Book Review

  • Term Limits, Vince Flynn

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1997, 612 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-02318-7

    Most techno-thrillers are written from a moderately right-wing perspective. You know the type: Government is strong, government is good, politicians might be corrupt from time to time, but the honorable military shall set them straight. Plain “thrillers” (without the fancy techno-gadgets and usually from a non-military perspective) are more left-wing, with huge governmental conspiracies, paid CIA assassins, routine invasions of piracy and corrupt officials everywhere the protagonists can see.

    One could write a pretty respectable Political Science / English Literature thesis on the political tendencies of modern thriller fiction. And one book almost certain to be included in any comparative study, despite its flaws, would be Vince Flynn’s Term Limits.

    The novel explicitly differentiate itself from other thrillers by opening up with this quote:

    …Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government… it is their Right, it is their Duty, to thrown off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

    A line from some random anarchist author? Hardly. That’s an excerpt of The Declaration of Independence, by Thomas Jefferson.

    For a while, Term Limits has the strength of Jefferson’s convictions. In the first few pages, Flynn paints the portrait of a corrupt American government ready to strongarm -even blackmail- lesser congressmen into voting for a controversial budget. Bad-boy National Security Advisor is introduced. Good-boy junior congressman is introduced. Three senior politicians are assassinated.

    This is where the novel gets interesting, because in Flynn’s universe, these three politicians deserved to die. Flynn’s protagonist expresses satisfaction at seeing them taken out of the picture. Polls indicate that most Americans couldn’t care less about the death of three Washington fat cats. The so-called “terrorists”’ demands are pretty darn reasonable: A balanced national budget and, later on, term limits for federal politicians.

    So far so good. Even though the whiff of personal libertarian politics is pretty strong, there’s a lot to be said for vigorous argumentation of contrarian viewpoints. So the bad guys aren’t bad guys and the good guys aren’t good guys. Strike one for original ambiguity.

    Unfortunately, this moment soon passes, and more assassinations are committed, though this time the targets are far less deserving than the three original victims. As modus operantis doesn’t exactly match, it becomes obvious that there are copycat terrorists. But who are they? And what’s their purpose?

    That’s where Term Limits loses a lot of interest, becoming yet another routine race-against-time-and-terrorists like we’ve seen so many times before. Everyone get what they deserve. The End.

    The initial political specificity of Term Limits never disappears, but the impression is that it’s been sidestepped in favor of some rather more conventional thriller dynamics. The interesting issues of the beginning are ignored until they progressively disappear in the background.

    At least the writing is clear -if a bit clunky in character exposition-, the protagonists suitably sympathetic and the pacing remains brisk, so that even apolitical readers will enjoy the book as solid entertainment. But those who expected an absorbing new take on american politics are bound to be disappointed after the first hundred pages, because Flynn can’t be bothered to explore the questions that he himself raises.

    Perhaps he’s waiting for a Political Science / English Literature major to do it…

  • The Medicine of ER or, How we Almost Die, Harlan Gibbs, M.D. and Alan Duncan Ross

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Basic Books, 1996, 232 pages, C$25.50 hc, ISBN 0-465-04473-5

    One crucial test of the effectiveness of this new breed of media-derivate “The Science of Popular TV Show” books is to evaluate its impact on a non-viewer of said show. If Lawrence Krauss can teach science to non-fans with “The Physics of Star Trek”, then he must be doing something right. As a complete non-viewer of “ER”, that allowed me to judge the medical vulgarization of The Medicine of ER on its own value.

    The book does get in a bit thickly into the show’s lingo and characters at times (for instance, it re-evaluates at least three episodes from a real-world perspective, giving good, bad and mixed marks to the show’s writing staff.) but seldom becomes confusing. At least the authors of the book know when to give leeway to dramatic needs, as they often note that real-world practices would remove a lot of tension from the show.

    Overall, though, they give good grades to E.R.’s medical accuracy. Viewers tuning in each week can be assured that most of what they see can happen in the real world. Exceptions are made for dramatic needs (allowing relatives in treatment rooms, over-incidence of thoracotomies) or from the show’s original genesis in the seventies (when producer Michael Crichton wrote the pilot episode). As the writers wryly note at the end of chapter Nine (a thorough debunking of the shocker episode “Love’s Labour Lost”), bad medicine might not be good for your professional credibility, but it can get you an Emmy.

    But, obviously, the book isn’t an episode guide, and its true value resides in the “Medicine for dummies” (or “medicine for couch potatoes”) details. Successive chapters look at the organisation of an hospital, heart diseases, trauma, illness, drugs…

    Even though the book is written by one bona-fide M.D. and an ex-medical center administrator, the book is unusually readable, even laugh-aloud funny at times. Chapters title reflect the overall unpretentious sense of fun: “Lightning can strike twice”, “Things not normally found in your body” (including the requisite risqué anecdotes), etc… The writing is brisk, and -we hope- technically exact. The briskness extends to the relative shortness of the book (barely 230 pages in large type), so hunt for this in used bookstores rather than pay full price.

    For a Canadian already used to the idea of a government-subsidized health care system, the strangest chapter of the book is “Fast as McDonald at Tiffany Prices”, an examination of hospital costs complete with several itemized costs breakdown of typical E.R. interventions. Had a traffic accident? That’ll be 6,500$, buddy. The chapter veers dangerously close to blatant editorial, but remains one of the strongest piece of the book.

    Well, almost as strong as the epilogue, which reminds readers that during one prime-time hour of television, there are on average 10,000 admissions to real Emergency Rooms across the country.

    In any case, The Medicine of E.R. accomplishes both of its goals with a certain amount of distinction: It examines the TV show and uncompromisingly find the flaws in its depiction of medicine, and uses the show as a springboard to give out a good overview of the current Emergency Medicine system as practised in the mid-nineties in the United States. Good show.

