Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Rating 2.5

T.E. Lawrence was an officer in the British army before and during WW1.  His story takes place in Arab states including what are now Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others.  He is obviously a well-educated man, though his story-telling skills are typical of his era and therefore somewhat tedious and difficult for a 21st century reader accustomed to tweets and instant gratification.  

Despite the fact that his story was made into a movie (Lawrence of Arabia) and is probably quite a tale, I found that to read it was actually unrewarding.  The text is about 600 pages, though after 45 pages I gave up.   The book begins without a story.  He uses high-falutin prose to present his list of seemingly unconnected details, almost no character development, no hero, no villain, and no obvious goal. There are some mildly interesting facts about the culture and politics of the people in that part of the world, though these tidbits were not a sufficient reward to slog through such Victorian-style British text.   I presume that at some point the author settles down to tell an actual story, though my attention span could not stretch that far. 

The Blue Nile

by Alan Moorehead

Rating: 4.3

The Nile is the world’s longest river and is fed by its two main tributaries, the Blue Nile and the White Nile.  The Blue Nile is shorter though supplies over 80% of the water in the Nile.  Alan Moorehead writes an interesting and at times poetic story of the characters and events that comprise the search for the source of the blue Nile.  

Beginning with a Scotsman named James Bruce he details the many European characters who braved deserts, primitive and hostile natives, and brutally hot weather to to find the elusive source of this mighty river.  I read the book several months before writing this review, so I’ve forgotten many of the details.  However I do recall that it was a well-told story, very interesting, and at times poetic.  Moorehead seemed to have good historical perspective and sensitivity to many of the extraordinary events on the Nile during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  He writes well, keep the story moving, providing just the right amount of detail and just the right amount of sharp-eyed observation.

His telling of Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt is excellent, as well as his story of the little-known Theodore, Emporer of Ethiopia (a most peculiar madman).  His depiction of the armed battle between Theodore’s army and the British army alone makes the book worthwhile, though there are many other episodes to keep the reader’s attention.    

The Fat Tail

by Ian Bremmer

Rating 3.8

Bremmer runs a firm specializing in analysis of business risks and opportunities for international companies.  His firm advises big companies on political and related issues they might face around the globe.  If you’re considering building a factory in Botswana, he’s the guy to go to for advice.

Bremmer has a wealth of knowledge and perspective on the realities and complexities of today’s global economy.  In this book he attempts to demonstrate how financial factors are just one of the many issues to consider in decisions of where to locate your business.   He cites numerous examples of the types of upheaval and threats faced by businesses everywhere.  In similar fashion to the book ‘Black Swan’, he points out that revolution, military coup, expropriation and other presumed outlier events actually occur far more frequently than imagined.  

The same can be said for stock returns, in which the so-called ‘normal curve’ envisioned by statistical theory is just that: a theory.  Reality shows that the tails of the curve, as measured by the 3rd moment of a population of data (kurtosis), exhibits far more occurrences than predicted by the normal curve.  To express this in the vernacular, shit happens way more than expected.

At the time of writing this review it’s been over a year since reading the book, so many details are fuzzy.  However I do recall that the information was worthwhile, though his writing skills a bit lacking.

Men to Match My Mountains

by Irving Stone

published 1987

rating: 4.2

Irving Stone tells the many stories that comprise the settling of what is now the western United States, primary in California, Colorado, Utah and Nevada.  He covers the period from shortly before the gold rush (1849) to  1900.

Stone assembles hundreds of episodes both large and small, from the humorous to the bloody, the tragic to the heroic.  Being born and raised in San Francisco and having lived in Colorado for the past 10 years made this book a bit more fun for me as I learned the source of many familiar names.  The movers and shakers of the early west had streets and other public places named in their memory.

As a historical review of an extended period and large geographical area, this is not a neat or tidy story with a hero, a goal, a struggle and an outcome.  Rather it is a mosaic of stories and events spread over decades, the result of which is realization of the manifest destiny.  

The early days in California are covered, with descriptions of the Californios, who were Mexican citizens when what is now the southwestern U.S. was owned by Mexico, and had been owned by Spain just a few decades earlier.  Mexico was not really interested in this territory, paid little attention to it and provided even fewer resources.  To reach this area traveling west required a truly life-threatening journey across hostile terrain inhabited by sometimes hostile Indians.  It was generally faster and safer to sail to Panama, cross that narrow land mass, then sail to California, or to sail all the way around Cape Horn.  

