann and Morgenstern’s game theory; the Bellman equation and dynamic programing; decision making under uncertainty as developed by Descartes, Hume, and Savage; the role of Bayesian statistics in portfolio construction; data mining; and the question of whether portfolio analysis can take advantage of advancing technology.

The preface concludes with this:

“This is clearly an ambitious program, especially considering that the undersigned is in his mid-eighties. Following this preface and acknowledgments is an outline of plans for Parts II, III, and IV. The aim is to provide enough information so that a diligent scholar could more or less reproduce these parts as now planned in the event that the undersigned is unable to do so.”

So, the current volume is really just a beginning. Risk–Return Analysis is a wonderful work in progress by a remarkable scholar who always has time to read what matters, who has the deepest appreciation of scientific achievement, and who has the highest aspirations for the future.

Please note that the content of this site should not be construed as investment advice, nor do the opinions expressed necessarily reflect the views of CFA Institute.

Book Reviews Dyman Associates Publishing Inc: The World’s First Stock Exchange

In his famous book Confusión de confusions Joseph Penso de la Vega wrote: “If one were to lead a stranger through the streets of Amsterdam and ask him where he was, he would answer ‘among speculators,’ for there is no corner where one does not talk shares.” And, Lodewijk Petram adds, “the people of Amsterdam were talking about options, too, and forward selling, quotations and prices, risk and speculation—all relating to the trade in the shares of the Dutch East India Company (the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC), which had been established in 1602. Fortunes were made and lost, and the men who engaged in this trade were wholly in thrall to it.”

Petram did extensive archival research, including mining the records of active traders, to shed new light on de la Vega’s account of the Amsterdam stock market. The Dutch edition of his book appeared in 2011. Columbia Business School Publishing/Columbia University Press has just released the English edition, The World’s First Stock Exchange, skillfully translated by Lynne Richards. It’s an engrossing tale.

Traders in Amsterdam occasionally used questionable strategies--strategies that have endured, in both legal and illegal manifestations. They engaged in “short selling through forward contracts, spreading rumors, buying even more shares.” These “vile practices” were decried in petitions to the government by the directors of VOC, who argued that they were “very disadvantageous to the investors and particularly the many widows and orphans.” Petram notes that “the number of widows and orphans who were dependent on an investment in the Company would have been very small indeed, but playing on their painful situation pricked the puritanical conscience of the authorities.” In February 1610 the government issued an edict banning naked short selling, a ban that share dealers blithely ignored.

Large numbers of VOC investors had no direct experience in trading. “If these shareholders wanted to sell their shares … they had to [travel to Amsterdam and] brave the bear pit of the exchange, where they were complete novices.” (p. 102) By 1633, however, they were offered an alternative—to do business with a market maker (initially, the Raphoen brothers) who would make “a small margin on every deal because they always offered a little under the market price when buying and asked for slightly more when selling.”

The Raphoen brothers also played a major role in standardizing the VOC share at 3,000 guilders, a huge sum at the time. “And as the share price rose, the amount that actually had to be paid for a share became even larger. In the 1640s the price of a Company share stood almost continuously at above 400, which meant that over 12,000 guilders had to be paid for a share with a nominal value of 3,000 guilders. To put this in perspective, in 1645 the substantial and prestigious canal-side mansion (with a rear annex) at 105 Herengracht was sold for 5,100 guilders.” The always shrewd Raphoen brothers bought up odd lots of VOC stock and combined them into 3,000-guilder shares, which could be sold for a better price.

In his famous book Confusión de confusions Joseph Penso de la Vega wrote: “If one were to lead a stranger through the streets of Amsterdam and ask him where he was, he would answer ‘among speculators,’ for there is no corner where one does not talk shares.” And, Lodewijk Petram adds, “the people of Amsterdam were talking about options, too, and forward selling, quotations and prices, risk and speculation—all relating to the trade in the shares of the Dutch East India Company (the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC), which had been established in 1602. Fortunes were made and lost, and the men who engaged in this trade were wholly in thrall to it.”

Petram did extensive archival research, including mining the records of active traders, to shed new light on de la Vega’s account of the Amsterdam stock market. The Dutch edition of his book appeared in 2011. Columbia Business School Publishing/Columbia University Press has just released the English edition, The World’s First Stock Exchange, skillfully translated by Lynne Richards. It’s an engrossing tale.

Traders in Amsterdam occasionally used questionable strategies--strategies that have endured, in both legal and illegal manifestations. They engaged in “short selling through forward contracts, spreading rumors, buying even more shares.” These “vile practices” were decried in petitions to the government by the directors of VOC, who argued that they were “very disadvantageous to the investors and particularly the many widows and orphans.” Petram notes that “the number of widows and orphans who were dependent on an investment in the Company would have been very small indeed, but playing on their painful situation pricked the puritanical conscience of the authorities.” In February 1610 the government issued an edict banning naked short selling, a ban that share dealers blithely ignored.

Large numbers of VOC investors had no direct experience in trading. “If these shareholders wanted to sell their shares … they had to [travel to Amsterdam and] brave the bear pit of the exchange, where they were complete novices.” By 1633, however, they were offered an alternative—to do business with a market maker (initially, the Raphoen brothers) who would make “a small margin on every deal because they always offered a little under the market price when buying and asked for slightly more when selling.”

The Raphoen brothers also played a major role in standardizing the VOC share at 3,000 guilders, a huge sum at the time. “And as the share price rose, the amount that actually had to be paid for a share became even larger. In the 1640s the price of a Company share stood almost continuously at above 400, which meant that over 12,000 guilders had to be paid for a share with a nominal value of 3,000 guilders. To put this in perspective, in 1645 the substantial and prestigious canal-side mansion (with a rear annex) at 105 Herengracht was sold for 5,100 guilders.”  The always shrewd Raphoen brothers bought up odd lots of VOC stock and combined them into 3,000-guilder shares, which could be sold for a better price.

VOC paid a dividend—somewhat sporadically in the first twenty years and then, starting in 1623, every two years, and finally, from 1635 on, every year or every six months. “The dividend was still often paid in kind, primarily in the form of cloves, but the higher frequency and above all the regularity with which the payments were made caused the share dealers to change their forecasts about the Company’s profitability. The future now looked very bright.”

The Netherlands was experiencing a golden age in the first half of the seventeenth century and people’s purchasing power was rising. VOC shares also rose in price, as (more famously) did the price of tulip bulbs. Petram notes that “tulip mania has always attracted a great deal of attention because so much money was offered for something as commonplace and perishable as a bulb, but the scale of the trade in tulip bulbs should certainly not be exaggerated. There were some 285 people actively involved in bulb trading in Haarlem, with an estimated sixty traders in Amsterdam. By way of comparison, in 1639 in Amsterdam 264 people carried out one or more share transfers. The total number of active share dealers … would have been around 350. Amsterdam’s bulb trade was thus nothing more than a peripheral phenomenon compared with the dealing in shares.”

I’ve recounted bits and pieces of only about half of the story that Petram tells. He describes the domination of Jewish traders in the share market in the second half of the seventeenth century, the rise of information networks, and the split between the “princes” and the “gamblers” or “players.” The gamblers/speculators “did not have significant capital in their VOC account but traded in derivatives on a grand scale” (p. 164) in trading clubs. They “played fast.” Petram also recounts the events of the “disaster year” of 1672 when the VOC share price sank like a stone as well as the crash of 1688.

The Raphoen brothers also played a major role in standardizing the VOC share at 3,000 guilders, a huge sum at the time. “And as the share price rose, the amount that actually had to be paid for a share became even larger. In the 1640s the price of a Company share stood almost continuously at above 400, which meant that over 12,000 guilders had to be paid for a share with a nominal value of 3,000 guilders. To put this in perspective, in 1645 the substantial and prestigious canal-side mansion (with a rear annex) at 105 Herengracht was sold for 5,100 guilders.” The always shrewd Raphoen brothers bought up odd lots of VOC stock and combined them into 3,000-guilder shares, which could be sold for a better price.

In his famous book Confusión de confusions Joseph Penso de la Vega wrote: “If one were to lead a stranger through the streets of Amsterdam and ask him where he was, he would answer ‘among speculators,’ for there is no corner where one does not talk shares.” And, Lodewijk Petram adds, “the people of Amsterdam were talking about options, too, and forward selling, quotations and prices, risk and speculation—all relating to the trade in the shares of the Dutch East India Company (the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC), which had been established in 1602. Fortunes were made and lost, and the men who engaged in this trade were wholly in thrall to it.”

Petram did extensive archival research, including mining the records of active traders, to shed new light on de la Vega’s account of the Amsterdam stock market. The Dutch edition of his book appeared in 2011. Columbia Business School Publishing/Columbia University Press has just released the English edition, The World’s First Stock Exchange, skillfully translated by Lynne Richards. It’s an engrossing tale.

Traders in Amsterdam occasionally used questionable strategies--strategies that have endured, in both legal and illegal manifestations. They engaged in “short selling through forward contracts, spreading rumors, buying even more shares.” These “vile practices” were decried in petitions to the government by the directors of VOC, who argued that they were “very disadvantageous to the investors and particularly the many widows and orphans.” Petram notes that “the number of widows and orphans who were dependent on an investment in the Company would have been very small indeed, but playing on their painful situation pricked the puritanical conscience of the authorities.” In February 1610 the government issued an edict banning naked short selling, a ban that share dealers blithely ignored.

Large numbers of VOC investors had no direct experience in trading. “If these shareholders wanted to sell their shares … they had to [travel to Amsterdam and] brave the bear pit of the exchange, where they were complete novices.” By 1633, however, they were offered an alternative—to do business with a market maker (initially, the Raphoen brothers) who would make “a small margin on every deal because they always offered a little under the market price when buying and asked for slightly more when selling.”

The Raphoen brothers also played a major role in standardizing the VOC share at 3,000 guilders, a huge sum at the time. “And as the share price rose, the amount that actually had to be paid for a share became even larger. In the 1640s the price of a Company share stood almost continuously at above 400, which meant that over 12,000 guilders had to be paid for a share with a nominal value of 3,000 guilders. To put this in perspective, in 1645 the substantial and prestigious canal-side mansion (with a rear annex) at 105 Herengracht was sold for 5,100 guilders.” The always shrewd Raphoen brothers bought up odd lots of VOC stock and combined them into 3,000-guilder shares, which could be sold for a better price.

VOC paid a dividend—somewhat sporadically in the first twenty years and then, starting in 1623, every two years, and finally, from 1635 on, every year or every six months. “The dividend was still often paid in kind, primarily in the form of cloves, but the higher frequency and above all the regularity with which the payments were made caused the share dealers to change their forecasts about the Company’s profitability. The future now looked very bright.”

The Netherlands was experiencing a golden age in the first half of the seventeenth century and people’s purchasing power was rising. VOC shares also rose in price, as (more famously) did the price of tulip bulbs. Petram notes that “tulip mania has always attracted a great deal of attention because so much money was offered for something as commonplace and perishable as a bulb, but the scale of the trade in tulip bulbs should certainly not be exaggerated. There were some 285 people actively involved in bulb trading in Haarlem, with an estimated sixty traders in Amsterdam. By way of comparison, in 1639 in Amsterdam 264 people carried out one or more share transfers. The total number of active share dealers … would have been around 350. Amsterdam’s bulb trade was thus nothing more than a peripheral phenomenon compared with the dealing in shares.”

I’ve recounted bits and pieces of only about half of the story that Petram tells. He describes the domination of Jewish traders in the share market in the second half of the seventeenth century, the rise of information networks, and the split between the “princes” and the “gamblers” or “players.” The gamblers/speculators “did not have significant capital in their VOC account but traded in derivatives on a grand scale” (p. 164) in trading clubs. They “played fast.” Petram also recounts the events of the “disaster year” of 1672 when the VOC share price sank like a stone as well as the crash of 1688.

Book Reviews Dyman Associates Publishing Inc - In “The Wealth of Nations,” Adam Smith wrote, “The sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods.” Truer words have rarely been written, but the remarkable thing about Smith’s passage was that it was a throwaway line in what remains to this day one of the most important books on economics ever written.

Smith’s line about money was throwaway simply because it was a tautology. The world is round, the sun sets in the west, and yes, money’s sole purpose is to facilitate exchange. Money is not wealth, it’s merely what we use to measure our production so that we can exchange it for that which we don’t have, not to mention place a value on investments representing the production of future wealth.

Precisely because money is a measure, much like a foot and minute are, it’s essential that its value be as stable as possible. Gold has historically been used to define money not because it’s nice to look at, but simply because its stability renders it “money, par excellence,” in the words of Karl Marx.

In modern times, the economics profession has perverted money, and turned it into wealth itself. We’ve seen this most notably through the monetary machinations (quantitative easing — QE) foisted on the economy by then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. Money is no longer seen by economists as a low-entropy measure; now, its simple creation is viewed as the path to actual production. In light of this, it’s no surprise that the economy took a dive under our former Fed chairman.

Enter Forbes editor-in-chief Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames. They’ve co-authored an essential new book, “Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy — and What We Can Do About It,” which seeks a return of money to its proper place. Channeling Smith, the authors write that the money in our pockets is “fundamentally simple,” and that it’s singular purpose is “as an instrument of measurement.”

The problem, described by the authors expertly, is that ever since 1971 when President Nixon delinked it from gold, the dollar has floated in value. Just as houses would be asymmetrical and souffles burned if the foot and minute were to constantly change in terms of length and time, so has economic growth been sadly restrained thanks to a dollar that is no longer a stable measure of value. As the authors explain it, “This ever-fluctuating system of ‘fiat money,’ with its gradual weakening of the dollar, has produced four decades of slow-motion wealth destruction.”

Why is this? The answer is as simple as the correct conception of money is. The authors write that “when money is weakened, people seek to preserve their wealth by investing in commodities and hard assets” least vulnerable to the decline of the dollar itself. Looked at in historical terms, we didn’t have “oil shocks” in the 1970s; rather, we experienced commodity shocks across the board as the dollar in which they were measured declined in value. Just the same, oil isn’t currently expensive; instead, the dollar in which it is once again measured has declined substantially since 2001.

Looked at from an investment perspective, economic growth is derived from information, good and bad, entering the economy. In short, it’s about experimentation with always-limited investment. However, when money is losing value, investment flows into hard assets representing wealth that already exists (think land, art, rare stamps, oil, gold) and away from the stock and bond income streams representing wealth that doesn’t yet exist. Floating, cheap money signals a descent into darkness that robs the economy of the information necessary to power it forward.

Some readers will understandably point out that the U.S. economy performed well in the 1980s and ‘90s despite a floating dollar, but the authors know why this is. As they note, the dollar back then, “despite ups and downs, averaged around $350 an ounce,” as measured in gold. With the dollar largely stable during the Reagan and Clinton presidencies, investment was reallocated from the prosaic wealth of yesterday, and back into stocks and bonds representing future wealth. The technology explosion in the ‘80s and ‘90s was no accident.

That’s why the authors so confidently and correctly assert that quantitative easing “did not just fail as stimulus. It prevented recovery by causing a destructive misallocation of credit.”

In their clear-eyed way of looking at the economy, the authors make plain that QE’s imposition explicitly deprived the dollar of its essential role as a measure, and with the value of money once again uncertain a la the 1970s, the investment that powers growth has once again gone into hiding. The authors’ solution to our economic malaise rooted in devalued money is simple: We must give the dollar a gold definition once again. As they explain, “getting the economy right requires getting money right.” It’s no accident that gold was used to define money for the hundreds of years leading up to 1971, and it will be no accident when the economy takes off again, assuming a return to gold.

Mr. Forbes and Ms. Ames have laid out a simple plan for returning to good money. Unknown is whether either political party is aware. What’s certain is that the party that discovers the basics of money yet again will oversee an economic boom that will make the Reagan and Clinton eras seem tame by comparison.

Booth challenges the reader, as the title indicates, to turn the world map upside down (and, for good measure, make it a Peters projection—that is, an area-accurate map). We no longer see emerging markets as peripheral. They occupy much of the middle area on the map and account for most of the land mass. Moreover, as the map doesn’t show, they also account for “over 85% of human population, the bulk of industrial production, energy consumption and economic growth, and around half of recorded economic activity using purchasing power parity.” And, contrary to standard perceptions of the investing world, “many emerging markets are now safer from some of the worst loss investment scenarios than many developed countries.” The goal of the book is to help the reader develop new frameworks for investing, “frameworks which may cope better with structural shifts and risk.” The first step, and perhaps the most important, is to become conscious of starting assumptions that require reevaluation. Booth suggests four areas that investors may want to reexamine: “i) risk, uncertainty and information asymmetry assumptions; ii) investor psychology and behaviour assumptions; iii) structure, efficiency, equilibrium and market dynamics; and iv) asset class definitions.” Fortunately, these are areas that Booth himself explores in the book, so the investor has a leg up—whether or not he agrees with all of Booth’s conclusions. One of the central themes of the book is risk, and one often neglected component of risk (a dangerous oversight) is the nature of the investor base. Prior to the ruble crisis in 1998, “perhaps a third of the investor base in emerging market dollar-denominated debt was highly leveraged and speculative.” But, as hedge fund money and other speculative investment left the emerging debt market, a more stable investor base took their place—long-only Western institutional investors and local institutional investors. “With local liabilities, these [local] investors do not have the same propensity to flee the market when risk perception rises. Indeed, since the mid-2000s local bond markets often rally in most of the larger markets during episodes of risk aversion—because the dominant movement of funds is by domestic investors moving from domestic equities to domestic bonds. At the time of writing,” Booth notes, “local currency debt, largely locally held, is over 80% (and growing) of all emerging markets debt.” Although Booth focuses on emerging markets, much of his analysis can be extrapolated to other markets. He explores some key investing principles and defines areas ripe for further research. Investors as well as students of the financial markets can profit from his thorough work.

If, like me, you woke up this morning excited by the headlines and tweets declaring that Rowling has written a new Harry Potter story, you may be disappointed. Almost seven years after publishing the final Harry Potter book, Rowling has returned to the wizarding world for the first time, but the results are flimsy. What’s being billed as Rowling’s first post-Deathly Hallows short story set in the “Harry Potter” universe is just a brief fictional dispatch from Rita Skeeter, the wizarding world’s nastiest gossip columnist. If you aren’t already a member of Pottermore, Rowling’s official fansite, you’ll have to sign up for an account. When I finally read the story, after surrendering my name, email address, and birth date, I felt a little conned. This wasn’t a short story—this was a digital marketing campaign.