  • Elvis Presley: Revelations from the Memphis Mafia, Alanna Nash

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper, 1995, 947 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-06-109336-X

    As someone born in 1975, it can be daunting, at times, to figure out the enduring popularity of Elvis Presley, who died in 1978. While other figures of his era have since long passed away from common memory, his legacy only seems to grow with each passing year. Endless droves of imitators, burgeoning cults and a mind-bending array of memorabilia only contributes further to his mystique.

    It’s a fair bet to say that the image of Elvis has since long been stripped away from the man who was Elvis. Seeing his image pop up as sort of an all-American symbol of decency can only make one wonder; who was the real Elvis Presley?

    Indeed, a whole cottage industry has popped up around this question, in the form of various biographies written about the man. If Elvis isn’t the most written-about historical figure of the twentieth century, it’s not clear who is. (Okay; Hitler. Don’t argue a rhetorical question.) Most of the books about him, however, have been written with a differing degree of accuracy by people who were not necessarily closely associated with “The King”, or had direct financial interest in maintaining his continuing untarnished image. Elvis Presley: Confessions from the Memphis Mafia is different, being a 600-page collection of testimonies made by members of the “Memphis Mafia”, a group of personal assistants that travelled with Presley for most of his career. These ex-confidantes are now more akin to disgruntled veterans, and he book is their chance to set the record straight on what has previously been said about Elvis.

    Indeed, the biggest asset of the book is its sense of authenticity. More than 95% of the book are direct quotations from three members of the “Memphis Mafia”, with occasional bridging comments by Nash and a special “guest appearance” by the wife of one of the co-authors. Nash’s sense of editing is superb, and the book truly is like sitting down with three Elvis experts and hearing them talk about their favourite subject. They provide a complete insider’s view of the true Elvis Presley, a socially maladjusted, pill-popping adult teenager whose personal integrity couldn’t begin to cope with the demands of fame inflicted on him by his musical talent.

    As such, Elvis becomes a tragic figure in this book, someone who suffered from the untimely death of his mother, a bad manager (“Colonel” Tom Parker, who was actually an illegal immigrant terrified that someone would discover his secret and deliberately restrained Elvis’ career in consequence), an emotional dependency on chemicals, bad advice, deep-seated contradictions and a bunchload of psychological problems. His death is made predictable, even inescapable. Presley becomes a sacrifice to the price of popularity. (But not, interestingly enough, a heroic sacrifice; the Elvis Presley of this book is not someone you would pity or sympathise with)

    Great stories in this book include Elvis’ presidential visit, his fascination with guns (and shooting thereof), his weird sexual fetish, his often illogical generosity, his financial problems, his military service in Germany, his reaction to his movies, etc…

    Unfortunately, one get the sense that this is not an entry-level biography, as it spends a significant part of its time denouncing mistakes made by other books, tabloids and documentaries in trying to describe the true Elvis. The insider-speak of the three “mafiosos” gets obscure at time, though Nash makes a very good job of vulgarizing the most obscure elements for a wider audience. An impressively complete index completes the book and makes it eminently suitable for reference.

    In a sense, Elvis Presley does achieve its goal in that I do not feel as if I have to read another biography about this rather loathsome singer ever again. As a bonus, I’ll be ready for next time someone ever tries to make of Elvis a saint that he so obviously wasn’t.

  • Titanic and the Making of James Cameron, Paula Parisi

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Newmarket Press, 1998, 234 pages, US$14.95 tpb, ISBN 1-55704-365-5

    As something of a cinephile and general movie buff, I can testify firsthand that few films of the nineties have known a fate as interesting as TITANIC. It was, first and foremost, a film by James Cameron, who had already proven his superb filmmaking abilities with such great movies like THE TERMINATOR, THE ABYSS, and TRUE LIES. It was also a film that reportedly underwent a troubled production, mostly through massive budget overruns caused by Cameron’s almost-maniacal perfectionism. Before it came out, everyone was already condemning it as one of history’s biggest bombs.

    I reserved judgement until opening weekend, but from my own overwhelmingly positive reaction to the film, I knew that TITANIC would be an unqualified. History proceeded to confirm this feeling: TITANIC became the highest-grossing film of all times and swept through the Oscars like a runaway superliner. Now Titanic and the Making of James Cameron is a book-length description of the making of TITANIC, from initial concept to Oscar night.

    This isn’t the first time someone writes a book about Cameron. Christopher Heard’s 1997 biography Dreaming Aloud actually makes a pretty nice prologue to Paula Parisi’s making-of-Titanic account, describing Cameron from his Kapuskasing boyhood to the verge of TITANIC’s filming. This book takes off from there.

    But it’s a much, much better book than Heard’s poorly-researched compendium of past Cinefex articles. Parisi has obviously spent a lot of time with the principal actors of the TITANIC story, and the book is filled by original interview quotes and interesting snippets not heard anywhere else. The style is brisk, without nonsense, and pretty much of the level you’d expect to read in Premiere magazine. I spotted a few errors (John Woo doesn’t spell his name Wu and www.aint-it-cool.com obviously lacks the -news!) but these could be attributed to poor proofreading rather than an underlying lack of research.

    Titanic ironically gives a better idea of the personal qualities of James Cameron than the other so-called biography. The manic filmmaker behind TITANIC is exposed as a ruthless perfectionist, driving others like he himself works; relentlessly. The book is riddled with statements about how people will finish a Cameron film hating the director, only to come back two, three years later when offered a position on a new film. Personal interviews color the narrative, and the reader can’t help but be impressed by the selfless devotion of James Cameron for his art.

    Parisi’s book has a substantial advantage over most of the “Making-of” books out there; that of being written in hindsight. Rather than only highlight the money-making aspect of the account (would anyone write a full general-interest account of a mildly successful picture like, say, LOST IN SPACE?), this allows Parisi to research her subject in-depth, and to cover areas not normally discussed in official making-of accounts (like the music, or the editing, given that those usually take place even as the making-of book goes to press). Titanic is, in this regard, geared far more toward the film-geek library than your stereotypical female teenage TITANIC fan. Parisi is scathing when she needs to be, and the behind-the-scene details are fascinating, as we see, for instance, Leonardo DeCaprio whining about how his character isn’t complex or dark enough to be interesting.

