Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

In the one short week between graduation and the start of California Barbri I tried to cram in as much non-legal reading as possible. I got about halfway through Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, Wallace Stegner’s biography of John Wesley Powell-which I am thoroughly enjoying. I read Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress. I also finished Malcolm Gladwell’s new book: Outliers; The Story of Success. I fell in love with Gladwell’s writing when I read The Tipping Point back when I got home from my mission. Blink was possibly even better and so is Outliers. For those Freakonomics fans out there, Gladwell’s books are must reads.

I wish I had more time to get in the details of Outliers. I would especially like to compare Gladwell’s discussion of “the trouble with geniuses” with the mismatch effect, which I worked with as a research assistant for its discoverer a couple of summers ago. But, alas, that will have to wait until I am finished with the Bar. So instead, enjoy one of my favorite Gladwell speeches: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce.

Book Review: “God Has Made Us a Kingdom”: James Strang and the Midwest Mormons, by Vickie Cleverly Speek.

One victim of the current financial crisis was the Seagull Book and Tape on Santa Monica Blvd. This was an unfortunate loss as it was the only LDS themed book store in SoCal.

The only silver lining in L.A. Seagull Book’s demise was the massive fire sale during its final week. I doubt I ever would have bought this history of the Strangites if it hadn’t been so cheep but Speek’s work would have been well worth the list price.

The story of the Srangites is the most fascinating of all of the Mormon break-off sects. (spoiler alert! I know this is nonfiction but the story twists and turns much like an airport page-turner. so if you want to be surprized by the book itself you should stop reading now). James Strang was a relatively new convert to the church when Joseph Smith was killed. Shortly after the prophet’s death Strang showed up in Nauvoo with a “letter of appointment” wherein, Strang clamed, Joseph had named Strang as his heir. He also claimed that an angel appeared to him and ordained him to that role at the exact moment of the prophet’s martyrdom. Thus Strang became a key player in the succession crisis. Because of his claims, Strang was excommunicated by Brigham Young whereupon he promptly started his own church from which he then excommunicated Young.

James Jesse Strang (Daguerreotype)

Strang had the tendency to draw the most controversial Mormon figures into his version of the faith. These included John C. Bennett (quite possibly the most notorious apostate of all Mormon history) and William Smith (Joseph’s volatile and often violent brother). Strang moved his followers to Voree, Wisconsin where like Smith he discovered ancient metal plates that he then translated into The Rajah Manchou of Vorito. This was a sort of Moroni-esque chronicle of the last man left of civilization prophesying Strang’s rise to the head of the church. Strang also started secret society called the Order of the Illuminati (not to be confused with Dan Brown) that consisted of an elaborate system of secret codes and initiation rights.

Reproduction of the Voree Plates

Though one of Strang’s major platforms for his new church had been opposition to polygamy,  shortly after becoming a prophet he decided that he was suddenly ok with it. He married Elvira Field as his second wife. In order to keep this marriage secret, she changed her name to Charles Douglass and she became Strang's nephew. Elvira also cut her hair and disguised herself as a man. “Charlie” became prophet’s missionary companion and acted as his secretary as the two toured the eastern states as a secret honeymoon. Some of Strang’s followers began to suspect the truth behind his nephew and, disturbed by this discovery, left the church.

Elvira Feild as Charles Douglass

Strang moved his followers to Beaver Island on the north end of Lake Michigan were he set up his kingdom. He made himself king in an elaborate coronation ceremony that shocked some of his followers. Many people believe that Strang and his followers were the true identity behind a mysterious band of pirates that plagued the great lakes during this period. They were accused of as much by their gentile neighbors and an all out war unfolded between the two groups on the lake. There were shootouts between boats, high-speed chases across the ice, an attempt by the gentiles to maroon a group of Strangites on remote island, and their narrow escape from this plot. The war culminated with the assassination of Strang by some of his former followers on a pier in Beaver Island’s harbor. The assassins, though their identities were known, were never brought to justice by a corrupt legal system that endorsed their actions.

