Rising Tide by John M. Barry

Wow. Every once in awhile, a book comes along that takes an obscure sort of a topic and just Forrest Gumps it (that is, shows how the entire world revolves around it). This is one of those books. Engineering, passion, engineering and passion, race relations, American aristocrats--this book has it all. Highly recommended.

A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester

Eh, you would have thought that the Krakatoa disaster would have taught me that Winchester can't be trusted. He takes a fascinating topic (the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire) and hides it in a wandering narrative (plate tectonics, Pentecostalism, California's natural history, a cup of coffee he had in Ohio . . .).

Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball by Edward Kimball

If you liked the recent President McKay biography, you are going to love the new biography of President Kimball.

President Kimball’s son Edward wrote a biography of his father in 1977, which turned out to be really bad timing since the most significant event of Kimball’s administration–and, arguably, of all of twentieth-century Church history–happened the very next year. That biography was (and still is) lauded as an unusually honest portrait of a Church President. (And you should read it before you read the new one.) I’m not sure why it took almost thirty years for the followup biography, but I can assure you that it was worth the wait.

Like the McKay book, this one fills some of the gaps in Church history. I’m too young to remember the ERA battle, the Hoffman affair, the Howard Hughes will, and the Church’s opposition to the MX missile. The author frequently uses before-and-after quotations from the General Handbook of Instruction in order to show how policies changed during his father’s administration. And, just as the McKay book did, there are lots of wonderful factoids here: Did you know that early converts in Africa were disproportionately male? That part of the responsibility of the committee that revised the hymn book in the 1970s was to use more gender-neutral language? That for a period ‘instructional solemn assemblies’ were held to train local priesthood leaders?

Edward Kimball writes that it was his father’s wish for his biography be “warts and all.” And it is. No flinching, no sanitizing. Here is a prophet who occasionally skips Church and becomes depressed over his physical limitations. We see a man who is overzealous in calling his inactive son to repentance and who later wished that he had been gentler in The Miracle of Forgiveness. We see the General Young Women’s President, Elaine Cannon, changing President Kimball’s mind about a major policy issue. We see the diminutive Kimball spending the night in the posh home of a stake president where he has to jump into the bed because it is so high off of the ground. And when he does, it breaks.

But we also see a Prophet of God:

On one occasion, while a Church security staff member was driving President Kimball home, Spencer leaned back to rest. After a bit, he suddenly sat bolt upright, took off his glasses, and looked intently at the driver. “Is this your first family?” he asked. Taken aback, the driver answered, “No, sir, I was married before. I tried all I could, but it did not work out.” President Kimball said, “I’m sorry if I have said something to cause you pain.” He lay back again briefly, then sat up again, looked intently, and asked, “How is your son?” The driver, who had only daughters by his second marriage, explained that he had not been allowed to see the son by his first marriage since the child was an infant, nearly twenty years earlier. They arrived at the Kimball home, and Spencer, embracing him, said, “You have good things to look forward to.” Puzzled, the driver asked [secretary] Arthur Haycock why the President would be reading his personnel file. Arthur assured him that the President had not seen the file. “How then,” the driver asked, “did he know about my family situation?” Arthur smiled, “That’s why he’s President of the Church.”

I don’t have a problem with ‘warts and all’ history, except that some authors forget about the ‘and all.’ Edward Kimball didn’t. This is a stellar, spiritual, honest, and amazing portrait of a prophet. But that’s not all.

Each book comes with a CD, which includes the full text of this biography, several other biographies of President and Sister Kimball, many scholarly articles, photographs, and audio clips. (It would have been nice if they had included the text of some of President Kimball’s more noteworthy talks but, alas, they didn’t.) The audio clips include some from before and others from after his throat surgery and his own description of the revelation on the priesthood–from a talk given in South Africa only a few months after the revelation was received. The CD also includes what is called the ‘working draft’ of this biography. A publisher’s preface in the book hints at why it may have been included:

The publisher and the biographer do not agree on the interpretations or weight of importance given to a number of events, or the choices of characterization of some of the people.

