Book Reviews for Amazon.com, December '05 and January '06

Public Reviews written by Marian W. Trotter (Bonnie) for Amazon.com

Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat, by Don Oberdorfer

“Firm and Brilliant,” January 11, 2006

Michael Joseph (Mike) Mansfield's approach to Congress could instruct many of the politicians in power today. Unlike his bombastic, controlling predecessor, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, Mansfield, as Senate Majority Leader, retreated from the glare of publicity so that his fellow senators, from both parties, could take pride in successful legislation that they initiated, all the while guiding that body with a steady hand.

Because of the statesman's honesty, his intellectual capacity, his ability to connect immediately with people, no matter their views, and his brilliance as a public servant, his home state Montana kept him in Congress from the year they first elected him in 1942 to 1977, when he retired from the Senate. They loved him because he put their interests first, regardless of what was occurring on the world's stage.

When Mansfield retired from the Senate, he expected to "loaf, read, and think," but the government couldn't let go and sent him to Japan where he served as Ambassador, a position from which he retired in his mid-eighties. After that, Goldman Sachs hired him to be its East Asian Advisor.

Above all else, human relationships ranked highest in importance for Mansfield. When his wife died, he said during her eulogy that without her he would have been nothing. Early in their marriage she urged him to leave his work as miner and mining engineer to pursue and complete his education.

I recommend Don Oberdorfer's "Senator Mansfield" to readers interested in a look into the bowels of politics, particularly during the Vietnam War era and its aftermath. I felt as if I were hiding under a desk eavesdropping. Reading parts of the tapes that Nixon made of himself, I couldn't decide whether to laugh or weep.

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In the Mind's Eye: Visual Thinkers, Gifted People With Dyslexia and Other Learning Difficulties, Computer Images and the Ironies of Creativity, by Thomas G. West

“Computer Graphics and Gifted Dyslexics,” January 6, 2006

In the Mind's Eye is the most interesting book I've ever read. Author Thomas G. West shows how advanced computer graphic technology is starting to provide an educational and professional home for the dyslexic visual thinker. In delightful and precise language, he illustrates why this new world of processing requires a global perspective, or the ability to see the whole of a phenomenon, as opposed to the blinkered view of an isolated part, and thereby to recognize patterns and quickly identify irregularities and problems. A three-dimensional view of each trader's performance could have saved Baron's Bank from the rogue trader who destroyed it.

The brain design that enables the visual thinker to grasp vast amounts of data by seeing it from a global perspective often comes with dyslexia or other learning difficulties. For these people, the traditional classroom and bureaucratic organization are nightmares. Schools, universities, and corporations flush out many dyslexic visual thinkers at great cost to the progress of civilization.

Nowadays computers eliminate what in earlier systems caused problems. They handle spelling and calculations easily. Another kind of student and professional is needed, an individual who is talented at manipulating images, rather than those facile with arithmetic and able to recite on demand memorized passages assigned by a teacher.

This extended essay would interest the general reader as much as it would the visual thinker. West exposes you to a careful look at gifted, dyslexic visual thinkers who made extraordinary contributions to civilization. You will read about how these giants refused to buy into the dominant clerically oriented educational and professional systems and forged ahead to devise original ways to build on their strengths.

I was particularly interested that for these profiled individuals, what they had on hand was enough for their pursuits - the expertise and material available to them through their studies, work, or personal interests. They were able to shrug off professional, family, or societal expectations, giving themselves plenty of time to think quietly. Their passions lay in engagement rather than whether their inventions or discoveries would work or would sell. Their ideas and activities will trigger pyrotechnics of thought and, possibly, a myriad of ideas for projects to pursue in your free time.

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Rebuilding the Indian, by Fred Haefele

“Craving Variety and Adventure,” December 22, 2005

Fred Haefele, in his 2005 memoir Rebuilding the Indian, will inspire anyone who has sworn off the cubicles, the clock punching, and bureaucracy of conventional working life. An individual who craves variety and adventure, he beckons you away from the staid and the insipid.

At age 51, the author started rebuilding a vintage motorcycle from a pile of scrap. As the parts of the Indian Chief gradually and arduously came together, so did other dreams: to start a second family; to build enduring relationships with his adult daughter and son from a previous marriage; and to get his novel published. Throughout his life, Haefele paid attention to inclinations toward exciting activity and a recurring boyhood dream: In full control, he floats quickly just above the ground waiting for flight. In 1969, he bought a motorcycle, a shield against the stifling bourgeois lifestyle.

