The Gospel Coalition

I have no love for basketball. I hated playing it in gym class all those years ago and get little enjoyment from playing it today. It is one of the few professional sports I have never seen live and one I really have no interest in seeing live. I know very little about the game and, frankly, do not care to know much more. That March Madness always overshadows the joy of Spring Training is a genuine tragedy. Reading “The Sports Guy” Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball, though, unavoidably drew me toward the game, at least for a few days. It was quite a chore, not least because this book is epic, weighing in at over 700 pages. 700 pages is a tall order for any single topic. But for basketball it comes close to a crime.

Simmons is a basketball freak. Seriously, I doubt there could be a greater fan of the game. Basketball is his life, his religion. From the time he was a young child he was absorbed in the game and over the years his passion has not diminished a bit. His knowledge of the game, its teams and its players is encyclopedic. And in The Book of Basketball he offers his take on just about every important question in basketball history: Who were the greatest players? Which were the greatest teams? What is the single greatest key to winning? Will there ever be a better player than Michael Jordan? And on and on.

The answers to these questions are nothing if not thorough. The quest to find the best players in the history of the game leads him to offer rather extensive looks at nearly 100 players, culminating in the inevitable conclusion that Michael Jordan has to be at the top of the list. The quest to find the greatest team is, thankfully, considerably shorter, though still extensive. I can’t deny there was some level of interest as I read through these long lists of players, seeing what distinguished one from the next and discovering how each of them made their mark on the game. Yet at the end of a list of 100 players, the majority of whom are no more than names to me, it is difficult to distinguish one from the next. My head was left spinning. Interesting at the moment, but gone a day or two later. It is just too much to absorb!

Parenthetically, The Book of Basketball highlights one of the pitfalls of e-books. I happened to read it using my Kindle and found myself skipping a lot of end notes I otherwise might have read. There are hundreds (and hundreds and hundreds) of end notes, but with the Kindle there is often too much effort involved in searching them out. And so I just took a pass on most of them. Had I been reading the printed book, I’m sure I would have done a lot more flipping back-and-forth. There are many things the Kindle does well; end notes is not (yet) one of them. If Apple does come out with a tablet book-reading device, I bet we’ll see a far more advanced and usable system. Here’s hoping!

The Book of Basketball is often profane, with rough language and regular jests about pornography, strip clubs and the like. Simmons appears to be caught in perpetual adolescence. Or maybe he just knows his audience. Why is it that sports are so often accompanied with base humor? Regardless, the regular inappropriate quips grow really old really fast, detracting from the otherwise enjoyable witty flavor Simmons employs. The guy has a terrific sense of humor; it’s too bad that he chooses to misdirect it so often.

In the end, I’d say this book is for basketball fans only, and even then only the biggest fans. To dedicate to basketball the amount of time it takes to read a book like this hardly seems worth it to me. Baseball, perhaps (but probably not). Basketball? No way.

Verdict: Read it only if you’re a super-mega-ultra basketball fan.

I love to read a biography in which an old man, in the waning days of his life, reflects on the lessons he has learned in the seven or eight decades given to him. There is something inspiring about hearing a man reminisce about the past and pass along the wisdom of the years. I hate to read a biography in which an old man, in the waning days of his life, describes a life given over only to his own pleasure. Unfortunately, Last Words, George Carlin’s posthumously-published autobiography, falls squarely into the latter category.

Carlin was, of course, a stand-up comedian, for decades one of the most famous comics and one who is regarded as among the America’s greatest. He filled concert halls, was a regular guest on the most popular television shows, recorded bestselling albums and taped live performances that continue to air today. His name was known around the world and he made himself a wealthy man. By some standards this made him a singularly successful individual.

Yet this is a story of an utterly wasted life. Carlin shows himself to be utterly self-focused, self-centered, self-obsessed. Shaped by his Irish Roman Catholic heritage, he turned quickly against the faith of his childhood and gave himself up to whatever pleasures the world could offer. The decades, the years of his greatest successes, were full of hard living that included a crushing drug addiction, alcoholism and the inevitable physical effects of both. Even when he fell in love he lived life for no higher power or purpose than himself and his own success. He was away from home so much that his wife filled the emptiness with alcohol, and still he did not lessen his workload; he and his wife did drugs and fought viciously in front of their young daughter who soon got into drugs as well, even sharing with her parents; even when his wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he stayed on the road, ending up far away when she slipped into unconsciousness and died.

