Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America's Most Perilous Year

Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year – by David Von Drehle

Most historians concur that Abraham Lincoln was our nation’s greatest president.  Most non-historians would agree.  If you were alive, however, in 1862, odds are you hated the man.  You certainly didn’t think he was that capable of a president.  Yet hard times and suffering breed character, and there was no more dangerous of a time in the history of the United States than when approximately half the states committed treason, tried to secede from the Union, and caused the bloodiest conflict in the history of the nation.

Lincoln began his term in 1861, just as the tinderbox was about to explode.  The war officially began when mortars were fired upon Fort Sumter later that year, and the first battle of Bull Run made everyone take notice of just how precarious the business of war could be.  So this book begins in January the following year, 1862, and it essentially walks us through the main travails of President Lincoln from January to December of that year.

Having a Civil War to deal with is bad enough, but any leader of the free world will tell you that those big problems come packaged with many smaller parcels as well.  Even though the Civil War is the main actor in this play, there are plenty of other calamities to deal with.  Most notably, the year sees the unexpected death of Lincoln’s young son Willie due to typhoid fever.  If this wasn’t bad enough, this tragedy befalls The First Lady so much, that she actually consorts to mediums to hold séances at The White House to try to talk to young Willie’s spirit. 

Then we have problems with other countries.  England, for instance, is keen to join the war – with the Confederacy, that is.  Oh sure, they believe slavery is bad, but the South controls the cotton, and cotton, you know, is good business.  Lincoln also had a cabinet that was frequently disharmonious with each other, and many didn’t care for their Commander in Chief (see Doris Kearns Goodwin’s excellent book “Team of Rivals”).

What this book really shows, is Abraham Lincoln’s leadership and calm demeanor throughout all of these events.  Most normal men would explode with the amount of idiocy and insubordination that is ever present at the time, but somehow, this president knows exactly how to juggle all of the balls and keep everyone content while slowly moving the nation towards the direction where it needs to go.  It’s a slow, painful, time, and strong patience is needed if changes are to be made and for the country to begin the healing process and become great again.

Are all of his moves perfect?  Well, no.  Example: He’s all for freeing the slaves, but doesn’t believe that the two races can live in harmony, so he begins exploring ways to ship the freed slaves <I>back</I> to Africa while setting up a colony for them.  This idea doesn’t go over well with the black population (freed and slave).  Even though they’ve had a tumultuous time during their entire life, America is now their home.  Wisely, Lincoln quickly abandons the idea.

The book ends at the conclusion of 1862.  Oh sure, we all know what happens during the next few years, but I, for one, kind of wish that the author would have kept going.  I would have loved to have read about all of the events, however painful, up to Appomattox, and Lincoln’s eventual assassination.  Perhaps this was the original intent of the author, yet he realized that the “best stuff” was from this one year.  Since this one year ultimately shaped the president and was the precursor to setting the nation on the right track, it isn’t a bad thing that we’re limited to 1862.  I found this to be a great book about a great man that had to lead the country during its worst time in history.

 As I write this review in March 2016, it kind of makes problems like Donald Trump seem incredibly inconsequential.

The Spy

The Spy - Clive Cussler and Justin Scott

For years, the names Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt were synonymous with thrills and high engaging adventures.  Then, at some point, Cussler decided to let his hero age somewhat, and the newer Dirk Pitt books featured our hero married to a Congresswoman and he had two adult twin children that were running around solving adventures with Dad.  I dunno, but by that point the series simply lost something for me.  Around this same time, Cussler started co-authoring multiple books focusing on new heroes/heroines/both.   Let’s see, there’s the NUMA files, the Oregon files, the Fargo Adventures, and the Isaac Bell series.   Sadly, only one of these tends to really be as thrilling as early Clive Cussler for me, and that’s the Isaac Bell series.

This is Isaac’s third adventure (the first was written by Cussler solo, the second, like this one, is co-authored with Justin Scott), and I must say that I really enjoy these books.  Cussler wisely places his hero in the past by a century or so – taking place in the early 1900s.  This helps differentiate these stories from all the other Cussler adventures being written.  Isaac Bell is a fabulously wealthy, dashing, hunkish, intelligent detective who works for the Van Dorn detective agency.  The guy can do no wrong.  In addition to be being fabulously reliant and handsome, he has an equally beautiful fiancé that appears from time to time within the stories.  These books, like all hero-centered adventure books, tend to focus on some “really big crime” for our hero to solve, while being placed in incredible danger and harm.

