Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon S. Wood

Although it probably wasn’t the intention of the author, this is really a great book to read during the current period of the United States simply because it illustrates that in the world of politics, nothing has really changed. It’s so tempting to see the ubiquitous bickering of the two political parties inflamed by tools such as social media and think that things have really gotten out of hand. Author Gordon S. Wood shows us that this behavior has been happening since the beginning of our country’s history. Adams and Jefferson were the first two presidential candidates who faced off against each other (George Washington was a unanimous selection as the first president). These two started out quite amiable towards each other, yet over time the differences between the two began to outweigh the similarities. This caused a plethora of insulting name-calling, bruised egos, faltered friendships and a divided country. Yes, even in its infancy, the United States was anything but united.

This book really isn’t a “co” biography. We learn a lot about both of these founding fathers, but the main highlight of this volume is the differences between the two. Sometimes this style of writing works, other times it felt a bit awkward. At least for my tastes. Maybe I was wanting more “biographical” information about the subjects? I’ve read excellent biographies of both of these individuals and felt like I already knew much about what author was telling his readers. That’s not a slam of the book, only an observation. For me, though, the parts of this book that I enjoyed the most were when these differences were told around specific event in history. My favorite part was during John Adams’ tenuous presidency with Jefferson serving as his vice-president (running mates weren’t selected as they are now; they were elected). You could definitely see the differences between the two expounded on and see how their already fragile feelings start to become more fractured. Other times, though, I felt as if I was sitting in a boring philosophy class with a very tepid instructor. We read an awful lot, for example, of the deep feelings and beliefs around topics such as a “constitution” and what it should include and involve. It can be quite drab reading.

Still, though, the pros of this book far outweigh the cons. What is particularly fascinating is that we are reading about a brand-new country. No one knew whether or not this “experiment” would work, and Adams and Jefferson had radically different ideas of success. In their minds, if things weren’t done their way, the whole country would collapse faster than it was assembled. Ironically, we see benefits and pitfalls of both of their philosophies and most clear-thinking people might argue the same is true with the political climate today.

Adams was the hard-core Federalist, who essentially wanted the new nation to mirror the government of Mother England. Yes, order was important, but he wanted to go as far as having hereditary succession. His belief was that all men were definitely NOT created equal and that only a certain level of a mind should be trusted to lead a nation. Jefferson, on the other hand, was of the rebellious Republican breed who thought government should be almost invisible. He DID believe all men were created equal, but by ‘equal’, well….among other things….that didn’t include Black people. So nothing was perfect back then either.

It should also be pointed out that both of these men died on the same day. Ironically, it was July 4, 1826 – the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. So in some strange way, these two individuals are probably more ‘connected’ than maybe they should be. In their latter years after serving in office, they seem to mellow their attitudes significantly towards each other. To be honest though, both of these individuals came across as being rather grumpy and uncompromising; especially towards each other. Still, though, it’s a great part of the history of the United States that needs to be learned. A good read despite the fact that it does get bogged down in places. You may want to start with a straight-up biography of the two men before tackling this one.

Casino

Casino – by Nicolas Pileggi

Like most people, I probably would not have read this book had I not seen the wonderful Martin Scorsese movie of the same name. Sadly, I didn’t enjoy this book nearly as much as the movie. In fact, I didn’t really enjoy this thing at all. I thought it was poorly written and am quite surprised how Scorsese managed to take something like this and turn it into such a beautiful piece of cinematic art. That says a lot of a film director. We must also remember that the movie was “based on” the book. Scorsese takes a lot of liberty with the script and, for whatever reason, he changes all the names of the real people. So Lefty Rosenthal became Ace Rothstein (DeNiro), Tony Spilotro became Nicky Santoro (Pesci), Geri became Ginger (Sharon Stone), etc. etc.

Speaking of character names, this is by far the biggest weakness of this entire book. For whatever reason, author Pileggi feels obligated to name every single minor character in the book. This is not at all necessary when the characters really don’t add anything to the story. This only manages to confuse the reader since one’s brain really shouldn’t have to be forced to assimilate so many names of people throughout the course of the book. Let’s look at an example of what I mean. I would propose the following statement is ideal:

“John drove across town in his car with three of his friends.”

However, the way Pileggi would write that statement would be:

“John drove across town in his car with Bill Thomas who was his next-door neighbor that owned a dry-cleaning business. Also in the car was Mark Dillon who John knew since high school. In the last seat of the car was George Miller who was John’s second cousin from his first marriage.”

Now, assuming we never come across Bill, Mark, or George again in the story, we really don’t need this excess of description stated in the above paragraph. After a while, your brain starts to automatically tune out these superfluous names as soon as you come across them. This is not a good thing because if the character JUST MIGHT be relevant to the remainder of the story, you’ve now trained your conscious to ignore them, so it becomes more burdensome when you read their name again and you can’t quite place them. This was a big, big hindrance for me.

