Letters From My Library

Starting a new series here today in honor of two milestones recently met, one being my fiftieth birthday, which, while not inevitable, is rather necessary for me to have achieved if I was going to be writing this sentence, and the other being the recent addition of the 2000^th book to my personal library.  Two thousand is much less than Thomas Jefferson was said to have had in Monticello (6,487 books donated to the Library of Congress), is certainly less than I have ever owned (there was the incident where lots of my favorite books were tossed out when I was off at college), and is less than what I’ve actually read since there are lots of trips to the library that aren’t factored in – but it’s still a hell of a lot of books.  So I’m going to try to pick out a representative sample and explain why I happen to like that particular one, whether and for what purpose I would recommend it and maybe just ramble on in whatever direction the words lead me.  In fact going on such rambles is what I see as one of the main functions of books.

First – no I haven’t read all of the books in the house – but I’ve read most of them, lots of them more than once – and I fully intend to get to each one.  If turning 50 is a milestone then its main purpose must be to allow you the experience and perspective to set a few goals and make a few resolutions.  One of mine is to get down to reading some of the books I’ve been holding in reserve (like Dom DeLillo’s “End Zone”).  But reading has never been a chore for me, so keeping that promise to myself shouldn’t be difficult.  In fact, 50 means that there is another milestone to be marked – 44 years of reading.  I really started picking up books from my entry into Miss Murphy’s first grade class when I was six years old.  I seriously doubt, from when I was halfway through that year, if there has ever been a time when I haven’t been reading at least one book.  Usually I’ll have a few going at once.  True – when I started I didn’t much care what I was reading (textbooks, joke books, baseball previews (one of which I still have – the 1974 pre-season review – Hank Aaron was going in to the year on 713 homeruns).  I’d just read anything for the sheer magic of seeing the words make sense.  Then I’d read it again.  And again.  And again.

That may be one of the things I miss the most about reading when I was a kid – I read all kinds of books more than once.  I’ll talk about some of them (like the Narnia series) in these essays, but there are others, like Tony Conigliaro’s autobiography “Seeing It Through”, that I’ve read about six times and can still quote from memory.  Re-reading books is tough to do now – I’ve got others waiting to be read in the on-deck circle, time is at a premium, and it is harder to justify picking up something you already read once.  But those books that I read multiple times (and some I’ve read so many times I’ve lost count) are like old friends revisited.  I think I might start to pick up the practice again.

In the meantime I’ll try, through these essays, to introduce a few of those friends around.  You might enjoy meeting up with some of them – you can never have enough friends.

First Up – William F. Gaines Sends a Present

I don’t know what the oldest book in my collection is – I have a few of my father’s old books and I’ve picked up some older books at used bookstores and the like.  I’ve got an old edition of Huckleberry Finn and a small edition of some of Chekhov’s plays – but I never have been a book collector in the sense of going after first editions or old leather bound volumes.  I get books to read them.  Towards that end I know exactly which of the books I have is the oldest in my collection in the sense of it being the oldest book I ever actually got for myself.  Not the oldest I book I ever bought mind you – I bartered for it – and therein lies a story. 

In first grade there were two primary mediums of exchange – neither of which was U.S currency.  One was desserts.  You could trade your dessert at lunch for many things – toys, other types of food, baseball cards – one chocolate pudding could get you quite a few cards.  The other item of barter was a “Whizzer” – and they were like gold.

A Whizzer was a top that seemed to be nuclear powered.  You would zip the vulcanized rubber tip along the floor and then the top would (probably aided by a gyroscope) spin on its end for about two and a half years (OK – hours).

(OK – minutes – but it seemed longer).

The entire time the Whizzer would – well – it would whizz, making a high pitched squealing sound.  Teachers must have loved the things because, at any given time, their desks would be loaded with an assortment of confiscated Whizzers, in all different colors.  Whizzers were the bomb.

You could trade a Whizzer for almost anything and I, in my first official book acquisition, traded an orange one that I had for not just one but three books.  One was so forgettable I have since forgotten it.  Another was one I would dearly love to find a copy of.  It was called “Bill Stern’s Favorite Baseball Stories” or something like that, and it was a collection of the stories that Stern, a radio personaility from the forties, would tell on air.  Woody Allen parodies the sorts of tales that would be told in Radio Days, wherein a pitcher comes back after three or four hunting accidents that gradually deprive him of his legs and arms.  Then there were the stories like the one about a catching prospect named "Bill" who had his heart broken when he didn't get signed to a pro contract  - "but don't feel too sorry for old Bill - because his full name was William Howard Taft and he went on to become President of the United States".  I still felt sorry for Bill - I'd have rather been a catcher.  I loved that book – I think it eventually disintegrated.  But it was still in second place out of the three – for the real treasure out of the trade was a book that remains in my possession, something called “Greasy Mad Stuff”.