    Of course, Titanic won’t matter much to those who hated the film, loathe Cameron or otherwise don’t care too much about the subject. But for fans of the film, or Cameron aficionados like myself, Titanic is a much better piece of film journalism than you might expect from the mass of cheap commercial derivates spawned by the film. As a highly-detailed look at the making of a blockbuster film and the mildly-mad filmmaker genius behind it, this is a book worth reading.

  • Chesapeake, James Michener

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Fawcett, 1978, 1083 pages, C$3.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-449-24163-7

    Is it possible for a saga to be under-whelming?

    After all, the adjective seems to be an antithesis of its subject. A saga is almost, by definition, intended to be impressive; spanning dozens of years, involving scores of characters and moving through often-historical events, a saga should thrill, engross and sustain a deep and unshakeable awe from its audience. To deliver anything less is to cheat the reader out of time and, often, money. And yet, Chesapeake…

    It’s not as if James Michener doesn’t know how to write a saga. Without flashiness, he regularly outpaces Stephen King in page-counts, churning out thousand-pages bricks one after the other. His usual formula consists in taking a locale (Texas, Alaska, Mexico… or the Chesapeake Bay, obviously) and tracing back its history through a series of vignettes taking place at quasi-epochal stages. Mother, sons and grandchildren all figure preeminently, aging through the novel as a vast tapestry of events is slowly built through vignette-chapters.

    Chesapeake is, without a shadow of an argument, a saga. It starts out in 1583, as an Indian is exiled from his tribe and forced to settle down near the Chesapeake Bay, becoming the leader of another tribe. Then we move on to 1608, as Englishmen John Steed also settles down the Chesapeake and start building his trading empire. Events accumulate, and major “characters” arrive at the Chesapeake; the Turlocks, Paxmores, Carters and Caveneys successively join the narrative.

    As this is a saga extending over hundred of years, it’s a distinguishing feature of Chesapeake that families, not individuals, are the defining characters of the novel. Steeds are the righteous aristocracy; Turlocks the low-life, cunning pirates; Paxmores the peace-loving religious artisans (as if the family name wasn’t enough of a giveaway); Carters the token blacks; Caveneys the Irish lawmen. Nature or nurture? Michener melts families into monolithic entities. As the chapters keep killing off characters, we only need to glance at the family name to have an indication of the moral fabric of the individual. (In general, that is: Michener takes some pleasure in perverting a few individuals, but they usually go back to their family’s ways, as is the case with Paul Steed or Teach Turlock.)

    The biggest problem of Chesapeake isn’t there, however. It’s the impression that save for the meaty middle section (with the afore-mentioned Paul Steed and “Captain Teach” Turlock), all of Chesapeake‘s individual chapters are vignettes that no not necessarily set up bigger and more interesting conflicts later down the novel. In fact, the last chapters are more like snapshots of life across the Chesapeake rather than true climactic unfolding of events. You would expect hundred of years’ worth of bottled-up family feuds, but instead you get a fifty-page short story on hunting dogs. Whaaat?

    Michener’s main failing contributes to highlight the other annoyances that sour Chesapeake‘s impression: Michener’s lengthy apologetic exposé of slavery and discrimination against blacks. (Though one must favourable mention his unflinching description of slave trading) The futility of the “Voyage” passages once they stop bringing new characters to the Chesapeake Bay. The absolutely massive padding of the whole story. The multiple lacks of latter payoffs from the earlier setups…

    Let’s not deny that from a reading-on-the-bus standpoint, Chesapeake delivers the goods in clear, readable prose. It’s as the novel draws at a close and that no threads are tied up that the overall futility of the novel becomes clear. Saga it technically is, but masterpiece it truly isn’t.

  • Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, Charles Pellegrino

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 1994 (1995 reprint), 386 pages, C$16.00 tpb, ISBN 0-380-72633-5

    A few years ago, I remember seeing a TV special that purported to explain the mysteries of the Bible through scientific investigation. Problem was, this show was obvious produced by fundamentalist authorities. The explanations were so ludicrously far-fetched that my basic feeling was that it was far simpler to blame the miracles on tall stories than to actually try to give them a rational, scientific explanation.

    Now here comes Charles Pellegrino, with a book that’s ostensibly about “solving the Bible’s ancient mysteries through archaeological discovery.” Normally, I wouldn’t have even picked up the book, but then you’ve got to realize that Charles Pellegrino is no ordinary writer: His three Science-Fiction novels (Marching to Valhalla, The Killing Star and Dust) were deeply impressive work from a writer who obviously brimmed with innovative concepts, and could present them in an intriguing fashion.

    Pellegrino is obviously someone with far-ranging interests. His professional credits cover a wide range of accomplishments, from anti-matter rocket designs to paleontological thought experiments that led to Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. On top of accomplished scientific and literary careers, he’s also an archaeologist, and Return to Sodom and Gomorrah is nothing less but a book-length essay about middle-eastern archaeology.

    The Bible elements remains, but Pellegrino (as a confirmed agnostic) works in a radically different fashion from that TV Special of my youth; he uses the Bible as a way of demonstrating what he’s seen in the field, not the other way around. And most often, the archaeological record is even more fantastic than the Bible itself.

    Take Sodom, for instance. Archaeologists have discovered a city that roughly corresponded to the biblical city of Sodom. But that city presented them with a puzzle: It seemed to have been abandoned in a hurry, and left untouched for several years afterward, even though other fertile places nearby had been re-colonized very quickly. Even more mysterious; the remains of the city appeared to have burned quite thoroughly, this despite the fact that there were no flammable materials in the city, dried mud being the construction material of choice. Charred animal bones everywhere, even though it takes a formidable amount of energy to char bones.

    Pellegrino and his friends in the field came up with a rather spectacular explanation: Underneath most of the middle east, as we know, lies multiple deposits of flammable hydrocarbons. What if, spurred by continental plaque movement, one large deposit made its way to the surface, like a natural tar pit? What if it first came out as natural gas -the lightest part of a petrol deposit-, and encountered an open cooking flame?