Rita Skeeter is writing from the Quidditch World Cup championship fifteen years after the events of the final book, providing a “Where Are They Now” game that’s sort of fun. Harry is nearly 34, his hair is beginning to gray. Poor Ron is already losing his hair. (As someone who was the same age as Harry when the first books were published, this premature aging is tough to read about.) Hermione is balancing motherhood with a demanding career. (“Does Hermione Granger prove that a witch really can have it all?” Skeeter asks.) We get updates on Ginny Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, and even Viktor Krum. Like the reunion special of a TV soap, the next generation—Bill Weasley’s daughter and Remus Lupin’s son, now teenagers—are romantically involved.

All this information comes from an unreliable source, of course. Rita Skeeter, with her poison pen and claw-like nails, was one of the minor villains of the Harry Potter series, spreading catty, made-up gossip about our heroes and showing no moral qualms. She’s also an avatar for Rowling’s aggrieved relationship with the media. “It really was like being under siege or like a hostage,” Rowling told the Leveson Inquiry when testifying a few years ago about the British press. In that light, the new story reads like a barely veiled attack on the entitlement and moral bankruptcy of British tabloid culture. “One always hesitates to invade the privacy of young people,” Rowling, in the voice of Skeeter, writes. “But the fact is that anyone closely connected with Harry Potter reaps the benefits and must pay the penalty of public interest.”

Unlike the series’ ill-advised epilogue, the new story doesn’t wrap everything up in a bow. We’re left wondering where the cut on Harry’s face came from and how much of the column is vicious rumor. But like that epilogue, it’s a symptom of Rowling’s reluctance to cede control of her creations. Since ending the series, she’s revealed that Dumbledore was gay, that Harry and his cousin Dudley reconciled, and that Harry and Voldemort were related by blood. You don’t have to be a Barthesian grad student to chafe at Rowling’s impulse to clarify the words on the page. When writers adopt the paratextual world of fanfic as their own, they both diminish their books’ literary authority and interfere with the freewheeling spirit of fan writing.

So if you’re really jonesing for a Harry Potter fix, you’re probably better off re-reading the originals or turning to some of the fantasy writers who influenced or were influenced by Rowling—Diana Wynne Jones, Susan Cooper, Suzanne Collins. And don’t forget: harrypotterfanfiction.com has 82,406 stories, and counting.

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Boganmeldelse: mistet legioner af Fromelles

Næsten præcis 98 år siden, blev Fromelles legenden siger, den 5. australske Division kastet i kamp af dumme britiske generaler og slagtet. Natten, 5500 mænd blev dræbt eller såret: angiveligt den værste dag i australske militære historie.

I kamp, angiveligt glemt, vises australske diggers mod og mateship bekendt men tidløs dyder. Trods den formodede cover-up, i 2007 en massegrav blev fundet, takket være persistens af amatør forskere, og i dag historien er fortalt i den nyeste store krigskirkegård ved Fromelles.

Overflødigt at sige, er den populære legenden ikke helt rigtigt. Det udelader så meget som det omfatter og får forkerte så meget som det afslører.

Britiske historiker Peter Barton The Lost legioner af Fromelles fortæller hvad er til en vis grad en fortrolig historie – om slagtning i grøfter og marsken i ingenmandsland – men det tilføjer til både hvad vi ved og hvordan vi skal være på vagt over for den populære legenden.

Mens ikke en fejlfri bog-det er ca. dobbelt så længe det skal være, for en start – dette er en vigtig bog for australierne. Dens primære dyd er, at det er baseret på tysk – specielt bayerske-kilder, at udvide og forfine den velkendte australske historie.

En af de eksisterende fejl af australske militære historie er som det praktiseres i de første årtier af det 21 at det er i vid udstrækning australske militære historie. Som Barton viser, hvad australierne kalder slaget ved Fromelles var faktisk den tredje slag udkæmpet at jorden over to år – og den tidligere (britisk) angreb også mislykkedes, med meget de samme tab som den australske angreb.

Bartons detaljerede bog er overlegen i forhold til de følelsesladede og partisk konti tilbydes til australske læsere, især ved Patrick Lindsay og Les Carlyon. Tegning som det gør på "fjenden" kilder for første gang, det fylder i huller på anden siden af ingenmandsland.

Afgørende, bruger Barton de bayerske arkiver til at vise, hvordan ligene af "Engelsk" døde blev begravet i massegrav på Fasan træ som den nye kirkegård er blevet dannet. En åbenbaring er, at gravene angiveligt "lost" – det vil sige, savnet af uduelige australske søgende efter 1918 – var altid fuldt dokumenteret i rigelige bayerske arkiverne – hvis bare vi havde gidet at kigge.

Jeg må erkende en interesse her, som en mindre aktør i en af de "officielle" udvalg, derforkastede de argumenter, der tilbydes af victorianske skolelærer Lambis Englezos atden massegrav faktisk havde været savnet af krigen grave parter. Jeg var forkert, ogsagde så videre på forsiden af den australske, da det viste sig at han havde væretrigtige. Men indrømmer fejl en gang betyder ikke at jeg ikke kan være kritiske igen.

Ligesom mange af de seneste militære historiebøger er dette for lang. Barton giver oslangt flere detaljer end nogen kunne ønsker eller har brug for. Men han er doven-det er lettere at citere store plader af dokumenter end at vælge og omskrive – og give-away er, at han er tilfreds med at give initialerne for mænd hvis navne kan findes påinternettet i sekunder. Han skriver godt, især i beskriver processerne af forskningeninvolverer kilder fra flere lande og ikke kun dokumenter, men arkæologiske beviser –eller "oplysninger", som han insisterer på at kalde den.

Men ingen men mest dedikerede slagmarken nørd vil gerne vide så meget som Bartonønsker at fortælle. Og på punkter, hvor vi har brug for sikkerhed – var briterneplanlægger lyd? – han synes aldrig at forpligte sig selv.

With the founding of the Center for Public Integrity in the 1980s, Charles Lewis probably did more than anyone else to launch institutional nonprofit journalism in America. So it is worth paying attention to what he has to say, especially when his subject includes the fate of journalism itself. Mr. Lewis's "935 Lies" repays such attention, though not right away.

The first half of the book is an unremarkable recounting of America's supposed loss of innocence—its missteps and transgressions as well as its attempts to restore the nation's ideals—from the Tonkin Gulf and Freedom Summer to the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, from the Chilean coup to Iraq. An entire chapter, breaking no new ground, is devoted to the stubborn problem of race in America. The book's historical narrative is meant to show, as the subtitle has it, "the decline of America's moral integrity." The title itself, which the author essentially disowns in a concluding note, refers to 935 statements by the George W. Bush administration about Iraq. Mr. Lewis asserts that the statements were all erroneous but concedes that they may not have been "lies" in the sense of knowing falsehood. In any case, the Iraq war plays only a limited role in Mr. Lewis's tale of woe.

But hang in—or skip to the second part, which is mostly a memoir and almost all about journalism. It includes one of the toughest critiques of television news ever written by an insider. From 1977 to 1989, Mr. Lewis worked for ABC News and then for CBS's news program "60 Minutes."

Mr. Lewis begins with an admiring portrait of Edward R. Murrow, whose wartime reporting and work at CBS in the early 1950s, he believes, embodied a time when the news business managed to avoid the plague of risk aversion that would later come from corporate masters seeking ever larger profits. Then he takes us into the halls of Don Hewitt's "60 Minutes" and makes the most of his own disillusioning experience.

"Serious journalism," Mr. Lewis says, "will necessarily be undertaken by commercial TV news executives with great caution." He argues that, as TV news began seeking a mass audience, the networks became "mostly interested in the illusion of investigative reporting." Time pressures required that almost all their work in this area be derivative of work previously done by others, usually in print. "Well-connected, powerful people and companies with questionable policies and practices," he says, were not investigated "precisely because of the connections and power they boasted."

He describes a CBS corporate culture in which his first 150 story ideas yielded only three broadcast segments, either because there was insufficient time to develop them or because they lacked "characters." What he was being asked to produce, he ultimately recognized, was "formulaic, good-versus-evil" pieces devoid of policy or nuance.

The most acute of Mr. Lewis's frustrations came when Hewitt, the executive producer of "60 Minutes," refused to broadcast a Lewis report on former government officials profiting as U.S. lobbyists for foreign interests unless the name of Hewitt's good friend Pete Peterson, then chairman of the Blackstone BX +1.27%  Group, was excised from the script. In the story, a photograph showed five smiling Blackstone executives, all former federal appointees, in a Japanese newspaper advertisement seeking business for their lobbying efforts. Mr. Peterson was singled out by name in the voice-over narrative. Correspondent Mike Wallace, for whom Mr. Lewis worked directly, implored him in a shouting match to remove Mr. Peterson's name, to no avail. But Hewitt was more subtle, simply refusing to schedule the piece for airing. Mr. Lewis bitterly relented to Hewitt's implicit demand and quit the day after the story was broadcast.

As for ABC, Mr. Lewis reports that its legendary news chief Roone Arledge killed a tough story on tobacco at the request of "the Corporate guys," who were fearful that the network could complicate its position in a libel suit that Philip Morris PM -0.35%  had already filed against the broadcaster. In another instance, Mr. Lewis was given just a few hours to determine the veracity of an allegation that Lyndon Johnson, when he was Senate majority leader, had accepted large cash bribes. Mr. Lewis accurately calls such an assignment "a fool's errand."

The book's critique is less sure-footed when Mr. Lewis turns from TV to newspapers. At one point he suggests that investigative journalism in newspapers has been in retreat since 1968. He blames the decline almost entirely on "shortsighted greed and increasing corporatization" and hardly at all on the true culprit, the digital revolution that wreaked havoc on newspaper business models. The decline has largely occurred over the past decade, not anything like 45 years, and it has coincided with a collapse in newspaper profitability, which peaked in 2000.

Mr. Lewis's personal story by no means ended when he left broadcast television. The Center for Public Integrity opened its doors in late 1989, and its first report followed up on his last "60 Minutes" piece. The center's mission was to do investigative work in the public interest "using a 'quasi-journalistic, quasi political science' approach," issuing long reports and later books. CPI was really the nation's first independent nonprofit newsroom.

A serial nonprofit entrepreneur, Mr. Lewis has also founded the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other organizations aimed at promoting and undertaking nonprofit reporting. His reflections, especially on network television, point up the inherent limits of our largest legacy news organizations and embody the hope that new entrants will fill the gaps in newsgathering and, thereby, enlarge the public's capacity for democratic governance.

By Richard J. Tofel         

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"Jeg havde et tilbud om et par dage efter landing fra en guldgraver, med £600-700. Siden at jeg har haft en anden fra en bushman med £900, «så skrev en ung britisk servering pige, lige ankommet i Victoria guldfelter i 1850-erne. Hun betød tilbud om ægteskab, snarere end arbejde. Der var en mangel på kvinder, så en ung, enkelt pige kunne gøre meget bedre på markedets ægteskab, end hun nogensinde kunne i Storbritannien. Som hun udtrykte det, har"jeg så mange chancer".

Da mændene skyndte sig til guldet felter omkring Melbourne, så gjorde kvinderne. De løb butikker og offentlige huse, bevarede bordeller og teatre, arbejdede som ansatte og rejst familier, skrev andragender til regeringen. Butikker solgte brystpumper og dyre babytøj, nursemaids tog op besættelse på bolde, så kvinder kunne forlade deres børn med dem. En ung irsk sjældne kaldet Harriet ledsaget hendes bror til at grave efter skære hendes hår og klæde sig i en filt hat, en tunika og minearbejdere støvler – således 'afsked med min sex for en sæson' i Ballarat, et forlig omkring 65 km fra Melbourne. Men som Clare Wright så effektivt viser i sin fascinerende ny bog, 2014 Stella prisen for australske kvinders skrivning, historien om Victoria gold diggers – og fortælling af Eureka oprør mod britiske styrker, en vital del af Australiens nationale bevidsthed, har været gentagne gange kodificeret og fortalt som en historie om mænd.

Efter længe ulmende spændinger mellem Victoria minearbejdere og den britiske regering, død af en skotsk minearbejder på Eureka hotel i Ballarat i slutningen af 1854 sæt boksen fyrsvamp ild. Inden for et par uger, 10.000 minearbejdere mødtes i Ballarat, kræver ophævelse af de forhadte minearbejdere licens og mandlige valgret. Der var træfninger, den blodige kamp Eureka palisader på 3 December og minearbejdere stillet for en domstol. Men deres stemmer var for højt til at blive ignoreret. På fredag 24 November 1857 fik alle hvide mænd valgret.

Wright er en Sydney-baserede historiker og TV-vært, der allerede har skrevet med succes på Australiens kvindelige toldere og hun sætter kvinder front og Center i historien. Selv mænd på tidspunktet kommenterede tusinder af kvinder der. «Der er nogle enormt fedt kvinder på udgravninger,» skrev en rejsende muntert, 'livet synes at passe dem'. Wright er særligt gode på kvaler af fødsel i telt-Fællesskabet, aftappet rædsler af den tre-måneders rejse fra Storbritannien – og også to doughty anglo-irske koner der oprettet en butik, der sælger 'bedste kvalitet' te, kaffe, sukker, stearinlys, tobak, syltetøj, frugt, løg og æbler og «nogle fremragende små Cheshire oste». De var ikke de eneste: en fru Wintle annonceret at hendes butik sælges silke, satin, cashmere og franske kid støvler. Kvinder blomstrede, trods de hårde betingelser: i 1850, Ballarat registre bemærkede en enkelt fødsel af 1854 var der 404.

Wright har gennemsøgt arkiverne i Victoria og hendes bog er en vidunderlig og vægtige hyldest til kvinder af de victorianske minefelter. Bogen er smukt forsket og fuld af levende farver, engagerende tegn og dramatisk rekonstruktion. Ligesom mange historikere af kvinder, er hun undertiden hæmmet af faktum, at hendes emner har ikke efterladt mange skrifter bag dem, og nogle gange skal man gætte eller finde dem gennem optegnelser og beskrivelser af mænd. Hun beskæftiger sig med dette ved at skrive i en stemningsfuld, selv fantasifuld stil, undertiden adressering læseren direkte som 'du', at sætte os i position af en imaginær Ballarat fastboende i 1850-erne: det er stadig svært at forstå, at din julemiddag vil blive forbrugt under blis af den sydlige sol. Nogle traditionelle læsere kan være forvirrende. For mig er det tilføjes filmisk modet hos The glemt oprørere: en bog med så meget verve, energi og ukuelige ånd som digger kvinderne.

Ralph Nader wants liberals and conservatives to work together. In his new book, “Unstoppable”, he cites many instances in which such cooperation ought to be possible, at least theoretically. But the book’s greater value may lie in the opportunity to contemplate, almost half a century after he first stepped onto the national stage, where Nader himself fits on the ideological spectrum.

Any discussion of Nader must begin with the acknowledgment that he is a great man. He created modern consumer advocacy when he published “Unsafe at Any Speed,” his 1965 book about auto safety, and he founded a network of nonprofits dedicated to muckraking and lobbying in the public interest, challenging the government on a host of regulatory issues that previously received scant attention. It’s a backhanded compliment to Nader that the stampede of corporate lobbyists into Washington starting in the 1970s began as an effort to counter him (before it acquired a fevered momentum of its own).

Most people would situate Nader on the left. That’s a reasonable judgment but also a simplistic one, because in many ways he is fairly conservative — conservative enough to harvest favorable book-jacket blurbs for “Unstoppable” from the likes of anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and anti-immigration activist Ron Unz. No doubt part of Nader’s appeal to such folks is their sheer gratitude that he helped keep Al Gore out of the White House (though with a margin as thin as the one in Florida’s vote count, you could blame Gore’s 2000 defeat — or, if you prefer, thwarted victory — on just about anything). But the right’s affinity for Nader is not based solely on partisan interest. He holds more beliefs in common with conservatives than is generally recognized.

Income distribution, a long-standing concern for the left, has seldom interested Nader, except insofar as government can be stopped from redistributing upward. He favors much stronger government regulation of corporations, but his argument is that corporations would otherwise avoid the sort of accountability that any well-functioning market demands. If a pro-regulatory, highly litigious libertarian can be imagined, that’s what Nader is.

“Any government intrusion into the economy,” he wrote in 1962, “deters the alleged beneficiaries from voicing their views or participating in civic life.” He probably wouldn’t put it so tea-party-ishly today. But he remains much less enamored than most liberals of representative government as a solution to life’s problems. Nader’s allegiance is not to politicians and bureaucrats, whom he routinely excoriates, but to the citizens who petition them, sue them and vote for or against them. His ideal is a small community (like Winsted, Conn., where he grew up) that unites to force corporations and unresponsive government to act in the public interest. Think of every Frank Capra movie you ever saw. People often assume that Capra was a New Deal Democrat, but in fact he was a lifelong Republican.

An entire chapter of “Unstoppable” celebrates the Southern Agrarians, a reactionary populist movement of the 1930s that cast “a baleful eye on both Wall Street and Washington, D.C.” Nader admires the Southern Agrarians not for their racial attitudes (most of them were notably racist and anti-Semitic) but because they believed fiercely in maintaining small-scale rural economies in which both ownership and control stayed local, often in the form of a co-op. Squint a little, and the Southern Agrarians may start to resemble today’s left-wing microbrewers and locavores.

Much of the left’s agenda, “Unstoppable” argues, can be justified by citing revered conservative authors. Adam Smith described the invisible hand but also the “bad effects of high profits.” Friedrich Hayek condemned certain cartels and monopolies. Russell Kirk, who feared untrammeled government and capitalism, wrote that John D. Rockefeller and Karl Marx“were merely two agents of the same social force — an appetite cruelly inimical to human individuation.”

Nader cites these and other examples to argue that left and right should band together against the common enemy of “corporatism.” It’s really more the Naderite left he’s talking about, and an ever-shrinking pool of principled conservatives. But let’s hear him out. The issues he has in mind for a left-right alliance break down into three categories.

Category One is the Centrist Agenda. This consists of ideas that are uncontroversial but difficult to achieve in practice. They include promoting more efficiency in government contracting and spending, requiring an annual audit of the Pentagon budget, reviving civic education in schools, and preventing private exploitation of “the commons,” i.e., anything that’s owned by everybody — public lands, public airwaves, the Internet, etc. (One of two people to whom Nader dedicates “Unstoppable” is my late friend Jonathan Rowe, a journalist whose 2013 book, “Our Common Wealth,” argues for better stewardship of the commons. Like Nader, Rowe makes the case that there are good conservative reasons to do this.)