Map of Mormon Settlements on Beaver island

After the prophet’s death his sheep wee scattered, the largest group joining the Reorganized Church, or “Josephites,” a few joining the Utah Church, or “Brighamites,” and many leaving Mormonism altogether. Strang’s most loyal followers waited for a successor to appear. They are still waiting.

God Has Made Us a Kingdom is great reading. Speek skillfully tells one of the most interesting stories in the history of Mormonism.

Book Review: “Mine Angels Round About”: Mormon Missionary Evacuation From West Germany ~ 1939, by Terry Bohle Montague

My mom sent me this one for Valentine’s Day. The story of the missionary evacuation of Europe under the advancing clouds of the Nazi war machine has a special interest to my family. My grandfather Mark B. Garff was a young mission president in Denmark when the war broke out. As Europe drew its last breath before it was plunged into World War II, Denmark was one of the last places where people could escape from the Continent. As a result Mark Garff was instrumental in getting the missionaries home safely as the war broke out.
This book is not really his story but is the story of some of the missionaries who were forced to flee from the war. To tell her narrative Montague focuses on the personal accounts of these missionaries, reconstructing the evacuation from journals and personal interviews. The result is an often suspenseful story of the panic, chaos, wrong turns, and narrow escapes that Mormon missionaries experienced as they fled Nazi Germany. Some of the more interesting trials experienced by these missionaries include: piloting through minefields, commandeering a train, and getting arrested by Nazi officers. Many of these missionaries also witnessed first hand the plight of Jewish Germans as they tried to escape Hitler’s plans.

I recommend it if you can find a copy.

Book Review: Massacre at Mountain Meadows by Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, and Glen M. Leonard

“There is an unclean thing, born and nursed on our soil, polluting our soil, which must be driven away, not kept to destroy us.” Sophocles, Oedipus The King Act I

In the southwest corner of Utah, along Highway18, sits an alpine valley called the Mountain Meadows. It is a quiet place, out of the way from any major traffic. There are a few farms that sprawl across portions the valley but it is, by and large, undeveloped. At an altitude of nearly 6,000 feet the valley is a pleasant place to escape the summer heat that beats down on the surrounding dessert. In 1857 this valley was the scene of one of the most tragic events in the history of the West. That year a group of Mormon settlers disarmed a California-bound wagon train under a flag of truce and then systematically slaughtered approximately 120 men, women, and children.

For several years after the massacre fragments of clothing and the sun-bleached bones of victims lay strewn across the meadows, their shallow mass graves having been unearthed by coyotes. In southern Utah legends cropped up after the massacre about herds of wild cattle haunting the region surrounding the spot where their masters were slaughtered. Even the land itself seemed to bear a mark of guilt as a testament to the terrible crime that occurred there. In the two decades following the tragedy, natural erosion replaced the lush grasses of the meadows with scrub oak and sage, carved deep gullies across the fields, and turned the little rivulet that ran through the valley into a wide arroyo. Even the natural spring was replaced with “a sunken pool of slimy, filthy water.” Some said that this transformation was a “cu[r]se of God.” But much more pronounced than any supposed effects on the land have been the guilt and shame that have been experienced by the Latter-day Saint and local communities to this day.

Nearly one hundred years after the event Southern Utah historian and Mormon Juanita Brooks referred to the Mountain Meadows Massacre as “a ghost that will not be laid.” She continued: “Again and again, year after year, it stalks abroad to cast its shadow across some history or to haunt the pages of some novel...until it has been made the most important episode in the state [of Utah], eclipsing every achievement and staining every accomplishment.” The feelings of guilt associated with the massacre have never fully been put to rest. Mormons born many decades after the event feel pains of guilt and shame at its very mention. Collective guilt on the part of the Mormon faith has been persistently laid at the feet of its adherents by historians, novelists, and film makers ever since the event.

It has now been 150 years since the Massacre and it appears that Mormonism is finally beginning to come to some kind of terms with the event. The new book, Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy is a significant part of this reconciliation. This has been one the most important publications in Mormon studies in the past few years. The historical work done by the authors is first rate. The reasoning behind their conclusions is clear and transparent. Over one third of the book is citations and footnotes. This basically allows diligent readers to do their own history to check the book’s conclusions. This transparency is refreshing in any work of history but it is especially important with any work dealing with the subject of the massacre, where there is so much disagreement about even the fundamental facts concerning the tragedy.