    Instant firestorm, fuelled by natural geological pressure and instantly lethal. Completely destroying habitable land. Typical Hollywood blockbuster premise, right there. Only a theory, of course, but doesn’t it sound good?

    Return to Sodom and Gomorrah is filled with discoveries of the sort. From evidence of a mitochondrial Eve to the common volcanic origins of both Palestinians and Israelis, passing by an explanation of the Dead Sea Scroll controversy and a huge amount of lucidly told ancient history, Pellegrino truly delivers the goods with this book. And he leaves plenty to the imagination too, as be regularly tosses off tantalizing hints of personal exploits (randomly mixing fire-fights, nuclear accidents and personal vendettas) with mind-blowing bigger issues. (Are we destined to create our evolutionary successors? Are we repeating the environmental mistakes that previously destroyed other civilizations?) Pellegrino is fluent not only in past history or prehistoric lingo, but also in the jargon of astrophysics and the vernacular of SF, and the result is simply unique.

    This is a book that will stimulate your thought processes, push you to buy everything else that Pellegrino wrote, and reconsider the Bible with a keener eye. Trying to make it justice is almost impossible; like most great scientific vulgarizations, you have to read it to truly feel it. Great reading for persons actively looking for their next big idea rush.

  • The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Collins, 1954, 1153 pages, C$95.00 hc, ISBN 0-261-10230-3

    It seems strange for a voracious reader such as myself not to have read The Lords of the Rings, one of literary history’s most influential work, in or outside the science-fiction/fantasy genre. Hey, everyone has their blind spots; at least I took the time to correct this one, plunging in Tolkien’s 1000+ pages saga in the waning hours of December 31, 1999.

    It took nearly three weeks, but I finally finished The Lord of the Rings. The earth didn’t tremble, the world was not magically transformed to a better place, I was not struck down by a bolt of pure epiphany. Of course, given the amount of hype that preceded the book, I shouldn’t have been overly surprised by a certain letdown. No book can survive this amount of build-up.

    But even then, I found The Lord of the Rings a laborious read. The very qualities of the work that made its reputation -the breathtaking world-building, the literary writing, the inclusion of songs and made-up languages, the epic nature of the narration- are the very things that drove me to frustration. Things that could have been told in two pages suddenly took a whole chapter; a rather simple trip from point A to point B became lengthy proceedings punctuated by crises that often didn’t amount to much lasting excitement or dramatic point. I found it strange that Tolkien spent so much time away from Frodo when he is undoubtedly the center of interest in the story.

    I skipped the songs, skimmed the most boring passages, read only a few dozen pages per day and generally was bored stiff by most of the book. And yet, I find myself with a generally positive opinion of the book. Certainly, fear of peer pressure certainly accounts for part of this sentiment (being stoned to death by rabid Tolkien fans is a fate that I wish upon no one, lest of all myself) but not all of it. I might have been decidedly unimpressed by the lack of zippiness of The Lord of the Rings, but there’s no disputing that this is a very good, very impressive work.

    Nowhere more impressive, of course, in the sheer depth of the world created by Tolkien, which was subsequently mined for endless hidden ripoffs which at least usually improved on the turgidness of the original. Still, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and few authors have been as flattered as Tolkien in seeing a whole publishing genre spring up from their not-so-humble creation.

    In the end, however, mere mortals like me can scarcely complain about a work that’s too literary, too complex or too richly-detailed. It’s a measure of how darn good The Lord of the Rings is that even if I didn’t especially like it, I have no choice but to recommend it.

    BRIEFLY: The Hobbit, Tolkien’s prologue to The Lord of the Rings, is undoubtedly written for children, but adults will find here a rougher yet perhaps more interesting story than the full-fledged sequel. The story remains focused on a single hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, and thus doesn’t have the dyptic structure of the trilogy. The considerably amount of dry British humor also helps.

    BRIEFLY: Bored of the Rings, the Harvard Lampoon’s parody of Tolkien’s trilogy, is far shorter (160 loosely typeset pages) and much more strictly enjoyable than its source material. Well, that’s if your brand of humor include snickering at gags like “Boggies are an unattractive but annoying people whose numbers have decreased rather precipitously since the bottom fell out of the fairy-tale market.” [P.XV] Still, the book essentially parodies the first book of the trilogy, plus the conclusion—which either speaks about the non-essential nature of the rest of the Lord of the Rings, or the authors’ laziness. A hoot for fans.

  • The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, Herman Wouk

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Little Brown, 1972-1978, ???? pages, C$??.?? mmpb, ISBN Various

    The Winds of War: Little Brown 1972, 885 pages
    War and Remembrance: Little Brown, 1978, 1042 pages

    As historians look back on the twentieth century, one single event will loom large over the period: World War Two. Born from the sum of world history up to that point and influencing latter human affairs forever, WW2 has, in a few years, reshaped geography, history, science and countless lives.

    Actually, it’s misnomer to call WW2 “one single event” given that it was a conflict made of several elements not always linked together. As it took place over six years, it also contains far too much material to be simply resumed.

    So you can imagine the built-in difficulties for Herman Wouk as he attempts to dramatize WW2 in The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. The sheer size of the result (nearly 2400 pages all told) is an indication of the magnitude of the task.

    Succinctly put, these two books follow the various adventures of the Henry family and their acquaintances, from 1939 to Pearl Harbour (The Winds of War) and them from Pearl Harbour to Hiroshima. (War and Remembrance) Initially, there’s Victor “Pug” Henry (waiting for a command assignment, but shuffled in a diplomatic role), his wife Rhoda (who might or might not be entirely faithful to her husband) and the three Henry children: Warren (promising naval aviator), Byron (devil-may-care wanderer) and Madeline (soon enough responsible for a radio show).