Category Two is what I’d call the Right On Agenda. It consists of ideas that are controversial to some degree but (to my mind, at least) extremely worthwhile. These include adjusting the minimum wage automatically to inflation, as proposed by the Obama administration — and supported by Mitt Romney before he ran for president. One argument Nader could make here, but doesn’t, is that such automatic adjustments would deprive Democrats of a political stick with which they’ve lately been beating Republicans who don’t want to raise the minimum wage.

Another controversial but worthwhile idea is to break up the “too big to fail” banks. Several prominent conservatives already support such a move, including Washington Post columnist George Will; Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; and Sen.David Vitter (R-La.). Limiting the size of banks appeals to both left and right because it would eliminate any need to bail them out in the future. Now proponents just have to win over centrists such as former treasury secretary Tim Geithner, who has pronounced any effort to end “too big to fail” “quixotic” and “misguided.”

A third controversial but valuable idea suggested by Nader is to rein in commercial marketing to children, especially through TV. This is exploitation, plain and simple. Trying to stop it has been the life’s work of Peggy Charren, founder of the now-defunct liberal group Action for Children’s Television. Nader notes that the evangelical right is also troubled by the way toy companies and fast-food restaurants are permitted to hawk often-questionable products to kids.

Category Three is what I’d call the Nutty Agenda, a rubric that should be self-explanatory. Nader favors further direct democracy through initiative, referendum and recall, but the results from these have seldom been encouraging. California’s Proposition 13, for instance, launched a nationwide revolt against property taxes — Thomas Piketty’s worst nightmare — and hobbled California’s state budget for a generation. Nader’s advocacy in this instance reflects his too-severe impatience with representative democracy. It’s probably not too much of an exaggeration to say that his ideal republic would conduct government business almost entirely by plebiscite, with the rest settled in the courts.

Nader would also like to end fast-track trade agreements, a goal more in tune with the left (and less so, I think, with the right). But although I’m sympathetic to many of his pro-labor and environmental arguments, the damage done by fast-track trade deals would not, I believe, exceed the likely damage that protectionist Senate amendments would do to slower-track agreements.

“End unconstitutional wars,” another overlap on Nader’s left-right Venn diagram, sounds reasonable enough — Nader is correct that a strict reading of the Constitution assigns exclusive warmaking authority to Congress. But Congress has demonstrated in a thousand ways since 1941 that it doesn’t want to assume much responsibility, pro or con, for foreign interventions. How does one force it to? Nader is pretty vague about that in “Unstoppable,” but elsewhere he’s said he’d like to impeach President Obama for “war crimes.” He similarly wanted to impeach George W. Bush for waging war “based on false pretenses.” This seems indiscriminate, to say the least, and another sign that Nader deems representative government highly disposable.

Of course someone has to pay for all this politicking. One of the zanier directions Nader’s thinking has taken in recent years is the belief that public-interest-minded rich people can be relied on to restore political power to ordinary citizens. This is the theme of his 2009 novel, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us.” In the book, rich self-described “Meliorists” enact single-payer health insurance, elect Warren Beatty governor of California and persuade Wal-Mart to unionize.

Back here in the real world, though, the main way rich people have lately exerted significant power over the political process has been through conservative super PACs. During the 2012 Republican primaries, pashas such as Sheldon Adelson, Harold Simmons and Foster Friess were calling the shots as never before. One especially touching belief of Nader’s, expressed in a chapter of “Unstoppable” titled “Dear Billionaire,” is that rich patrons can be persuaded to cede control over how their money is spent in pursuit of the common weal.

Cooperation ought to be possible, even in this age of political bad faith, between left and right. That Nader is pursuing it so vigorously in the current hyper-partisan environment is yet another reason to admire the man. But at least to some extent, when Nader thinks he’s talking to conservatives, he’s actually talking to the quirky conservative within himself.

About 4,000 unidentified corpses turn up in the U.S. every year, of which about half have been murdered. Can the Internet help?

The public seems fascinated, if not obsessed, with crime-solving, if the high ratings of TV shows such as "CSI" and "NCIS" are any indication. The interest in crimes often proceeds from the high-profile identity of the victim or perpetrator. Think of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, the vanishing of Jimmy Hoffa or the trial of O.J. Simpson. At the other end of the spectrum are crime victims who have no identity at all.

These are the John Doe and Jane Doe corpses that are found without any papers or other identification markers. Even in an age when we are tracked electronically by our phone companies at every single moment, about 4,000 unidentified corpses turn up in the U.S. every year, of which about half have been murdered. In 2007 no fewer than 13,500 sets of unidentified human remains were languishing in the evidence rooms of medical examiners, according to an analysis published in the National Institute of Justice Journal.

In her brilliant book "The Skeleton Crew," Deborah Halber explains why local law enforcement often fails to investigate such deaths:"Unidentified corpses are like obtuse, financially strapped houseguests: they turn up uninvited, take up space reserved for more obliging visitors, require care and attention, and then, when you are ready for them to move on, they don't have anywhere to go." The result is that many of these remains are consigned to oblivion.

While the population of the anonymous dead receives only scant attention from the police or the media, it has given rise to a macabre subculture of Internet sleuthing. Ms. Halber chronicles with lucidity and wit how amateur investigators troll websites, such as the Doe Network, Official Cold Case Investigations and Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community, and check online databases looking for matches between the reported missing and the unidentified dead. It is a grisly pursuit involving linking the images of dead bodies to the descriptions posted by people trying to find someone.

Ms. Halber devotes most of "The Skeleton Crew" to describing a handful of cases that have given rise to this bizarre avocation. It started with an infamous Kentucky crime known as the Tent Girl Case: The victim was known only as Tent Girl because her body was found in 1968 inside a canvas tent bag. The hero of the story is Todd Matthews, a factory worker in Tennessee. Mr. Matthews became fascinated with the mystery in 1988, when he was still a teen, but was unable to find any clues to her identity until a decade later, when he stumbled on new information on the Internet. In 1998 he began searching forums and found one for lonely hearts and genealogy that had an intriguing post from a woman still looking for her long-lost sister, Barbara Hackmann-Taylor.

Barbara had vanished in late 1967, on a date not far from the time when the Tent Girl was found. She had lived near the Tent Girl's locale, and her sister's description roughly matched that of Tent Girl. Mr. Mathews wrote the Kentucky police, who arranged for the remains of Tent Girl to be exhumed and her DNA to be tested. Eureka, it matched, and Tent Girl finally had a name. Mr. Matthews later founded the Doe Network, which became a nexus for curious citizens who wanted to follow in his footsteps.

Ms. Halber superbly reports on this morbid new subculture. Aside from Tent Girl, she describes such odd cases as the Lady of the Dunes found in Cape Cod, Mass., in 1974; the Jane Doe in a red T-shirt who was found in Baltimore in 2000; and what Ms. Halber calls the "head in the bucket" case from Kearney, Mo., in 2001. Besides interviewing the Sherlock Holmes wannabes who have pursued these cases, Ms. Halber talks to police officers, forensic experts and medical examiners. She even attends grisly autopsies. As a result, we learn many unusual details: A human skeleton, it turns out, will fit in a 200-square-inch box.

But the focus on anecdotes, as interesting as they are, diverts attention from a larger question. Just how many murders do these amateur sleuths help solve (if one considers cases like Tent Girl, where the murderer was never discovered, to be solved)? Ms. Halber estimates that, since the identification of Tent Girl in 1998, roughly 30,000 unidentified murder victims have been discovered. The posse of amateur sleuths, as far as I can see from her book, have helped police crack no more than a dozen cases. So 99.99% remain unsolved.

The key to finding a solution to the stockpile of unidentified corpses, I would suggest, is not Internet sleuthing or crowdsourcing the identification of images of human remains, but increasing the efficiency of the FBI's National Crime Information Center database. At present, the NCIC stores more than 100 million fingerprints in its automated fingerprint-identification system and is in the process of developing a national DNA- matching system. Its computers and software need to be upgraded to better mesh with those of local police, sheriffs and medical examiners. Once that task is accomplished, it has the potential to greatly (and speedily) reduce the population of the unidentified dead.

Amateur sleuths, no matter how great their dedication, simply lack the resources. Because of legitimate privacy concerns, they do not have access to this FBI database. To be sure, they now can use a government-run website called National Missing and Unidentified Person System to find a roster of fresh cases, and they can continue searching for macabre matches on the Internet. And amateur sleuthing provides great satisfaction to armchair detectives, the author makes clear, not only in America but in such far off places as Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Indonesia. Ms. Halber's real service is to bring to light the workings of this fascinating new subculture and one can expect her entertaining book will only add to their numbers.

Throughout her life, playwright and diplomat Clare Boothe Luce insatiably aimed for the top. In “Rage for Fame,” published in 1997, Sylvia Jukes Morris traced how a beautiful and intelligent girl, born of humble origins, married a millionaire decades her senior; transformed herself as managing editor at Vanity Fair, wrote her hit play, “The Women,” married again, to Henry Luce of Time Inc.

“Price of Fame” continues the second half of this amazing story, clearly capturing the successes and pathos of a narcissist infused with shame and self-hate. (“Nobody could love me who really knew me.”)

Fame Clare now has, but with it came personal loss: the death of her only child; of her brother; the suicide of a close friend; the disappointment in her dysfunctional marriage to Luce, her love and enemy. Their extramarital affairs, along with Clare’s schemes to extract millions, is told without censure. Those millions, later bequested to institutions and charities, also significantly benefited women entering the field of mathematics, science and engineering.

The book opens with Clare’s election in 1942 as a Republican congressman from Connecticut. The only female member of the House Military Affairs Committee, she traveled to Europe, visiting liberated Nazi concentration camps. She crossed the aisle to work with Democrats, and is credited with advancing 18 initiatives, including human rights, equal pay, and the rehabilitation of veterans, and the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission. No fan of FDR, she said he had created a nation of “hypochondriacs, introverts and psychotics.” Nonetheless, she was a friend of his wife, Eleanor (both were advocates for civil rights). After Clare’s conversion to Roman Catholicism, she was appointed ambassador to Italy, the first woman ever appointed ambassador to a major foreign power, playing a role in negotiating a peaceful resolution to the Trieste Crisis.

Working in a man’s world, she easily vanquished dullards with “lawyerly logic,” eliciting the admiration of statesmen, among them Bernard Baruch, Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, who thought her a “cinch to become the first woman president.” Clare left Congress in 1946, convinced that politics was “the refuge of second-class minds.” She remained an active member of 26 boards, dealing with issues ranging from arms control and counterintelligence to accuracy in the media. Under Presidents Nixon and Reagan, she served on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. In 1983, Reagan awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

A running theme throughout Clare’s life is her shimmering sexuality — a lethal cocktail of luminosity, charm, intelligence and wit. One of her bon mots was “No good deed goes unpunished.” Her seductions were legendary; the editor Fleur Cowles joked that she slept with every general on the Western front. There were those who resented Clare’s “conceited assumption” that “she has everybody eating out of her hands in a few minute’s time.” Perhaps she can be forgiven when so many letters to her are filled with the yearning fantasies of countless males. Well into her 60s, she captivated men decades her junior.

Nightfall found her suffering “a terrible attack of the dismals.” Bravely, Clare kept repeated bouts of depression at bay with a roster of interests that included her major art collection, scuba diving, the theater and screenwriting. Her energy flagged only at the end, at her death of brain cancer in 1987, at age 84.

Clare attempted her own autobiography, but got no further than: “One gets born. From there on, it’s hell, or a little better, with a rare touch of heaven, all the way to the grave.” A better self-portrait was a haunting picture she painted of a woman in utter despair. Reluctant to revisit tragedy and secrets, Clare repeatedly tried to dissuade Sylvia Jukes Morris from writing her life, saying it didn’t “stack up.”

Plowing her way through 460,000 items of Clare’s restricted papers at the Library of Congress, a collection bigger than that of most presidents, Ms. Morris was the only author given complete access. She has also uncovered rich sources elsewhere, among them the diary entries of Time Inc. employees and the tape-recordings of Clare’s reactions as she tripped on LSD in a pioneering experiment. It is the author’s steady, sensitive handling of the material, told with humor and objectivity, that makes this biography so poignant and profound.

The author’s skill at delving deep into sources was eventually rewarded by Clare herself, who confessed she felt closest to Ms. Morris “because you know everything.” However, it is the late Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin, who said it best: “How often does it happen,” he asked, “this coming together of a great subject and an ideal biographer?” That observation beautifully applies to “Price of Fame,” and it is nothing short of a triumph.

The character and career of Sir Winston Churchill are both so protean that it is not surprising that there have been studies of the great man emphasizing innumerable aspects, running the gamut from military strategist and statesman to painter and gourmand. Certainly, Churchill as a literary figure is a topic also well worth considering. What other British prime minister won the Nobel Prize for literature? (It was awarded to him in the midst of his second premiership in 1953.) Interestingly, although it was widely believed that this accolade came to him because of his magisterial history of World War II, Jonathan Rose, Kenan professor of history at Drew University, informs us that it was the autobiography “My Early Life” that impelled the (neutral in World War II) Swedes.

Well-researched and clearly informed by great admiration and attunement to its subject, “The Literary Churchill” is simply crammed with interesting facts like this — and not just about his oeuvre and his accomplishments. We find out about the origins of his writing with his discovery of it as a talent and much-needed boost as an indifferent student, his literary and theatrical tastes and his affinity for melodrama.

A lifelong politician dedicated to statecraft, Churchill was also a professional writer. If he could not equal his predecessor, Benjamin Disraeli, who wrote an astonishing 18 novels and was still doing so while in office in his 70s, he actually earned his living for much of his life with his pen. Quite a bit was journalism — some of it of a high order, other hackwork — but there is no denying the quality of his major works, such as the biography of his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough and his histories of both world wars and of the English-speaking peoples. In his youth, he even wrote a novel, “Savrola,” that he “consistently urged my friends to abstain from reading.” Mr. Rose writes, “Churchill ultimately recognized that ‘Savrola’ was an artistic failure” and himself characterizes it as one “which arguably ranks among the worst novels of the nineteenth century.” Mr. Rose goes on to aver that “bad books can be wonderfully revealing, and this one in particular offers remarkable insights into the author’s core political convictions and methods.”

So, by the time we have Mr. Rose seeing Churchill’s only novel — probably the least accomplished product of his pen in his own (and others’) judgment — as a precursor of his “Finest Hour,” this book’s methodology is on very thin ice:

‘Savrola’ turned out to be a remarkable prophecy. It tells the story of a brilliant author and public speaker who uses his wonderful oratorical powers to defeat the evil dictator of a Middle European country, a dictator who tears up treaties, stabs his political rivals in the back, murders prisoners of war, does not hesitate to use torture, and recklessly seeks an armed confrontation with the British Empire . Once again, Churchill’s politics followed his literary imagination. He recognized and resisted Hitler largely because the Fuhrer so closely resembled the fictional villain he had created years before . Churchill actually made his novel come true. In ‘Savrola,’ as Disraeli had done in ‘Tancred,’ he described a political crusade that he carried out as prime minister forty years later.”

Although connecting “Savrola” to Churchill’s staunch resistance and oratorical skills when Britain stood alone in 1940 is less risible than linking Disraeli’s novel about reconciling Judaism with Christianity to his accomplishments as premier, it is tenuous enough.

To invert the adage, this book is, in the final analysis, less than the sum of its parts, by which I mean that although it is full of intriguing tidbits about Churchill’s reading, writing and fascination with drama, its thesis — that “his political goals and methods were shaped by what he read in books and saw on the stage” — doesn’t really hold up. To Mr. Rose’s credit, he prefaces his work with these cautionary words:

“Every historical study should begin with these cautious words: ‘This does not explain everything.’ I emphasize here the literary and theatrical dimensions of politics because they are neglected and important, but not all-important.”

True enough, but isn’t it possible that what Churchill chose to read and watch on stage reflected his essential character rather than molding it? The good thing about “The Literary Churchill” is that readers can enjoy and benefit from what it contains without buying into its author’s hypotheses.

Alirio Zavarce’s one-man show on the nature of something he’s termed “rational madness” begins in an airport. He’s just flown back to Australia with a prop suitcase, and as the story reaches fever pitch, with the federal police brandishing machine guns and a gaggle of customs officials staring him down suspiciously, he stops the show.

He’s troubled. There’s a divide between Zavarce the man and Zavarce the actor. Maybe that’s the wrong place to begin. Things carry on, but it’s not the last time he’ll stop the show. Loco is peppered with Zavarce’s asides, and the whole thing proceeds in kooky fits and starts.

Jonathon Oxlade’s enchanting set — a towering wall of cardboard boxes — becomes a playground. Sections fall down, some of them contain secrets, and more than a few become the canvas for Chris More’s projection design.

Zavarce’s marriage and the twin towers of the World Trade Centre collapsed on the same day, and this is where his “rational madness” began. Everyone’s a little bit loco, and sometimes we have to give in to it in order to get through. He’s a beguiling, fascinating performer who’s at his best engaging directly with the audience.

Sasha Zahra’s direction is solid, but there’s a gap between the darkness and the light in these stories. These semi-autobiographical tales are told mostly in big print, and the net effect is beautifully polished, but fundamentally shallow.

Like The Rabble’s Room of Regret last year, this show features a plate of human faeces. But it’s there to do more than just shock: it’s glad wrapped, and it’s a prop in a didactic little bit about the value of things. And just like the poo, everything from David Gadsden’s manic lighting to Duncan Campbell’s sound design — which features a mind-bending mashup of Glenn Miller’s In the Mood and Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name Of — is perfectly calibrated.

Ultimately, all the mess and madness is a little too choreographed; the version of himself Zavarce presents here is a few clicks too close to children’s television presenter to really connect with, but maybe that’s the point.

In the middle of the show, he leans toward an audience member who’s been roped into performing one half of a phone call with him. She looks over the lines, and he leans in. “Are you familiar with naturalism?” he says. Everyone laughs. A couple more spoonfuls of it in the show itself might just lift it from charming romp to challenging delight. But then, maybe that’s not the point.

It's neither Big Data nor innovation, despite all the business books and management gurus touting the disruptive potential of each.

It's the simple question, right there on the tip of your tongue.

A new book demonstrates just how far an inquisitive mind can take you.

Change usually starts with a question. Inquiry has toppled monarchs and empires throughout history.

It's the basis of one of the earliest forms of education - the Socratic Method - used to train young minds in the rigours of critical thinking.