I read the working draft, which is color-coded to indicate what material is and isn’t in the final draft. (But I should note that I found at least a half-dozen errors in the color-coding system.) I would describe the omitted material as follows:

–About half of the omissions are fat that any good editor would have cut–interesting stuff, perhaps, that just wasn’t relevant to a biography of President Kimball and would have made a long book too long.
–Many omissions involve material that recounted differences of opinion between members of the Quorum of the Twelve and/or the First Presidency. The final book often includes the conflict without naming those who disagreed with President Kimball.
–Many omissions serve to make the final book less liberal than the working draft. Not only are some of Edward Kimball’s more liberal views removed, but some of President Kimball’s are as well. For example, the final book offers no sympathy to Sonia Johnson (a vocal supporter of the ERA who was excommunicated), but the working draft does by including her refutation of some of the charges against her. The draft portrays President Kimball as more sympathetic toward Johnson than the final book does. There are only two instances where the working draft is more conservative than the final book: President Kimball’s personal opinions about oral sex and birth control were omitted.
–Text on topics that might be embarrassing to the Church (failed policies, bad public relations, anti-Mormon efforts, “unannounced missions,” changes in temple work, compensation of GAs, discussion of pre-Adamites, Kimball’s suggestion that the priesthood ban may have been an error, etc.) were omitted from the final draft. Whether these omissions are due to discomfort over the subject or the assessment that they weren’t particularly relevant to a biography of the Church President is difficult to determine.
–Other omissions create a less-flawed portrait of the President; let’s just say that after reading the draft, one wonders if some of J. Golden Kimball’s proclivities were genetic.

But, overall, the omissions do not profoundly change the book, with one exception: the draft suggests that President Kimball had already reached a conclusion (based on inspiration) about extending the priesthood to all men before the famous revelation, which functioned more to ensure that recalcitrant members of the Quorum of the Twelve would fully support the change.

What didn’t I like? Not much. Many of the photographs don’t have captions and that’s annoying. While I can appreciate the desire to put most footnotes on the CD to save space in the book, it is somewhat disconcerting not to have a citation at hand. The footnotes that are included are often interesting factoids, if not completely germane to the topic at hand. But these are minor quibbles.

I am surprised that Deseret Book published this; it covers a lot of ground that one doesn’t normally find in a Deseret Book: this includes doctrinal matters (Adam-God theory, blood atonement) as well as historical incidents (the prophet asking an apostle to change a talk before publishing it, a First Presidency statement meant to clarify that a statement made by the prophet was a personal opinion). I’m going to be optimistic and hope that this book is the first of a long line of candid and compelling works from Deseret. I believe the Saints will be the better for it; my overarching impression of President Kimball after reading this book is that he was an incredibly humble, human, and powerful prophet. As his wife described him, this book represents him: “It is too much to say that he is perfect, but he comes wondrously close.”

Cross-posted to Times and Seasons.

Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman

Rough Stone Rolling is the definitive biography of Joseph Smith for this generation. Bushman does an able, if not artful, job of telling the prophet’s story. His reading of Joseph’s use of seer stones, of his troubled relationship with his financially unsuccessful father, of the Book of Mormon’s countercultural take on Native Americans, and the changing place of women and blacks in unfolding LDS theology are gems. But Joseph Smith, in this book, is not a majestic, triumphant, haloed, barely-mortal dispensation head. He is, by Bushman’s portrait, a flawed man—one making many mistakes and subject to many weaknesses. His straightforward style might be a little jarring to those used to sanitized Church history, but this book is and will be the benchmark biography of the founding prophet for a long time.

More on this book forthcoming at Times and Seasons.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

This book was nearly perfect in every way.

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

This book owns more awards and critic's praise than anything I've ever read. But it isn't all that. It was--OK. The constant flashforwards were unnerving, confusing. The plot only held together as a series of slightly related short stories. Not really recommended.

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

Subtitled "How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less," this is a tragic, funny, amazing tale of a woman who survives by her wits as her husband drinks his paycheck. Highly recommended.

I Love Mormons: A New Way to Share Christ with Latter-day Saints, by David L. Rowe

The techniques that Evangelicals use to convert Mormons to 'traditional Christianity' do not work. The same cannot be said for the method proposed by David L. Rowe in his new book.

Why the Church is as True as the Gospel by Eugene England

This didn't do much for me. Sorry.

The Emperor of Scent by Chandler Burr

Luca Turin, apparently, proved that the prevailing theory for how smell works was wrong. But academic researchers who were not interested in seeing their life's work consigned to the dustbin were not impressed. Professional researchers (i.e., perfume company hacks) were not interested in getting laid off.

So no one believed him. And that's why Chandler Burr calls this a scientific morality tale about the failure of a new idea to take hold because of political and financial pressures.

Not being a scientist, I'm not sure what to believe. But when Burr claims that every major olfaction scientist that he interviewed told him that Turin's work was bunk but, no, they hadn't actually read his paper and they weren't going to because they were too busy, well, it doesn't sound for the anti-Turin camp.