In the book’s introduction the authors stated: “Only complete and honest evaluation of the tragedy can bring the trust necessary for lasting good will. Only then can there be catharsis.” I find the use of the term “catharsis” particularly apropos. Catharsis is the purging or cleansing of the tragic emotions. Understanding the massacre in the context of cathartic reconciliation provides an effective way to resolve the feelings of collective guilt as well as to purge the state being collectively guilty.

In 2001 the church commissioned three historians to write a history of the massacre. This history was not to be a response to prior histories but rather rely on original documents. To this end the church provided an enormous amount funding for original research. The church also wanted full disclosure of all the material that it possessed. The church opened up all of its archives for the project. These included the personal recollections that had been collected by Assistant Church Historian Andrew Jensen over one hundred years before and had up until this time been kept from the public. Perhaps most significantly, the church surrendered editorial control over the manuscript, allowing the historians to do their work without supervision.

The book has been a major hit among L.D.S. faithful. The first printing of 5,000 copies sold out before it was even released. As of November 27, 2008 (only two months after its initial release) book was already in its fifth printing, having sold more than 44,000 copies, most of them in Utah. The narrative of Massacre at Mountain Meadows proceeds like a Greek tragedy. As the authors move through the events the motivations of the perpetrators pervade the background. The book describes, in terrifying detail, how decent ordinary people were able to let themselves murder innocent men, women and children.

The institutional support for this book and it’s acceptance among mainstream Latter-day Saints shows a willingness on the part of the church and its members to come to terms with the massacre. This reconciliation is just beginning. But as Mormonism rediscovers the Mountain Meadows Massacre, its adherents are forced to confront the question of what they would have done had they been there. The difficult part of this is realizing that the perpetrators cannot simply be dismissed as evil, violent men. The perpetrators lived good decent honorable lives before the massacre, committed a terrible atrocity, and then returned to living good decent honorable lives. Anyone who sees this fact is forced to ask the question; “would I have acted any different in the circumstances?” I believe that by asking this question is the first step to healing the wounds left by the tragedy. When this question is honestly asked, we can purge whatever part of us may have caused us to do what the murderers if we had been in their situation so that we will never again repeat the tragic mistakes of our collective past.

Richard Turley, one of the co-authors Massacre at Mountain Meadows, highlighted the need for an emotional understanding and connection with the perpetrators; “and I think that those emotions that we felt are important to understanding what really happened. I think sometimes people try to tell the story of what happened at Mountain Meadows from a pedestal of righteous indignation that allows them to separate themselves form those emotions and if they never felt what happened there they don’t really understand it.” In Greek tragedy the end of the tragedy is catharsis, a cleansing or purgation of the tragic emotions of pity and fear. It is by going through the process that the tragedy evokes, that one reaches catharsis. This is not easy or always pleasant. The purpose of tragedy is to bring to the surface negative emotions so that they can then be cleansed from the spectator. Aristotle remarked: “Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper catharsis of these emotions.” C.S. Lewis likewise remarked: “Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality.” I believe that this is because literature puts us in the position to feel and experience our shared identity with other people. By experiencing their crimes, sins, and flaws we identify whatever shared nature and, hence shared guilt, we have with others. By seeing a commonality with tragic figures we begin to understand the flawed parts of our own nature. It is then that the healing can begin. It is this process that can bring catharsis.

Book Review: People of Paradox a History of Mormon Culture by Terryl Givens

I read By the Hand of Mormon a couple of years ago and was completely drawn into it. Givens brings both a rigorous academic approach and refreshing insight to the field of Mormon studies. Not to mention the fact that he is a really good writer. People of Paradox is the perfect example of this. Givens is the Jared Diamond of Mormonism, a true polymath. He skillfully weaves the disciplines of history, philosophy, literary criticism, and theology into a seamless and compelling investigation of Mormon culture.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of this book is Givens’ characterization of Mormonism as consisting of a series of paradoxes instead of a set of fixed doctrines. This characterization is an effective way to deal with Mormonism’s non-creedal nature.