I could tell you the history of Mad magazine, but others have already done a better job.  Check this out http://h2g2.com/approved_entry/A2116540 or just accept this even shorter version – a guy called William Gaines had published a series of comic books in the fifties along the lines of “Tales from the Crypt”.  The comics were brilliantly written, scarily illustrated and actually could frighten the crap out of you.  So, naturally, someone, in this case Congress, had to shut it down on the supposition that it was “corrupting the nation’s youth”.  The “comic code” outlawed such brilliance in favor of hard hitting works like “Little LuLu” – but Gaines refused to give up – he modified a comic called “Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad” just enough to make it a full fledged magazine rather than a comic and, in doing so, avoided the code.  Thus set free he proceeded to load the magazine with exactly the sorts of outrageous drawings and parodies that never would have been allowed in a straightforward comic.  Naturally, again, kids flocked to the opportunity to be corrupted and I was one of them.  But I never liked comics that much – books, even paperbacks, were more solid.  Because of this prejudice I attempted, whenever possible, to take my Mad magazine in book form – this meant I missed out on the fold in picture that the true magazine included on the back cover – but it was worth it.

“Greasy Mad Stuff” is not the greatest Mad book I ever had – just the oldest one - but it was still good enough – and a lot of it still stands up.  It makes fun of the advertising industry (“Mad Men” indeed), includes some great Don Martin cartoons, a parody of “The Price is Right” (they are asking the purchase price for the Queen Mary), and has a great section on “Women in Whiskey Ads”.  These are all pretty standard for Mad, and, I suppose, are actually fairly tame – but when you are reading this stuff in the first grade it is a revelation –  and even if you didn’t understand half the references (who the hell is “Fabian”) it felt like you were being written to as a grown-up.  Well, maybe not a grown up, grown up – but at least like a teenager – someone who was being allowed in to a world beyond “See Spot run.  Run Spot, run”.  Mad pushed the envelope – but it pushed you too – and books should do that more often.

Patriot's Day

First of all, there is Patriot’s Day itself, which is, quite simply, the best holiday nobody knows about, hands down. Stuck there in the middle of April, unique to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, quietly acting as the default “floating holiday” for huge swathes of the population, Patriot’s Day somehow seemed to offer itself up as the official opening to Spring on an inordinate number of occasions. It was often the day where the weather would finally turn the corner from “still damn cold” to “I better watch it or I’m gonna get a sun burn”. Of course, there were more than a few times where snow threatened and you’d just look at the group you were hanging out with, shrug your shoulders, say “New England for ya” and retreat to Who’s On First, Copperfield’s, The Cask & Flagon, Clark’s, The Elliot Lounge, Daisy’s – any port really, any port. Then there were the days when it was, in fact, really hot out. In those cases you would enjoy the sun for as long as you could stand it, look at the group you were hanging out with, shrug your shoulders, say “ya ready fer one?” and retreat to Who’s on First, Copperfield’s, The Cask & Flagon, Clark’s, The Elliot Lounge, Daisy’s – any port really, any port. Some things just need to be done.

You’ll never blow that up.

Then there is the morning game. When I was young I found out there were day games and there were night games. And there was one, and only one, morning game.  That game was played by the Boston Red Sox and whoever was (un) lucky enough to draw the short straw of having to get themselves out of their hotel beds and schlep over to the Fens at around 8:00 AM on a Monday morning.  That’s right – Patriot’s Day manages to make Monday morning “Monday morning” for millionaire baseball players – but for fans it was heaven.  It meant meeting a gang of people at around 10:00 at Who’s On First, Copperfield’s (okay – you get the picture), trudging in to Fenway Park with the somewhat illicit glow of having had something to drink before noon (on a weekday!) and then watching baseball at a time of year when the game is still new enough to cause you to remember the Donald Hall poem Ken Burns put in his film… “down under the frost line it waits, to return when the birds return…” (that is, if you remember anything – after all you were in a bar at 10:00 in the morning…).   It meant spilling out of the stands after the game, making your way down towards the marathon, cheering some guy from the copy room, or a college classmate, or that girl who told you at the previous week’s party that she was running (“Which girl”?  - “You know the one with the…" “ Oh yeah – that one – she can run with those???”).  But all this comes after the morning game – the game that ends early enough for the rest of the day to spread out before you with all kinds of glorious possibilities.

You’ll never blow that up.