The main actor in this story is the dreadnought battleship.  This was THE weapon of the future around 1908, and although World War I was still six years away, those who knew better knew that it was only a matter of time before a great war between many would breakout.  So spies are trying to sabotage this new weapon.  Strange events happen, beautiful women appear, bizarre accidents occur, Bell miraculously rescues a beautiful woman, key people are not who they seem, explosions are stopped at the last minute, and there are even more beautiful women.

This sounds like I’m being crass, and perhaps I am, but the absurdity of the story doesn’t really take away from my enjoyment.  It’s simply fun to read about the amazingly infallible detective and how he’s able to put together complex puzzles that lead him slowly closer to solving a baffling conundrum while narrowly escaping death, racing across the country in a fabulous new roadster, or being thrown off a train (yet not hurting himself because he crashes into a sheep).

This story had a bit too many people within the pages.  It could be a bit challenging to keep everyone’s identity safely compartmentalized in my brain, but I really did enjoy myself while reading the book.  It’s also nice to know that there really is life for Cussler after Dirk Pitt. Even though Pitt, according to Cussler anyway, really isn’t quite through.  I had a lot of fun with this, and every other Isaac Bell book I’ve read so far.

A God in Ruins

A God in Ruins - by Kate Atkinson

While it is not absolutely necessary to read Kate Atkinson’s previous book, Life After Life, before reading this one, I would definitely recommend it.  That one was a weird book.  Brilliant, but weird.  In that book, we read about young Ursula Todd - a woman born in England a few years before the first World War.  Throughout her life, she literally keeps dying.  So a cosmological reset button is pressed, and her life starts over.  And over and over and over.  Each life being somewhat different from her last one.  In all of Ursula’s lives, she has a younger brother Teddy.  You could say that A God in Ruins is based on one of Ursula’s many lives, and Teddy, this time is the main character.

The thing I really like about Teddy is that he seems to be a somewhat normal, likable person.  This is rare in Kate Atkinson books.  Most of her characters are not pleasant people. Fathers are usually dolts, mothers are unsympathetic, no one ever believes in God, and people don’t seem to have a clue how to treat their marital partner with love and/or kindness.  Teddy is somewhat different, but sadly, his life doesn’t seem to be any better than the lives of anyone else created by Kate Atkinson.

We jump all over the place time wise in this book.  It’s definitely not a linear story. One chapter, Teddy is grown up and married.  Then, we flashback to when he was a small child.  Next, we’ve fast forwarded 60 years and he’s a grandfather.  Then, we go back 30 years and he’s a pilot during World War II.  This sort of narrative drives many bonkers, but I thought it worked out rather nicely, and actually thought it made for a better story. 

Some key characters in the book are Teddy’s daughter Viola, and her children Sunny and Bertie.  They’re definitely a warped bunch, but if you’re familiar with Atkinson, these kinds of people are par for the course.  It could be very frustrating reading about these offspring.  Fortunately, good old Teddy can deal with them a lot better than most people could.

Without going into much detail about the plot, you could argue that there really isn’t that much of a plot at all - another common occurrence for this author.  We simply read about all of these people’s day to day (miserable) lives.  What I did find somewhat fascinating is that if you read the book carefully, you discover exactly why Viola grows up into such a “wrong number”.   Children must be raised carefully.  If not, episodes can trigger unpleasant characteristics causing the person to be somewhat distressed and damaged.  So since Viola is royally messed up, she of course gets mixed up with the wrong people as she grows older, ends up having children she doesn’t really love, and then those children grow up dysfunctional, and the whole cycle begins anew.

Unlike any other Kate Atkinson book, this one tends to get too long winded when we read chapters of Teddy’s escapades during World War II.  You could argue that the aspect is somewhat necessary, but I thought the details were too drawn out, and the author could have trimmed several pages.  Fortunately, the end of the book is somewhat of a surprise.  With Atkinson bouncing around over the span of about 100 years, the ending might not be too clear for many, though.  Once you finish the book, I would search the web for the different opinions as to “what really happened”.  This in itself makes the book very worthwhile. It makes you think.