Not surprisingly, by the end of his life Carlin had succumbed to despair. “I no longer identify with my species. I haven’t for a long time. I identify more with carbon atoms. I don’t feel comfortable or safe on this planet. From the standpoint of my work and peace of mind, the safest thing, the thing that gives me most comfort, is to identify with the atoms and the stars and simply contemplate the folly of my fellow species members. I can divorce myself from the pain of it all. Once, if I identified with individuals I felt pain; if I identified with groups I saw people who repelled me. So now I identify with no one. I have no passion anymore for any of them, victims or perpetrators, Right or Left, women or men.”

In the end, Carlin did not live long enough to finish his memoirs. Someone had to piece together his notes, fill in the relevant details, and send them out to the publisher. He died in 2008 at the age of 71. He went to stand before the God he denied, the God he despised (funny, isn’t it, how you can so despise someone you insist does not exist), the God he made a career out of mocking and belittling.

Some memoirs are written for fans only while others transcend only the most loyal audience. Last Words is definitely for fans only. Profane, loud, over-the-top, this book is an apt reflection of the man himself. A man who was driven by the desire to shock others, this book gives him the last laugh, one last chance to make his audience gasp at his own profanity, his own baseness. But somehow, when read in the context of his life, the jokes no longer seem so funny.

Verdict: Buy it if you’d like to learn how to waste a life.

In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt sent a delegation to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China and Korea. Alice Roosevelt, the President’s daughter and the Paris Hilton of her age, served as mistress of the cruise while Secretary of War William Howard Taft acted in his capacity as a diplomat. In each of these nations he conducted meetings in Roosevelt’s name with many of the meetings kept strictly secret. Now, a century later, James Bradley seeks to discover what those meetings were all about and how they have impacted history. He records his findings in The Imperial Cruise.

Bradley is best-known for authoring Flags of Our Fathers, a book that spent almost a year on the list of bestsellers and that was subsequently made into a film directed by Clint Eastwood. Flags of Our Fathers told the story of the six iconic figures who raised the American flag during the battle of Iwo Jima. One of these men was John Bradley, the author’s father. He followed that book with Flyboys, which told the story of an air raid during that same battle. And now Bradley’s third book turns to the background of the War in the Pacific, attempting to understand why those battles were necessary in the first place, why so many young American men lost their lives thousands of miles from home.

Where Bradley’s first two books were well-received and really quite good, The Imperial Cruise is, frankly, just awful. This is a book that has become a bestseller only on the basis of Bradley’s prior success. There is no other logical explanation. The Imperial Cruise is a sanctimonious, unsubstantiated, anti-American screed. Much is said, little is proven, credibility is almost entirely lacking. Bradley falls into the well-worn trap of reading current standards, current social mores into the past. But even worse, he creates one-dimensional caricatures of many of the characters in the story, defining them only by their worst trait. This is history at its worst.

By way of example, Bradley defines Teddy Roosevelt almost entirely as a hopeless, arrogant, paternalistic racist, as if that is all he ever was. He continually describes Americans as American Aryans, a pejorative that paints all Caucasian Americans in a negative light, drawing the inevitable comparison to Hitler’s Nazi’s. He describes the actions of American soldiers only in terms of atrocities, making it seem that those who committed atrocities were the norm rather than the exception. He paints all of America, and her foreign policy in particular, in only the worst terms and then assigns to her the blame for every Pacific conflict of the twentieth century. Read Bradley and you would assume that Japan would never have considered invading China were it not for America’s suggestions and demands.

Ironically, as Bradley goes on and on he begins to sound like he is the one who is racist. Reading this book one would think that the history of the Pacific nations was all sweet and peaceful until the evil Aryan Americans showed up and began to teach the “Pacific Negroes” how to make war. One would assume that no Japanese leader was clever enough to be deceptive until the Americans taught Western-style deceit.

Bradley’s anger, his snideness, show themselves from cover-to-cover. His mocking tone, his inability to be at all objective, taint this book, leaving it far less than credible history. It’s just a mess and one not worth bothering with.

Verdict: Buy it if you want to learn how not to do history.

The Times has just released this week’s list of bestsellers. I am not surprised to see that it is not radically changed from the week before. This is, after all, quite a slow time for book sales. I’m guessing things will pick up a little bit more by the end of the month when publishers once more begin to pump out a-list titles.