An odd and fascinating book-highly recommended.

Hearts Petals ed. by Mary Jane Woodger

I enjoyed reading the letters that President McKay sent to his wife. However, I thought many poor decisions were made in the presentation of the letters: everything from using endnotes instead of footnote to an almost-imposssible-to-read font to not providing necessary background information. Still, these letters are worth reading.

Home-Alone America by Mary Eberstadt

I was prepared to like this book; why shouldn't I like something that justifies my lifestyle choices? But while I agree wholeheartedly with Eberstadt's thesis (specifically, that children who have absent fathers or mothers who work long hours are at a higher risk for all sorts of dangers), her book is terrible, terrible, terrible! I'm tempted to go line by line for the sheer joy of the smackdown; such horribly-argued rhetoric deserves to be dismantled. However, it would take a long time and this book just isn't worth it. I'll let one example speak for literally every single page of this book.

Eberstadt begins with a lengthy explanation of why children in day care have more illnesses than other children. (No one doubts this.) Then she mentions the argument that these early illnesses may be justifiable because they result in the child having fewer illnesses down the room. She dismisses this in one sentence as poor justification. No real reason given.

But this deserves more. What is the data? Do 60 childhood colds prevent one teenage cold? Does one childhood cold prevent 60 teenage ones? What about complications? In any case, is it justifiable to injure little children to prevent harm later on? What effect do the childhood illnesses have on working mothers? These are important questions that Eberstadt doesn't answer.

I only continued reading for the same reason that people gape at trainwrecks: I couldn't really believe how bad it was. I'm sad that such an important argument was mangled in Eberstadt's hands: her holely rhetoric has done the cause more harm than good.

The Parenting Breakthrough by Merilee Boyack

You just gotta love any book that has a picture of a seven-year-old boy cleaning a toilet on the cover.

Merrilee Browne Boyack’s new book The Parenting Breakthrough: A Real-Life Plan to Teach Your Kids to Work, Save Money, and Be Truly Independent focuses on teaching real-life skills, particularly those relating to personal finance. I probably don’t need to say that many LDS parents seem to be doing a poor job in this department. I’ve been in the home of an LDS teen who, despite not having a job, had fifty-one (yes, I counted) Clinique lipsticks on the bathroom counter. I’ve known returned missionaries who have been tempted to steal toilet paper rolls from the Institute building because of the financial pressure caused by credit card debt. So I’m pleased that Boyack, a mother of four almost-grown sons and an estate attorney with a degree in Finance, has put together a plan for teaching basic personal management skills to kids.

Her idea is simple but profound. In a nutshell, here it is: sit down with your spouse and write a list of all of the skills necessary for independent living. Then, assign each task to an age and be sure that your child learns that skill at that age. She provides a sample chart in the book, and while I’d quibble with some of her specifics (What’s the point of teaching a nine-year-old to pump gas? And don’t wait until sixteen to teach a child how to understand advertising!), the idea is sound and should prevent the proverbial scene of a mother teaching her son to iron the night before he leaves for the MTC. She write, “the real problem with doing everything ourselves is that we end up always doing everything ourselves. And our children don’t grow up; they just get bigger.”

Boyack’s emphasis on training children to be self-sufficient also provides an important theoretical underpinning to counter the tendency for LDS moms to want to do everything for their children as a mark of their devotion. That alone makes this a worthwhile read for anyone who is buffeted on one side by the current push toward hypermothering and the sad current in LDS culture to be the perfect Mormon mom, evidenced by having a countless multitude of startched, shiny, smily–and did I mention quiet–kids in the pew next to you. Boyack strongly argues that it is better to have self-sufficient, long-haired, and fiscally responsible kids than to present the perfect public image by having assembled the children yourself. Her story of allowing her three-year-old to make a PB & J on the floor while the other memberd of the Relief Society Presidency (whom she’d nicknamed Martha Stewart I and Martha Stewart II) watched in horror is a worthy tale indeed.

In addition to strongly making the point that parents should teach their children the basics of independent living, she provides practical hints for accomplishing this. I can’t wait until my sons are a little older. The first time one of them lusts over a big-ticket item, I’m going to suggest that he take out a loan from the First National Bank of Smith. We’ll follow Boyack’s suggestion and agree to a contract with a 20% interest rate and collateral. When my sweet boy falls behind in his payments, I’ll sell his collateral on ebay. I’d rather he learn that lesson on a 300$ stereo as a teen than a 30,000$ car when he’s trying to support a family. She has lots of creative suggestions for teaching personal financial responsibility to teens.