    Love affairs, friendship, casual acquaintances and such soon expand this narrow cadre, with the result that we truly get a diverse sampling of the war from various point of view. One character always manages to be at the right place at the right time for most of the war’s events. Though the plot mechanics often threaten to overwhelm the narrative drive, Wouk must be commended for his solution to the size problem of WW2.

    Unfortunately, there’s no solution to the size problems of the two books themselves. While a certain amount of padding is probably inevitable in 2,400 pages, Wouk more than overdoes it in this duology, inserting whole scenes of no narrative nor documentary impact and chapters than can be skipped without ill-effect. The Jastrows’ story, in particular, is more than obvious (and manipulative) in its ultimate denouement, and attempts to drag it out only annoy rather than inform.

    On the other hand, maybe because of these fluffy passages, Wouk does manage to bring back dramatic tension to World War II. For contemporary readers, it’s a story of the past, a fixed sequences of events that lead to our reality. It’s all-too-easy to forget that the issue of the war was unknowable at the time. The Winds of War excels at showing the possible early outcomes of the war’s beginning; Germany invading England, the Allied powers suing for peace after Poland, etc… This sense of absolute incertitude is the strongest virtue of the first volume.

    Wouk should also be praised for the passages presented as translated excerpts of (the fictional) General Armin von Roon’s military analyses of WW2 as interpreted from a German point of view. These passages are clearly written, and present an alternate perspective of the events, often more complete and enlightening that what the story’s protagonists see.

    There are a few interesting storyteller’s tricks sprinkled throughout the second volume, such as the remarkable roster call of American airmen sacrificed during the battle of Midway, or a straight admission that a fictional character never existed, but was inspired by hundred of others who did exist. Most of these asides work.

    Herman Wouk’s duology makes you not only understand the events of the Second World War, but also instill a certain emotion into them, whether it’s incertitude, suspense, devastation or loss. Both books deserve to be read, if only for fulfilling the second’s book title: War and Remembrance.

  • Ringmaster!, Jerry Springer and Laura Morton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    St. Martin’s, 1998, 273 pages, C$34.99 hc, ISBN 0-312-20188-5

    Okay.

    I realize that it’s going to be impossible to review this book without saying it at least once: I like “The Jerry Springer Show”. I know it doesn’t make sense for a good, polite catholic boy like me to be a fan of one of the trashiest talk show in television history, but there you go.

    Oh, it’s not like I haven’t tried to rationalize this odd preference. I like to say that it makes me escape from my dreary own boring life. I say that “The Jerry Springer Show” offers a variety of viewpoints, accents, attitudes and arguments that I’m unlikely to find anywhere else. I consider the show to be a good barometer for modern social morals. I think that Springer is a terrific host. The show is perfectly hilarious to watch in groups. And if you don’t like it without having watched it, you don’t know what I’m talking about.

    WIth Ringmaster! Jerry Springer gets the chance to both describe his life so far and to give us a glimpse of the mechanics of his shows. As could be expected, his life is less interesting than his work.

    Springer was born in London during World War II. He and his parents quickly emigrated in America after the war, and Jerry grew up in New York. He attended college in New Orleans where he discovered a passion for politics. After being a volunteer for political candidates, -and finishing both his military service and a law degree- he was elected on the Cincinnati city council in 1971. Forced to resign after a signed check of his was found in a whorehouse (yes, who would have thought it, a sex scandal), he nevertheless was elected as Cincinnati’s mayor in 1977, at the age of 36. The multi-talented Springer then went in journalism as a news anchor and reporter. After a few years, he began host his own show, which went from an ordinary interview format to the wilder entertainment we now know today.

    All of this is told as an “interview with God.” Though Springer doesn’t skip out on the essential details, we too often get just that; the essential details. His reasons to step down as mayor are not fully explained, and the whole matter dismissed in a single sentence (“running for governor”) But Springer’s biography, of course, isn’t the real reason we’re reading the book. This reason, of course, is to know more about Springer’s day job, the “Jerry Springer Show”. There, the book truly shines.

    “Where do they find these people?” is the traditional question most neophytes ask of “The Jerry Springer Show.” The book tells us that the show seldom, if ever, bothers to “find” guests: They receive nearly 3,000 calls per week/day on their phone lines, and the Springer producers call back the most intriguing stories.

    “Is it true?” Here again, the book offers a few reassurances: In order to on the show, each guest is forced to sign a legal document making them responsible for the whole cost of a show ($80,000 US) in case they’re lying. Most stories are cross-verified. Each guest has to sign another document detailing twenty “surprises” they might be told during the show.

    The mechanism of the show is also endlessly fascinating: Make-up artists, dentists and psychologists are employed by the show. They’ve got a prop and wardrobe department. They must book guests on different planes and different hotels. The security people are Chicago Police officers. The audience is carefully selected for balanced demographics and looks. (Older people are placed at the back in case of front-line mayhem.)

    In short, this is the perfect gift for any fan of the show. Ringmaster! is co-written for maximum readability (don’t be surprised to read it in a single evening) and includes enough great anecdotes to justify your while. Non-fans of the show will obviously not be converted -Jerry attempts at instilling “respectability” are sincere but misguided,- but fans will lap it up with glee. Good fun.

  • Managing Martians, Donna Shirley with Danelle Morton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Broadway Books, 1998, 276 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-7679-0240-8

    Your reviewer is lucky enough to work as a technical specialist in a unit doing research as to how new ideas and new trends that will shape the way we will work in the future. One of the most fascinating current trends is something called Knowledge Management. It’s based on the idea that low-level white-collar work is becoming increasingly automated (no more typists, no more messengers, etc…) and that what remains is a type of office worker far more concerned with refined knowledge than raw data. Unfortunately, this knowledge, being intangible and formless, defies all previous theories of management.

    Knowledge Management might be only a fad (only time will tell), but it is built on solid tendencies. Everywhere we look in this new economic context, it’s obvious that purely intellectual work is accounting for a substantial part of growth. It’s now a cliché that the nerds of yesterday are the drivers of today’s high-tech sector, but these nerds cannot be managed in the same way than the worker class has traditionally been driven.