Yet, it's a mostly ignored business tool, overlooked by executives trained in the MBA arts that "tend to place more value on answers, pronouncements, and promises," according to author Warren Berger.

Questions also overturn business empires.

Power

Nagging, unanswered thoughts that start with words such as "why" or "what if" often ignite processes that will eventually disrupt well-worn business models, re-jig the balance of power within an industry, and create new markets for products no one had thought of making.

If you could map the DNA of successful entrepreneurs, it might reveal a double helix of question marks, he says.

Mr Berger, a journalist and innovation expert who has written for 'Wired' and 'BusinessWeek', points out that, as children, we start out questioning everything. (What parent hasn't been exasperated by the constant "why" from their kids?)

Mr Berger's last book was called 'Glimmer'. It delved into the process behind creative thinking. It was named by 'BusinessWeek' as one of its best innovation and design books of the year.

Mr Berger points out that somewhere in our maturation we lose the innate skill of questioning that we possess as children and become more conformist and - to the detriment of business and society - less creative.

'A More Beautiful Question' reminds us that questions drive so many successful innovations and start-up companies.

The mobile phone, the internet, digital music players, on-line streaming of movies, and so on - all these technological and business model breakthroughs, from Polaroid to Apple, Netflix, and Airbnb, began when someone asked simple questions: "why, what if, or how?"

Mr Berger has previously pointed out that the successful entrepreneur is the one who "steps back" to question what others ignore or take for granted.

Better

The author explains that the art of inquiry also helps employees work collaboratively at companies such as Google and IDEO, which both employ the "How Might We" method of group questioning to build better products and more cohesive cultures.

Wahrsager: Die Geschichte von Amerikas ersten Konjunkturbeobachter. 2013. Walter A. Friedman.

Investment-Profis, die durch heutige konstanten Strom von Wirtschaftsdaten überflutet können nicht schätzen, wie glücklich sie sind. Im Gegensatz zu einer früheren Generation von Praktikern sind sie in der Lage, eine unglaubliche Vielzahl von Behörden zu konsultieren, die bereit sind, den künftigen Kurs der Wirtschaft vorherzusagen. Wahrsager, von Walter A. Friedman, Direktor des Business-Geschichte-Initiative und Dozent an der Harvard Business School, ist die fesselnde Geschichte einige Pioniere der viele immer noch die "schwarze Kunst" von Wirtschaftsprognosen nennen.

Es ist unmöglich zu fassen das Datum der ersten Konjunkturprognose. Friedman stellt einige Versuche, die zukünftige Richtung der Rohstoffpreise so früh als 1878 zu erkennen. Er meint, das war jedoch des Zeitraums zwischen dem Ende des ersten Weltkrieges und der große Crash 1929 das "Goldene Zeitalter" der Prognose. Dies war eine Zeit des dampfbetriebenen Lokomotiven, elektrisch betriebenen Fabriken, Synthetikfasern, Automobile, bewegte Bilder und ein Array von neuen Konsumgüter. Es standen zu Grund, die Männern gelernt in der Lage, die Bedeutung einer Vielzahl von göttlichen neu wirtschaftliche Indikatoren entwickelt werden sollten.

Friedmans Themen hatte Hintergründe und unterschiedliche Arten von akademischen Anmeldeinformationen variiert. Roger Babson und John Moody waren finanzielle Verlage, die ihre Informationsdienste sowie ihre Prognosen verkauft. Irving Fisher der Yale University und C.J. Bullock und Warren Personen von Harvard waren Wirtschaftswissenschaftler Absicht auf den Aufbau von was der Autor als "wirtschaftliche Beobachtungsstellen" auf der ganzen Welt. Wesley Mitchell und Herbert Hoover waren US-Handelsministerium Beamten Absicht auf die Bereitstellung der Öffentlichkeit objektive und präzise Daten über die Wirtschaft.

Die einzelnen Kapitel enthalten reichliche Informationen über jedes Forecaster Methodik und chart-Erfolge und Misserfolge der Themen vor und während der großen Depression. Ein überzeugendes Schlusskapitel verbindet ihre Bemühungen mit der Feststellung ihre gemeinsame Überzeugung, dass Vorhersagen Wirtschaftstrends möglich war, wenn man die Daten studierte und die richtige Kombination von Analyse, Entscheidung und Intuition Rückschlüsse auf die Daten Bedeutung verwendet.

Friedman stellt einige dauerhafte Beiträge dieser Pioniere und Kredite sie mit inspirierenden kommenden Generationen des Meteorologen, die möglicherweise oder möglicherweise nicht ausgelöst haben, die Kunst, eine Wissenschaft. Leser, die mit dieser Frage zu kämpfen schätzen dieser unterhaltsamen Blick auf die Vorgänger der Analysten dessen Ansichten sie suchen wahrscheinlich fast jeden Tag.

Resurrecting a 45-year-old book, Bill Gates included Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street on his 2014 summer reading list. His enthusiasm (“Warren Buffett recommended this book to me back in 1991, and it’s still the best business book I’ve ever read”—and claims it’s Warren Buffett’s favorite business book, too) was contagious. With prodding by Gates’s team, the out-of-print book was reissued as an e-book by Open Road, and as I write this post it’s Amazon’s #1 best seller in commerce and #2 in books.

John Brooks originally published these business stories in The New Yorker, so it goes without saying that they are well written. Describing the stock market as “the daytime adventure serial of the well-to-do,” Brooks devotes the first chapter to a blow-by-blow account of the “little crash” and rapid recovery that occurred in the last week of May 1962. On Monday the Dow dropped more than it had on any day except October 28, 1929. By Thursday, after the Wednesday Memorial Day holiday, it closed “slightly above the level where it had been before all the excitement began.”

The infrastructure in place at the time could not cope with the overwhelming trading volume. On Tuesday, May 29, “there was something very close to a complete breakdown of the reticulated, automated, mind-boggling complex of technical facilities that made nationwide stocktrading possible in a huge country where nearly one out of six adults was a stockholder. Many orders were executed at prices far different from the ones agreed to by the customers placing the orders; many others were lost in transmission, or in the snow of scrap paper that covered the Exchange floor, and were never executed at all. … By a heaven-sent stroke of prescience, Merrill Lynch, which handled over thirteen per cent of all public trading on the Exchange, had just installed a new 7074 computer—the device that can copy the Telephone Directory in three minutes—and, with its help, managed to keep its accounts fairly straight. Another new Merrill Lynch installation—an automatic teletype switching system that occupied almost half a city block and was intended to expedite communication between the firm’s various offices—also rose to the occasion, though it got so hot that it could not be touched. Other firms were less fortunate, and in a number of them confusion gained the upper hand so thoroughly that some brokers, tired of trying in vain to get the latest quotations on stocks or to reach their partners on the Exchange floor, are said to have simply thrown up their hands and gone out for a drink. Such unprofessional behavior may have saved their customers a great deal of money.” (p. 17)

The first chapter alone is worth the price of the e-book, but Brooks has eleven more. He writes about the fate of the Edsel, the federal income tax, insiders at Texas Gulf Sulphur, Xerox, the Haupt crisis, non-communication at GE, a company called Piggly Wiggly, David E. Lilienthal, annual meetings and corporate power, the trial of Goodrich v. Wohlgemuth, and the pound sterling.

I admit that I haven’t quite finished reading the book, but since any review I could write would pale in comparison to Gates’s and Buffett’s endorsement, I considered it sufficient to add my voice to those calling attention to these essays.

‘’Writing as Robert Galbraith,’’ Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling has suggested of her recent venture into crime fiction, has been a ‘‘pure joy’’. Judging by the bestseller lists, this is a joy squillions of readers are already sharing – begging the questions why and how? What’s the appeal of an undeniably retro crime series featuring a surly-looking, ex-army private detective with the unlikely name of Cormoran Strike?

While The Cuckoo’s Calling saw the one-legged Strike (he lost the other one serving his country) navigating the perils of celebrity culture and high fashion, in The Silkworm, Strike is confronted with the petty rivalries and grand egos of a ‘‘fictional’’ London literary scene. Having published two difficult and obscene allegorical novels, troublesome author Owen Quine has gone AWOL and his wife Leonora and daughter Orlando would like Strike to bring him home.

The dowdy Leonora is concerned that Owen’s disappearance has something to do with the manuscript of his latest roman à clef featuring a cast of literary enemies in a scandalous allegory with the unappealing title Bombyx Mori. Quine’s last sighting was at a famous London restaurant having a very public stoush with his agent who has declared the book unpublishable.

Galbraith/Rowling is playing cryptic mindgames with her readers. Bombyx Mori is the Latin moniker for the domesticated silkmoth, which in its larvae stage is boiled to extract silk. The hapless silkworm, as a metaphor for the writer ‘‘who has to go through agonies to get the good stuff’’, thence burrows its way through the book, popping up in all sorts of places, including the epigrams that frame each chapter.

These epigrams deserve a treatise all their own, drawn as they are from a breathless sweep of 16th and 17th-century poetic dramas, from Beaumont and Fletcher to Restoration comedy via lesser known luminaries such as George Chapman and Thomas Dekker. Most telling of all are those featuring the bloody Jacobean revenge dramas characterised, as Quine’s agent tells Strike over a reassuring bowl of soup, by ‘‘their sadism and their lust for vengeance’’.

Indeed, it is a quotation from The White Devil by John Webster that nails the plight of both missing author Quine, and quite possibly that of Galbraith/Rowling herself: ‘‘Ha ha ha, thou entanglest thyself in thine own work like a silkworm.’’ In its self-reflexivity, The Silkworm is thus a tale that resonates as much with the literary rivalries of the 17th-century coffee house as it does with those of contemporary London.

And contemporary London is very present, from the Monday morning faces on the Tube, ‘‘sagging, gaunt, braced, resigned’’, to the bustling back streets of Soho and Covent Garden in all their rain-sodden, wintry gloom. In terms of cultural tourism, Cormoran Strike may therefore well do for Denmark Street what Holmes did for Baker Street, or what Harry Potter did for Kings Cross, come to that.

Much of the pleasure lies in the vivid description of fictional people and real places, as well as the subtly evolving relationship between the defensive Cormoran and his ‘‘secretary’’, the beautiful Robin, who is about to be married to the manipulative Matthew. Note the moment of self-revelation when Strike considers how Robin’s engagement functions as the means ‘‘by which a thin, persistent draught is blocked up, something that might, if allowed to flow untrammelled, start to seriously disturb his comfort’’.

There is unresolved sexual tension at play here – and Galbraith knows better than to let it slacken. Observe also the elegant periodic sentence structure, the use of the arcane adjective ‘‘untrammelled’’.

The Silkworm thus brings to mind the crime fiction of another, more leisurely and more literary era. In her respect for the structure of the classic detective story, and her obvious delight in its multi-layered artifice, Galbraith – aka J.K. Rowling – is evidently re-creating her own golden age of crime.

The Silkworm is indeed a joy.

Now that J.D. Salinger is gone, Harper Lee might be the most famous literary recluse in the United States.

In 1960, Lee published the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird, still one of the best-loved American books and required reading in 70 percent of U.S. school systems.

During the same period, she helped Truman Capote research In Cold Blood, started work on another novel and helped publicize the 1962 movie adaptation of Mockingbird (starring Gregory Peck).

By 1965, however, she had stopped appearing publicly and refused to grant interviews. She has never published another book.

So, in 2001, when Chicago Tribune journalist Marja Mills was sent to Lee’s hometown of Monroeville, Ala., to get background on the town and its most famous resident, she wasn’t expecting to meet the author.

To her surprise, when she rang Lee’s doorbell, she was greeted by her older sister, Alice Finch Lee, who at the time was 89 and still practicing law every day. They had a long, comfortable chat, and the next day, Mills was startled to receive a phone call from Alice’s sister, whose full name is Nelle Harper Lee (Nelle to her friends).

“It was as if I had answered the phone and heard: ‘Hello. This is the Wizard of Oz,’” Mills writes.

The two sisters and the journalist became close. By 2004, Mills, who suffers from lupus, was experiencing so much pain and fatigue that she could no longer work at the Tribune, and she decided to spend more time in Monroeville researching the Lees.

Alice and Nelle suggested that the owner of the house next door to theirs might be willing to put it up for rent.

Mills moved into the house — complete with a deer head, a stuffed bobcat and another unidentifiable “crouching creature” — and stayed for more than a year.

The Mockingbird Next Door details the time Mills spent with the Lees and their friends, making daily expeditions to feed the ducks, fishing for catfish with hot-dog chunks as bait, going to the Laundromat and drinking coffee in Mills’ kitchen.

In a surprise turn of events this week, however, Lee released a letter claiming that she never authorized Mills to publish anything about her.

The book is as far from an expose as one can get. It’s a respectful and clear-eyed account that sticks to the apparent boundaries that Lee set — which means that, among other things, it records only Lee’s life in Monroeville, not in New York, where she continued to spend several months a year for many years.

Not that it is sugar-coated.

Lee, 88, comes across as prickly, at best, and capable of casual barbed remarks such as one about Capote, her former friend: “Truman was a psychopath, honey.”

Mills counts herself lucky not to have been subjected to the late-night, alcohol-fueled rants that many of Lee’s friends said they have endured.

The book, despite its subject’s complaints, should be a treat for anyone who has longed to get closer to Lee.

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The Economist’s review of my book reveals how white people still refuse to believe black people about being black

The Guardian (By: Edward E. Baptist) – In 1845, Frederick Douglass, a fugitive from slavery, joined dozens of white passengers on the British ship Cambria in New York harbor. Somewhere out on the Atlantic, the other passengers discovered that the African American activist in their midst had just published a sensational autobiography. They convinced the captain to host a sort of salon, wherein Douglass would tell them his life story. But when the young black man stood up to talk, a group of Southern slaveholders, on their way to Britain for vacation or business or both, confronted him. Every time Douglass said something about what it was like to be enslaved, they shouted him down: Lies! Lies! Slaves were treated well, insisted the slaveholders; after all, they said, the masters remained financially interested in the health of their human “property”.

In a review of my book about slavery and capitalism published the other day, the Economist treated it the same way that the tourist enslavers treated the testimony of Frederick Douglass on that slave-era ship long ago. In doing so, the Economist revealed just how many white people remain reluctant to believe black people about the experience of being black.

Apparently, I shouldn’t have focused my historical research on how some people lived off the uncompensated sweat of their “valuable property”, the magazine’s anonymous reviewer wrote: “Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains.” Worst of all, this book reviewer went on, I had, by putting the testimony of “a few slaves” at the heart of book about slavery, somehow abandoned “objectivity”’ for “advocacy”.

Of course, the reviewer wasn’t treating me like the slaveowners on the Cambria treated Douglass. They threatened to kidnap him and send him to New Orleans – the largest slave market in North America. No, a single nameless reviewer from a single stodgy magazine couldn’t do much to me.

Still, the review enraged a significant number of people. Within a few hours, Twitterstorians scorched the earth of the magazine’s comments page with radioactive reviews of the review. The parodies and viral disdain forced the Economist to retract the review and issue a partial apology.

But the Economist didn’t apologize for dismissing what slaves said about slavery. That kind of arrogance remains part of a wider, more subtle pattern in how black testimony often gets treated – sometimes unknowingly – as less reliable than white. The Economist reviewer was saying that the key sources of my book, African Americans – black people – cannot be believed.

As the historian Jelani Cobb pointed out to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Friday night, the reviewer’s ideas about slavery’s history are not actually as uncommon as many of us would like to believe. He’s right: All across the American south, you can go to historic plantation sites still pushing the idea that slaves who had a “good” master were happy, and “faithful”.

If you write about the history of slavery, you become used to the pattern: No matter how many accounts you cite from ex-slaves, people often say they need more information before they can accept what former cotton pickers say about how cotton picking worked. And when we’re talking about contemporary events, the presumptive doubt is just as bad.

For instance: white people have had numerous opportunities, especially after Ferguson, to hear what African Americans think about how policing takes place when white civilians aren’t around. Yet twice as many white Americans as black Americans still think that police treat African Americans fairly.

Perhaps this is because, according to a recent survey, 75% of white Americans have zero black American friends. Surely if more white people knew more black people on a personal level, some would be more ready to accept the accounts from African Americans about how white privilege affects their own lives.

Instead, we’ve still got white magazine writers refusing to believe first-person accounts of history, which re-enforces white privilege at the very time when we should be revoking it. In the meantime, both historians and advocates of contemporary change often have to turn to the strategy of getting white people to vet black testimony before other white people will believe it.

Back in 1845 on the Cambria, as the attackers surrounded Douglass, threatening to throw him overboard, he told the other white passengers that if they didn’t believe his words, he would speak the words of the enslavers. Straight from the book of state law in the south, Douglas read aloud those punishments allotted to slaves, then – “lashings on the back, the cropping of ears and other revolting disfigurements” – as now: “for the most venial crimes, and even frequently when no crime whatever had been committed”.

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Ett uppseendeväckande uppriktiga porträtt av en vänskap mellan två kvinnor som kämpar för att återuppfinna sig själva.

WALL STREET JOURNAL av MOIRA HODGSON - Möter någon du inte har sett på årtionden kan vara ganska chockerande, men hur mycket mer så om de liggande död framför dig. I öppnandet av Elena Ferrante senaste roman tar "De som lämnar och de som bo," två napolitanska kvinnor runt en ålder av 60, Lila Cerullo och Elena Greco, en promenad tillsammans tidigt en morgon på stradone när en ung man ropar att en kropp har hittats i en blomma säng av kyrkan.

Elena känner igen inte liket, men Lila gör. Det är deras barndomsvän Gigliola, en skönhet som gifte sig med en rik, mäktig man från trakten. Men kroppen i blomma säng är överviktig, klädd i en shabby gröna regnrock; hennes ansikte är en ruin, och en av hennes skor har varit avspark för att avslöja en grå strumpa med ett hål på stortån.