I also appreciated her gender-neutral approach to teaching children: she emphasizes that both sons and daughters need to think about the impact that their career choices will have on their familes and that both need to learn to save. (I sometimes feel that this is only emphasized for the young men for their missions.) She earns high marks in my book for castigating a father who didn’t want to teach his daughter how to change the oil in her car. She also recommends that fathers teach some ‘girl things’ and mothers some ‘guy things.’

But when Boyack covers spirituality and discipline, the book loses its luster. While her information is good, there’s nothing that’s new if you’ve read a few of the more popular parenting books. Because the previous chapters do cover topics that are rarely discussed and have innovative suggestions, it makes these ones all the more disappointing by contrast. And I object to her ‘because I’m the Mom, that’s why’ approach; I’ve had quite a bit of success with children obeying freely when they understand the reason behind my request.

I have to admit that I found her chummy tone offputting at times. She introduces herself this way:

I’m also an attorney. I heard that–you just went, “euuwww.” I knew you would. But I run my law practice part-time from my home, and in the meantime I do lots of stuff just like you. I’m not a psychologist or anything like that.

I’m not entirely sure what tone I want a parenting book to take: I don’t want to hear the disembodied voice of unquestionable authority, but I don’t want to be chatting on the playground, either. Boyack veers a little too much to the latter, but it isn’t insufferable. Where her tone does get her into trouble, however, is where it allows cruel humor. Sometimes she’s spot-on (I won’t try to recount the story of the woman who dabbed at her tears in sacrament meeting with a feminine hygeine product; you’ll need to read that one for yourself for full effect, but I will tell you that I admire anyone who describes a large fight erupting during Family Home Evening as “the activity portion of our home evening"), but other times it borders on the blasphemous (I don’t think the Lord does anything to us for “sheer entertainment effect"). At its worst, it mocks:

Another preparation tactic is as follows: We see people doing horrendously menial work (like holding up a sign on the road for construction workers) and we say, “Gee, no one could make him go to college!”

For someone who is very, very convincing when she writes about the ability of parents to shape their children’s behaviors, she seems unaware of the message that this type of comment will send her children. (How much better it would be if she handed her kid the classifieds and said, “Pretend you have a GED and are looking for a job. What can you do and how much will you make? Now pretend you have an MS in Electrical Engineering. What jobs are available and how much will you make?")

Despite the flaws, the practical suggestions for teaching personal responsibility make this book a worthwhile read for LDS parents who want their children to move out of the basement someday.

Cross-posted from Times and Seasons

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz

Horwitz cleverly merges the story of Captain Cook's three unbelievable voyages of discovery with the tale of his own recreation of the trip. Captain Cook did unfathomable things and Horwitz has fun comparing Cook's adventures with his own. This is the best kind of history and travelogue. Highly recommended.

The Book: A History of the Bible

I should warn potential readers: there’s a real danger that you will drool on the pages of Christopher de Hamel’s new book.

While some parts are a little ponderous, you won’t drool because you’ve fallen asleep. There’s enough good trivia (the scribes creating Hebrew Bibles circumvented the prohibition on illustrations by drawing pictures using miniscule text instead of lines) and excellent one-liners ("The Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God may be the most important unreadable book in the world.” and “Sparke takes immodest pleasure in adding that when the Royalist armies beseiged Worcester in 1642, Ash hid his illicit fortune down the privy and, in trying to dig out his money some weeks later, was overcome by the smell and died.") interspersed to keep you well awake. You’ll drool over the pictures.

Luscious, oversized photographs of every step of the Bible’s history–from pages of the Dead Sea Scrolls to richly illuminated medieval manuscripts, to rather optimistic translations of the Bible into Hindustani and Mohawk to (my personal favorite) a modern illuminated manuscript that’s still a work in progress. The gold used to highlight the lines in Jesus’ genealogy in the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel appears to transcend the page it is on–and the page of this book. It took my breath away.

Perhaps what I most appreciated about this book was its effort to trace the history of the Bible as a book, not (as is more commonly done) as a source of theology. De Hamel only takes the occasional foray into philosphical issues, and these are interesting.