In the first part of the book Givens describes four paradoxes that he sees as essential to the Mormon experience. He then uses these four paradoxes to frame and explore the various developments in Mormon culture over the last 180 years. I thought that he would have to gerrymander the developments in Mormon culture to make them fit within these paradoxes. Instead the discussion feels natural and the relationships between the paradoxes and these events ends up being compellingly logical.

I was most interested in his history of Mormon intellectual pursuits but found all of his histories (music and dance, literature, architecture and city planning, theater, and visual arts) to be fascinating.

I could go on and on about this book but finals are approaching so I’ll get back to work.

The Book According to Garff: The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi

Few books have ever haunted me the way this one has. This is Levi’s final meditation on the horrors of the Holocaust. Levi was interned in Auschwitz and witnessed firsthand the terrible atrocities that occurred there. The Drowned and the saved is his attempt to understand what went on. In so doing he tries to understand not only the victims but the perpetrators as well. This is not a pleasant experience. Like everyone, I have been acquainted with multiple accounts and retellings of the events of the Holocaust. But this is something else entirely. Levi is not chronicling the events he witnessed but rather exploring the motivations behind them and plumbing the depths of their effects on the souls of the victims. This makes the investigation all the more painful. Shortly after writing this book the author threw himself off a fourth-story balcony.

The title is a reference to the fact that the true story of the holocaust will never be told and could never be fully understood. This is because those who experienced its deepest horrors were drowned by them. “The destruction brought to an end, the job completed, was not told by anyone, just as no one ever returned to describe his own death. Even if they had paper and pen the drowned would not have testified because their death had begun before that of their body.”As depressing as I have made this book sound it is also beautiful and powerful. There were many discussions I found to be particularly profound. Chief among these is Levi’s effort to understand what he calls “the grey zone.” This is where good meets evil in the same individual at the same time, a phenomenon that was perhaps more evident in concentration camps than it has been anywhere else in history. The Nazi’s sought to bring their captives as far into the grey zone as possible by forcing them to commit atrocities against their fellow prisoners. Levi assumes their voice to describe their motivations for doing this: “We, the master race, are you destroyers, but you are no better than we are; if we so wish, and we do so wish, we can destroy not only your bodies but also your souls, just as we have destroyed ours.” This discussion is significant because everyone is susceptible to slip into their own grey zone.

“…we too are so dazzled by power and prestige as to forget our essential fragility. Willingly or unwillingly we come to terms with this power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting.”

Book Review: The Golden Chord by Paul Genesse

I don’t read much fantasy. Aside from being a huge Tolkien fan I’ve only ever delved into a handful of other fantasy series.’ My mom’s friend’s husband just wrote this book and gave me a free copy so I put in the beach bag along with the others I’m reading (we do a lot of reading at the beach but alas, I will never be tan like April is). Overall I would say the Golden Chord is a good book and worth reading. Genesse is a new writer and this often shows in his writing especially when he occasionally relies upon the crutch of clichés. The protagonist was someone who felt very real and Genesse did a good job of getting the reader to sympathize with and care about him. Another thing that Genesse did very well was to create a unique and thought provoking world.

Geneses’ world consists of a series of plateaus that are elevated over a sea of clouds that cover what is known only as ‘the Void.’ This Void is apparently the source of all the dragons and other flying beasts that constantly plague the inhabitants of the plateaus who live in caves or under sheltering trees to protect themselves from these ‘aevians’ (I don’t know if Genesse was the first person to come up with that title or not, but it’s a good one).
Here are some photos I took from a plane above central Utah. I imagine that this is what the view of the Void from Cliffton looks like.

Even thought The plot was, at some points, kind of standard (too much of a coming of age story as well as the standard journey to the dragon’s lair) and I thought that the love story was a little boring (too young adult) The Golden Chord was very good read and I will definitely be looking for the sequel (all fantasy novels have sequels because fantasy writers can never condense their ideas into just one book). I would recommend the book to anyone looking for an entertaining fantasy read.