Monterey was the seat of government back then, until gold was discovered in 1848, and mining began in earnest in 1949, bringing fortune seekers of every kind from around the world.  This boom transformed San Francisco from a few sand dunes and tents into a thriving city in the 1850s.  A few years later gold and silver were discovered in Nevada, transforming that area into a temporary boom community, and a bit later in Colorado.

There is much coverage of the Mormon settlement of Utah and their conflicts with the rest of the U.S. over the issue of polygamy.  There were horrific violent episodes committed by both sides of this dispute, and it was not until 1896, some twenty years after the death of founder Brigham Young, that Utah finally realized its goal of statehood.  To achieve this privilege they had to relinquish their legal right to polygamy.

The number of interesting and noteworthy characters are too numerous for this short review, though here are some of the more memorable ones:  Collis Huntington was the one of the Big Four who owned the first transcontinental railroad (along with Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford and Mark Hopkins).   He was a shrewd, ruthless business man with not a shred of charitable impulse and hellbent on acquiring as much money and power as possible until the day he died.  He owned all California elected officials, most newspapers and many in the U.S. legislature.  The outrage over his pattern of monopolistic behaviour led to the rise of organized labor and eventually to the trust-busting Sherman Act in 1890.

Charles Crocker on the other hand was a hands-on visionary who would stop at nothing to actually build the railroad, working side by side with his imported Chinese laborers, pick in hand, for over a decade to overcome every imaginable obstacle in linking the east and west coast.   Some say the engineering and physical feat of this railroad is on par with the Great Wall of China.  

In Colorado there was H.A.W. Tabor, a genial, hapless business man who started with nothing yet became among the wealthiest in the world from acquiring stakes in silver mines.  He was as generous as he was lucky, though his sensible and conservative wife was profoundly unhappy with her husband’s wasteful spending, herself having no interest in the trappings of wealth.  He divorced her and married a young beauty named Baby Doe who bore him two daughters.  Baby Doe loved the furs and jewels and high life her husband provided.  As often happens, the wealth began to unravel.  So much silver was mined from the west in the mid-19th century that the country became over-supplied with this metal.  Congress de-monetized silver in 1873 and suddenly Tabor’s wealth plummeted.  He was forced to sell all of his holdings to pay debts and ended up living with his young wife and daughters in a small house for $35/month.  He died shortly thereafter of a burst appendix.  Most people assumed that the beautiful young Baby Doe would use her charms to attract another wealthy man, but she fooled them all.  She continued to raise her daughters, and tried to resurrect one of her late husband’s mines by actually digging it herself.  She spent 20 years in this effort and died poor.

The book is well-written and maintains a good pace.  These are important qualities for a story with no main character and in which we already know the ending.  Not exactly a page-turner, though still difficult to put down.  Overall, an interesting portrait of the countless struggles endured by those who built a civilization in the western U.S.

The Arabs

by David Lamb

Published 1987

Rating: 4.2

David Lamb, an American journalist who lived in and reported on the Middle East, writes a very readable description of Arab culture and politics, aimed at helping westerners to understand the several hundred million people know collectively as Arabs.  Lamb uses Cairo as his base during his four-year stay in the early 80’s.  He travels extensively through and reports on Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, and Morocco.  He meets and interviews political and intellectual leaders as well as average citizens to describe Arab culture and politics and to elaborate on the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Lamb concludes his book by admonishing the United States for its lack of understanding of the many peoples that comprise the Arab world, and for painting these diverse peoples with one brush.  To make his point, he provides ample historical perspective, starting with ancient desert cultures, the traditions of Bedouin tribes, conquest by invading armies throughout the millennia, and of course the rise of Islam after the death of the prophet Mohammed in 632 AD.

Lamb begins his story in Cairo, which he characterizes as the heart and soul of the Arab world, and a place where the author spends much time.  He contrasts the dynamic Cairo of the early 20th century to the polluted and chaotic mega-city at the end of that century.  It is a story of a rapid decline from a thriving cultural and intellectual capital to a sprawling and desperately poor city of 8 million inhabitants.   Yet he maintains that Cairo in 1986 was still the intellectual capital of the Arab world in that no other country permitted such freedom of thought.  Most free-thinkers in the Arab world have long since moved to western countries.

Having read Napoleon’s accounts of Cairo from his invasion in 1798 and having visited Cairo myself in 2011, I was struck by the similarity of observations from the western perspective and ultimately how little has changed in two centuries.