It’s worth noting that, after seven weeks in the top spot, Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue has finally been bumped to number two. It has been replaced by Have a Little Faith. My guess is that Palin’s book won’t have a whole lot of staying power–that once it begins to fall it will fall fast. We’ll see.

While there are no books making a first-time appearance on the list this week, there is one that has not been on for a while (though it has spent 17 weeks there in total)–Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. This is a book I’ve been looking for an excuse to read. And now, just like that, it’s made an unavoidable appearance on my list of things to do. Excellent! I’ll be reading that this week.

I’ve finally finished up the way-too-long The Book of Basketball and have just Born to Run and Last Words to complete before I am entirely caught up. Of course I’ve got a few more than that to review. Check in next week as I try to do some reviewing.

The mega-selling book Three Cups of Tea told a series of stories from the life of adventurer, mountaineer and humanitarian Greg Mortenson. In 1993, Mortenson, having failed in an attempt to climb K2, wandered into a tiny village deep in the mountains of Pakistan. Embraced by the people of this village, and seeing that they had no school building for their children, he vowed to someday return and build one. Being a man of his word, he did just that. The book detailed how he kept that promise and how he went on to build not just one, but fifty-five schools, in that area. It details the challenges he faced and how he overcame them. He is an amazing individual who overflows with passion, intensity and drive. The book was part adventure, part biography. The story was so compelling, it is little wonder that it generated so much interest.

Several years have passed since those events and Mortenson has since found fame, having seen his book spend three years on the New York Times list of bestsellers (the softcover list, that is; the hardcover edition did not sell well). In late 2009 he released Stones Into Schools the follow-up to Three Cups of Tea. As a sequel, a true follow-up, the book is very similar to its predecessor–so much so that I am not quite sure what to say in order to distinguish the two, beyond pointing out that one happens several years after the other. Mortenson is still walking and riding and driving around the wilds of Pakistan, attempting to begin schools. His heart is really for schools for girls, that marginalized population in Pakistan that he feels offers the key to the nation’s recovery from the influence of the Taliban. He also travels to Afghanistan to begin schools in that always-embattled nation. But the formula is still very much the same. He is approached to build a school in some unbelievably-remote location and, with the help of an unlikely cast of characters, he makes it happen, time after time. Reading about it never gets old.

Here is one significant difference between the two books. Where Three Cups of Tea was occasionally melodramatic to the point of hilarity (this remains my favorite quote: “After they’d traveled half a kilometer, he saw the firefight resume. The widely spaced streams of tracers leaped across the road like ellipses. But to Mortenson, who wouldn’t learn his friends had survived until the following week, when he returned to Kabul, they looked more like question marks.”), Stones Into Schools shows all the hallmarks of better writing and editing. It is, I think, just an all-around better book. Where I found I was a little disappointed by the first, I was quite impressed with the second. At the very least it is an enlightening and interesting read.

Though Mortenson, in the absence of Christian convictions, may place too great a hope in education, it is easy to see how education may be at least one key to a transformation of areas marked by extreme poverty and the influence of a faith that sees little reason to educate its girls. It’s not at all difficult to appreciate what Mortenson is doing and to get swept up in his excitement.

Verdict: Buy It

I was an early adopter of Amazon’s Kindle. I loved it for a couple of months and then fell out of love with it, kind of like the dog my parents got me when I was a kid. At first having a dog was a lot of fun and I loved having him tow me around the yard in the winter. I even enjoyed walking him for the first week or two. But then he showed his true colors–he made a mess of the yard and ate a few cats and just generally misbehaved and suddenly all I could see was his flaws. Eventually mom and dad gave him away. They told me they had given him to a family that had a mentally challenged son and who lived on a farm where the dog could run and run, tongue lolling out, eyes bright, just the way a dog ought to be. In retrospect that sounds like the kind of thing parents say when they’ve really dropped the dog off in the middle of the countryside to fend for himself. I should ask them about that sometime. Or not.

But I digress. I loved my Kindle at first. It was like so many other new technologies–it wowed me with all its great new features. I saw all the joy but little of the pain. But then I got used to it and couldn’t see past its obvious flaws. It was slow; it was ugly; I kept wanting to write all over the screen with my ever-present highlighters; it was not good for doing serious reading. In the end I traded it to a friend for a stack of commentaries. We both thought it was a good deal. Last I heard my buddy was still in love with it.