Here are my hopes and predictions for the next books: I hope the hero/s have to actually journey down into the Void. There could be a whole cool new world down there. I predict that Drake will have to use both his own and Ethan’s thorn bolts in a final battle of some kind (or Ethan’s spirit will somehow use it to protect Drake). I also bet that there will be some sort of unification between the two main religions as well as their respective male and female deities. I predict that the dark chord that binds Ethan and drake will later be discovered to be a golden chord (I thought for sure that was how this book was going to end). I hope that either the series is only a few books longer or that the books remain short. I get annoyed when I start a series only to have the author drag it out for ten books, especially if each volume is like 800 pages long. I only have so much time people!

Book Review: Legacy of Ashes; The History of The CIA by Tim Weiner

This is probably one of the most important history books to come out in recent memory though it has certainly been overshadowed by the immensely popular John Adams and Team of Rivals. Legacy of Ashes is a readable, engaging book that contains loads of information crucial to understanding twentieth century American and world history. That being said, Wiener’s biases are so patently obvious at times that he sometimes borders on silliness. However what his biases are is instantly obvious (the book is part op-ed piece) so that you can just read past them. His biases and dramatics can, in the end, be forgiven because they make the book that much more interesting and readable. Weiner combines countless firsthand interviews of the most significant figures in American intelligence with mounds of declassified documents into a compelling and disturbing narrative.

Wiener has the tendency to be a bit overdramatic. This makes for weaker history but more interesting reading. When this dramaticism combines with his biases he often makes points that are outright ridiculous. For example one of these occurs when he is discussing the CIA sabotage of the Line X espionage group. Line X was set up by the KGB as a way to steal American technological innovations; including even the Apollo Space Program. When the CIA discovered Line X they set up a complex network to systematically feed the Soviets faulty technology. The CIA even gave the KGB defective pressure monitoring software that caused a Soviet gas pipeline to explode. Weiner concludes his discussion of this program by noting on page 387: “had the tables been turned, it could have been seen as an act of terror.” Really? I guess he is trying to make the point that America considers any effort against it an act of terror. But really? The Soviets were stealing American technology so we simply sent the spies bad information. We didn’t blow that pipeline up. The Soviets did by not doing their own research and relying on what they had stolen from others.

Occasionally Weiner omits his sources where he shouldn’t, like this statement on page 412 about former director Bill Casey “After he died on May 6, at age seventy-four, his own bishop denounced him from the pulpit at his funeral, as Presidents Reagan and Nixon listened in silence.” Here is another classic example of Weiner’s dramatic (perhaps overly so) writhing style. This is absolutely fascinating. I wonder what the bishop actually said. Unfortunately, in my edition at least, there is no source or footnote as to what the bishop actually said in his funereal. The bit about Reagan and Nixon sitting in silence certainly makes for good drama but it is perhaps a bit unfair. The point that Wiener is trying to make is that much of the evil associated with Casey was really their fault and he was a sort of ‘fall guy’ for their decisions. The author condemms their silence simply from the fact that they attended his funeral (of course they sat in silence during the sermon, it would be unbelievably rude to speak up at any time). I can’t help but wonder if Carter or Ford were also there and, if so, why Weiner didn’t include them as well. I’m probably being overly critical here because he does include over 150 pages of sources and he can’t be expected to include it all. I just have the haunting suspicion that maybe the bishop’s words weren’t quite as damning as Weiner suggests.

One more criticism and then I’m done, I promise. Sometimes Weiner is a bit too harsh on the CIA’s analysis. Take for example the faulty intelligence concerning Iraq’s weapons of mass-destruction. Weiner recounts the defection of Saddam’s son-in-law who informed the agency that Saddam had destroyed his weapons of mass-destruction. Weiner states “The CIA disregarded what he said, judging it as deception. The fact that [the son-in-law] went back to Iraq and was assassinated by his father-in-law did not alter the agency’s belief.” Weiner is making the point that the CIA was blind to evidence that went against the conclusions that it had already arrived at. This point indeed has a lot of validity. But in this case it is not fair. The KGB used this tactic of assassinating and pretending to assassinate or imprison its own disinformation agents all the time in order to try and convince the CIA that these disinformation agents were genuine. It would certainly be consistent for Saddam to use this same tactic in order to convince the Agency that he had in fact destroyed his weapons of mass-destruction.