Another problem that I had with this novel is it didn’t really flow into an easy-to-understand story. Pileggi throws so many stories from so many people into his narrative, and many of them don’t really even take place in a casino or even Las Vegas. This book seems more of anecdotal recollection of many of the mob personalities that are closely related to the key players. Again, the movie tended to do this, but when you have a master like Martin Scorsese, he can take all of this jumbled information and still tell a decent story while making sense out of all of muddled stories and episodes that are randomly thrown at us. I never really felt like there was any linear progression here, and when you did see relationships progress (such as the love triangle between Lefty, Tony, and Geri) it’s told in such a haphazard fashion, that a lot of the emotion the reader should feel simply isn’t there.

Other times, the author includes things such as entire transcripts of police reports, entire court transcriptions, and entire news stories verbatim. Probably the highlight (emotion wise) of the book is when Lefty and Geri are having their last fight and she’s screaming at him outside of their house while loaded on drugs. Yet right in the middle of this drama, Pileggi haphazardly includes the arrest report and it seems to throw the drama off too much. I mean, I could understand the author including this arrest report as a postscript at the end of the chapter, but why include it right in the middle of the event as he’s describing it?

I think that the approach that the author should have taken would have been to not include so many verbatim interviews that he conducted with related individuals, and instead try to incorporate the stories into an easy flowing narrative. He should have then maybe included an appendix with this multitude of individuals instead of flooding his readers with this information throughout the story.

I must confess that as I write this review, the vast majority of other reviewers on Amazon have given this book a very high rating. So maybe I’m just missing something. I simply didn’t enjoy the book and thought the overall experience was extremely tedious. Oh well, it did lead to a great movie.

The Steel Kiss

The Steel Kiss by Jeffery Deaver

My 31st Jeffery Deaver novel I’ve read in 7 ½ years. You don’t read that many books by one author unless you really enjoy their work. I’ve also read all of his Lincoln Rhyme novels – in order. That’s a pet peeve of mine. When authors use the same character in multiple books, you might just miss something relevant to the progression of the main characters if you skip a book or read them out of order.

The Lincoln Rhyme books always work well for my tastes. As I’ve stated in some of my recent reviews (all on Amazon) though, I’ve been suffering a bit from “Deaver-Rhyme ennui”. The stories and characters can get a tad repetitive over time and one can’t help but feel as though you’ve read it all before. Perhaps Jeffery Deaver read my mind (or my reviews) because this book seemed somewhat fresh compared to the multitude.

In this caper, Lincoln Rhyme and many of his cohorts are back once more dealing with an intelligent psychopath who is using IoT (Internet of Things) technology to cause panic and mayhem. If you’re not familiar with the term IoT, it’s essentially the technology that allows you to lock your house from your smart phone even if you’re across the country; or the ability to have your refrigerator generate an e-grocery list as it tracks food that is removed. It doesn’t seem too far-fetched to figure how a computer savvy individual can break into the code of said devices and really cause havoc. As always, Deaver does an excellent job with his research.

Fortunately, Deaver expounds on the idiosyncrasies of his characters a bit less than normal this time around. Lincoln is still a grouch, and partner Amelia Sachs is still high-strung, but we don’t read as much about Rhyme yelling at his aid for more scotch or Sachs’ “scratching her scalp until it bleeds”. This is a very good thing. For the constant reader, these mentions really do get old after a while. It’s also nice to see that Deaver elects to only use many members of the supporting cast sparingly in this story. Again, it becomes cumbersome when we get so used to Rhyme and the regulars huddled in his private lab going over evidence while Rhyme screams at all of them for not being at his level of intellect.

We also meet a few new characters and read several subplots. Normally having many subplots isn’t always a good thing, but I welcomed the change in this book. Included here are stories about a parent, an ex-lover, and a student of Lincoln Rhyme’s who is also a quadriplegic (Lincoln is a teacher in this book – having ‘retired’ from the police force). The length of this book seemed to be about 150 pages longer than the normal Lincoln Rhyme escapade, but that didn’t bother me at all. Again, Jeffery Deaver is a very strong writer, so the fact that he adds so much “fresh” material and perspective is a change for the better.

Deaver is famous for his plot twists, but when you’ve read so many of his works, you’re not as astounded when you come across them. As another reviewer put it: “When you’re really trying to figure out how a magician will fool his audience, you tend to look at his hands and not necessarily where he’s trying to get your eyes to focus.” That’s a great description of myself when I now read Jeffery Deaver. The surprise factor wears thin after you’ve read so much of the authors’ work.
Still, though, this was very enjoyable. I thought this was one of his best Lincoln Rhyme efforts. I imagine it must be a real chore trying to keep things fresh for his repetitive readers. Deaver succeeds here. Hopefully he’ll do as good of a job next time as well.