    As far as nerd projects go, you really can’t find better than space exploration. These “rocket scientists” are no ordinary workers, and their bosses must be no ordinary managers. Everyone applauded when NASA landed the Pathfinder/Sojourner probe on Mars on July 4th, 1997. A lot of effort has been expended in sending this little rover a few million kilometers away, and Managing Martians finally tells the pre-glory story from the point of view of the team leader of the Sojourner project, Donna Shirley.

    Managing Martians is a book that attempts to do many things at once. It’s an inspirational story of a country girl turned pro scientist. It’s a business book on how to manage knowledge workers. It’s a techno-scientific work of triumph through engineering. And yet, despite its disparate nature, it’s an interesting account on all three viewpoints.

    As a biography, it tracks Shirley’s life through the difficult career path of a woman in a male industry. Born in 1941 in a small Oklahoma town, Donna Shirley knew early on that she wouldn’t be just another one of the girls. Developing an early interest in aeronautics, she got her pilot license, went to college, found love, switched majors from engineering to English and found a job as a technical writer at McDonnell Aircraft. After finding out that this wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life, she went back to college, got her engineering degree and ended up at JPL. The rest wasn’t easier, as the whims of space politics decided where she would work.

    Are good managers born or raised? Tough to tell, but Shirley’s unconventional career path would later reflect on her management style and though Managing Martians doesn’t claim to be a business book, it’s still a pretty good illustration -through concrete example- of the new challenges of knowledge work. “When managing brilliant, creative people,” she says, “at some point you find it’s impossible to command or control them because you can’t understand what they are doing.” [P.88] The story of Sojourner truly gives a good idea of the realities of space exploration in all its bureaucratic, nitty-gritty details. Not much preaching here, but more than a few examples.

    Of course, the book truly shines when considered as the ultimate insider’s account of the whole Pathfinder/Sojourner project. Numerous technical issues are clearly explained and highlighted. Managing Martians succeeds at giving a sense of the quiet techno-heroism that’s the hallmark of most top-notch scientific endeavor. No superheroes, just regular people doing the best job they can. Even Shirley doesn’t try to claim undue applause, deferring often to the members of her team.

    Hopefully, many people will read this book and get a sense of what it’s like to “be a rocket scientist.” Others will read it and learn a few things about how to run a high-tech business. Others will just enjoy the inside story of the Sojourner project. But all will get something valuable out of the book.

  • Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Norton, 1997, 480 pages, C$19.99 tpb, ISBN 0-393-31755-2

    Regular readers of these reviews have probably notices a personal fondness for books that explain How Things Works. This explains a fascination with hard-Science-Fiction, techno-thrillers, scientific vulgarization and other documentary works. Hard sciences -physics, chemistry, biology, etc.- lend themselves particularly well to vulgarization given that they’re based on a set of fairly common theories and experimental body of proof.

    The “softer” sciences -history, sociology, psychology, etc.- are decidedly harder to quantify. Everyone has their own pet theories and the nature itself of social sciences makes it much harder to prove theorems by practical experiment. One of the aims of Jared Diamond’s excessively ambitious Guns, Germs and Steel is to provide a solid foundation for “the future of human history as a science”.

    It all starts with a very obvious question: Why was it that Europe conquered North America, and not vice-versa? Most high-school students can probably answer this question by pointing out the technological differences between the two civilizations. But that only brings up another question: Why was there such a significant difference? Was is because of Europe’s more numerous population? And why was that?

    Like a patient parent answering the endless “Why” questions of an inquisitive child, Diamond peels away all the layers of questioning until he can start from the very foundations of civilization. And, as he states in his introduction, the answers he brings forth are a conscious attempt to dispel all racial theories of history by highlighting environmental differences. Europeans were not smarter than American-Indians; they just happened to grow up at the right place.

    The best parts of Guns, Germs and Steel come early on, as Diamond lucidly explains how, for instance, the presence of large domesticable animals led to the rise of sedentary agriculture, of resistance to disease, of mass production. He explains the mechanisms of technological innovation. He shows that agriculture wasn’t necessarily an “obvious” choice to hunter-gatherers. His chapter on agriculture through enlightened selection (“How to make an Almond”) is, easily, one of the most mind-blowing vulgarization piece I’ve read in a long while. Also be sure to read his lucid explanation of how language is “invented”.

    Most of the book is simply that; a whirlwind explanation of 13,000 years of human history. It’s unusually readable for such a scholarly work. This book is going to end up on many college reading lists—indeed, on many general-interest reading lists too.

    Still, the book isn’t perfect. The fourth part (“Around the World in Five Chapters”) is crucial to Diamond’s thesis (It’s a set of practical applications to the theoretical instruments developed in the rest of the book) but is of such a specialized interest that it’s a noticeable notch below the interest sustained by the rest of the book. Also, in trying to dispel racial theories of civilization, Diamond doth protest too much, and ends up dangerously close to annoyance in overpraising non-western civilization. Finally -though a careful re-reading of the book might invalidate this criticism- Diamond’s praise of societies where innovation is encouraged (in “Necessity’s Mother”) might run counter to his central thesis of non-racial difference; at some point, equal societies make their choices (eg; democracy/totalitarism) and these choices take the environment out of the equation and brings back the debate on purely social grounds.

    Guns, Germs and Steel is a unique book, a ground-breaking study of civilizations as entities that’s nevertheless as compelling as it is thorough. It has already won the Pulitzer prize, has figured prominently on bestseller lists and seems destined to a respected status in both popular and specialized fields. Indeed, its gets top recommendations from this reviewer; read it!

  • Blue Justice, Jeannine Kadow

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Signet, 1998, 400 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-19588-4

    From time to time, it happens that an otherwise good novel suffers from one single wacky element, a part of it that just seems incongruous with what we expect, or what we consider to be “acceptable”. It happens that this single element destroys the novel, illustrating other structural flaws or simply turning the reviewer from an unbiased to a negative state of mind.