I was fascinated by Weiner’s suggestion that the CIA is becoming an “intelligence-industrial complex” alluding to the military-industrial complex warned against by Eisenhower. I hope that he will explore this idea more in a follow up book. Another interesting revelation form this book is how different the real CIA is from the one that everyone imagines. I had always assumed that the CIA was this quasi-omnipotent-omnipresent-all-knowing organization that had a good handle on world affairs. Nothing could be further from the truth. The agency was almost completely blind to anything happening inside the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In fact when the Ayatollah’s revolutionaries seized the CIA station in Tehran they were shocked by how impotent the agency had been. The radical Islamists had jus assumed that the CIA had almost complete control of Iran. But in fact the agency had only a handful of inexperienced agents with extremely limited information and almost no knowledge of the culture and language of Iran. In fact the Tehran station was so weak that the revolutionaries were offended.

Legacy of Ashes got me thinking about the fundamental paradox at the heart of the CIA (something that Weiner discusses with great insight): How do you engage in intelligence and espionage, which are absolutely dependent on secrecy and limited oversight, in a free and open society? Most of the terrible things that happened as a result of the CIA were due to this paradox. Directors lied to the presidents that oversaw them. The CIA lied to the American public. The agency constantly broke the law almost with impunity. Weiner quotes General Magruder on page 12: “Clandestine operations involve a constant breaking of all the rules…To put it baldly, such operations are necessarily extra-legal and sometimes illegal.” The core of the American democracy is the rule of law. In a democratic society all people must be subject to the law. I find it telling that the highest authority in the land is not an individual or even a body of government officials but is a law. The Constitution is the supreme authority over the U.S. Government. It is incompatible with our democratic system that officials or anyone for that matter be permitted to break the laws of our land. It is absolutely essential that the people of the nation accurately know what the government that rules them is up to in order to make sure that they are following the law. And when it comes to the CIA you have a serious problem because if the public knows what the CIA is up to the agency’s purpose is completely undermined.

This was not a problem, at least not in the same way, for the KGB. The government that they operated under was already by its nature secret. In America the public has always had a good deal of information about what its government is up to. For example the federal government as well as all state governments have freedom of information acts or public records laws. These statutes compel government officials to surrender information to any citizen that requests it with few exceptions (there are exceptions for national security reasons that do protect most of the intelligence info). Even aside from FOIA laws and the effective domestic media our government has more leaks than a colander. One of the reasons that the KGB was often more successful in espionage and intelligence than the CIA stems from the fact that KGB secrets remained secrets.

In our democracy ultimately the CIA must be accountable to the American people. This is virtually impossible to do with out compromising all legitimate missions the CIA is caring out. I can quickly get the names and contact information on just about any government official. If it were this easy to do this with the members of the intelligence community they would all be killed. Furthermore, the American people may not fully understand the reasons for certain operations that may on the face seem expensive, pointless, futile, or even abhorrent. The apparent answer to this is that you have elected officials do the monitoring. But these same problems exist with elected officials. Furthermore, these elected officials can not be held accountable for their oversight of covert operations if these operations remain secret from the public. Where do you draw the line? Certainly you can’t have the CIA meddling around the world as if it were a toy with zero accountability. But in order to have accountability you must have accurate knowledge. But if knowledge of intelligence activities is widespread they losses all effectiveness. In essence; intelligence ceases to be intelligence.

Book Review: Magic Street by Orson Scott Card

Iv'e always been a big fan of the Ender series’ and every once in a while I dabble into another of Card’s books. My brother Mike gave me this one a while back but I didn’t get to in until now. April and I read this one together as well. Our two-person-book club seems to be off to a good start. As a book club field trip we went around and saw the spots where the events of the book happen. They are all within a few miles of our house and the dogs could always use another walk. I think I liked the book more than April but I can still only give it a mixed review.