After he graduated from college, he took up tree surgery, another shield, this one against the politics so chaotic in the late 1960's. Rather than build a nest egg, he developed courage, physical strength, and the alertness and agility necessary to avoid catastrophic accidents. Until he sold his tree surgery business recently, it supported him and his family -- and the Indian Chief -- continuously, in sharp contrast to some conventional jobs that have become obsolete, leaving workers to face new bouts of long and expensive training.

His descriptions of migrating birds of all sizes and types, frost on land "jewel-like in the moonlight", and steam hovering over water in the process of freezing just may inspire you to go on out there and pick up a long-ago dream just to see what might happen.

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The Macmillan Visual Dictionary : 3,500 Color Illustrations, 25,000 Terms, 600 Subjects, by Jean-Claude Corbeil

“Inspiration Found in a Dictionary,” December 19, 2005

For thirteen years, I've been consulting my 1992 edition of The Macmillan Visual Dictionary. Searching its publisher's web site for a newer edition, I got 0 results. If I ran the world, this fine work would be on the Internet, its entries updated daily.

To artists and writers: it's such a classic, I don't really miss the would-be updates. Using computer technology, the authors use vivid descriptive color, each component delicately outlined. You start by finding the term you're looking for within one of the general categories, each color tabbed for clarity. Or you may find the page numbers for it in the index. What is a fetlock? Within the animal kingdom, you will find two double-page spreads of the horse, its exterior and its skeleton. Or look for your term in the index: curb bit, page 649, how it fits in the horse's mouth, and page 650, pictures of nine types of bits.

Let's say you have a picture of a thing in your mind, but you don't know its name. Find this image in one of the 28 color tabbed categories.

For artists, this visual dictionary is loaded with sources for inspiration. Take gems alone. Sketching facets, I want to compare my imaginary world found in the facets of a sapphire to that found in those of an emerald. What medium would best represent your idea? Photography? What kind? Here you will find cameras and accessories, for both still and video. For writers, specific terms along with clear pictures of what you are writing about increase accuracy and help bring your poetry and prose to life.

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The Elements of Style Illustrated, by William Strunk Jr.

“Somebody Else's Umbrella,” December 18, 2005

For forty years, writers have been consulting this handy bible to clear away verbiage fog. Look for the name of your problem in the index, and you'll find the number of the page where the distinction between "tortuous" and "torturous" is made in a little over two lines. Lend is the verb, loan the noun.

This edition is different from the others. It's illustrated, by artist Maira Kalman, whose dreamlike, impressionistic images reminded me how important a mental picture is to remembering a scene in history, the location of a business, or even a person's name. Her pictures capture what you might see with your mind's eye, or at a passing glance.

To depict the construction design necessary for a solid piece of composition, Kalman paints an interior corner covered by door-shaped, geometric outlines. For the possessive indefinite pronoun, use an apostrophe: "Somebody else's umbrella." Kalman's female character, dressed in yellow and standing in front of a dark blue background, turns away from a cherry red umbrella.

What I believe you might find particularly helpful are the verbal illustrations and examples. Throughout, the authors use columns: On the left side is what looks like a first stab at a phrase or sentence, loaded with unnecessary words that render it tame and dull. On the right all superfluous words are gone, the result brief and sharp.

Left column: Owing to the fact that
Right: Since (because)

In only 153 pages, "The Elements of Style" gives you immediate access to common usage problems and ways to correct them. I don't see how a writer could work without it.

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Burning Fence : A Western Memoir of Fatherhood, by Craig Lesley

“Riveting Tale of Two Fatherhoods,” December 14, 2005

When Rudell Lesley told his wife Hazel he had to go out for a while to look for a lost flashlight, he never returned, leaving her to raise their eight-month old son alone. The baby, christened Martin Craig Lesley, emerged with remarkable academic ability that came with a talent for remembering and processing every experience on an unusually deep level.