And there is the race…always the race.  I ran it once, when I was a senior in college, still in shape from football season, intramural basketball and the seemingly amazing fact that, at that age, it was still possible to keep weight off.  I finished right around the four hour mark, and they gave you three things when you crossed the line.  You got a Mylar blanket (still have it), a container of yogurt (I don’t recall the flavor but, trust me on this, it could have been called “Pig Poop” and I would’ve eaten it), and a paper certificate saying you had finished the Boston Marathon.  What they did not give you was a spoon with which to eat the yogurt – but the certificate could be folded into a reasonable facsimile – which is why the only thing I have left is the blanket.  The marathon, for its participants, both elite and non-elite, is largely a “destination race”.  Boston is not an Olympic qualifier – it has lots of hills but the elevation drop is too great to allow for a world’s record to be recognised (a ridiculous position for track authorities to take, by the way), and it comes right before London, which means that it always forces a choice on you if you’re among the world’s best.  For non-elites Boston’s draw is its history, its tradition, its “essence” – but it's either too hot, or too cold, or too windy large parts of the time.  But still, they come – because, and I’m going to get technical here, well, BECAUSE IT’S FREAKIN’ AWESOME!  Because you go from small town Hopkinton to Framingham where the railroad tracks run beside you, to Wellesley where the girls line the road and cheer you on, to Newton where the hills that you don’t even notice when you’re in a car become HILLS and then into Boston’s neighborhoods – Allston and Brighton (or is it Brighton then Allston – and how the hell do you tell the difference?), and then into Brookline – and when did the Back Bay get so freakin’ far from Cleveland Circle? and – “Hey that’s my cousin – what the heck is he doin’ here?” – and then Kenmore Square (did the Sox win?) until you turn a corner and – there it is, so close, so close…  (Let’s halt right there – because you can temporarily do that – but here’s the thing - you might delay that feeling, but…)

 You’ll never blow that up.

And for spectators the race is a smorgasbord of sights.  The start is incredible, a sea of humanity that bobs by in some kind of indefinable rhythm.  Or you can watch in the early stages – about ten miles in – where there is always someone in the lead pack you don’t expect – and where you can begin to have the following conversation as the red faced frat boy who is about to end up on the losing end of a drunken bet wobbles by – “ain’t no way that guy's makin’ it”.  But the success stories outnumber the failures and there is the great novelty shop of runners to watch – I’ve seen Batman, Spiderman, Superman, Underdog and untold numbers of Santa Clauses run by me.  Figures from history abound – even some you wouldn’t expect.  Along with George Washington, Abe Lincoln and assorted Romans in togas I swear Richard Nixon runs the marathon every year.  You can watch for the celebrities – both the everyday ones (“I heah Mahky-Mahk might run this yeeeah”) and the pure marathon ones, for the race creates its own.  Watching for Johnny Kelly used to be something everybody did.   Then it became the Hoyt’s – the father and son team who run together and raise the spirits of everyone they pass.  Or you can watch for people you know – (“Hey – that’s my cousin – what the hell is he doin’ running this thing?”) And there is the experience of watching with other people and what that brings to the table.  There was the one year I watched from the hills in Newton with some of my friend David’s relatives, one of whom told me about her tennis playing exploits in Florida during the winter just past.  Nothing remarkable about that except that the relative was his grandmother who was heading towards ninety at the time.  Gramma was deadly on clay.

You’ll never blow that up.

But Boston is a destination race after all – and the goal is to finish.  People go there to scratch it off their bucket list and casually say, in conversations held worldwide – “Yeah – I ran Boston”.  That’s why the finish line is crowded both with people who want to be there when their loved ones cross the line – and the people who want to see those meetings and just witness the endless supply of joy that is brought about through those finish line reunions.  “Gramma – you did it!”, “Will you marry me now?”, “Take that cancer!”, “That was for Dad” and, always, “I JUST DID BOSTON!”.  You can divert that for a bit.  Yeah – you can slow it down – but…

You’ll never blow that up.

You can’t blow it up because (here’s a little secret) – you can’t really destroy the good parts of cities.  You can destroy buildings, you can raze entire blocks, you can flood whole districts, you can eliminate the very names from the maps – but if there is an honest heart to a city – it comes back.  I recall a certain September morning a few years back – you think New York is gone?  I hear New Orleans was wiped out by a hurricane – but I also recall them winning the Super Bowl recently.  I’ve walked the streets of Warsaw, including the “old district” which contains not a single building older than 1955, but which was lovingly reconstructed by its citizens from any scrap of plans or memories they could find.  Warsaw isn’t supposed to exist – sentenced to death by Hitler himself – but I’ve been there and it’s got some damn fine restaurants.  Speaking of old Adolf – his own Berlin was ravaged by Nazi pestilence and split by a wall – but is now a great place to party.  Hiroshima itself has overcome its demons to thrive and send lanterns floating down its river every year as testament to the peace it wishes for all and the sacrifice it made to secure that peace.  Go back as far as you want – Rome was sacked countless times – all that did is make it a more interesting place to visit.  Even Troy – the ultimate symbol of a city opening its doors to its own destruction - lives on.  No really – it does.  Troy is found in upstate New York – it was the home of the original Uncle Sam – you can look it up.  But you can’t blow it up.

Yes – you can ruin a city’s day, you can disrupt its routine, you can create tragedy, you can even, you worthless bastards, leave the blood and life of an innocent eight year old on its streets.  But if you think, even for a second, that your puny little attempt to overcompensate for what must be a seriously deficient intellect can inspire fear, terror, despair or surrender – think again.  All that you have created is defiance, resolve, inspiration and heroism.  All of those are traits that last much longer than your pathetic effort to overcome them.  They lead people to do some crazy, wonderful  things.  You will find out the following about those people:

You’ll never blow them up.