First what I liked. I loved the alternate fantasy world of Los Angeles. It was a lot of fun to imagine the terrain that surrounds me as being wild and devoid of all the concrete. I also loved the sense of dread that occasionally carried the narrative. Card is good at horror. His short horror stories are actually pretty scary (something that is very hard to do in print). The first chapter of Magic Street is thoroughly creepy and instantly got me into the story.

My favorite aspect of the story was that of Word. He becomes this sort of faith healer/prophet but is unsure of whether his abilities come from God or from some more sinister source. I would have liked to see this line developed a little more. I wanted to see him struggle more with the corrupting forces of fame and power and really have to dig deep to reject it. I guess I’m starting to drift into what I didn’t like about the book. I wish Card wouldn’t have borrowed so much from Midsummer’s night’s dream. But at least he made sure to explicitly alert the reader to the fact that he was doing this. I also thought that the sex scene seemed a bit contrived and really only existed as a way of advancing the plot. It was just a little out of place and it made me loose attention.

Magic Street was nevertheless a fun read so I give it a mild recommendation. But I may be a bit biased because I live where it takes place.

Most of the events take place in an area called Baldwin Hills. Baldwin Hills is just south of our apartment. It is an affluent, mostly African American, neighborhood that is sometimes called the black Beverly Hills.

Cloverdale in Baldwin Hills

Mack’s house

The drain pipe where Ceese finds Mack

Yolanda’s house

Downtown with Yolanda’s house, the hairpin turn, and the field

Word’s house

See's Candies

Avenue of the Stars Olympic Blvd Overpass

The scene of the last battle in Century City. The building behind the battlefield is in Die Hard.

Book Review: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I’m not sure whether or not I will also review the fiction I’m reading (I usually read one or two nonfiction and one fiction book at the same time). I don’t consider my self a lit critic and I don’t want this blog to turn into a review site (that’s why I refrain from reviewing movies and albums until after the end of the year, also if April started reviewing every book she reads 80% of the posts would be book reviews). But here goes anyway.

Crime and Punishment was one of those classics that for some reason I never got around to reading until now. I stole the book from my brother Kevin when he left for his mission a couple of years ago. After that it just sat on my shelf, making me look smart. Not until recently did I actually pull it out of our bookcase. April and I read it together, trading it back and forth and having our own mini book club. This was a lot of fun and also helped us to remember characters and plot developments.

Crime and Punishment is probably the best work of fiction that I’ve read since I finished Angle of Repose a few years ago. Dostoevsky’s prose is not as beautiful as Stegner’s or Steinbeck’s, for that matter (though some of this was likely lost in translation). Still, I have never read a book that did a better job of putting me inside the head of the protagonist, a protagonist who is a murderer. It is amazing how realistically his thought process is laid out for the reader. You really get to follow this guy through his rationalization. Importantly this book shows how good people can do horrible things.

Crime and Punishment also has a healthy share of page turning suspense. Dostoevsky’s writing left me guessing and was I surprised by most of the twists and turns. The cat and mouse between the protagonist and the detective is fantastic. The timing that Dostoevsky uses in their dialogue is perfect.

Towards the end of the book there are some touching sequences. And throughout the narrative a strong sense of reality pervades. It was fun to revisit Russia in literary form. I was there ‘literary-ily’ last summer when I read Master and Margarita. Some day I will go there for real. Both novels have something of a similar feel though they are radically different in almost every other respect. Master and Margarita is more of a dark fantasy novel, a retelling of the Faust legend. In both books I struggled to keep track of the Russian names. Fortunately the Pevear and Volokhonsky edition that I used has a helpful table of names at the front. This edition also has translators’ footnotes which are helpful in understanding not only translation issues but references to places and people as well as for understanding the context of many of the events and references in the work.