There’s no reference to Mormons or Mormonism here, but there are some interesting ideas for the Saints to chew on:

(1) De Hamel’s comments on the reception of the Latin edition of the Bible translated by Jerome (known as the Vulgate) provide an interesting data point for comparison with the LDS Church’s use of the KJV:

It is a curious fact that at many stages in the Bible’s history, contemporary translations into current languages have often been regarded with unease. The words of the Old Latin translation, by contrast, must by Jerome’s time have sounded archaic, and therefore seemed to many people to be more fitting for a biblical text. It is interesting that the Vulgate never really gained acceptance until its language too began to seem archaic. In the period when its supporters defended it most fanatically, the late Middle Ages, it was obsolete.

(2) De Hamel notes that the initial reaction by many Bible-believing people to modern finds of ancient texts was one of some hesitancy: there was a real fear that the Dead Sea Scrolls would suggest that in the first century, the Old Testament was a very different book. But as de Hamel explains:

Anxious believers can be enormously reassured by the almost exact similarity between even the earliest of the biblical papyri from Egypt and the text as it has survived during its descent through countless scriptoria and printing shops of Europe. . . .No significant variations or deliberate falsifications have ever been found to shake public confidence in the Bible as a whole.

While not delegitimating Joseph Smith’s famous statement about “designing priests and corrupt scribes” or the Book of Mormon’s note that many “plain and precious” parts were removed, it does call the Saints to carefully consider what might have changed–and when.

(3) One cannot so much as flip through this book without being in awe of the efforts that were put into not only transmitting the Bible, but making it a work of beauty. I wonder if there is room for any such thing in the LDS Church. I only know of a few efforts to go beyond the standard-issue scriptures of the Church (see here and here) and both leave a lot to be desired. Should there be an illuminated Book of Mormon? Would it be of any worth to the Saints? How else might art and scripture merge?

You have to admire De Hamel, who spent a quarter century as head of the Western Manuscripts department at Sotheby’s in London, for taking on a project so huge that it is beyond the purview of any one scholar. While it is perhaps unfair, then, to expect him to have mastered all of the relevant literature on 3000 years of Bible transmission, I do note that on the one point where I feel competent to evaluate his work, he’s off the mark. Here’s de Hamel discussing a manuscript of the Gospels found in the early twentieth century:

The text of Saint Mark includes one verse not apparently recorded elsewhere. Between Mark 16:14 and 16:15, Christ adds a statement that the reign of the Devil is over and that fearful things are about to happen to those sinners whom Christ came to save, and for whom he has prepared spiritual and incorruptible glory in heaven. The style and context of the verse suggests the real possibility that this may indeed be an authentic lost sentence from the Gospel.

The problem here is that most scholars regard Mark 16:8 as the original ending of the Gospel, with Mark 16:9-20 as a later addition. This makes the contention that his newfound verse is original rather problematic. (Perhaps de Hamel meant that it was an original verse, once found elsewhere in the manuscript. But that isn’t the plain sense of his words.)

Aside from that slight slip and the ocassional dry passage, this is a wonderful book. I recommend the text for anyone who wants to know how we ended up with fifteen hundred pages in fake leather and I recommend the illustrations for everyone.

Cross-posted at Times and Seasons.

An American Life by Ronald Reagan

I really wanted a biography, not an autobiography, of Reagan, but I couldn't find one. I did enjoy reading this. All of those phrases from my childhood--Iran-Contra, Grenada, Lebanan, Achille Lauro, sandinistas, arms-for-hostages, the Faukland Islands--now have some meaning. Of course, I realize that I only got Reagan's side. And while I did enjoy this, he doesn't get very many points for self-reflection; this autobio is much more 'journalistic' in tone. And a better editor would have cut the lengthy back-and-forth missives between him and Soviet leaders: they were boring. Slightly recommended.

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

It has been a long time since I have read a book this good. It is a great medical mystery, feel-good story of a man commiting to serving the poor, inside look at the politics of international health issues, and compelling ethical drama about how we treat the poor in a world of limited resources. (With a list like that, I feel almost guilty mentioning how entertaining it was.) Highly recommended.

TR: The Last Romantic by H. W. Brands

After 298 pages, I have decided that life is too short to spend time reading mediocre books.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling

I don't feel the need to say anything profound here. It was a good book.

Adventures of a Church Historian by Leonard Arrington

I loved this book and recommend it highly. Arrington presided over the Church Archives during the 1970's (the only professional historian to do so), when it was open to scholars. The fruits of his labor (and others on his staff) constitute most of the best Mormon history written to date. He describes his experience trying to write Church history as a Church employee, at a time when some General Authorities loved his work and others disagreed with it, as akin to being a mouse in a room where elephants are dancing. This is a must-read for those interested in Mormon Studies.