If you go out into Boston Harbor you will find a series of islands that have been made in to a national park.  There are still many people who don’t even know this exists but it's a sight well worth checking out.  On one of those islands stands an abandoned fort and you can go to its top turret and look back over the entire city.  To your right is East Boston, where the planes are landing.  Further on, Charlestown, with its monument standing tall against the sky.  Look to your left and you see Southie, the hills of Dorchester, the Blue Hills marking the edge of Roxbury,  JP, Hyde Park, Roslindale, West Roxbury (how do they know where one ends and the other begins)?   Over in the distance the tall buildings mark the Back Bay, with Allston and Brighton (Brighton and Allston?) just beyond.  And right before you is Boston proper, from Beacon Hill down to the waterfront and just off to the right, in the North End, a steeple.  On an April night over 200 years ago, one man (who was obviously crazy) stood in that steeple and signaled another fellow (who must have been equally loony) that he should go and try to stop the firepower of the greatest empire on earth – because said empire thought they could use that firepower to break the spirit of the people of Boston.  We all know how that turned out.  So how can you – you worthless little twit – think that your pathetic attempt to “terrorize” Boston has any chance of success?  Look at this city asshole – and know this:

You’ll never, ever, blow it up.

A Modest Proposal

As someone who grew up in a region that strongly supported the right of the people to keep and bear arms I’m probably a bit biased when it comes to interpreting the 2^nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  I’ll be blunt – I think it allows citizen’s to own guns.  Not just a militia, not just a police force – any ordinary person has the right to purchase and keep a firearm.  That said – I don’t hear anyone advocating that it allows citizens to own and keep bazookas – so there are limits on what rights are enshrined in the constitution. 

But the whole idea of a constitutional right is to grant it to the extent that maximizes its effect without infringing on other rights or other people’s exercise of those rights.  You should not set out to limit a right – the goal should always be to expand it to its reasonable limit.  So, with this in mind I believe that any measures taken to cut down on gun violence should only be done in a manner that preserves the gun ownership rights of the American populace.

Then again, I’m also against loonies shooting children.  Always have been.  Never once have I, or any of the people I know who support the 2^nd amendment come out and said “Ya know, there aren’t enough kids being shot recently”.  Neither has anyone gone “Dammit, it’s been a while since someone who thought he was The Joker managed to arm himself to the teeth and take out a cinema complex”.  So gun control advocates need to get real when caricaturing the typical gun owner.  Not one supports this and, while a particularly offensive lobbying group has been laying the groundwork for a major backlash against gun owners (looking at you NRA), I think that a majority of gun owners would, if approached rationally, support equally rational attempts to limit gun violence.

And, from this point on, I’m going to get in trouble with my gun owning friends because I’m going to talk about changes to the law that will limit, not gun ownership, but gun operation. I understand this response but would urge gun owners to avoid falling prey to the NRA’s scorched earth strategy and approach what I’m saying here with an open mind.

When the shootings in Newtown Connecticut took place it quickly became known that the perpetrator had used his mother’s guns to carry out both her murder and the massacre in the elementary school.  In other words – he wasn’t the owner of the guns involved – they were someone else’s but, let’s face it, a gun doesn’t know whether it is being wielded by the rightful owner or a passerby.  My proposal would be to take a limited first step towards enhancing gun safety by making it possible for guns to “know” this information from henceforth.

When you sat down at your computer to read this blog you may have signed in using a PIN number.  You certainly use such an ID code when you access your ATM account.  We have, or could have, the technology to make such a personal code attachable to every gun manufactured and sold in the United States within a very short period of time.  A device could be fitted to guns that would require a three or four digit code to be implemented before a trigger guard would be released rendering the gun active.  If such a code had been in place, and Nancy Lanza had kept it to herself, it is quite possible neither she nor any school children or staff would have been shot by her nutjob son, Adam.

There will be a knee jerk response against this proposal from the NRA and some gun owners but, remembering that I support ownership rights, please keep in mind that this proposal would not prevent a single person who is lawfully authorised from buying, owning or operating a gun.  All it does is make a gun a more personally responsible item.  This is what I believe gun owners have always been taught anyway.  When you buy a gun – it is your gun.  It belongs to you.  If you treat it well, it will treat you well.  If you serve its needs responsibly it will serve you responsibly.  If you are negligent, unthinking or foolish then those are the characteristics that your gun will reflect.  The use of this enhanced technology will simply make these statements truer, will simply make your gun more definitively yours.

But, you may be saying, there are lots of guns out there already and, if you’re like me, you’re not too keen on passing laws that force people to do things – that’s government interference in an area that, for the most part, government should stay out of.  I understand both the worry about existing guns and new legislation.  I think I have a reasonable way to deal with both, but it’s going to require me to get a bit “legal” on you.

First, a bit of explanation on where I live.  I’m currently located in Dublin, Ireland and work as a lawyer here (after having been originally trained in the States).  I am constantly bombarded with European lawyers who criticize the U.S. as being too litigious.  “Everyone sues everyone over there”, I hear, “how do you ever get anything done?”.  At first I agreed with this ongoing barrage.  Then I got bored with it.  Finally, while I don’t support all aspects of the U.S. approach, I have come around to believing that America has a better system than the Euroweenies, and here is why.