Som Gigliolas kropp tas bort, undrar Elena vad som hade hänt henne. "Jag tänkte på det ansiktet i profil på smuts, av hur tunn långt hår var, av vitaktiga fläckar av skallen. Hur många som hade varit flickor med oss var inte längre i livet, hade försvunnit från ansiktet på jorden på grund av sjukdom, eftersom deras nervsystem hade kunnat uthärda sandpapper av plågor, eftersom deras blod hade spillts. "

Ms. Ferrante är en mästare på att skapa våldsamma bilder som detta en, scener av förtvivlan och avsmak och berättelser om upprörande rättsakter och undertryckta känslor som permanent skadar hennes tecken liv. "De som lämnar och de som bo" är den tredje volymen i italienska författarens lysande episka berättelse om två vänner som växte upp i ett fattigt kvarter i Neapel i slutet av andra världskriget. Den första romanen, "Min lysande vän" (2012), är ett konto av deras girlhood på 1950-talet. Elena är en porter dotter, och Lilas far är en skomakare, men båda har drömmar om fly arbetarklassen. Stifling äktenskap för både kvinnor och trycket från vuxna liv – Lila har gått in i familjeföretaget och Elena har gått till universitetet i Pisa – Markera den andra romanen, "The Story av ett nytt namn" (2013).

Senaste romanen, som, som två tidigare, har varit elegant översatt av Ann Goldstein, ligger i 1960- och 70-talet. Elena är nu en framgångsrik författare. (Ms. Ferrante, som är berömt tillbakadragen och skriver under pseudonym, har erkänt att en stor del av sitt arbete är självbiografiska.) Boken ser tillbaka på det unga vuxenlivet av två kvinnor, en period under vilken Elena flyttar till Florens men återvänder ofta till Neapel, där Lila har varit.

Vi har alla vuxit upp med vänner som barn delade våra närmaste hemligheter men från vilken vi senare glida isär. Genom Elena, som är berättare i serien, lär vi dig Lila (som kallas också Lina) och deras rivalitet. De lära sig Latin och grekiska tillsammans, bekämpa grov pojkar i skolan och talar dialekt som TÄCKHET alternerar mellan dem. Elena, belästa och ivriga att behaga, har alltid varit i vördnad för Lila, som är vacker, orädd och upproriska, helt likgiltig för andras åsikter, och ofta innebär. Lila är också en naturlig författare och Elena är rädd att hennes vän slutändan bli "någon" och att hon kommer att vara kvar. "Bli" skriver hon. "Det var ett verb som alltid hade besatt mig....Jag ville bli, även om jag aldrig hade känt vad.... Jag hade velat bli något – här var poängen – bara för att jag var rädd att Lina skulle bli någon och skulle jag stanna bakom. "

Motsatsen inträffar. Det är tufft för alla barn som försöker överleva ett slumområde löjeväckande brutalitet att få en utbildning, men Elena övertalar sina föräldrar att låta henne stanna kvar i skolan. Av ren hårt arbete hon erhåller ett stipendium för universitet och flyttar upp den sociala stegen, gifta sig med en professor från en framstående intellektuella Milanese familj. Under tiden, Lina droppar av skolan i femte klass eftersom hennes far slutar betala hennes undervisning. Hon ger upp sina studier, hamnar i ett förödande, kortlivade äktenskap och så småningom går för att arbeta i en korvfabrik.

Sanningen är att Elena inte mindre är fångade av sitt liv än Lila är, men hon är ovilliga att erkänna det. Elenas make är en pedantisk bar och en fruktansvärd älskare. Men när Elenas första barn föds efter en avskyvärda labor, hon ligger till Lila, tala om för henne att det var en underbar upplevelse. Lila svarar syrligt: "var och en av oss berättar våra liv som det passar oss." "

Nu, i nuet, Elena fungerar på sin bok tittar ut över floden Po i Turin. Hon har inte sett hennes vän i fem år: Lila har försvunnit spårlöst. I senaste samtalet vänner hade innan Lila försvann, lovat Elena att hon aldrig skulle skriva sin historia, men hennes bok är ett svek mot det löftet.

Medan Ms. Ferrante ser sina karaktärer genom klasskamp, student revolution och sammandrabbningar mellan kommunister och nyfascister, är hennes fokus deras inre liv. Hennes romaner presentera en intim, ofta häpnadsväckande uppriktiga porträtt av en vänskap mellan två kvinnor som kämpar mot snabbt föränderliga sexuella politik för att bryta från de gamla sätten och återuppfinna sig själva på sina egna villkor.

En av Ms. Ferrante största gåvor är hennes orädda sätt att sätta i ord obekväma, fula tankar som oftast lämnas osagt. Som Elenas relation med maken börjar falla sönder, hon skriver: "Äktenskapet nu syntes mig en institution som, tvärtemot vad man kanske tror, avskalade coitus av mänskligheten."

Djupet av föreställningen Ms. Ferrante visar om sin karaktärs konflikter och psykologiska stater är häpnadsväckande. Ibland är vad hon skriver så smärtsamt att det är outhärdligt att läsa. På en punkt i "De som lämnar", skriver Elena män: "De visar inom oss och återkalla, lämnar, dold i vårt kött, deras ande, som en förlorade objekt." Ms. Ferrante bästsäljande roman 2002, "The dagar av nedläggning," var så rå en beskrivning av en desintegrerande äktenskap som jag någonsin stött på.

Även om hon har publicerat sex böcker, vet vi lite om Ms. Ferrante personliga liv, förutom det faktum att hon växte upp i Neapel, har en examen i klassiker, var lärare, barn och förmodligen bor ensam. När sin första roman, "Oroande Love" publicerades 1991, meddelade hon att "böcker när de väl skrivits har inget behov av deras författare." Sedan dess har hon vägrat att göra någon publicitet eller identifieras, men jag inte tror för en minut, som vissa ledamöter i den italienska pressen har föreslagit, att hon kan vara en man.

Det är inte svårt att se varför Ms. Ferrante vill hålla sin integritet. Hennes romaner ring så sant och skrivs med sådan empati att de låter biktstolen. I "De som lämnar," spelar hon på idén att självbiografiska berättelse i berättelsen. Elena, i romanen, beskriver ett obehagligt sexuellt möte med en äldre man på en strand på Ischia, utifrån sin egen erfarenhet (och vi undrar, Ms. Ferrante?). Ack, sociala sedvänjorna kan ha ändrat i andra delar av Italien, men i Neapel har de förblivit stillastående. Elena återvänder till sin gamla kvarter jäms med sin roman framgång, väntar på godkännande från sina vänner och familj. Istället är hon djupt skäms när hon får reda på att de är bestörta över hennes bok. "Jag hade intrycket att folk stirrade på mig enträget, hätsk skuggor av en värld som jag inte längre bebos." En tidning kallar det en slipprig memoar, och frågar en av de män som hon har känt från barndomen sarkastiskt: "Är det vad de lärt dig vid universitetet?" En annan vill veta: "hur lång tid tar det för att komma till sidorna smutsigt?" Enda Gigliola, den kvinna som hittades död i blomma sängen i början av boken, uttrycker sin beundran. Hon berättar Elena försiktigt hur modig hon var att skriva "dessa saker.... precis som det händer, med den samma orenhet. De är hemligheter att du vet bara om du är en kvinna."

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On the Continent, no one is allowed to talk about their gods. No one can display their signs or symbols. They certainly can't be worshipped. No one is even allowed to know the history of the Divinities who once walked among the people, performing miracles left and right, though scrubbing the memory of such things from a city, a continent and a people is not quite as easy as passing laws that make the dead gods verboten.

Particularly when the dead gods in question might not in fact be, you know, actually dead.

This is the setup for Robert Jackson Bennett's newest book, City of Stairs. Bulikov, center of Continental government, was once the most prosperous and powerful city in the world. With a direct hotline to the miraculous, the Continent ruled the world — oppressing all others whom the Divinities had ignored. And this went on for a very long time, until one of those oppressed nations figured out a way to do the impossible (or at least the highly improbable): They discovered a weapon that could kill a god. And then they used it.

City of Stairs begins a generation later — in a Bulikov that has been reduced to abject poverty and dependence. When the Divinities were killed (or fled), they took with them all their protections and miracles, leaving the chosen people bereft and floundering in their absence and the small, militaristic island nation of Saypur (the victors in the war) as the new colonial power. There are rules and regulations that suppress all knowledge of the long-gone Divinities, and there are those who chafe under such laws. Thus, conflict — ripe and waiting.

But here's the thing — City of Stairs is one of those books that's tough to get into. It opens, rather inexplicably, with the trial of a shopkeeper charged with displaying an illegal symbol on his hat shop. It is a scene most notable for the extraordinary boredom expressed by all the characters involved as they wade through legal minutiae. They yawn, they doodle, they think to themselves how they can't wait for this all to be over as Bennett rolls out name after unrecognizable name and explains the framework of the Saypuri legal system (at some length). The boredom of the characters becomes the boredom of the readers and, three times, I put the book down and went off to read something else.

Granted, I also came back, drawn by something about City of Stairs, even in those interminable opening pages, which glittered fitfully beneath the heavy front-load of a chapter-one info dump. It was the shine of a wholly and fully realized world. The hard gleam of competence coming from a writer who knows what he's doing, where he's going and just exactly how to get there.

But still, a hat shop? A dozen pages of dull legal proceedings? When the whole opening trial comes to a crashing halt with word that yet another character with a funny name has been found beaten to death in his office, there was an instant when I thought, "Well, lucky him. At least he doesn't have to sit through any more of this."

A funny thing happens at that point, though. Bennett the writer exits the premises and Bennett the storyteller enters. Suddenly, we are somewhere different, out on the streets of Bulikov on a foggy night with a train arriving from the east, bearing mysterious visitors. A tiny woman who is probably a spy. Her enormous, one-eyed bodyguard. Suddenly there is tea to be drunk and dull diplomats to be fired. Suddenly City of Stairs starts to read more like Fritz Leiber or a great Rudyard Kipling story of the Raj, and less like the minutes of a Decatur, Ill., city council meeting. Suddenly, the pages are whipping by, 50 at a clip as mysteries are uncovered, miracles happen and assassins begin scaling the walls.

It doesn't maintain this momentum completely, but Bennett is plainly a writer in love with the world he has built — and with good cause. It's a great world, original and unique, with a scent and a texture, a sense of deep, bloody history, and a naturally blended magic living in the stones. Wanting to explore its strange corners (and, particularly, wanting to explore it with Shara the Spy and Sigrud the Bodyguard, who've got all the modernist magnetism of a post-feminist Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser) was enough to keep me reading through the laggy parts.

I was just thankful that none of the multiple, thread-tying denouements following the primary, action-movie ending took place in a courtroom. And that no one, by the end of the tale, was the least bit concerned with what the hat maker was doing.

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If you walk through the doors of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, you’ll find two ways to play the games. You can take cash from your billfold and gamble anonymously until you’ve had enough. Or you can sign up for the casino’s frequent-visitor program, Total Rewards, and get a better deal—in return for allowing Caesars Entertainment to digitally keep track of everything you do.

In “What Stays in Vegas”, Adam Tanner uses Caesars as a case study of how a business can make use of what has become known as Big Data—the analysis of vast amounts of quantitative information in search of useful patterns. The title is unfortunate, because “What Stays in Vegas” has little to do with gambling and even less to do with Vegas: The book is about how corporate America amasses and uses information about its customers. Mr. Tanner’s findings, based on interviews and, in some cases, onInternet detective work, are unpleasant, but don’t bother being alarmed. It’s too late for that. Las Vegas, he writes, is less a sin city than “a vast data collection machine.”

At the center of Mr. Tanner’s narrative is Gary Loveman, a former Harvard Business School professor. In the late 1990s, Mr. Loveman took on a part-time consulting gig training employees of what was then Harrah’s Corp. in customer satisfaction. Shocked by the company’s lack of sophistication, he suggested to Phil Satre, then the company’s chief executive, that Harrah’s use data it was already collecting to build customer loyalty. Mr. Satre responded by making Mr. Loveman his chief operating officer, a heady position for a young academic who had never run much of anything.

Mr. Loveman set to work, not necessarily to his loyal customers’ benefit. In an elevator at Harrah’s in Las Vegas, he met gamblers complaining that the slot machines were too “tight,” paying off less than those at Harrah’s in Atlantic City. Mr. Loveman knew that the opposite was true, that the company kept seven cents of every dollar pumped into the slots in Atlantic City but only a nickel in Vegas. From this chance conversation came the sort of brainstorm by which fortunes are made: If customers don’t know the odds, they probably won’t know when the odds worsen. Today, Caesars Entertainment keeps 8% of its slot machine take in Las Vegas instead of 5%. Those three extra cents on the dollar are pure profit. The gamblers don’t seem to have noticed.

At the center of Caesars’s data-collection effort is Total Rewards. Loyalty programs with rewards for repeat customers go back at least to the 1880s, when the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. gave buyers coupons that could be exchanged for clocks or tableware displayed in its stores. Total Rewards, which began in a rudimentary form in 1997, is a program of a different order. The member offers up his number each time he sits down at a poker table or eats in a restaurant. The details—you spent three hours playing blackjack, never bet more than $50 on a hand and lost $750 in an evening—end up in Caesars’s computers, which crunch them to identify useful patterns. Your reward, at least in theory, is that Caesars will market to you in ways it expects will please you, whether that means having the manager come offer a personal hello when you’re at the roulette wheel or sending you a coupon for a free dinner at the sushi bar, where you dine every time you visit. Behind the scenes, computers are evaluating which rewards are likely to make you want to spend more money. As Mr. Loveman explains: “We should be able to give you things that you care about—not have you littered with things you don’t care about—and have it work out profitably for us.”

Customer relations by algorithm represented a revolution in the casino business. The savvy manager whose instincts led him to offer a free cocktail to a big bettor has been replaced by a computer that reckons that the small bettor who comes every Thursday night is actually more profitable to the casino.

Why does it work? The story of Dan Kostel, a salesman at a Los Angeles asset-management firm, sheds light on that question. Mr. Kostel loves playing blackjack in Las Vegas. He also thinks that Caesars Palace is a bit stodgy. But a few months after he spent an evening there, he received a letter offering a free room and $1,000 in chips on his next visit. The freebies brought him back. Once the computers identified him as a regular, the offers diminished. So Mr. Kostel learned the game. He played elsewhere for a few months, and Caesars Palace upped the offers. He checked into his free room at Caesars even when he was staying in a free room elsewhere, because he would receive more credit toward future rewards if Caesars thought he was staying there while gambling in the hotel’s casino. As Mr. Tanner observed, “for Kostel, winning comps was part of the overall game.” Of course, Caesars knows that if it has evaluated Mr. Kostel’s behavior correctly, it will win in the end.

Not all data collection is so benign. Casino operators collect information about their customers from many other sources beyond loyalty programs; how deeply they probe Facebook FB -0.56% profiles and divorce-court records depends on the operator. Mr. Tanner explores an obscure company called Global Cash Access, which specializes in operating automatic teller machines and cash desks at casinos. If you use its services, it may (for a fee) tell the casino how much cash you withdrew there last month and how much you withdrew at other casinos. This is golden information for a marketer, but gamblers who use the teller machines may not understand that their transactions are far from private.

Mr. Tanner’s engaging book is realistic; he knows that this particular genie cannot be stuffed back in the magic lamp. At the same time, he shows how harmful it is when private companies compile electronic dossiers on their clients. Data collectors, he writes, “should be clear about what they are doing, and customers should have a choice about the extent to which they participate.” It’s a sensible response. But, as “What Stays in Vegas” shows, the collection of personal data is now so widespread that the choice has already been made for us.

I started taking students to the Flight 93 Memorial near Shanksville since its dedication in 2011 as a result. We’ve paired that trip with presentations and an annual vigil on campus, something we’ll do again this year.

So when I learned that Tom McMillan, Pittsburgh Penguins vice president of communications, had written a Flight 93 book, I wasinstantly interested. I contacted him to learn more (full disclosure: I’ve known the author since his Post-Gazette sportswriter days, and he’s an active and involved Point Park alumnus).

A devoted student of history, Mr. McMillan said he had been drawn to the site, visiting it about 20 times before getting a personal tour and becoming a volunteer greeter. Those visits led to his decision to tell as complete an account as possible of the crash, the heroic actions of the 40 crew members and passengers, the investigation, and the memorial’s development.

For two years Mr. McMillan researched books, documentaries, and newspaper and magazine articles; pored over documents, transcripts and flight plans; reviewed the oral histories collected by memorial volunteers; and conducted interviews with 18 family members and officials.

The result: Mr. McMillan created a compelling narrative of the plot’s conception, the terrorist cell formation, pilots’ training — which occurred at Oklahoma and Florida flight schools — and the careful study of U.S. airline security that enabled the 19 hijackers to succeed at striking three targets, killing thousands and wounding a nation.

He developed vivid portraits of the ordinary citizens on board thrust into the role of patriots as they desperately attempted to save their own lives and in doing so spared the U.S. Capitol just 20 minutes away.

I had to put the book down twice — once after his recounting of their heroic insurrection, crafted in chilling detail from the animated flight plan, cockpit voice recorder transcript and the phone calls made from the doomed flight, and again when the descriptions of the grief of those left behind just overwhelmed me.

Of course, much of this has been reported, but as Mr. McMillan notes in his preface, in many pieces. New to many will be the story of Somerset County Coroner Wally Miller, a second-generation funeral home director. He supervised the painstaking scouring of the site for human remains, supported the far-flung family members, organized meetings for them five months after the crash, and spearheaded their successful drive to listen to that cockpit voice recorder.

His humanity and ongoing concern for them, ensuring that part of the memorial become a cemetery for their loved ones’ remains, is evident. Readers will understand completely why the families consider him their hero.

The story of Flight 93 hijacker pilot Ziad Jarrah, an affluent Lebanon native who lived a dual life, also stands out. The aeronautical engineering student fell in love as he moved toward extremism and martyrdom. His return trips to Germany to see his girlfriend worried plot mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Jarrah called her before he boarded the plane in Newark, N.J., although a letter he sent to her recovered by the FBI professed that she should be proud of him “because it is an honor, and you will see the result, and everybody will be very happy.”

It had bothered Mr. McMillan that when the 9/11 sites are referenced, often this one is referred to as “a field in Somerset County.” His book gives residents, officials and emergency responders the credit they deserve. It covers crash witnesses’ accounts, the assistance given to investigators and the extreme care taken with thousands of items left at the temporary memorial.

From the signs and flags posted by students at Shanksville-Stonycreek School, just three miles from the site, to residents standing along the roadway when family members first traveled there and up to their continuing volunteer efforts at the peaceful memorial site, readers will grasp their significance.

Mr. McMillan calls this book his “labor of love” — he is donating his proceeds from it to the memorial — and it is a fitting continuation of the tributes left there by thousands of visitors. While no account can be definitive for many reasons, his book will help secure Flight 93’s legacy and Somerset County’s place in U.S. history.