For me, after discovering Kate Atkinson, this was the first time that I’ve ever read the entire works of one author from start to finish, and I’ve immensely enjoyed her works (I’ve reviewed them all on Amazon).  Her books have the tendency to be very depressing, yet very humorous at the same time.  I read an interview with her once, where she said she didn’t feel her books featured characters that were constantly despondent.  She felt all of her characters were “normal”.  I admit that I was saddened by this.  I can’t imagine people living their life in a way that all of these characters do.  If you’re reading this review, I can assure you that it’s very possible to experience a world of joy despite major and minor setbacks.  I only hope that you find such joy.  

I would love to recommend turning to God for enlightenment, but I won’t say that, because someone reading this will think I’m being preachy.  Trust me, though, you can live a better life than a character in a Kate Atkinson book.

So Anyway

So Anyway - by John Cleese

If you knew absolutely nothing about visual arts nor pop culture, and you ran into John Cleese on the street, you would have no idea that he is one of the funniest men on the planet. All comedians have a certain shtick, and whereas Cleese has definitely changed his persona during the last fifty years, he remains a fascinating character because he has a very cerebral approach to everything.  Listening to the man, you don’t feel as though he’s trying to make you laugh, but you rather feel as though he’s trying to take everything we know about life and put it inside a nice, neat, gift-wrapped box.  He’s a fascinating person to listen to, yet in spite of these characteristics, he still manages to laugh a lot himself, and in turn, make others around him laugh as well.

I say this because this autobiography is not really a “funny” book.  Many times when comedians record their memoirs, they feel it necessary to litter the writing with witty one liners and clever anecdotes throughout the pages.  For the most part, John Cleese avoids this with this book.  That’s not to say that nothing in this book his funny.  No, there are times when he’ll surprise and shock you and make you fall over with laughter while recalling a certain memory.  This is just the man’s style.

You also should be warned that this is not a “Python” book.  For whatever reason, this book basically ends as Monty Python begins.  I’m not entirely sure why.  Perhaps it’s because the antics of his life have already been well documented once he began performing with Python in the late 1960s.  This book takes the reader on a journey through Cleese’s life as a young boy, attending public school, becoming a school teacher, getting a degree to practice law, and eventually writing and performing comedy.  Writing comedy was never his dream, he actually ended up doing it by accident, realized he was very good at it, kept working at various jobs and, and once Python arrived, stuck to it for good.

You might think that you would be shortchanged since the most memorable parts of Cleese’s life are excluded here.  After all, does anyone really want to read a book about a person that leaves out his most well-known portions of his career?  Oddly, I didn’t feel cheated.  John Cleese is simply a superb raconteur, and I found all aspects of his early life to be quite fascinating.  Again, one can see his brain gathering material from an everyman’s day to day life that eventually would blossom into comedy.  It must be said that this book would definitely NOT have worked had this not been an autobiography, yet rather a biography written by anyone other than John Cleese.  It’s not his life that is particularly fascinating, yet his observations and tales of his memories that are such a joy to read.

Once he does begin writing and performing for the BBC in the 1960s (many of those shows have literally been erased from their original tapes), he does include in this retrospective some of the scripts of some of the selected skits and, depending on one’s imagination, are either quite welcome or could seem stiff at times. He did an awful lot in the few years before Python, and it’s quite obvious that he accumulated quite a bit of experience that helped him shine during his Python and Fawlty Towers days.

Sometimes the man’s honesty can get him a wee bit of trouble, but this definitely doesn’t bother the man one bit.  Example: A few years ago, he went on a standup tour that he called something like “The Alimony Tour”.  He explained that he did not want to go out on the road and perform, but he simply had to because he owed money to one of his ex-wives.  A bit sardonic if you’re in the audience and discover such a thing, but in a strange way, this, again, is part of the man’s charm.  I raise this issue because there are some that say that this is also the reason for him writing this book – simply a way to cash in without divulging any stories from the glory days of his career.  I certainly didn’t feel that way, however.  I loved reading about his descriptions of his early life.  I must also say, however, that if he ever pens a follow up that does detail the latter half of his career, I’ll definitely snap it up as soon as possible.  I simply love to listen to the man – even if he isn’t making me break down in hysterics.