After having lived here for years I began to understand that the reason Europeans have no asbestos in their buildings, have seatbelts and airbags in their cars, have knowledge about the dangers of smoking or the hazards of the workplace is because those dangers were first made apparent in the crucible of American litigation.  We do all the work, they sit back and get all the benefits.  Europeans wander like sheep waiting for Americans to battle about what standards of behavior should apply and then passively bleat “baa, baa” while their governments legislate the rules Americans hammered out in the marketplace of ideas.  I’m speaking in an exaggerated manner but my fundamental point is that over here change comes about passively (and late) while in the States change is usually more dynamic and proactive.

Let’s use that dynamism to incent changes in gun behaviour rather than wait for laws to be passed requiring it.  First, let’s simply tweak the rules surrounding litigation to institute “presumed strict liability” for a gun manufacturer who sells a weapon built after 2014 in the market without personal trigger guards when that weapon is used by someone to commit a crime, or wrongfully injure another.  They can rebut this presumption only by showing the weapon is older than 2014 or that they didn’t manufacture it.  Otherwise, build and sell an unprotected gun like this in the U.S. and pay when it is used criminally or negligently.  That payment won’t come in the form of a government imposed fine – it will come by way of a lawsuit directly instituted by the injured party or their surviving family.  Want to change manufacturers' behaviour?  Make them understand that if they don’t follow this best practice when making their product they’re going to have every law firm in the land lining up to sue them. 

The second solution (on what to do about guns manufactured pre-2014) is a bit tougher but I think it should run in a somewhat similar way.  If you own or sell a gun post 2014 (regardless of year of manufacture), and said gun  doesn’t have a personal trigger deactivation device – you will face a presumption of strict liability when someone else uses that gun and causes injury, death or damage.  So let’s say Nancy Lanza wasn’t shot by her son in 2012 – instead crazy Adam was around in 2015 and tries to pull the same stunt.  If he took those guns from his mother (or a neighbour, or a shop) and they were not protectively equipped that owner would face the presumption of negligence in allowing an injury, damage or death to occur.  As a result they would be strictly liable for resulting damages and would face the threat of loss of their house, business or bank accounts.  This debt would, like a personal injury claim, be non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.  It wouldn't matter if they said "I thought it was locked away safely" or "my house was broken into and it was stolen" - no coded device, no defense.  This is a strong incentive to make your weapon truly your weapon and people will flock to the shops to have their guns fitted with the device.

I want to be sure I differentiate what I am talking about from what is currently on a gun.  All (or most) guns have safeties.  But a safety is there to prevent the holder from inadvertently discharging the firearm.  A personal trigger deactivation device is designed to prevent anyone other than the owner (or the person they entrust with the code) from firing the gun.  It is designed to keep guns from being fired without the owner’s permission – not to keep the gun from being fired by mistake. The technology required to build this device exists, is relatively inexpensive and does provide a means of enhancing gun safety without limiting the right to own a gun.  It won’t solve all problems, prevent all crimes or make everyone happy.  But in an environment where people are asking that something be done – this is something, and it is real, not imaginary.  It requires compromise on the part of gun owners.  It also will require them to ignore the industry driven objections of the NRA – a tasteless advocacy group that is increasingly reflective of the needs of greedy business interests and not its individual members.  For anti-gun groups it will require you to at last face up and admit the reality of what the second amendment means – a U.S. citizen has, and should have, the right to own a gun. 

But it will be a gun that is truly theirs – their protection and their responsibility.

Filling a Gap

When I was a kid one of the things I wanted most when I grew up was a room of my own filled on all sides with loads of books.  (I was a weird kid).  But now, lo and behold, I’ve pretty much got exactly that.  It’s not a huge room, and it’s not just "mine", but its full of books and I can go in there and read any time I want other than workdays, weekends when I’m doing something with the kids, most evenings and while I’m asleep.  So I get a couple of hours a week.  That’s cool.

But this post isn’t about the room so much as its contents, and that’s because this week one of the most highly anticipated books ever has been published and is, at long last, available to the public.  I’ve been waiting (along with lots of others) for this particular work to come out for years.  The story behind the book is fascinating – and is, in and of itself probably fit for a screenplay.  It concerns the biography of one of the greatest figures of the last century, has had everyone wondering for years if it would even appear, includes the fulfillment of an author's wishes from beyond the grave and it is still uncertain as to whether it will even work.  But it’s here – and for now that’s enough.