As I read, I marveled that the child didn't suffer a nervous breakdown or withdraw completely into fantasy. Relatives made vague, brief, derogatory comments about his father. Hazel said, "He just didn't give the slightest damn about anything." Rudell was shell-shocked from his fighting in the war. He was a backslider who poached. Trying to three-dimensionalize his father using this information began the stirrings of rage. Also Craig needed a target for his anger because his stepfather Vern was too terrifying to defy openly.

Badly injured in an accident at fifteen, Craig finally drew his father's attention. Rudell appeared with his young wife and four half-siblings. From that time until his father's death, Craig takes a spellbinding journey into the lives of his father's family and associates.

Rudell, with all his entertaining stories ("stretchers"), fails to say what would have meaning for Craig: why Rudell left, and whether he thought he made the right decision. With all of his hard physical labor as a fence builder, Rudell keeps himself and his family in squalor. Mixed into all this is Craig's adopted handicapped son Wade who burns Rudell's stack of freshly cut fence posts, believing that he's scaring off Big Foot.

If you would like to live inside the mind of a man who overcame a harrowing childhood to become a successful writer and university professor, this memoir is for you.

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American Prometheus : The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

“Martyr for the Sake of Many,” December 3, 2005

Who or what has protected us against an atomic bomb attack? Surely not the designers and manufacturers of the first atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

I was wrong. Reading American Prometheus (the name of the Greek god who took fire from Zeus and gave it to humans)," I learned that the director of the atomic bomb's development, J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), spearheaded the movement to contain this dangerous weapon after it was used successfully against Japan. Before Presidents, Generals, and Atomic Energy officials, he argued for the weapon's containment and control, proposing a coordinated effort by all powerful nations, in the end martyring his career as a prominent member of the government's scientific community.

The authors describe Oppenheimer as naïve, as if they are surprised in the light of his scientific genius. To me he seems naïve in his dealings with government interrogators, but only from the standpoint of someone whose main interest is protecting his job. I don't believe the physicist was naïve. Knowing the dangers of the new nuclear war technology, Oppenheimer was most interested in protecting humankind, not his own back. He believed that, inside the system, he could most effectively wage his campaign to contain and control the technology, even at the expense of his career. He clung like a barnacle to high-level government positions until the Atomic Energy Commission expunged him from government service in 1954 by not renewing his security clearance.

J. Robert Oppenheimer's story is frightening. President Truman and Eisenhower, Generals, politicians, and specifically high-ranking officials serving on the Atomic Energy Commission showed the same blind pig-headedness that we see today in the mishandling of Iraq. One of the only bright spots these days is independent prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, the kind of lawyer that Oppenheimer badly needed.

I recommend this book for the general reader as well as for the historian. The authors weave facts and dates into the narrative without interrupting the flow. Reading about Oppenheimer, you learn what it is like to choose between obeying the dictates of those in power, with possibly disastrous consequences for the many, and protesting their decisions, risking the loss of your job. The book will give courage to anyone facing such a decision.

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Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy, by Kent Nerburn

“Chief Joseph's True Greatness,” December 3, 2005, December 3, 2005

I loved this book. In vivid detail, Kent Nerburn, in his "Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce," fulfills his promise to show Chief Joseph's true greatness, which myth has obscured, eventually rendering the great man what the author aptly describes as a kind of "hood ornament."

When the U.S. military captured the Nez Perce, other chiefs fled. Joseph stayed with and cared for his bands during their circuitous, grueling travels as prisoners of the U.S. government, while the President and military officials decided how inexpensively they could house the Nez Perce from then on.

Joseph, already a myth in the eyes of the U.S. populace as the leader of the Nez Perce tribe's masterly escape from the "best that the U.S. military had to offer," used his fame to advocate for his bands before Presidents and Congress. Although feted and celebrated, he failed to get adequate results. He was unaware that Indian genocide was being considered.

This is the most horrific account of displacement I have ever encountered. A huge number of Nez Perce died on route, particularly the elderly and the very young, sickened by starvation and killed by white diseases to which they had no immunity.

"Chief Joseph" took place during Reconstruction following the Civil War, a time when government resources were lacking and nerves worn. Soldiers and officers assigned to the Indian front typically lacked basic military skills and the experience necessary to handle Indians with sensitivity and tact.

I recommend this book to people who like history that is presented as narrative, offering the kind of momentum and characterization that you find in novels.

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