Living in Cairo and having many local friends there, Lamb provides a view into the seeming contrasts of the city.  Trash piles up on the streets and city infrastructure is hopelessly inadequate or completely absent.  Traffic is pure anarchy, inside banks people cram toward the tellers rather than forming orderly queues.  Yet Egyptians maintain a fait accompli sense of life and are known for their good sense of humor.  Amazingly, despite the outward filth, the homes of even the most humble peasants are immaculate inside.  

Lamb traces the recent decline of Egypt to Nasser, who led the country from 1956 until his death in  1970.  Despite the fact that Arab culture is basically capitalistic (Mohamed and his wife were both business people), Nasser nationalized much of the country’s business and turned to socialism.  Nasser also set lofty goals of defeating Israel and of uniting the Arab world into a great monolithic culture.  

None of Nasser’s goals were realized.  In fact his policies accomplished quite the opposite of his goals.  Israel proved to be too formidable of an enemy and Egypt and its Arab neighbors proved unable to use their numbers and wealth to prevail in battle.  Plagued with infighting, untrained armies and sometimes conflicting agendas, they were the Goliath that could not slay David.  Lamb explains how the basic tenets of Islam - that Allah ultimately decides outcomes, the duty of the faithful is to pray 5 times daily and that the text of the Koran contains everything they need to know - actually discourages intellectual and material pursuits.  He outlines how this combination of Islam and socialism under Nasser combined to destroy wealth and create an impoverished, uneducated society.  He also describes to some extent how the clergy trumped university intellectuals to further impoverish Egyptian society and of course establish their own power base.  

Perhaps the most puzzling element in the middle east is the relationships between the Palestinians, Israel, Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world.  At one point in detailing the complexities of these relationships, Lamb characterizes the Palestinians as ‘the Arab’s Jews’.  By this he means that for most Arabs, the Palestinians are viewed in much the same way that Jews are viewed in many western countries.  That is to say that they are a) different, and b) successful, and therefore . . . c) resented and/or ostracized by the mainstream.   He describes Palestinians as more educated, more worldly, less religious, and more middle class than in most Arab countries.  When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, many muslims in Lebanon actually cheered the arrival of Israeli tanks because they felt that the Israelis would expel the Palestinians.   While many Arab states are outwardly pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel, none of these states actually want any of the Palestinians in their country.   With all of the extraordinary wealth of the Arab oil states, millions of Palestinians continue to live in poverty, right in the backyard of the wealthiest Arab nations.  

Lamb devotes a considerable number of pages to describing the tangle of interests that comprise middle eastern politics.  It is a hopelessly complex web of shifting priorities spanning the planet, and while it would be easy to cite numerous truths about national or factional interests, they would all be half-truths at best.  From this section of the book I am reminded of the response of Henry Kissinger in 1970 when one of his deputy secretaries excitedly suggested that he had a solution to the middle east peace problem.  Kissinger stopped the junior officer and said “there is no solution to the problem.  Our job is to manage the problem.”  Indeed, Lamb’s text on middle eastern politics portrays exactly what Kissinger described.  There are too many players who benefit from the various conflicts for there to be any notable chance of a lasting peace.  Almost every war, terrorist act, and government policy of oppression has a vested interest in the death and subjugation of one group for the benefit of another group.  Ego and money are always stubborn obstacles to peace.

Perhaps the longest lasting and bloodiest example of this concept was the Iran-Iraq war which lasted through most of the 1980’s.  This brutal conflict was really a battle of egos between Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.  Iran had triple the population while Iraq had a better trained and equipped army.  Iran sent tens of thousands of pubescent boys to march through mine-fields, thus serving the dual purpose of clearing the fields and killing themselves in the process.   Iran equipped these boys with plastic keys that they were told were keys to heaven for their martyred souls.  Both sides had enough oil money to buy weapons from the United States and Soviet Union, and both sides had plenty of outsiders who were delighted to see these two adversaries waste their blood and treasure in a prolonged battle.  

After describing the hopelessly entangled politics of the region, Lamb shifts to the impact that oil has had on many Arab countries.  He notes that despite the vast wealth that has accumulated in the area, most Arabs are still very poor and uneducated (at least they were back in 1986).  Since this book was published much of that has changed, and education has gradually spread and many Arab governments have made concerted efforts to diversify their economies to reduce dependence on oil.  Most of the smaller Arab nations with oil realize the problem that they have not earned their wealth, so that when the oil runs out some day, they would revert to the poor desert tribes they once were.  To prevent such an outcome, some are trying to direct efforts to build a more sustainable society through education and diversification.