Youtube of the week: Filipino thriller

Just about everyone on the planet has seen this by now. But it takes me back to my mission where I visited a couple of Filipino prisons and some mental institutions as well. I served in this area called Mandaluyong in the middle of Manila where there are so many prisons and mental institutions that the joke, when anyone says that they are from Mandaluong, is to ask them “sa loob ba?” (from inside?). The conditions inside these places were nightmarish. We once had an investigator who was committed to the largest such mental institution by his aunt as retaliation for listening to missionaries. We went to visit him. He was in one of many large rooms where he and about a hundred other people lay chained to beds that were jammed next to each other. There were people howling and screaming. We got his aunt to let him out after a couple of weeks. As far as I know he never did join the church. But on a lighter note here are prison inmates in Cebu which is 365 miles south of Manila doing their famous Thriller reenactment.

Book Review: Mind of the Market by Michael Shermer

This book is an attempt by the author to understand the market through the lens of evolutionary theory. Shermer uses the term “evolutionary economics” to describe this enterprise. Shermer is a good story teller and he does a good job of explaining cutting edge science in a way that is both accessible and interesting. Unfortunately, towards the end of the book, Shermer’s narrative peters out into an op-ed piece in favor of libertarianism. Perhaps most surprisingly Shermer introduces what he calls the “principle of freedom”, that we are free to act as long as it doesn’t interfere with the freedom of others, without any argument or justification whatsoever. Instead it is almost presented as some sort of indisputable maxim. When he combines this maxim with his discussion of evolutionary economics what he ends up with is merely an argument for less government control over the economy. I wish instead that he would have ended the book by drawing conclusions from his earlier discussion alone. I think that if he would have done this he could have had something that would have really been useful for trying to understand how the market works.
Throughout the book Shermer argues that there is a moral side to the market as a result of our evolutionary past. While his arguments are interesting as is the science behind them, the same conclusion can be drawn from merely reflecting on the necessary nature of the market. This is because a moral component is necessary for the market to exist at all. Of course the foundation of the market is greed. This is true but it is only half the story. Self interest is what ultimately drives the market but there is something else going on as well. Just as the market could not exist without self interest it could not exist without trust either. Every market transaction entails trust. We must trust the other party to at least some extent to trade with them. Because this trust is absolutely necessary for the market to exist the market is built on trust as much as it is on greed. Without this trust the market would not exist because no one would enter into it in the first place. This is not surprising because it reflects human nature itself. True, we are inherently self interested but we are also inherently moral. Game theory assumes that there is no trust in the transactions. As a result its application to financial markets is limited. Though it elegantly explains how selfishness works it does not account for the other half of the picture. Take for example the prisoner’s dilemma, perhaps the core illustration of game theory. For the dilemma to work you must assume that the prisoners are amoral and that they do not trust each other. This has always been a problem for me as I’ve studied the dilemma. It seems that in the real world the prisoners would likely be friends and therefore would trust each other and want to help each other out. We don’t get into prisoner’s dilemmas with our family and friends. And I do not believe that we completely get in them with our adversaries either. Illustrating this point is the relationship between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during the cold war. Even between these two arch-nemeses in the battle for word power there was a degree of mutual trust. This trust is the reason that the world still exists today. Mathematician John Von Neumann was one of the developers of game theory and a believer in the principles of rational self-interest. He was also an adviser to Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. When the Soviets showed the first signs of developing nuclear weapons, he urged the president to bomb the Russians into oblivion. Game theory, he said, required it. It’s easy to see how he arrived at this conclusion. Either the Soviets were going to unleash their arsenal on us or they were not. If they did, at least we would both have been reduced to ashes and therefore on equal footing with each other. And If they did not send the apocalypse our way, then we would have won the cold war and earned the title of “worlds only superpower.” What Von Neumann failed to recognize was the other half of the equation; trust. As a result of this trust the two superpowers were able to resolve the dilemma, at least partially anyway, by choosing the best over all option, mutual preservation. Game theory certainly does describe many of the problems that do exist in the market. The question then is how can we use the moral tendencies of the market to counter its greedy, oppressive, and self-destructive dark side? As usual I digress. This was an entertaining read; it just felt like it could have been much more.

YouTube of the week: All this talk of libertarianism has reminded me of my many encounters with Randian Objectivism (I know they’re not the same thing). This video has been circulating around the various LDS philosophers societies for a few months now. It Synthesizes Ayn Rand, Immanuel Kant, and Mormon Missionaries.