For those of you who don’t already know what I'm talking about the book in question is “The Last Lion – Winston Spencer Churchill – Defender of the Realm” by William Manchester and Paul Reid.  This is the third volume of Manchester’s majestic biography – the first two – (Visions of Glory 1874 – 1932 and Alone 1932 – 1940) are considered masterpieces – cited by both historians and everyday readers as two of the greatest biographies ever written.  (For example – Ernie Adams, the mysterious “football researcher” who works with Bill Belichick and the Patriots revealed to David Halberstam that the two volumes were his favorite books).  For me – I can’t even tell you how much I enjoyed these books.  They are incredible – combining extensive research and knowledge of the subject with just the right amount of personal investment.  A good biography informs you and makes you care about the subject.  A great biography informs you and makes you care about the subject and his times.  A transcendent biography informs you and makes you care about the subject, his times and the biographer.  Guess where I put Manchester’s work?

Visions of Glory was, upon its appearance in 1983, an immediate sensation – it described Churchill’s formative years, his capture and escape during the Boer War, his prescience and fall from grace during World War I – and then his career up to the time he first became alarmed at the growth of fascism in Germany.  It made all of this come to life – it was an ideal (though not, as some carped, an idealized) account of Churchill’s life.  This was particularly true for Americans, who would not have been as well versed in some of the vagaries of British society (such as the relative hell of boarding school) as those in Britain. After the first book came out it seemed like an interminable wait until the next volume (but it really wasn’t that long).  The second book (published in 1988) started in 1932 and left off just as Churchill was achieving his long time goal of becoming Prime Minister (after bucking the establishment in Britain by being the only politician of note to warn continually of the dangers of Hitler’s rise).  But, having achieved his goal after standing alone for so long personally, he inherits a country that now stands alone – with Germany having conquered all of Europe and bombers anticipated in the air any moment.  The next book would tell the story of this supreme battle.  The reading public awaited eagerly.

And then – silence.  Nothing was published for 5, 10 then 15 years.  Rumors and pronouncements about Manchester’s health began to filter in – he had had strokes, was unable to work, was writing via Dictaphone, the book would never happen, no- wait – the book was due out next year. 

Sadly, in 2004, William Manchester died.  It seemed that the third volume – the final part of one of the greatest biographies in American literature – would remain unfinished.  But it gradually became known that in the months before his death Manchester had passed the task of completing the book off to Paul Reid, a newspaperman from Florida.  Manchester had actually resisted this for a long time – but finally asked Reid to come up and complete an “audition” chapter to see if he could actually handle the assignment.  It seems he passed – and Manchester bequeathed his research materials to Reid.

That was some bequest.  Manchester was one of the great researchers – meticulously organising his materials into bound 100 page legal pads he called “clumps”.  Unfortunately many of these clumps were annotated with Manchester’s handwritten notes, in a manner that only he could fully decipher, like Leonardo’s notebooks.  Reid was given 100 of these “clumps”, plus about 130 pages of manuscript, and was left (ironically “alone”) to finish the book.  He went to work.

Years passed – if you searched the internet whole websites were dedicated to speculating on whether the book would ever be finished.  The task seemed impossible – and Reid was very close mouthed about the whole thing.

And now – here it is.  It’s out.  The book lists both Manchester and Reid as co-authors, one dead for eight years, the other charged with bringing him (as well as Churchill) back to life.  I’m awaiting delivery as we speak, but in a few days I anticipate filling one of the most gaping holes in that room full of books – the spot for Volume 3.

(Now if Robert Caro would finish up the LBJ series, the other hole can be filled).

In honor of this momentous occasion I’m reviving the list of the month (and making it the primary post) to go through all of the Manchester books I have in the library.  Not ranking them (they’re all good) – just setting them out there if anyone wants to chase them down.  Obviously, I recommend doing just that.

1.       The Glory and the Dream

Manchester’s history of the United States for the years 1932-1972 seeks to explain the changes to American life and politics brought about by the New Deal in the post-depression era.  From a practical standpoint, if you are looking to understand where the current liberal/conservative split in American politics comes from, there is probably no better source.  This was my first encounter with Manchester’s works, and from a reader’s perspective I can tell you that the writing about the details – the small, forgotten events – is what makes this book special.  As an example, Manchester’s description of the great New England hurrican of 1938 (which dwarfed Sandy) is one of the greatest chapters about the power of weather you’ll ever read.

2.       Goodbye Darkness

William Manchester served as a Marine in the Pacific theatre during WWII.  His time there included participation in some of the most horrific battles in the entire war, (such as Okinawa), a close friendship with his fellow Marines who had fought in even more of those battles and a Purple Heart for serious wounds. This account personally and searingly recounts what happened during his time there and what it did to him for the years afterward.

3.       A World Lit Only By Fire

Manchester's reconstruction of life in the Middle Ages is not his best work, but it does serve to enlighten a reader as to what was “dark” about the dark ages and what wasn’t renewed by the renaissance.  It is also an interesting counterpoint to a book by another favorite historian, Barbara Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror”.

4.       Death of a President

Commissioned (and then disowned) by Jacqueline Kennedy, this controversial book remains the standard by which events up to and following the assassination (but not the act itself) are measured.  It is the primary source for any discussion of these events.  What other people say about these things (what the presidential party and Oswald did up to the point of the motorcade, what happened on Air Force One on the way back to Washington, etc.) starts here and then either agrees or disagrees with Manchester’s account.  For the record, Jackie Kennedy never disputed the accuracy of this book – she simply felt it too sensitive a matter to reveal some of the truths it contains.  As much a part of history as a history itself.