But now there is a Kindle 2. I had Amazon send one to me while I was in Atlanta last week. I justified purchasing it on two grounds. First, it is significantly cheaper than its predecessor. Second, Amazon worked out many of the flaws (like the way-too-long page-turn times and the oops-I-touched-the-side-and-it-turned-a-page flaw). Third (oh wait, I said two) it will pay for itself very quickly with all the bestsellers being only $9.99 (compared to $20-$30 at the local bookstore). And fourth, it now offers Whispernet service in Canada (though it carries a $2 surcharge, much to my chagrin). And just think how much room we’ll save in the house without all those books demanding shelf space. Overall, the 10MillionWords project offered me good reason and good justification to turn back to Kindle.

Overall, the Kindle 2 seems significantly improved from the first generation. It’s thinner, lighter, snazzier and faster. Heck, it even stays in its folder now, thanks to some handy little clips (I always thought the idea of trusting in gravity to keep a $400 machine in a leather folder was quite a weakness of the Kindle 1). Of course there are a few downsides, such as a still-awful keyboard and an Apple-style battery that can only be replaced by Amazon. It is not a thing of beauty and is not half the machine it will be in a few years, I’m sure. But it is beginning to show a bit of the promise we hoped for it from the beginning. Still, there’s probably a 50/50 chance that in six months I’ll be several commentaries richer and one Kindle poorer. Especially if Apple wows me with the long-awaited tablet.

As I promised yesterday, here is the second part of the roundup of the titles that are on the list of bestsellers as of January 1. I’ve read most of these, though there are a couple that I’ll be finishing up this week.

What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. In this book, his fourth, Gladwell deviates just slightly from what he has done in his previous three bestsellers. Here he simply shares some of his best or favorite or most highly-regarded columns from over the years. Like the other books, this one made a fast-track to the bestseller list and has remained there now for 10 weeks.

Outliers by Malcom Gladwell. Speaking of Gladwell, here he is again with book #3, Outliers. This one has remained on the bestseller list for 58 weeks now. Incredible. As I mentioned in my review, I certainly wouldn’t mind taking home just one of Gladwell’s royalty checks. They must be something to behold. In Outliers he does what he does so well, drawing together strange and unusual facts and building them into a fascinating whole. Though it may not be his best, Outliers is still a great read.

The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley. So you liked Flags of Our Fathers, did you? And maybe you liked Flyboys too? The success of those two books is the only possible explanation for this dog being on the bestseller list. Here Bradley engages in some incredibly bold anti-Americanism in his attempt to piece together a history of American involvement in Asia as it pertained to the background of the Second World War. I will soon write a review of this one but for now suffice it to say that Bradley’s biases are so clear that he very quickly loses all credibility. This is a truly bad book.

A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity by Bill O’Reilly. This is Bill O’Reilly’s memoir, sort of. It is not a true memoir. Instead he looks to past events and shows how these led him to become who and what he is today–a social conservative who despises injustice. He sees himself as a crusader against whatever is unfair or unjust in the world and in A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity he shows how such a sense of justice was instilled in him from a very young age. Again, I will provide a review of this one soon.

When the Game Was Ours by Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. This book looks at one of sports most interesting and most important rivalries–that of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, the men who revitalized basketball. Players who hated each other during their years on the court (and who were relentlessly driven by each other), in their years after basketball Bird and Johnson found kinship and even friendship. Here they write about their long rivalry and life after the game. Quite an interesting book (as basketball tales go), I will have a review of this one soon enough as well.

The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons. I am hard-pressed to think of a sport I enjoy less than basketball. And yet, just my luck, there are two basketball books on the list of bestsellers. When the Game Was Ours was interesting enough since it was predominantly biographical–it is never too terribly hard to read stories of people’s lives. The Book of Basketball, on the other hand, is a history of the game from one of its greatest fans. It is really long (700+ pages) and really dry, at least for someone who has no love for the game. I continue to make my way through it.

Last Words by George Carlin. I know little about Carlin (beyond that he was a comedian) and have not yet read his book. I hope to do so this week.

Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin. The first, but surely not the last book on the recent financial meltdown, Sorkin’s book attempts to be both first to the shelves and exhaustive. While it was the first, I doubt it will prove to be truly exhaustive as facts continue to present themselves. Still, it is an interesting read that provides plenty of great information about the crisis that continues to unfold around us.

And that’s that–the fifteen titles that started the year on the New York Times list of bestsellers. Reviews, reflections and more will follow next week.