    Blue Justice has such an element, in the character of Maria Alvarez, “a gorgeous 19th Precinct beat cop with a license to kill… and kill again.” She not only the Police Commissioner’s daughter, but she’s also a flaming psychopath, serially sleeping with the whole NYPD police force, harassing co-workers and -oh yeah, that too- killing other police officers by the hearseload.

    It stretches, bends, twists and crooks believability not only to include such a character in a book, but to base a whole novel around such an element. The logical blunders are so big that they threaten to engulf the reader’s good faith. How are we to believe that such a twisted character could become a police(wo)man? How are we to accept the fact that she’s never been found out by any other person? How are we to gulp down the assumption that she killed almost a dozen police officers in a year and no one figured out that she was romantically involved with most -if not all- of these policemen? How should we react to the idea that she could go around harassing a fellow police officer (charging harassment, hanging dead eviscerated cats in his locker, charging rape then retracting it, sending ominous letters, making unpleasant phone calls, etc…) in complete impunity?

    These are the questions at the start of the novel. But then something quite wonderful happens; the narrative makes you accept it and you’re in for the ride. Blue Justice isn’t your usual cop novel; it twists the usual assumptions, takes a few large risks and ends up as a pretty interesting piece of work despite never being quite believable.

    Most of the novel’s strength is in the characters, from the thirty-year veteran Ed Gavin to rookie Jon Strega, tough-nails detective “Cue Ball” Ballantine and Ivy-league blond supercop Hansen, without forgiving psycho Alvarez. These are no simple caricatures, or movie cliché stereotypes. Struggling relationships, devious criminals and internal demons all vastly complicate our protagonists’ lives. Things never go quite as well as planned, never to the appropriate persons. If Hollywood would be to bring Blue Justice to the silver screen, critics would be running to their word processors in order to call it “brilliantly revisionist” and such.

    The premise of the book itself isn’t conventional. Veteran Gavin is clued in that a rash of police suicides (including his partner) isn’t as simple as it would seem, but even though he zeroes in on the killer’s identity, it’s never as simple as bringing in the handcuffs. Other things have to be attended to, and while these “other things” are mostly extrataneous to the remainder of the novel, they also constitute most of the atmosphere. In passing, we get a good look at the NYPD and its own little quirks and internal particularities.

    While Blue Justice never overcomes this initial feeling of oh-goodness-I-can’t-believe-it outrageousness, it still manages to pull itself together and deliver a good police procedural. The writing style is enjoyable, and the pacing is dynamic enough to compensate for other flaws. Maybe more interesting for jaded readers of the genre, Blue Justice is nevertheless worth a look. Just be ready to give some slack to the psycho killer.

  • Sea Strike, James H. Cobb

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Berkley, 1997, 351 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-425-16616-3

    Military techno-thrillers are usually written by men for men, starring men fighting against other men with carefully described weapons in imaginary wars taking place in the not-too-distant future. More attention is usually given to the geopolitics, the fancy weapons and the action scenes than to character development or fancy prose. It’s an unusually popular genre, at least if we judge it by its foremost practitioners: Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, Larry Bond have all spent some time on the bestseller charts, reaping the results of some pretty good efforts. With Sea Strike, James L. Cobb manages to produce a decent novel that perfectly fits into the genre, and provides good entertainment for any reader.

    Cobbs innovate within his field by featuring a female protagonist: Amanda Garrett is the captain of the USS Cunningham, a stealth destroyer featuring the latest in high-tech devices. It’s not the first time that the genre has seen major female characters (Clancy, for instance, has several strong female roles), but never so much at the forefront. Cobbs gets further points by convincingly building Commander Garrett as a reasonably realistic heroine. This reviewer was not enthused by the romantic subplot, but other readers might think otherwise.

    Sea Strike won’t turn off many readers by the difficulty of its prose style, which is still as efficiently functional as the best other novels of its genre. The technical descriptions are painlessly inserted, and the action scenes are detailed with the proper mix of detail and directness.

    Of course, all of this takes a second seat to original plotting and cool but interesting realism. Fortunately, Sea Strike performs equally well in both areas.

    In matters of geopolitics, Cobbs goes to good old China to find its antagonists, though things are made more interesting by a civil war involving not only Chinese dissidents, but also Taiwan. Though some passages dealing with internal Chinese matters could have been edited out of the novel, the development of the crisis is well-handled, doesn’t seem too outrageous (once you get around the idea of a Chinese civil war) and competently presents both the military and the diplomatic side of things.

    In terms of cool techno-gadgetry, Sea Strike remains in the realm of the believable, with only a few minor gadgets besides, of course, the USS Cunningham stealth destroyer itself. The gadgets are effectively used, however, and the technical jargon isn’t undecipherable.

    The emotional mark of distinction for this type of literature isn’t a sense of wonder, of loss or of affection, but a sense of cool novelty from the action scenes. The best techno-thrillers (like Payne Harrison’s Thunder of Erebus, or Harold Coyle’s Sword Point) all feature individual vignettes, neatly integrated in the action but at the same time standing on their own as mini-scenes of inherent coolness. They must be visually spectacular, technically innovative and not without a certain sense of panache and ironic humor. Sea Strike has a few of them, from the smashing demise of a Chinese nuclear submarine to a last-last-minute helicopter rescue. They don’t take Sea Strike to the classic level, but they certainly brings back some of the sheer fun of this type of novels.

    The end result is a novel that’s quite enjoyable. Normally, this wouldn’t warrant a recommendation, but given the sad late-nineties state of the military technothriller as compared to its heydays of the early nineties, Sea Strike is certainly worth picking up for fans of the genre. James H. Cobbs has proven his belonging to the genre, and we can only await his next novel.

  • Borderlands of Science, Charles Sheffield

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Baen, 1999, 367 pages, C$32.50 hc, ISBN 0-671-57836-7

    We live in interesting times. Everywhere you look, things are changing, and they’re changing at an accelerated rate. It used to be that a decade could pass without perceptible difference. Not anymore. Going back a decade from 1999 brings us to a world still locked in a cold war, without Internet, without decent personal computers, without quasi-classic cultural references like JURASSIC PARK and TITANIC. Anecdotal evidence aside, we are now collectively running along in a race called Progress.