5.       American Caesar

When Manchester served in the Pacific it was Douglas MacArthur he served under.  When he talks about the way his fellow combatants felt towards their commander he knows what he’s talking about.  For the avoidance of doubt “Dugout Doug” was not well liked by his men.  They thought him cruel, disconnected and questioned his courage.  When he began his biography of MacArthur Manchester uncovered an incredibly complex figure – perhaps as detestable as those men believed him to be – but for entirely the opposite reasons. 

6.       The Last Lion – Winston Spencer Churchill (Visions of Glory 1874-1932)

7.       The Last Lion – Winston Spencer Churchill (Alone 1932-1940)

See above.

I haven’t read The Arms of Krupp, Manchester's investigation of the German munitions manufacturer – but it’s a book I will get to and I consider it money in the bank.  First up though is Defender of the Realm – I can’t wait.  Oh – Manchester is from Springfield, Massachusetts – very much a product of Western Mass.

No Party Like a Third Party

The election just passed has been exhaustively analysed and hashed over during the past week and, without doubt, will continue to be chopped up, deciphered, re-ciphered, interpreted, neglected, detected and inspected for the coming months.  We’ve been told that this isn’t as dominant a win for the Democrats as it seems (true), that it is a dire warning for the Republicans (also true) and that it signals a decisive turning point for the (choose one) (a) makeup of the electorate; (b) future of the country; (c) accepted view of what constitutes “normal”; or, (d) all of the above.  (Hint – go with “d”).  Of course, you can, with equal certainty, say the same thing about every presidential election ever held.  I’ve heard people compare this to the 1948 election (and they are right), to the 1800 election battle between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (they’re right again) and to the 1912 barn burner between Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes (they’re right on this one too) – and every person making the comparison points to their particular past contest of choice as definitive – and, yes, every point they make is absolutely correct.

You see – when you are talking about a country as large and important as the United States every such election is definitive.  They are all equally important (in that they define the mood of the country at a given point in time), but, just like Animal Farm says – some are “more equal than others”. So when you read the analyst who trumpets that the Republicans either have to adjust their focus to include Latinos (or gays, or a graduated tax system, or health care reform, yadda, yadda, yadda) they’re talking complete sense.  And trust me, you are going to get loads of people talking complete sense to you in the coming months.  If you’re a political junkie (the author, at this point, is looking sheepish and raising his hand) this is the stuff you complain about (“Jesus – not another person telling me what this was all about”) - and still you read it.

But often, in the rush to explain what was really important, a couple of things will get overlooked.  Those are the things I like to examine.  Leave the big issues to someone else – I like to look at the fringes. This is how I justify having majored in Political Science.  So, out of these outliers scenarios I’ve picked a couple that aren’t getting looked at very closely but might possibly end up being the big take-aways from the election  just held if things happen to fall  -   just – exactly  --- into  --- the --- right ---place.  Here’s the first one:

The Real Republican Achilles Heel

Look – if you are a Republican I feel for you this week – I really do.  You must be like the fighter who gets knocked out by a lucky punch – everyone acts like you got absolutely creamed, but you feel just fine – so why is the doctor standing over you and your trainer throwing water in your face?  What the hell just happened – waddya mean I lost?  Get those smelling salts away – I’m fine dammit!

And then you try and stand up – your legs feel a bit wobbly.  And your head hurts a bit.  That’s all – you’ll get ‘em next time. 

And maybe you will – but – to strain the analogy a bit further – you gotta learn to keep your left up.  Your left arm that is – something the Republicans aren’t really known for having.  They better get one.  The Republicans only started to get back in to the race when Romney started to moderate his views.  And everyone from Mario Rubio to Fox News itself is telling them they better start to address the “Latino” problem.  In this case you really should read “Latino” as meaning “everyone who isn’t white, male, straight and rooting for a team inside the Southeast Conference”.  But the election was only lost by a few percentage points and this is, after all, the party of the aforementioned Rubio, of Condoleeza Rice, of Herman Cain, of – well, a bunch of others whose names escape me at the moment – but my point is – this is a fixable problem.

Which is true – there is no reason why the various gaps plaguing the Republican party can’t be plugged without compromising the basic conservatism at the party's core.  I’m not a huge fan of that philosophy but I do think it is vitally important that it be represented within the political arena.  If you were to poll the party membership I bet you could find a 70-30 margin in favor of compromising on something like immigration, for example.  Hell – both of the Republican nominees before Romney were big proponents of immigration reform.

And that’s where things get dicey.  Look at that second number. That 30% isn’t going to necessarily go along with your plan.  In fact – it wouldn’t be surprising if a third party candidacy would be spawned out of that “base”.  Just this year, for example, Michelle Bachman, Ron Paul and Donald Trump all flirted with a third party candidacy.  And this was in a year when the Republican nominee didn’t move leftward at all.  He ran as far right as he could.  He chose a right wing VP nominee.  He disavowed the very health care reform that he invented!  He attacked Big Bird for crying out loud!