Today, January 1, is the first day of the 10MillionWords project. Over the next 365 days I am going to read all of the non-fiction bestsellers that show up in the New York Times list. As I thought about this project I had to figure out whether I would read all of the books that were on the list in 2010 (including the ones that were on the list to begin the year) or only the books that were added to the list during that calendar year. In the end I brokered a compromise of sorts. I read in advance the books that were going to be on the list as 2009 turned into 2010. This was relatively easy since many of the books had sat there for weeks or months. Then, during 2010, I’d only need to read the new books as they were added.

My plan for today was to look at this week’s list, which is always posted on Fridays, and begin from there. Unfortunately, with today being a holiday, it seems that the Times is running a bit late. So I’ve had to adapt.

What I am going to do is provide a brief overview of the books that are on last week’s list, most of which I’ve already read and most of which will undoubtedly still be on the forthcoming list. Today I will provide a look at the first seven and tomorrow, when (hopefully) the current list is available, I’ll write about the remaining eight.

Going Rogue by Sarah Palin. Since its release 6 weeks ago, Sarah Palin’s memoir has stood atop the list. There is always a kind of ironic joy in seeing a book by a conservative like Palin on top of the list at a publication like the Times (which certainly does not tend towards conservatism). This memoir is well-written and makes for an interesting read. Those who love her will likely love her more for reading the book; those who despise her will likely despise her more. There are few surprises in its pages. In my assessment Palin remains an interesting Presidential candidate but one who does little in this book to give confidence to those who feel she is underqualified for so lofty and important a position.

Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom. The author of Tuesdays with Morrie returns with a second bestseller. In this one Albom spends time with a Jewish Rabbi and a Protestant minister and draws from each of them lessons about life and faith. As I wrote in an earlier review, “It is a defense of the kind of faith that is so popular today–a type of religious belief that de-emphasizes distinctives and plays up the importance of unity. It is a book about religion, about faith in general, more than it is a book about the Christian faith. Unfortunately but undoubtedly, it is a book that could easily comfort a person in a faith that excludes Jesus Christ. And in that way it is a book that misrepresents the Bible, for the Scriptures will not allow for such a faith. The Bible demands exclusivity, it demands that we understand that Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father.”

Arguing with Idiots by Glenn Beck. As with Palin’s book, Arguing with Idiots is one that is likely to appeal to fans and be hated by the dissenters. In his usual loud-mouthed way, Beck takes issue with small minds and big government. In my review I said, “Beck does a very good job of taking a wrecking ball to countless idiotic objections to common sense solutions. From beginning to end he relies on his trademark sarcastic humor and offers plenty of moments when the reader will laugh or roll his eyes or, more likely, both.”

Stones into Schools by Greg Mortenson. Stones into Schools is Mortenson’s sequel to Three Cups of Tea, a book that has spent over a year on the list of bestsellers. He picks up where the previous book left off, describing how he has continued to build schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Easily the equal of the first book, Stones into Schools is an excellent and enjoyable read.

Open by Andre Agassi. Agassi’s memoir describes a life dedicated to a sport he hates. Tracing life from his childhood as a tennis prodigy to his life after leaving the game, Agassi opens up his life. Excellently written, Open could almost be the story of any of these sports stars whose lives are given over to fulfilling the dreams of their parents.

Superfreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. The duo behind the mega-selling surprise hit Freakonomics return with the unimaginatively-titled sequel. But it is just as good as the original, drawing together all kinds of seemingly-unrelated facts into fascinating comparisons and conclusions. Those who liked the first book are going to like the second just as much.

True Compass by Edward Kennedy. Published just weeks after his death, Kennedy’s long-awaited memoir is rather a disappointment. Kennedy seemed to feel the need to place himself at the center of almost every pivotal event in modern American history. As I wrote in my review, “So what we have in True Compass is a sanitized version of his life, a Pollyanna life, a life as Kennedy would like it to be remembered. It is a life scrubbed of his own blame, his own sin. He portrays himself as a person who rarely, if ever, worked out of self-interest but rather as a great patriot who constantly sought always and only the best for his nation; he portrays himself as a great humanitarian who, even in his struggle against cancer, was less concerned with winning the battle for his own sake than he was with winning a battle that might lend hope to others. And he portrays his family–his parents and siblings and children and grandchildren–as patriots and humanitarians as motivated as himself for the good of others.”

And that takes us from book one to book seven. As I said, I’ll check in tomorrow with the conclusion of this list.