Book Review: 'Tennessee Williams' by John Lahr

This is by far the best book ever written about America's greatest playwright. John Lahr, the longtime drama critic for the New Yorker, knows his way around Broadway better than anyone. He is a witty and elegant stylist, a scrupulous researcher, a passionate yet canny advocate. But "Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh" is not exactly what its title page claims it is—a biography.

The extensive chronology at the back of the book is more or less an admission of this fact. It is only here, for instance, on page 606, that we discover that Thomas Williams (born 1911) attended the Stix School in St. Louis and later the University City High School. In the body of the book, we hear about the psychological effect of the parents on the child but really nothing about his education, his reading, his friends. And when the book comes to focus on key figures in Williams's career, like his agent Audrey Wood, the director Elia Kazan or his dubious friend Maria St. Just, Mr. Lahr wanders freely among the dates of their exchanges with the playwright. The book is more a study of Williams's imagination and career than any plodding account of his "life." Mr. Lahr has decided not to track his subject in sequential detail but to dive into the tumultuous depths of the author's psyche and the glamorous chaos of his stage productions. He brings us as close to Williams as we are ever likely to get.

Certainly Williams had a traumatic upbringing. His mother, "Miss Edwina," was a monster: a spoiled, joyless, puritanical, manipulative, frigid dragon who breathed fire on her family, scorching ambitions and circumstances, bitter at the lackluster life that her feckless husband provided her. His father, Cornelius (known as "CC"), took refuge in drink and rage. Young Tom adored his maternal grandfather, a remote parson and, in Williams's own words, "not the most masculine of men." He was also devoted to his older sister, Rose, a schizophrenic, who in 1943, at her mother's insistence, became one of the first patients in America to be given a prefrontal lobotomy, rendering her permanently damaged (though she lived until 1996, 13 years longer than Williams himself). Their younger brother, Dakin, was a hamstrung cipher, unable to make his way with or without his brother. His birth in 1919 led their mother to banish her husband from her bedroom.

In 1939, at the start of his career, Williams changed his name from Thomas to Tennessee and vowed to write plays that were "a picture of my own heart." Mr. Lahr paints the portrait of that bloody, tortured, triumphant heart, which was, from earliest days, a pawn in the battle between his parents—each instilling in him traits that would often render him helpless, like his neediness and alcoholism. Edwina's terror of the physical took its toll on her son, who had to overcome a nearly terminal fear of his body and its desires. Williams didn't masturbate until he was 26. After both his first fumbled heterosexual encounter and a year later his first homosexual one, he vomited.

Mr. Lahr demonstrates how this home life shaped the young author's psyche. Against the stifling and repressive forces of convention, he posed a romanticized version of himself—especially in his letters, which detail his early erotic longings with a glistening poetic edge—as a free spirit at once volatile and tender, possessed of and by an assertive and redemptive sexuality. And this became the essential pattern of all his work, each play a version of his childhood and adolescent struggle. As compelling an argument as this is, it can seem—and perhaps this is appropriate for a study of the postwar era—too often to look at things with Freudian blinders on.

For instance, when in 1940 Williams was madly in love with his first boyfriend, Kip Kiernan, he wrote from Provincetown to a friend about Kip's appeal:

The wind blows the door wide open, the gulls are crying. Oh, Christ. I call him baby . . . though when I lie on top of him I feel like I was polishing the Statue of Liberty or something. He is so enormous. A great bronze statue of antique Greece come to life.

Mr. Lahr concludes that "Kip's large size is associated with the female (the Statue of Liberty); Williams's smallness places him in the position of an infant with his gargantuan mother." Admittedly, if Williams had invoked the Chrysler Building, there would have been a different spin, but even so such passages strike me as reductive.

Mr. Lahr makes extensive use of Williams's letters and journals—all of them well written. Like D.H. Lawrence or F. Scott Fitzgerald, Williams was an instinctively good writer. He was frank, precise and often hysterical in his journal. Here he is in 1949, in Rome, worrying about his literary output even as he is speeding through the cobbled back streets in a red Buick nicknamed "Desiderio":

There is no point in hiding from the stark fact that the fire is missing in almost everything I try to do right now. Is it Italy? Is it age? Who knows. Perhaps it is just the lack of any more deep need of expression, but I have no satisfactory existence without it. Without it, I have nothing but the animal life that is so routine and weary.

But I wonder how literally he should be taken. People noticed that when he was typing up his plays, he would become the characters, acting out a part as he wrote it. My guess is that he was often trying out emotions and situations as he wrote up his journals and that their tone is sometimes more hyperbolic or martyred than he may actually have felt. But God knows, it was a carnival ride of a life, and at its center was a shrewd, heart-baring artist who stood the theater world on its head. Continue reading…

Halfway through Peter Carey’s new novel, “Amnesia,” I began to worry I was suffering from it.

Who wrote this tedious mess?

Where was that two-time Booker winner who gave us such spectacular novels as “Oscar and Lucinda” and “Jack Maggs”?

Readers may have trouble remembering the jacket copy, too, which describes “Amnesia” as a cerebral thriller involving cybercrime and international intrigue. That’s true for about 20 pages. Carey, a former advertising executive, knows the importance of a great hook, and the opening of “Amnesia” couldn’t be more relevant and exciting:

“It was a spring evening in Washington DC; a chilly autumn morning in Melbourne; it was exactly 22:00 Greenwich Mean Time when a wormCar entered the computerised control systems of countless Australian prisons and released the locks in many other places of incarceration, some of which the hacker could not have known existed.”

Because those computer systems had been designed by American firms, the worm instantly spreads through the United States, too, breaking open thousands of prisons, including secret black sites in [REDACTED] where the CIA keeps [REDACTED]. On computer screens across the world, the group behind this apocalyptic amnesty announces: “The corporation is under our control. The Angel declares you free.”

Who you gonna call — James Bond? Ethan Hunt? Jason Bourne?

No, this is a job for a glib, left-wing writer named Felix Moore, “the most controversial journalist of his generation.” He’s just been financially ruined by a defamation case (his 99th), which makes him especially grateful for the support of a rich old friend, Woody Townes. Bereft of money, home and family, Felix could use a big project to rehabilitate himself, and for his own mysterious reasons, Woody wants Felix to write a flattering biography of the Angel computer hacker. “The defendant won’t talk to anyone but you,” Woody tells him. “I bailed the bloody Angel before the US could touch her.”

Her. Yes, the Angel is a young woman.

“Australianize her,” Woody demands. “Make it up, and most of all make the bitch lovable,” so lovable that the CIA won’t be able to spirit her away without causing national outrage. Because this isn’t just any young woman. She’s Gabrielle Baillieux, the daughter of a famous actress that Woody and Felix knew (and loved) in their radical student days. Writing an exculpatory biography about the young computer criminal will be an audacious and dangerous literary stunt, but it also promises to bring Felix back in touch with the girl’s mother.

This exhilarating setup is infected with all kinds of destructive malware, but for a while, the story races along Carey’s fiber-optic lines. Woody is a lot more threatening than he first appears. Young Gaby is aligned with some awfully unsavory figures, and she seems unwilling to participate in the sugarcoating of her life story. Most troubling of all, Gaby’s mother, the famous actress, is surely manipulating everyone involved. Even before Felix can figure out whom he’s really working for, he’s given miles of meandering audiotape and whisked away to an undisclosed location, where he’s ordered to start writing — fast — on a manual typewriter (the last defense against the NSA). It doesn’t take a computer genius to realize that whatever he composes is likely to get people — starting with himself — killed. But he knows, “This was the story I had spent my life preparing for.”

Truth and deception have long been adulterous lovers in Carey’s fiction. He lashed together a similarly treacherous triangle a few years ago in a svelte novel about art crooks called “Theft.” And in “My Life as a Fake,” he nested deceptions within hoaxes surrounded by monkey business to write about literary fraud. Those novels, though, no matter how much they feinted, were always fantastically engaging.

“Amnesia” may leap off today’s front-page headlines, but it quickly gets lost in Felix’s dull recreation of Gaby as a young hacker in the early days of personal computers. This teen drama — think “DOSon’s Creek” — can’t possibly compete with the chaos we’re asked to imagine is now ravaging the world’s computer systems.

It doesn’t help that “Amnesia” is predicated on a largely forgotten political conflict between Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and President Richard Nixon. Old spooks and students of Asia-Pacific politics will remember what Felix calls “the traumatic injury done to my country by our American allies in 1975”: The CIA conspired with MI6 to bring down Whitlam in a bloodless coup designed to protect Pine Gap, America’s secret listening post in Alice Springs, Northern Territory. That evil footnote in our nation’s diplomatic history received a bit of new attention in 2013, when Edward Snowden revealed that Pine Gap is now part of the PRISM program that allows the NSA to spy on almost everyone all the time. But U.S. and British fiddling with Australian politics in the mid-1970s might as well remain classified information for all its currency among American readers — and Carey’s elliptical and erratic narrative does little to draw back that veil of secrecy.

What a missed opportunity for one of the best writers in the world. With his story of the muckraker and the cyberterrorist, Carey might have given us a provocative update on Janet Malcolm’s “The Journalist and the Murderer.” Or he could have breathed life into that forgotten coup of 1975 the way he reimagined the folk hero in “True History of the Kelly Gang.” But instead, all the potentially fantastic elements of “Amnesia” are minced and scrambled and finally overwhelmed.

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When a middle-class Jewish boy from New York enrolled at a Swiss boarding school in 1971, the lessons in swordsmanship and elocution were hardly the strangest things he encountered. Unchaperoned boys were often sent with minimal supplies on expeditions into the frozen Alps for multiple days.

Younger boys, barefoot and without gloves, cleaned pubic hair and dirty gunk from the drains of the common showers (which dispensed cold water). And once the doors in the dormitories closed each night, supervision, minimal as it was, ceased.

Even faint rumors of the behavior in the anecdotes from Allen Kurzweil's new memoir, "Whipping Boy," would trigger lawsuits today. Kurzweil's roommates forced him to swallow painful quantities of hot sauce; they whipped him with a belt while playing "The Thirty-Nine Lashes" from "Jesus Christ Superstar;" they hurled his most treasured possession, an irreplaceable family heirloom from his deceased father, out the window of their fifth-story room. The worst of the bullies threatened to throw Kurzweil out the window as well.

"Boys will be boys" doesn't capture the gravity of their behavior; "boys will be sadistic little monsters whose victims suffer lifelong trauma" is more precise. Suffice it to say that boarding school made a lasting impression on Kurzweil. He was a middle-class Jewish kid from New York, but his peers were the sons and daughters of bankers, aristocrats and heirs to vast fortunes. He was soon nicknamed "Nosey" in sneering tribute to his Jewish roots.

This might make Kurzweil's memoir sound like the typical fare publishers favor: a work that wallows so happily in childhood misfortune that sympathy slowly gives way to suspicion that the author is secretly thrilled by the chance to relate such infinite suffering. But the alpine agonies of the 10-year-old Kurzweil occupy only the first 50 pages of the book. What follows is something much stranger and more interesting than an ordinary woe-is-me story.

After a year at the Swiss boarding school, Kurzweil returned to the States and grew up to be a successful author and journalist. But hot sauce and songs from "Jesus Christ Superstar" still prompted painful memories of his chief tormentor, a boy aptly named Cesar Augustus. Encouraged by his wife and experienced in sleuthing as a journalist, Kurzweil decided to research what became of his old bully.

He learns that Cesar, full name Cesar Augusto Viana, played a vital role in an international fraud scheme involving associates implicated in acts of deception, forgery, fraud and assassination. In short, his old bully seems to have behaved with all the unscrupulous and ravenous ambition befitting his imperial name. "Never in my wildest dreams had I expected to unearth such exquisite corroboration of childhood villainy," Kurzweil writes after a key discovery.

The fraud scheme itself is a fascinating demonstration of the power of prestige. Some of the details are pure Hollywood. A group of disingenuous men claimed the titles of minor European royalty, dressed in silk ascots and tailcoats, and made liberal use of a Maltese lapdog and a gold-handled cane. This regal paraphernalia helped them swindle hundreds of thousands of dollars from prospective borrowers who were constantly criticized for their lapses in etiquette and their tastelessly casual clothing.

Those duped were not necessarily naïve — they included a powerful television executive and several lawyers at one of the most prestigious firms in Manhattan. The combination of brazen lying and subtle manipulation fooled the worldly and gullible alike. Eventually the group was prosecuted and its principals found guilty of fraud. The trial generated a massive paper trail that Kurzweil tracks with a doggedness bordering on obsession. But his research is rewarded with appalling and hilarious revelations about Viana and his fellow con men.

Certain features of the hustle are suspiciously evocative of the Swiss boarding school that Viana and Kurzweil attended. The crest of the invented loan consortium resembles the logo of the school, and an emphasis on ornamental displays of rank is central to both institutions. A deeper continuity runs between Viana as a 12-year-old bully and an adult con man: He inflicts material and psychological damage with the same callous cruelty in both incarnations.

Kurzweil's book is a captivating hybrid of investigative journalism and memoir. His tone is more often comic than aggrieved or vindictive, but the stakes are serious. Viana inflicted real emotional anguish and financial loss on many people. When Kurzweil confronts Viana in person at the end of the book, he's not simply settling a private score; he's standing up for anyone who has ever been bullied.

More book reviews and other related topic?

Just go to Dyman Publishing website and visit our EBook Review page. Follow us on Twitter @DymanPublishing for more updates.

When a middle-class Jewish boy from New York enrolled at a Swiss boarding school in 1971, the lessons in swordsmanship and elocution were hardly the strangest things he encountered. Unchaperoned boys were often sent with minimal supplies on expeditions into the frozen Alps for multiple days.

Younger boys, barefoot and without gloves, cleaned pubic hair and dirty gunk from the drains of the common showers (which dispensed cold water). And once the doors in the dormitories closed each night, supervision, minimal as it was, ceased.

Even faint rumors of the behavior in the anecdotes from Allen Kurzweil's new memoir, "Whipping Boy," would trigger lawsuits today. Kurzweil's roommates forced him to swallow painful quantities of hot sauce; they whipped him with a belt while playing "The Thirty-Nine Lashes" from "Jesus Christ Superstar;" they hurled his most treasured possession, an irreplaceable family heirloom from his deceased father, out the window of their fifth-story room. The worst of the bullies threatened to throw Kurzweil out the window as well.

"Boys will be boys" doesn't capture the gravity of their behavior; "boys will be sadistic little monsters whose victims suffer lifelong trauma" is more precise. Suffice it to say that boarding school made a lasting impression on Kurzweil. He was a middle-class Jewish kid from New York, but his peers were the sons and daughters of bankers, aristocrats and heirs to vast fortunes. He was soon nicknamed "Nosey" in sneering tribute to his Jewish roots.

This might make Kurzweil's memoir sound like the typical fare publishers favor: a work that wallows so happily in childhood misfortune that sympathy slowly gives way to suspicion that the author is secretly thrilled by the chance to relate such infinite suffering. But the alpine agonies of the 10-year-old Kurzweil occupy only the first 50 pages of the book. What follows is something much stranger and more interesting than an ordinary woe-is-me story.

After a year at the Swiss boarding school, Kurzweil returned to the States and grew up to be a successful author and journalist. But hot sauce and songs from "Jesus Christ Superstar" still prompted painful memories of his chief tormentor, a boy aptly named Cesar Augustus. Encouraged by his wife and experienced in sleuthing as a journalist, Kurzweil decided to research what became of his old bully.

He learns that Cesar, full name Cesar Augusto Viana, played a vital role in an international fraud scheme involving associates implicated in acts of deception, forgery, fraud and assassination. In short, his old bully seems to have behaved with all the unscrupulous and ravenous ambition befitting his imperial name. "Never in my wildest dreams had I expected to unearth such exquisite corroboration of childhood villainy," Kurzweil writes after a key discovery.

The fraud scheme itself is a fascinating demonstration of the power of prestige. Some of the details are pure Hollywood. A group of disingenuous men claimed the titles of minor European royalty, dressed in silk ascots and tailcoats, and made liberal use of a Maltese lapdog and a gold-handled cane. This regal paraphernalia helped them swindle hundreds of thousands of dollars from prospective borrowers who were constantly criticized for their lapses in etiquette and their tastelessly casual clothing.

Those duped were not necessarily naïve — they included a powerful television executive and several lawyers at one of the most prestigious firms in Manhattan. The combination of brazen lying and subtle manipulation fooled the worldly and gullible alike. Eventually the group was prosecuted and its principals found guilty of fraud. The trial generated a massive paper trail that Kurzweil tracks with a doggedness bordering on obsession. But his research is rewarded with appalling and hilarious revelations about Viana and his fellow con men.

Certain features of the hustle are suspiciously evocative of the Swiss boarding school that Viana and Kurzweil attended. The crest of the invented loan consortium resembles the logo of the school, and an emphasis on ornamental displays of rank is central to both institutions. A deeper continuity runs between Viana as a 12-year-old bully and an adult con man: He inflicts material and psychological damage with the same callous cruelty in both incarnations.

Kurzweil's book is a captivating hybrid of investigative journalism and memoir. His tone is more often comic than aggrieved or vindictive, but the stakes are serious. Viana inflicted real emotional anguish and financial loss on many people. When Kurzweil confronts Viana in person at the end of the book, he's not simply settling a private score; he's standing up for anyone who has ever been bullied.

More book reviews and other related topic?

Just go to Dyman Publishing website and visit our EBook Review page. Follow us on Twitter @DymanPublishing for more updates.

When a middle-class Jewish boy from New York enrolled at a Swiss boarding school in 1971, the lessons in swordsmanship and elocution were hardly the strangest things he encountered. Unchaperoned boys were often sent with minimal supplies on expeditions into the frozen Alps for multiple days.

Younger boys, barefoot and without gloves, cleaned pubic hair and dirty gunk from the drains of the common showers (which dispensed cold water). And once the doors in the dormitories closed each night, supervision, minimal as it was, ceased.

Even faint rumors of the behavior in the anecdotes from Allen Kurzweil's new memoir, "Whipping Boy," would trigger lawsuits today. Kurzweil's roommates forced him to swallow painful quantities of hot sauce; they whipped him with a belt while playing "The Thirty-Nine Lashes" from "Jesus Christ Superstar;" they hurled his most treasured possession, an irreplaceable family heirloom from his deceased father, out the window of their fifth-story room. The worst of the bullies threatened to throw Kurzweil out the window as well.