    Most of this progress is fuelled, directly or not, by science and technology. In Borderlands of Science, noted scientist and SF author Charles Sheffield tries to establish what is the extent of today’s knowledge. “This book” writes Sheffield in his introduction, “defines the frontiers of today’s science.” This isn’t an easy task, and even though Sheffield makes valiant efforts, the results still fails short of his ambitions.

    Part of the problem, as Sheffield himself acknowledges, is that science is so mind-bogglingly all-inclusive and specialized to the point of rarefaction, that no sane individual can aspire to know all about it. Sheffield is, by formation, a physicist/mathematician with a body of experience in astronautics. This makes him an ideal writer to talk about physics and space exploration, but that doesn’t make him an authority in chemistry, biology or computer science. Indeed Borderlands of Science falters when it tries to dissect these subjects, an impression strengthened by the pell-mell organization of the book.

    The second problem of this book is that it’s targeted, not to a general audience, but to aspiring science-fiction writers. You would think that publisher Jim Baen, in his marketing genius, would aim for a layman’s audience numbering in the… oh… few millions. But instead, Sheffield passes his time pointing out potential “story ideas” where simply stating the state of current research would do just as well. Granted, this is an artifact of the book’s origin (it derives partly from a series of lectures given by Sheffield to a bunch of wanabee SF writers), but it’s still annoying to the (far numerous) readers without any interest in mining “story ideas” from this book.

    Another marketing misfire is more readily obvious, at least on the hardcover edition: As it is now common with Baen large editions, their art geniuses have slapped a coat of metallic paint on the cover, making it garishly unpleasant to look at. Of course, given the already-ugly nature of the illustration itself, this might have been done intentionally. Still, Borderlands of Science deserved a more restrained cover along the lines of most popular-science books.

    Even despite these various flaws, Borderlands of Science manages to be a pretty decent scientific vulgarization book. Sheffield writes with a certain amount of wit, and the result is a book that goes deeply into scientific jargon, but which always return before it’s too late. Even though the structure is a bit hesitant at times, there is a very complete table of content, index and many documented references.

    In short, a decent popular-science read for hard-SF fans.

    [January 2000: Bad news for Sheffield: The ideal limits-of-science book already exists, and is called Visions, by Michio Kaku. It actually begins with a question raised by Sheffield at the end of his book: “Is this the end of science?” and proceeds from there by saying that the basic discoveries have been nailed down, but that the science of mastery awaits… Read the review, or the book, for more details.]

  • Meg, Steve Alten

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Doubleday, 1997, 278 pages, C$31.95 hc, ISBN 0-385-48905-6

    There are two ways to write a novel. The first one is to reach into your personal experiences, pull out your opinions and emotions about life and write a honestly moving narrative that works for you first, and everyone else after. The second way is to tailor a product to the marketplace, designing the flow of the novel to appeal to a large public and really aim for a mass audience. In a nutshell, that’s supposed to be the difference between “literature” and “bestsellers”.

    Self-proclaimed artists will try to make you believe that writing literature is considerably harder than writing a bestseller. But is it really so?

    While there is some truth to the widely-held observation that bestsellers are more formulaic than other types of fiction, it still takes great skill to put together the elements of a successful mass-market novel.

    It’s almost a given that first, a bestseller needs an intriguing premise. Meg not only promises something similar to JAWS by loosening a shark upon an unsuspecting human population, but actually promises more than JAWS by featuring something much bigger: A twenty-ton, sixty-foot-long Carcharodon Megalodon. “Meg” to its friends. An escaped Jurassic-era relic of unheard-of proportions: It features a head as big as a pickup truck armed with nine-inch-long teeth “with the serrated edges of a stainless-steel knife.” [P.4] And, being a shark, it has all of the superior perceptive and motor skills of the world’s most enduring predator.

    The Meg is introduced in the first two chapters. The human characters come much later. There’s the brilliant-but-flawed protagonist Jonas Taylor (no points for predicting what happens to a hero with a surname like that,) a paleontologist with a deep-reaching trauma. There’s his wife, an ambitious journalist with plans to discredit her husband in order to divorce him with justification. (No point for guessing what happens to such a conniving woman.) There’s Terry Tanaka, a young Asian woman with something to prove. Plus the usual array of colorful supporting characters, whether they’re allies or not. They’re realized competently, well-within the usual standards of the genre.

    What happens with this premise and these characters is, like you’d expect, a book-long monster hunt. First Jonas has to go to the Meg, deep down at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. Then the Meg has to escape its natural habitat and wreak havoc, first in Hawaii then along the Californian coast. It’s all very exciting, just as we’d expect it.

    Ultimately, thrillers like Meg can be evaluated on their potential cinematographic strengths. And that where this novel truly shines. By the time one throwaway scene near the end basically destroys nine news helicopters in a mid-air crash, you can only grin in sadistic delight and buy the movie rights. A shark with a head as big as a pickup truck makes for memorable scenes!

    The remainder, characters, dialogue and psychological unsophistication, is just dressing on the cake. Meg isn’t JAWS, but it’s good enough to be a worthwhile read on its own. “Two Words: JURASSIC SHARK” says the end-cover blurb. Not a bad review, in a nutshell.

    [May 2007: I really tried to enjoy the next two entries in the Meg series, but they illustrate what happens to a good concept when you wring it dry. Both The Trench and Primal Waters fall into the trap ofdoing the same thing over and over again: The Meg gets loose, the Meg reappears and eats people, the Meg is captured, killed or driven away. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Primal Waters is a bit more interesting than the second tome thanks to some easy pot-shots at reality TV and a delirious scene involving baseball fans, but that’s about it. Plus, there’s something depressing about each novel beginning by driving accursed protagonist Jonas Taylor deeper in despair in order to give him some dramatic stakes. Alten: Let. It. Go.]