He notes that in Saudi Arabia, which is probably the most conservative and also wealthiest Arab country, the leadership would actually prefer to be more progressive, but the majority of their population is not ready for rapid change.  So Saudi culture modernizes at a seemingly glacial pace, as the fabulously wealthy and large royal family governs in much the same way they have for two hundred years, allowing every citizen access to their leaders to register virtually any complaint or request.  

Lamb concludes with a message for westerners that Arabs primarily want to be friendly with the United States yet feel a combination of hurt and anger at being rebuffed.  He describes the United States view as the simplistic belief that there are just two sides to conflict in the middle east, and that one side is good and the other side evil.   And he asserts that as long as the U.S. hold this view and refuses to educate itself about the varied interests of the many players in the Arab world, our policies are likely to fail.  His book then is one journalist’s attempt to enlighten us about the Arabs.  It’s a worthy effort.

The Insurgents

by Fred Kaplan

published 2013

rating: 3.9

This book traces the history U.S. military strategy regarding insurgencies, and in many cases, most notably Vietnam, the military’s lack of strategy.  The United States by the 1960’s had the most powerful military machine on earth and an ingrained culture of conventional warfare involving large numbers of soldiers and massive firepower.

This military strategy was a disaster in Vietnam, where the enemy played by very different rules.  After the failure in Vietnam, the very word ‘insurgency’ was forbidden in the U.S. military.  Non-conventional wars were frowned upon as something that real soldiers don’t bother with.   Yet a small but growing number of people both inside and outside the Pentagon were beginning to question this approach and to push for realistic policies to deal with the new world of warfare.  

The story is told with General David Petraeus as the central character.  Kaplan traces Petraeus’s career from West Point through all of his military accomplishments and finally his resignation as director of the CIA.  Petraeus was an exceptional student and officer, usually at or near the top of his class in everything, and very early discovered that the U.S. failure in Vietnam was really a failure to recognize the nature of their enemy.  

The U.S. military, having gained world dominance through its superior air and ground firepower, was strongly biased toward fighting conventional wars - the type where the side with the best and fastest weapons wins.  As a comedian once joked when Bush was president, ‘they just discovered oil on the moon, so Bush has ordered troops to invade.’

Through the study of history, citing books by Jean Larteguy, T.E. Lawrence and others who detailed successful strategies of counter-insurgency, Petraeus realized that if the U.S. had employed those strategies in Vietnam they might well have achieved a different outcome.  

The basic premises of fighting insurgents is that the point of fighting them is to protect the ordinary citizens of that country.  By assisting those people with various aid and infrastructure and by separating them from the insurgents, the military can make allies of the locals.  In some cases insurgents also can be converted away from their cause and the act of nation building can occur.  Killing bad guys is not a way to win such wars.  It is more about winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the local people.

The book lists many people, both military and academic, who shared Petraeus’ beliefs.  It is a bit frustrating that Kaplan lists so many names and gives more background than seems necessary about each character, their credentials, how they met each other and so on.  Yet this is not a novel where characters are developed.  Without developing these characters, the story becomes a monotonous, disconnected string of meetings and encounters spread over 40 years.

It is a painful struggle, with plenty of very bright, determined and talented people, many of whom were in high positions of authority.  Yet continually their cause of fighting wars appropriately is thwarted by the highest reaches of power within the Pentagon and White House.  There is very little information about those who resist change.  Most of the effort is by a small but growing number of players who see that you cannot do nation building with tanks and bombs, and that you must adjust your battle plans according to the nature of your enemy.

The good news is that after a 40-year struggle to achieve this change, Petraeus and others finally succeeded, under President Obama in 2012.  So presumably now the U.S. military will embrace a doctrine of applying appropriate actions based on goals and the nature of an enemy.  In other words, they will add to their toolbox and train soldiers to use either carrot or stick appropriately.  We’ll see.

Overall an interesting topic, though quite tedious at times.  I actually skipped the middle third of the book because I felt I was not learning from it and that the endless lists of people and encounters did not make a compelling story.  In the end though, after enough old-timers had retired and enough new players had risen to prominence, and after two more failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon finally agreed to acknowledge the new world and attempt to adapt.

The Cleanest Race

by B.R. Myers

published 2011

Rating: 4.3

B.R. Myers wrote this book in 2009 and has obviously spent a lot of time studying the culture and propaganda of DPRK.  Having traveled there myself in 2012, I found his book fascinating.  His observations explained many of the strange things I observed in DPRK, and I found his explanations completely plausible and consistent with my own experience.