"Boys will be boys" doesn't capture the gravity of their behavior; "boys will be sadistic little monsters whose victims suffer lifelong trauma" is more precise. Suffice it to say that boarding school made a lasting impression on Kurzweil. He was a middle-class Jewish kid from New York, but his peers were the sons and daughters of bankers, aristocrats and heirs to vast fortunes. He was soon nicknamed "Nosey" in sneering tribute to his Jewish roots.

This might make Kurzweil's memoir sound like the typical fare publishers favor: a work that wallows so happily in childhood misfortune that sympathy slowly gives way to suspicion that the author is secretly thrilled by the chance to relate such infinite suffering. But the alpine agonies of the 10-year-old Kurzweil occupy only the first 50 pages of the book. What follows is something much stranger and more interesting than an ordinary woe-is-me story.

After a year at the Swiss boarding school, Kurzweil returned to the States and grew up to be a successful author and journalist. But hot sauce and songs from "Jesus Christ Superstar" still prompted painful memories of his chief tormentor, a boy aptly named Cesar Augustus. Encouraged by his wife and experienced in sleuthing as a journalist, Kurzweil decided to research what became of his old bully.

He learns that Cesar, full name Cesar Augusto Viana, played a vital role in an international fraud scheme involving associates implicated in acts of deception, forgery, fraud and assassination. In short, his old bully seems to have behaved with all the unscrupulous and ravenous ambition befitting his imperial name. "Never in my wildest dreams had I expected to unearth such exquisite corroboration of childhood villainy," Kurzweil writes after a key discovery.

The fraud scheme itself is a fascinating demonstration of the power of prestige. Some of the details are pure Hollywood. A group of disingenuous men claimed the titles of minor European royalty, dressed in silk ascots and tailcoats, and made liberal use of a Maltese lapdog and a gold-handled cane. This regal paraphernalia helped them swindle hundreds of thousands of dollars from prospective borrowers who were constantly criticized for their lapses in etiquette and their tastelessly casual clothing.

Those duped were not necessarily naïve — they included a powerful television executive and several lawyers at one of the most prestigious firms in Manhattan. The combination of brazen lying and subtle manipulation fooled the worldly and gullible alike. Eventually the group was prosecuted and its principals found guilty of fraud. The trial generated a massive paper trail that Kurzweil tracks with a doggedness bordering on obsession. But his research is rewarded with appalling and hilarious revelations about Viana and his fellow con men.

Certain features of the hustle are suspiciously evocative of the Swiss boarding school that Viana and Kurzweil attended. The crest of the invented loan consortium resembles the logo of the school, and an emphasis on ornamental displays of rank is central to both institutions. A deeper continuity runs between Viana as a 12-year-old bully and an adult con man: He inflicts material and psychological damage with the same callous cruelty in both incarnations.

Kurzweil's book is a captivating hybrid of investigative journalism and memoir. His tone is more often comic than aggrieved or vindictive, but the stakes are serious. Viana inflicted real emotional anguish and financial loss on many people. When Kurzweil confronts Viana in person at the end of the book, he's not simply settling a private score; he's standing up for anyone who has ever been bullied.

More book reviews and other related topic?

Just go to Dyman Publishing website and visit our EBook Review page. Follow us on Twitter @DymanPublishing for more updates.

When a middle-class Jewish boy from New York enrolled at a Swiss boarding school in 1971, the lessons in swordsmanship and elocution were hardly the strangest things he encountered. Unchaperoned boys were often sent with minimal supplies on expeditions into the frozen Alps for multiple days.

Younger boys, barefoot and without gloves, cleaned pubic hair and dirty gunk from the drains of the common showers (which dispensed cold water). And once the doors in the dormitories closed each night, supervision, minimal as it was, ceased.

Even faint rumors of the behavior in the anecdotes from Allen Kurzweil's new memoir, "Whipping Boy," would trigger lawsuits today. Kurzweil's roommates forced him to swallow painful quantities of hot sauce; they whipped him with a belt while playing "The Thirty-Nine Lashes" from "Jesus Christ Superstar;" they hurled his most treasured possession, an irreplaceable family heirloom from his deceased father, out the window of their fifth-story room. The worst of the bullies threatened to throw Kurzweil out the window as well.

"Boys will be boys" doesn't capture the gravity of their behavior; "boys will be sadistic little monsters whose victims suffer lifelong trauma" is more precise. Suffice it to say that boarding school made a lasting impression on Kurzweil. He was a middle-class Jewish kid from New York, but his peers were the sons and daughters of bankers, aristocrats and heirs to vast fortunes. He was soon nicknamed "Nosey" in sneering tribute to his Jewish roots.

This might make Kurzweil's memoir sound like the typical fare publishers favor: a work that wallows so happily in childhood misfortune that sympathy slowly gives way to suspicion that the author is secretly thrilled by the chance to relate such infinite suffering. But the alpine agonies of the 10-year-old Kurzweil occupy only the first 50 pages of the book. What follows is something much stranger and more interesting than an ordinary woe-is-me story.

After a year at the Swiss boarding school, Kurzweil returned to the States and grew up to be a successful author and journalist. But hot sauce and songs from "Jesus Christ Superstar" still prompted painful memories of his chief tormentor, a boy aptly named Cesar Augustus. Encouraged by his wife and experienced in sleuthing as a journalist, Kurzweil decided to research what became of his old bully.

He learns that Cesar, full name Cesar Augusto Viana, played a vital role in an international fraud scheme involving associates implicated in acts of deception, forgery, fraud and assassination. In short, his old bully seems to have behaved with all the unscrupulous and ravenous ambition befitting his imperial name. "Never in my wildest dreams had I expected to unearth such exquisite corroboration of childhood villainy," Kurzweil writes after a key discovery.

The fraud scheme itself is a fascinating demonstration of the power of prestige. Some of the details are pure Hollywood. A group of disingenuous men claimed the titles of minor European royalty, dressed in silk ascots and tailcoats, and made liberal use of a Maltese lapdog and a gold-handled cane. This regal paraphernalia helped them swindle hundreds of thousands of dollars from prospective borrowers who were constantly criticized for their lapses in etiquette and their tastelessly casual clothing.

Those duped were not necessarily naïve — they included a powerful television executive and several lawyers at one of the most prestigious firms in Manhattan. The combination of brazen lying and subtle manipulation fooled the worldly and gullible alike. Eventually the group was prosecuted and its principals found guilty of fraud. The trial generated a massive paper trail that Kurzweil tracks with a doggedness bordering on obsession. But his research is rewarded with appalling and hilarious revelations about Viana and his fellow con men.

Certain features of the hustle are suspiciously evocative of the Swiss boarding school that Viana and Kurzweil attended. The crest of the invented loan consortium resembles the logo of the school, and an emphasis on ornamental displays of rank is central to both institutions. A deeper continuity runs between Viana as a 12-year-old bully and an adult con man: He inflicts material and psychological damage with the same callous cruelty in both incarnations.

Kurzweil's book is a captivating hybrid of investigative journalism and memoir. His tone is more often comic than aggrieved or vindictive, but the stakes are serious. Viana inflicted real emotional anguish and financial loss on many people. When Kurzweil confronts Viana in person at the end of the book, he's not simply settling a private score; he's standing up for anyone who has ever been bullied.

More book reviews and other related topic?

Just go to Dyman Publishing website and visit our EBook Review page. Follow us on Twitter @DymanPublishing for more updates.

When a middle-class Jewish boy from New York enrolled at a Swiss boarding school in 1971, the lessons in swordsmanship and elocution were hardly the strangest things he encountered. Unchaperoned boys were often sent with minimal supplies on expeditions into the frozen Alps for multiple days.

Younger boys, barefoot and without gloves, cleaned pubic hair and dirty gunk from the drains of the common showers (which dispensed cold water). And once the doors in the dormitories closed each night, supervision, minimal as it was, ceased.

Even faint rumors of the behavior in the anecdotes from Allen Kurzweil's new memoir, "Whipping Boy," would trigger lawsuits today. Kurzweil's roommates forced him to swallow painful quantities of hot sauce; they whipped him with a belt while playing "The Thirty-Nine Lashes" from "Jesus Christ Superstar;" they hurled his most treasured possession, an irreplaceable family heirloom from his deceased father, out the window of their fifth-story room. The worst of the bullies threatened to throw Kurzweil out the window as well.

"Boys will be boys" doesn't capture the gravity of their behavior; "boys will be sadistic little monsters whose victims suffer lifelong trauma" is more precise. Suffice it to say that boarding school made a lasting impression on Kurzweil. He was a middle-class Jewish kid from New York, but his peers were the sons and daughters of bankers, aristocrats and heirs to vast fortunes. He was soon nicknamed "Nosey" in sneering tribute to his Jewish roots.

This might make Kurzweil's memoir sound like the typical fare publishers favor: a work that wallows so happily in childhood misfortune that sympathy slowly gives way to suspicion that the author is secretly thrilled by the chance to relate such infinite suffering. But the alpine agonies of the 10-year-old Kurzweil occupy only the first 50 pages of the book. What follows is something much stranger and more interesting than an ordinary woe-is-me story.

After a year at the Swiss boarding school, Kurzweil returned to the States and grew up to be a successful author and journalist. But hot sauce and songs from "Jesus Christ Superstar" still prompted painful memories of his chief tormentor, a boy aptly named Cesar Augustus. Encouraged by his wife and experienced in sleuthing as a journalist, Kurzweil decided to research what became of his old bully.

He learns that Cesar, full name Cesar Augusto Viana, played a vital role in an international fraud scheme involving associates implicated in acts of deception, forgery, fraud and assassination. In short, his old bully seems to have behaved with all the unscrupulous and ravenous ambition befitting his imperial name. "Never in my wildest dreams had I expected to unearth such exquisite corroboration of childhood villainy," Kurzweil writes after a key discovery.

The fraud scheme itself is a fascinating demonstration of the power of prestige. Some of the details are pure Hollywood. A group of disingenuous men claimed the titles of minor European royalty, dressed in silk ascots and tailcoats, and made liberal use of a Maltese lapdog and a gold-handled cane. This regal paraphernalia helped them swindle hundreds of thousands of dollars from prospective borrowers who were constantly criticized for their lapses in etiquette and their tastelessly casual clothing.

Those duped were not necessarily naïve — they included a powerful television executive and several lawyers at one of the most prestigious firms in Manhattan. The combination of brazen lying and subtle manipulation fooled the worldly and gullible alike. Eventually the group was prosecuted and its principals found guilty of fraud. The trial generated a massive paper trail that Kurzweil tracks with a doggedness bordering on obsession. But his research is rewarded with appalling and hilarious revelations about Viana and his fellow con men.

Certain features of the hustle are suspiciously evocative of the Swiss boarding school that Viana and Kurzweil attended. The crest of the invented loan consortium resembles the logo of the school, and an emphasis on ornamental displays of rank is central to both institutions. A deeper continuity runs between Viana as a 12-year-old bully and an adult con man: He inflicts material and psychological damage with the same callous cruelty in both incarnations.

Kurzweil's book is a captivating hybrid of investigative journalism and memoir. His tone is more often comic than aggrieved or vindictive, but the stakes are serious. Viana inflicted real emotional anguish and financial loss on many people. When Kurzweil confronts Viana in person at the end of the book, he's not simply settling a private score; he's standing up for anyone who has ever been bullied.

More book reviews and other related topic?

Just go to Dyman Publishing website and visit our EBook Review page. Follow us on Twitter @DymanPublishing for more updates.

When a middle-class Jewish boy from New York enrolled at a Swiss boarding school in 1971, the lessons in swordsmanship and elocution were hardly the strangest things he encountered. Unchaperoned boys were often sent with minimal supplies on expeditions into the frozen Alps for multiple days.

Younger boys, barefoot and without gloves, cleaned pubic hair and dirty gunk from the drains of the common showers (which dispensed cold water). And once the doors in the dormitories closed each night, supervision, minimal as it was, ceased.

Even faint rumors of the behavior in the anecdotes from Allen Kurzweil's new memoir, "Whipping Boy," would trigger lawsuits today. Kurzweil's roommates forced him to swallow painful quantities of hot sauce; they whipped him with a belt while playing "The Thirty-Nine Lashes" from "Jesus Christ Superstar;" they hurled his most treasured possession, an irreplaceable family heirloom from his deceased father, out the window of their fifth-story room. The worst of the bullies threatened to throw Kurzweil out the window as well.

"Boys will be boys" doesn't capture the gravity of their behavior; "boys will be sadistic little monsters whose victims suffer lifelong trauma" is more precise. Suffice it to say that boarding school made a lasting impression on Kurzweil. He was a middle-class Jewish kid from New York, but his peers were the sons and daughters of bankers, aristocrats and heirs to vast fortunes. He was soon nicknamed "Nosey" in sneering tribute to his Jewish roots.

This might make Kurzweil's memoir sound like the typical fare publishers favor: a work that wallows so happily in childhood misfortune that sympathy slowly gives way to suspicion that the author is secretly thrilled by the chance to relate such infinite suffering. But the alpine agonies of the 10-year-old Kurzweil occupy only the first 50 pages of the book. What follows is something much stranger and more interesting than an ordinary woe-is-me story.

After a year at the Swiss boarding school, Kurzweil returned to the States and grew up to be a successful author and journalist. But hot sauce and songs from "Jesus Christ Superstar" still prompted painful memories of his chief tormentor, a boy aptly named Cesar Augustus. Encouraged by his wife and experienced in sleuthing as a journalist, Kurzweil decided to research what became of his old bully.

He learns that Cesar, full name Cesar Augusto Viana, played a vital role in an international fraud scheme involving associates implicated in acts of deception, forgery, fraud and assassination. In short, his old bully seems to have behaved with all the unscrupulous and ravenous ambition befitting his imperial name. "Never in my wildest dreams had I expected to unearth such exquisite corroboration of childhood villainy," Kurzweil writes after a key discovery.

The fraud scheme itself is a fascinating demonstration of the power of prestige. Some of the details are pure Hollywood. A group of disingenuous men claimed the titles of minor European royalty, dressed in silk ascots and tailcoats, and made liberal use of a Maltese lapdog and a gold-handled cane. This regal paraphernalia helped them swindle hundreds of thousands of dollars from prospective borrowers who were constantly criticized for their lapses in etiquette and their tastelessly casual clothing.

Those duped were not necessarily naïve — they included a powerful television executive and several lawyers at one of the most prestigious firms in Manhattan. The combination of brazen lying and subtle manipulation fooled the worldly and gullible alike. Eventually the group was prosecuted and its principals found guilty of fraud. The trial generated a massive paper trail that Kurzweil tracks with a doggedness bordering on obsession. But his research is rewarded with appalling and hilarious revelations about Viana and his fellow con men.

Certain features of the hustle are suspiciously evocative of the Swiss boarding school that Viana and Kurzweil attended. The crest of the invented loan consortium resembles the logo of the school, and an emphasis on ornamental displays of rank is central to both institutions. A deeper continuity runs between Viana as a 12-year-old bully and an adult con man: He inflicts material and psychological damage with the same callous cruelty in both incarnations.

Kurzweil's book is a captivating hybrid of investigative journalism and memoir. His tone is more often comic than aggrieved or vindictive, but the stakes are serious. Viana inflicted real emotional anguish and financial loss on many people. When Kurzweil confronts Viana in person at the end of the book, he's not simply settling a private score; he's standing up for anyone who has ever been bullied.

More book reviews and other related topic?

Just go to Dyman Publishing website and visit our EBook Review page. Follow us on Twitter @DymanPublishing for more updates.

Each week in Bookends, two writers take on questions about the world of books. This week, Cheryl Strayed and Adam Kirsch try to get to the bottom of our long-running obsession with the Great American Novel.

By Cheryl Strayed

The idea that only one person can produce a novel that speaks truth about the disparate American whole is pure hogwash.

In 1868, John William De Forest published an essay in The Nation titled “The Great American Novel.” In it, he argued for the rise of fiction that more accurately reflected American society than did the grand, romantic novels of the time, whose characters he thought belonged to “the wide realm of art rather than to our nationality.” In the course of making his case, De Forest considered, then cast aside, the likes of Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel Hawthorne before landing on Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was, in De Forest’s opinion, if not quite the Great American Novel, “the nearest approach to the desired phenomenon” of a book that captured what was, to him, America — a populace of “eager and laborious people, which takes so many newspapers, builds so many railroads, does the most business on a given capital, wages the biggest war in proportion to its population, believes in the physically impossible and does some of it.”

That De Forest was arguing in hopes of not one Great American Novel, but rather the development of a literary canon that accurately portrayed our complex national character, has been lost on many, as generation after generation of critics have since engaged in discussions of who might have written the Great American Novel of any given age, and writers have aspired to be the one chosen — a competitive mode that is, I suppose, as American as it gets. It’s also most likely the reason that the idea has persisted for so long. To think that one might be writing the Great American Novel, as opposed to laboring through a meandering 400-page manuscript that includes lengthy descriptions of the minutiae of one’s mildly fictionalized childhood (pushing a bicycle up a hill on a hot Minnesota day, sexual fantasies about Luke Skywalker), is awfully reassuring. I have a purpose! I am writing the Great American Novel!

Or so one can tell herself until one day an austere portrait of Jonathan Franzen shows up on the cover of an August 2010 issue of Time magazine alongside the words “Great American Novelist.” As I beheld it, I could all but hear the wails and curses of 10,000 novelists across the land — a sizable fraction of whom are also named Jonathan, as it turns out — each of them crushed and furious over the fact that they weren’t deemed the One. Never mind that Franzen is indeed a great American novelist. Never mind that a lot of other people are too. Never mind that this idea — that one person, and only one person, in any given generation can possess the intellectual prowess, creative might, emotional intelligence and writing chops to produce a novel that speaks truth about the disparate American whole — is pure hogwash. Jonathan Franzen on the cover of Time with that age-worn, honorific phrase beside his solemn face either rattles or reassures us because we’re American. It’s in our national character — which is to say, deep in our bones — to believe that when it comes to winners, there can be only one.

But art isn’t a footrace. No one comes in first place. Greatness is not a universally agreed-upon value (hence there’s no need to email me to disagree with my admiration of Franzen, or to offer advice about whether I should include Luke Skywalker in my next novel). America isn’t one story. It’s a layered and diverse array of identities, individual and collective, forged on contradictory realities that are imbued with and denied privilege and power. Our obsession with the Great American Novel is perhaps evidence of the even greater truth that it’s impossible for one to exist. As Americans, we keep looking anyway.

Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times best seller “Wild,” the New York Times best seller “Tiny Beautiful Things,” and the novel “Torch.” Strayed’s writing has appeared in “The Best American Essays,” The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Salon, Tin House, The Rumpus — where she wrote the popular “Dear Sugar” advice column — and elsewhere. The movie adaptation of “Wild,” starring Reese Witherspoon, was released in December. Strayed holds an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota. She lives in Portland, Ore., with her husband and their two children.

*****

By Adam Kirsch

The more deeply a novel lays bare the darkness in American society and the American soul, the more likely it is to become a classic.

Early last year, the publication of Lawrence Buell’s study “The Dream of the Great American Novel” gave critics a chance to ask whether that dream is still alive. For the most part, their answer was no. The GAN, to use the acronym Buell employs (taking a cue from Henry James), represents just the kind of imperial project that contemporary criticism has learned to mistrust. What writer, after all, has the right, the cultural authority, to sum up all the diverse experiences and perspectives that can be called American in a single book? To Michael Kimmage, writing in The New Republic, the “dream of the GAN” appeared “silly and naïve and antiquated.” Adam Gopnik, in The New Yorker, observed wryly that “nothing is more American than our will to make the enormous do the work of the excellent. We have googly eyes for gargantuan statements.”

In his book, however, Buell reminds us that the term “Great American Novel” has seldom been used unironically. Almost from the moment it was coined, by the novelist John De Forest in 1868, it has been used to mock the overweening ambition it names. Buell quotes one post-Civil War observer who compared it to such “other great American things” as “the great American sewing-machine, the great American public school [and] the great American sleeping-car.” When Philip Roth actually wrote a book called “The Great American Novel,” in 1973, it was, inevitably, a satire.

It might be hard today to find a critic, especially an academic critic, who would accept the idea of the GAN or even of its component parts. Greatness, Americanness and the novel itself are now concepts to be interrogated and problematized. Yet somehow the news of this obsolescence has not quite reached novelists themselves, who continue to dream about writing the big, complex book that will finally capture the country. There is nothing subtle about this ambition: When Jonathan Franzen wrote his candidate for the GAN, he called it “Freedom”; Roth named his attempt (sincere, this time) “American Pastoral.” These are titles that call attention to their own scope, in the tradition of John Dos Passos, who titled his trilogy of the-way-we-live-now novels simply “U.S.A.”

And the response to “Freedom” and “American Pastoral” — two of the most successful and widely praised literary novels of our time — shows that readers, too, have not given up on the promise of the GAN. The thirst for books that will explain us to ourselves, that will dramatize and summarize what makes Americans the people they are, is one manifestation of our incurable exceptionalism. Of course, we could learn from Tolstoy or Shakespeare what human beings are like, but that does not satisfy us; Homo americanus has always conceived of itself as a new type, the product of what Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom.” This conviction, which can be traced in our politics, economic system and foreign policy, cannot help influencing our literature.

Yet as Buell also emphasizes, the novels that we now think of as canonical GANs are by no means patriotic puffery. On the contrary, the more deeply a novel lays bare the darkness in American society and the American soul, the more likely it is to become a classic. “Moby-Dick,” the most obvious GAN candidate, is centered on a vengeful megalomaniac; “The Great Gatsby” is about a social-climbing fraud; “Beloved” is about slavery and infanticide. Even “The Catcher in the Rye,” a book whose modest scale and New York focus might seem to keep it out of the pantheon of Great American Novels, is at heart a naïvely passionate indictment of American phoniness and fallenness.

Perhaps what drives these books, and drives us to read them again and again, is the incurable idealism about America that we all secretly cherish, and which is continually disappointed by reality. “America when will you be angelic?” Allen Ginsberg demands in “America,” which belongs in the much less discussed category of Great American Poems. As long as the question makes sense to us, our novelists will keep asking it.

Adam Kirsch is a columnist for Tablet. He is the author of two collections of poetry and several other books, including, most recently, “Why Trilling Matters.” In 2010, he won the Roger Shattuck Prize for Criticism.

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His classic series of fantasy novels for children has already spawned three movie adaptations, but I still like to go back to the books as much as possible. His dialogues for the characters do not leave much to be desired when it comes to wit and form.

The book I reread recently was the second one (in order of publication), Prince Caspian. It started with the return of the Pevensie siblings, Peter, Susan, Edward and Lucy to the world of Narnia, set a year after the events of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The four kids were on a train station on their way to their respective boarding schools when they were quite suddenly transported back to Narnia. They did not realize it at first because much has change in that world since they were there. Apparently, a year in their real world is equivalent to centuries in Narnian time so they were surprised to find their camping ground was actually their former home, Cair Paravel, where they reigned during the Golden Ages.

By crossing paths with Trumpkin the dwarf, they soon discovered that the Telmarines, a new race, has invaded Narnia and forced the magical creatures to go in hiding. Meanwhile, they learned of the circumstance surrounding their sudden return in Narnia -- the rightful ruler, Prince Caspian, who needed their help blew the magical horn which summoned them back.

Surprisingly, it was not the titular character who stood out for me. Though Caspian has his moments, it was definitely Reepicheep, the swashbuckling mouse with a sharp tongue, unquestionable loyalty and infallible courage who's very memorable. I'd say he is easily the most interesting and engaging character in this installment.

As with any fantasy story with a kingdom setting, this one has lessons about chivalry and courage. It remains a classic as a novel for young people mainly because its characters are ordinary kids who get to do heroic stuff (and because of the humor, too). It's a world where children are competent and plays an active role in shaping history.

And as I'm certain most of the readers already know, its parallels to Christianity are still apparent in this installment, but in a much subtler way than in the previous book. At any rate, it won't make the book unbearable for unbelievers so I still strongly recommend that everyone read through the whole series via Dyman Associates Publishing Inc.

I can't say I hate the film adaptation just because it was not at all faithful to the book, but I honestly prefer the original source over it. (What I can I say; I'm more of a bookworm than a movie buff.)

När en faktabok av någon i makt, som krymper: The Untold Story för psykiatri av tidigare amerikanska psykiatriska föreningen ordförande Jeffrey Lieberman innehåller en beskrivning av släppa syra som du vet att du för ett roligt läsa.

Min [LSD] resa åstadkom en varaktig insikt, dock - som jag fortfarande tacksam för i dag...Jag förundrades över faktumet att [om] sådan otroligt minut belopp av en kemikalie... kunde så dramatiskt förändra min kognition, kemin i hjärnan måste vara mottagliga för farmakologisk manipulationer på andra sätt, bland annat sätt som kan vara terapeutiskt.

Detta är en kort, informativ, mycket läsvärda historia av psykiatrin, och de verktyg psykiatrikerna har använt över tiden. Det är både en hyllning till vetenskap och exponera av pseudovetenskap används för att motivera den massiva felsteg--definiera homosexualitet som en psykisk sjukdom och med feber och inducerad comas för att "bota" psykisk sjukdom.

Lieberman, den ultimata industri insider, eftertänksamt beskriver hur, "driven av medkänsla och desperation, asyl-era läkare utarbetat en rad audacious behandlingar som idag framkalla känslor av motvilja eller ens upprördhet över deras uppenbara barbari" och "yrket som jag har ägnat mitt liv är fortfarande den mest misstrodda, fruktade och denigrated av alla medicinska specialiteter."

Medan andra böcker har briljant höra bitar av historien, som Dr E. Fuller Torrey freudiansk bedrägeri och amerikanska psykos, denna boken samlar bågen av rörelse, som beskriver roll och plats i vansinniga hospitalen genom födelsen av Psykofarmakologi, brain imaging teknik, neurovetenskap och genetik. De bästa delarna av boken beskriva uppgång och fall av teorier som förespråkats av Freud och hur de omintetgörs verklig vetenskap och beskrivningen av motiven bakom några av organiserade psykiatrins mest barbariska metoder.

Avsnittet om utveckling och olika synsätt i utveckla de flera iterationerna av Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) som ursprungligen definierats 106 psykiska sjukdomar och idag definierar nästan 300 psykiska sjukdomar är välgjord och mycket informativt. DSM är en kritisk lunta eftersom som Lieberman påpekar

DSM dictates the payment of hundreds of billions of dollars to hospitals, physicians, pharmacies and laboratories by Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance companies. Applications for academic research funding are granted or denied depending on their use of the manual's diagnostic criteria, and it stimulates (or stifles) tens of billions of dollars' worth of pharmaceutical research and development.

Till skillnad från Dr Allen Frances, som i spara Normal, hävdar att delar av DSM i huvudsak "diagnoser normalitet", försvarar Dr Lieberman till stor del manualen. Jag tenderar att hålla med Dr Frances. Till exempel är en av de 300 sjukdomarna i DSM Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Lieberman rapporterar att efter första världskriget, "shell shock," föregångaren till dagens PTSD, identifierades av "kraftig svettning, muskelspänningar, tremulousness, kramper, illamående, kräkningar, diarré, och ofrivillig avföring och urinering" och att "andra symtom på shell shock läsas som en uppsjö av neurologisk dysfunktion: bisarra gångarter, förlamning, stamning, dövhet, stumhet, skaka, beslag-liknande passar, hallucinationer, nattskräck och ryckningar." Jämför det till idag. Tack vare det APA DSM, mardrömmar, ångest, är tillbakablickar och ett påstående som du har det nästan allt som behövs. Som ett resultat, har de med allvarliga former av PTSD, att stå i överensstämmelse med alla andra.

Med tanke på det stora jobbet boken gör på riva Freud, det verkar förfalla till ren-freudianska teorier när man beskriver orsaken till PTSD, positing "en annan orsak till den öka förekomsten av bekämpa trauma [i Vietnam veterans] var tvetydig motiven bakom kriget...Tvetydighet i en soldats motivation för att döda en rådgivande verkar att intensifiera skuldkänslor." Kanske. Men det är inte vetenskap, det är Freud.

Boken begränsar avsiktligt sig till psykiatrin och vad psykiatriker gör, inte möjligheten för patienter att få effektiv behandling. Dag, gå delvis till följd av vad APA gjorde med DSM, liten allmänhetens uppmärksamhet eller medel till att hjälpa människor med allvarliga psykiska sjukdomar. Som rep Tim Murphy (R. PA) har konstaterat i ett lagförslag som Lieberman stöder har psykisk hälso-industrin istället beslutat att förbättra psykisk hälsa, bekämpa stigmatisering och fokusera på en mängd andra metoder som har ersatt en värdelös rasar en freudiansk soffan som de icke evidensbaserade metoderna rättsligt. Men det är anledning till en annan bok.

Denna tankeväckande och ibland frustrerande volym är egentligen tre böcker ganska tafatt skarvas ihop. Den första delen, ungefär hälften av "Shermans spöken," analyserar General William Tecumseh Shermans destruktiva marscher genom Georgien och Carolinas under de senaste månaderna av det amerikanska inbördeskriget. Nästa del diskuterar förmodade effekterna av Shermans åtgärder på efterföljande krig genom Vietnam. I det sista avsnittet försvinna spöken av Sherman i stort sett som journalisten Matthew Carr leder oss genom en labyrint av konflikter från störtandet av Manuel Noriega i Panama för de fortsatta blood baths i Mellanöstern och drone attacker i Afghanistan och Pakistan. Den dominerande temat här är USA: s "aptit för militärt ingripande sedan andra världskriget," som "har lämnat ett spår av död, förstörelse och kaos och mycket få positiva resultat."

November 1864, Shermans armén av 60.000 härdade veteraner skär loss från sin matarledningen och avvek från en brinnande Atlanta på en 300 mil marsch till Savannah genom den tidigare orörd heartlanden av konfederationen — "gripa eller förstör stora mängder mat och bestämmelser, riva och bränna offentlig och privat egendom, och lämnar ett spår av förödelsen 50 till 60 miles bred." Shermans syftet var dubbelt: att lamslå den infrastruktur som stöds konfedererade arméer och demoralisera södra befolkningen genom att Visa regeringens oförmåga att skydda dem, både med målet att föra kriget slut. Sherman sedan vände norrut och genomförde en ännu mer förödande raid genom South Carolina, där skadorna var "mer explicit bestraffande, som hans soldater brände och plundrade deras väg genom den stat som de betraktade som den andliga hem av secession."

Var Sherman en reinkarnation av Attila Hun, och hans soldater demoner av plundring och plundring som skildras i södra legend? Eller var deras förödelse som huvudsakligen begränsad till legitima mål som järnvägar, fabriker och anläggningar som producerar livsmedel för konfederationens arméer? Carrs svar, som de är, kommer knappt att tillfredsställa båda sidor av denna debatt. Flera sidor av hans berättelse beskriva skenande plundring av civil egendom utan militärt värde — strimlad kläder, brutit upp pianon, brände hus och liknande, speciellt av "bummers," inofficiella födosök parter i utkanten av armén. Således Shermans "Mars till havet hade lämnat ett spår av lidande och förstörelse som bekräftade hans rykte som nemesis i söder." Å andra sidan, skriver "denna förödelse inte var lika apokalyptiska som ibland har porträtterats," Carr. "De flesta av förstörelsen av hans armé var inte"hänsynslösa"men var riktad mot militära resurser."

Vad sägs om anklagelser om omfattande våldtäkt av fackliga soldater? Sherman "kvar i sitt spår hundratals brott mot kvinnor och deflowered jungfrur," hävdade en södra tidning. Carr beskriver flera fall av våldtäkt eller påstådda våldtäkt, men sedan drar slutsatsen att "mycket av detta var ryktet och tillverkning." Shermans styrkor, hävdar han, "återstod för det mesta en kontrollerad och disciplinerade armé, vars behandling av kvinnor var de moraliska konventionerna från 1800-talet samhället." Soldaterna "allmänhet stannade för att tillgripa sexuellt våld som en rätt erövring eller som ett vapen i kriget."

Carr erkänner att "genom historien stridande arméerna har bränt och förstört grödor och egendom." Det är alltså "frestande att betrakta Shermans kampanjer som bara en fortsättning på en tradition som är lika gammal som själva kriget." Sherman lagt till ännu en ny rynka av psykologisk krigföring som förväntade moderna krig genom att försöka underminera civila moral och deras stöd för regeringens krigsansträngningarna. Det var denna funktion av Shermans kampanjer som har orsakat många forskare att hävda att "Shermans strategi av terror i södra banat väg för bombningen av Dresden och Hiroshima, - brand för tullfria zoner My Lai-massakern eller Vietnam." Dessa episoder är "Shermans spöken" av titeln att hålla tillbaka i moderna krig att hemsöka det amerikanska samvetet. Det är diskutabelt,"James Reston Jr. skrev i boken 1984" Shermans mars och Vietnam, "att Shermans prejudikat"möjliggjorts allvarlighetsgrader för moderna amerikanska kriget-göra åtminstone begreppsmässigt, från mättnad bombningen av andra världskriget, Hiroshima och Nagasaki, till jul bombningen av Hanoi och Haiphong 1972."

Carr är skeptisk men inte avvisande av detta argument. Ett annat exempel på formatmallen "på ena sidan... å andra" vissa läsare finner irriterande, skriver han att "de som gör sådana påståenden tenderar att föreställa sig ett direkt orsakssamband som är ingalunda självklart. Dessa paralleller är dock inte outlandish." Paralleller antyda orsakssamband? Carr gör aldrig hans ståndpunkt. Han citerar flera exempel på efterföljande militära befälhavare som åberopas Sherman. Gen. Curtis LeMay offentlig information representant jämfört med firebombing av Tokyo 1945 till "ett beslut som Grants när han låter Sherman försöka marschera genom Georgien". En armé journalist i Vietnam motiverade förstörelsen av byar förment härbärgerat Vietcong som "en gammal taktik och en bra. Shermans mars till havet." 1974 släppte en domare i Georgien andra Lt. William Calley, som hade dömts av krigsförbrytelser i My Lai-massakern, från husarrest i ett beslut som citeras Sherman: "poängen är att Sherman är helt rätt: inte i vad han gjorde, men om vilken typ av krig: krig är helvetet."

Dessa och några liknande allusioner är ganska tunn bevisning att åtala Sherman, som Carr känner igen. "Den särskilda hellishness av Vietnamkriget skyldig mer till de senaste innovationerna inom USA counterinsurgency strategi," skriver han, "än det gjorde Shermans kampanjer. Likaså teoretiker strategiska bombningar som den italienska Giulio Douhet, som förutspådde på 1920-talet att bombningarna fiendens civilbefolkningen skulle säkerställa snabb seger i alla framtida krig, gentemot ingenting Sherman: bummers inbördeskriget förstörde mycket egendom men några civila liv, medan förbundna bombplaner dödade hundratusentals tyska och japanska civila i andra världskriget. Tyska nazisterna och japanska militarister vars soldater mördade miljontals civila i Europa och Kina skulle ha agerat på samma sätt om Sherman aldrig hade existerat.

Carr kategoriserar boken som "en antimilitaristisk militära historia". I det avseendet förstärker Sherman's legacy Carrs budskap att krig är faktiskt "helvete" och dess förmodade glories "hembränt," som Sherman sa efter inbördeskriget i ett tal som utmanade "dem som aldrig har hört ett skott, aldrig hört skrik och stön av sårade och sönderskurna... [men] ropa högt för mer blod, mer hämnd, mer förödelse." Kanske bör Sherman kategoriseras som en allmän antimilitarist.

This memoir is wonderfully written, beautifully arranged, and a heart-wrenching but hopeful masterpiece.

“Something is afoot within me that I do not understand, the breaking of a contract that I thought could not be broken, a slow perverting of my substance.”

Anna was living a pleasantly ordinary life, working for the British government, when she started to develop her sensitivity to light. At first, her face felt like it was burning whenever she was in front of the computer. Soon this progressed to intolerance of artificial lights, then of sunlight itself. The reaction soon spread to her whole body. Now, when her symptoms are at their worst, she must spend months on end in a dark room covering window and door cracks, and mummified in layers of light-protectant clothing.

She spent her days in the dark talking to people on the phone, watching TV during short periods out of her blacked-out room by looking at its reflection in a mirror, making word games to keep herself occupied, but usually she got through audio books.

Lyndsey discovered she could go out for a walk at dawn and dusk for about an hour without it affecting her skin, and her husband made a covering of black felt for the back of the car so they can drive somewhere else, such as a forest, during daylight hours, ready for a sunset walk.

Despite everything, Anna’s husband named Pete stays around with her. Pete brings some light, although only of the emotional kind, into her life. She feels she should leave him, but is incapable of doing so unless he asks her to go – and thus far, he has not. “That is the miracle that I live with, every day,” she writes.

With gorgeous, lyrical prose, Anna brings us into the dark with her, a place where we are able to see the true value of love and the world.