Move left on immigration, birth control, gay rights - and you are flirting with a third party candidate arising.  History shows this is what happens when parties try to shift away from a long time base.  Ask an old time Democrat who George Wallace was.  Ask an even older one who Strom Thurmond was.  And this Republican party, right now, would be utterly destroyed by a third party candidate that springs from its right wing.

The vulnerability to a 3^rd party candidacy is reflected in the numbers surrounding the various states that could be considered “in play”. These would include not just the states that the Republicans won by a narrow (within 10 point) margin, but the states that they lost within that margin as well. This is because once a state leaves the “competitive” column it no longer commands the single most important resource associated with elections – money. So, let’s take a look at the states that qualify for such treatment:

Narrow Republican Wins:

N.C. – 51-48% (3%)

GA – 53-45% (8%)

Ariz – 54-44% (10%)

MO – 54 – 44% (10%)

SC – 55 – 45% (10%)

Narrow Democratic Wins:

FL – 50-49 – (1%)

OH - 50 -48 – (2%)

VA - 51-48 – (3%)

Colo – 51 -47 (4%)

IA – 52 – 47 (5%)

PA – 52-47 (5%)

Wis - 53-48 (5%)

NH - 52-46 (6%)

Nev – 52-46 (6%)

MN - 53-45 (8%)

Mich – 54-45 (9%)

NM - 53-43 (10%)

Some people would look at this and say “there are more states that were close for the Democrats than for the Republicans – the Republicans only have to win a few of those” – and they’d be right.  But look what happens when we introduce a right wing third party candidate.  Just for arguments sake let’s say that this candidate only does about 25% as well as the last truly viable third party candidate – Ross Perot, who got about 20% of the vote.  So we’ll give our imaginary candidate 5% of the vote and take it from the Republican totals – then we get this:

3^rd Party Revisions For Close States:

Republican Wins      

N.C. – 46-48%*

GA – 48-45% (3%)

Ariz – 49-44% (5%)

MO – 49 – 44% (5%)

SC – 50 – 45% (5%)

* (Becomes Democrat Win)

Democratic Wins:

FL – 50-44 – (6%)

OH - 50 -43 – (7%)

VA - 51-43 – (8%)

Colo – 51 -42 (9%)

IA – 52 – 42 (10%)

PA – 52-42 (10%)

Wis - 53-43 (10%)

NH - 52-41 (11%)**

Nev – 52-41 (11%)**

MN - 53-40 (13%)**

Mich – 54-40(14%)**

NM - 53-38 (15%)**

** (Becomes “Comfortable” State)

This does two things. First, it adds a state to the Democrats that they won in 2008 and just barely lost this time.  That’s bad enough news for the Republicans.  But what it also does is free up all the money that was spent on the five now comfortable states to be used in the now extremely competitive states.  And here is where the math kicks in – when calculating what the 3^rd party candidate subtracts from the Republican percentages all you do is take the amount from their vote and lower it by five.  The Democrat doesn’t benefit directly.  But when that money starts flowing into states like Georgia, and South Carolina – you don’t just subtract from the Republican vote – you add to the Democrat.  So let’s say those extra resources only shift a measly three percent of the vote from the R to the D column.  Just 3%.  Well, here’s what happens:

3^rd Party Revisions For Close States:

 Republican Wins      

N.C. – 43-51% (8%)*

GA – 45-48% (3%)*

Ariz – 46-47% (1%)*

MO – 46 – 47% (1%)*

SC – 47 – 48% (1%)*

* (Becomes Democrat Win)

Democratic Wins:

FL – 50-44 – (6%)

OH - 50 -43 – (7%)

VA - 51-43 – (8%)

Colo – 51 -42 (9%)

IA – 52 – 42 (10%)

PA – 52-42 (10%)

Wis - 53-43 (10%)

NH - 52-41 (11%)**

Nev – 52-41 (11%)**

MN - 53-40 (13%)**

Mich – 54-40(14%)**

NM - 53-38 (15%)**

Republicans would be left with one state - Texas - in the top dozen of electoral vote prizes. If this happens we’re in 400+ electoral vote territory – that’s a meltdown. 

“But” – you say -  “you’re not taking in to account that the new Republican nominee would be taking some of those moderate votes, and Latino votes and closeted gay Republican votes back from the Dems”.  Maybe I’m not.  But you’re also forgetting that the Democrats won’t be running a black guy who is coming off a four year recession in 2016.  It’s likely that they could be either (i) running a woman (what’ll that do to the gender gap?), or, (ii) running a southerner in the Bill Clinton mold (think you’ll hold on to Georgia then?).  Or both.  If this happens and there is a third party candidacy out of the Republican right wing – and there is historic precedent for this when a party adjusts – you could be looking at Republican Armageddon.

(Actually – I’m going to copyright “Republigeddon ©” right now).