Myers explains that DPRK is actually not a Confucian society as many scholars assume, and is not a Marxist society either.  It is nominally a personality cult, although the predominant belief that drives all of the internal propaganda is that the Korean people are a uniquely pure, virtuous and child-like race, unlike any others on the planet.  This aspect of Korean belief can be traced to their 35 years of Japanese occupation, in which they adopted these themes from their imperialist occupiers.  

Myers argues that to understand DPRK we must understand how they see themselves and how they see the outside world.  Many assume or believe that the leadership of DPRK does not believe in their own propaganda, but Myers explains that the evidence suggests that they do in fact believe it.  In a nutshell, they see themselves as pure and virtuous people who must continually struggle to keep the evil world at bay, and especially the depraved imperialist Americans.   Surprisingly, many in South Korea share some of the most basic tenets of these beliefs, though of course not the cult-like worship of Kim Il Sung.   South Koreans are overwhelmingly in favor of U.S. troops maintaining their presence (after this writing, South Korea has agreed that the U.S. will gradually reduce and eliminate its military presence on the peninsula).  It appears that all Koreans on the peninsula share a high degree of xenophobia, though the ROK (south) has greatly moderated this after 70 years of democratic rule and rising material wealth.  

I think I would not have found this book as interesting had I not traveled through North Korea recently.  Though well-written, the details of the propaganda would have appeared somewhat unbelievable.  But I was there, and can verify that I saw just about everything the writer references, and if fact had many of the same observations, though of course not his depth of knowledge.  

As DPRK becomes less air-tight regarding influences from South Korea, China and elsewhere, it will become increasingly challenging for the DPRK propaganda machine to maintain its storyline.  They have traditionally had two storylines:  one for internal use and another for the outside world.  That will become more problematic as tourism and ties to South Korea grow and better technologies find their way inside the regime.  After nearly 70 years of isolation and total power within their borders, the new ruler (Kim Jong Un) at 29 years old seems unprepared to deal with the eventuality of a more open society.

Myers concludes that western governments are wrong to assume that Pyongyang wants normalized relations.  In fact that is the one thing that would surely eliminate their etre’ de raison.  The logic for his conclusion goes like this:  Koreans are the purest, cleanest race, most virtuous race on the planet, childlike in their ways.  They have no interest in becoming an imperial power or of attacking anyone, other than perhaps the U.S. for pre-emptive reasons or retaliation for past crimes.  Given their pure and child-like nature, they need a strong parent-leader to protect their country and race from the evil world, and especially the depraved Americans.  

So as you can see, if Pyongyang were to normalize relations with the U.S., or to relinquish its nuclear arsenal or reduce its military threat, the leadership would cease to have a reason to exist.  Such a development would run counter to 70 years of relentless propaganda - three generations of unquestioning belief.  In fact Kim Jong Un has no choice but to continue being as belligerent as possible to both South Korea and the U.S.  It would not be entirely surprising if he actually attacked South Korea or even the U.S., other than the presumed fact that we expect his military would fall short of the task.  But the North Koreans have already shown a high aptitude to turn lemons into political lemonade.  As with the Korean war, despite the fact that Pyongyang was leveled and that they had no choice but to sign an armistice, they managed to claim victory, even today, as evidenced by the food aid the U.S. sent to DPRK in an attempt to make amends!

Here’s some text from page 150 of the book:

It is no coincidence that a poster illustrating that story’s (Korean War) central crime - the caption “100,000 times revenge on the Yankee vampires” - appeared in 1999, when North Korea was the Clinton administration’s main aid recipient in Asia.  Nor was it by accident that Jackals (DPRK novel) was simultaneously republished complete with racist caricatures, in three magazines in August 2003, just before and during the first round of the six-party talks.  Ever since Kim Jong Il proclaimed his military first government, effectively shaking off responsibility for the country’s economic ruin, declines in real-world tension between Pyongyang and Washington have seen an intensification of anti-Americanism, not a lessening of it.  Only one conclusion is possible:  The regime is worried that the masses might cease to perceive the US as an enemy, thus leaving it with no way to justify its rule - or even to justify the existence of the DPRK as a separate state.

Not sure I would have enjoyed this as much had I not toured DPRK.  Still, well-written and documented with cogent arguments throughout.  Hope he writes a second edition if and when conditions in DPRK change.