Category: Books

I first heard tell of Drake’s Fortune: The Fabulous True Story of the World’s Greatest Confidence Artist in the virtual pages of Salon, which reviewed two books dedicated to the art of the scam. And as I have a soft spot in my heart for hucksters, I picked up the (reportedly) better written of the two.

Zowie, whatta great book! Which is to say: what amazing subject matter. Drake’s Fortune is well-written, and author Richard Rayner has the good sense to avoid two problems which seem to plague biographies: he stays focused on the subject matter and he keeps it brief (200 pages). This makes for a riveting work, one that that I plowed through in two days and would have read cover-to-cover had I started it early on a weekend.

Despite the title, the protagonist (‘antagonist,’ really) is Oscar Merrill Hartzell. The titular “Drake” refers to Sir Francis Drake, a British admiral from the 1500’s who plundered the Spanish Armada and returned to England with a bounty of gold. After the Queen took her share from the The ill-begotten trove, the rest sat in probate awaiting a heir to claim the remains. And there the untold riches sat, for hundreds of years, as the legal questions surrounding the gold’s rightful owner grew ever more complex. Anyone who could sort out the genealogical riddle stood to make a killing: they would receive the entire fortune, plus centuries’ worth of interest. This is the task Hartzell undertook, but he knew it wasn’t going to be easy or cheap. Indeed, no one man could possibly afford all the legal fees required to untangle this legal morass. So Hartzell asked ordinary citizens for donations, and promised that, once the estate was his, he would return their investment 1000%.

It would have been a win-win situation for everyone involved, if not for one troublesome detail: there was no Drake estate. Yes, Sir Francis Drake had returned to the motherland with a boatload of booty, but every doubloon had been distributed — nothing remained to be claimed by anyone. But this didn’t stop Hartzell from selling “stakes” in the estate all the same. In fact, from 1920 to 1933, he bilked thousands and thousands of people out of millions and millions of dollars — this despite the fact that the nation was in the midst of a Great Depression! And what’s even more astounding is how little effort it took him: Hartzell rarely even bothered to pretend like he was really pursuing an estate, instead running the entire scheme off of his winning charisma and his superhuman ability to lie like a rug.

Drake’s Fortune is an unnerving book. But the scariest moment, for me, came when I realized why I get so much spam email. Who could possibly believe that a Nigerian official wants to transfer billions of dollars into their bank account? Who could possibly believe that they could lose 30 pounds in seven days? Who could possibly believe that there’s a pill that will increase the length of your penis overnight? You read Drake’s Fortune and you begin to understand that the world is filled with people who can be made to believe anything, and these dupes would go right on believing even if The Truth came over to their house and slept on their sofa for a week. I am not overly concerned by the idea that there are con men in the world, but when I think about the hoards of suckers these guys prey upon, I can’t help but shudder.

Read this book. It’s great.

In a desperate attempt to appear “hip,’ to “connect” with his teenage students, my high school math teacher compared geometry to Dungeons and Dragons. “You all love D&D, right?” he said, assuming we all did since, in 1987, it was the fad du jour. “Well, geometry is just like that: it starts as a few, basic, fundamental rules, and then builds a whole bunch of secondary rules to handle special cases. So in D&D you have basic rules for fighters, thieves, wizards and whatever, and in geometry you have rules for circles, squares and triangles. And from there you build more and more guidelines until you have an entire system!”

At the time I hated math, so I rolled my eyes at this amazingly lame analogy right along with everyone else. But now, years later, I can’t help but wonder if he might have been on to something. In the decade since high school I have become fascinated both with games and math, and I now understand that the two are intimately connected. Indeed, reading Journey Through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics was a lot like reading a rule book for the natural world.

Author William Dunham chose a dozen or so theorems, each of which advanced — and, some cases, revolutionized — the world’s understanding of mathematics. It starts with the ancient Greeks and the problem of “squaring” various shapes. (One “squares” a figure by turning it into a square with sides of a known length, which, in turn, allows you to determine the area of the original shape. “Squaring the circle” was, for quite a while, the holy grail of mathemastics, until it was proven to be impossible.) The first Great Thereom demonstrates how to square rectangles, then pentagones, then hexagons, and so forth. This discovery paved the way for such other revelations as Pythegoras’ Theorem (a² + b² = ²) and the value of pi, which, in turn, served as building blocks for still more profound insights. Journey Through Genius almost seems like a mystery novel, where clues are slowly revealed and more and more conclusions are drawn.

The most fascinating part of the book, I though, was the depiction of mathematicians as gunslingers in the 17th century. Up and coming mathematicians would challenge established scholars to “duels,” where the participants would swap tests and see who could stump whom. He who could crack most of his opponent’s questions would become (or remain) Mathematics Fastest Gun; the other would be shot down in ignominy. An unfortunate consequence of this institution was that mathematicians who discovered new methods of solving problems would be reluctant to share their secrets, instead hoarding their knowledge and using it to win in these gun fights. Who knew that Math Guys could be so ruthless?

I freely admit that I didn’t really follow the Theorems presented in the last four chapters, although Dunham still explained the role and importance of each. Overall I found Journey Through Genius to be a fascinating read, and one — like all the books on mathematics I read these days — which made me wish I had cared more about this stuff when it was being taught to me to free. Criminey, if I had listened to my geometry teacher’s advice and treated mathematics like D&D, I could have been a Level 13 Trigonomiter with a +2 Slide Rule of Sharpness by now. Ah, wasted youth.

About halfway through high school I finished reading my 87,000th crappy sci-fi or fantasy novel and decided that I’d had enough. From that point on I have avoided the genre entirely, except to read books that (a) have won an award, or (b) are personally recommended to me by friends with trustworthy judgment, or, preferably (c) both. Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep fell into the former category — it won the Hugo Award in 1991 — but if you’d like that recommendation I’d be happy to provide it myself.

The novel is set in the far far future, and the events take place in a region called The Beyond. The galaxy, we are told, is divided into four distinct “Zones of Thought” like the areas on a bullseye: The Unthinking Depths are in the center, The Slow Zone is the next ring out, The Beyond falls on the fringes of the galaxy and surrounding everything is The Transcend. Each region has its own physical laws. So in The Slow Zone (where our own Earth resides), the “Nothing Faster Than the Speed of Light” limit reigns, but in The Beyond this prohibition is lifted. No one really knows what The Transcend is like because creatures who manage to get there become godlike Powers and generally stop giving a rat ass about mortals.

Our story begins with a ship’s crash landing, stranding two human children on a planet inhabited by sentient wolves. Each individual wolf is not very intelligent alone, but they all possesses the ability to “hear” the thoughts of other wolves in about a 10 meter radius. Groups of four to eight wolves, then, come together in packs to become a “person,” with a group mind and a single identity. These “people,” called Tines, can then use their four to eight mouths in collaboration — all controlled by the group mind — to manipulate their environment as skillfully as humans can with their hands. One disadvantage of the tines, though, is that they are unable to come within 10 meters of one another without their thoughts intermingling — an occurrence which could result in confusion or even loss of identity, The tines are wonderfully well thought-out and described by Vinge, although their unique sense of personhood does lead to some bizarre sentence constructions. (E.g. “Afraid of the noise, he sent some of him to peer over the ridge while other parts of him cowered on the ground.”)

The rest of the book is pure space opera: a malicious, virus-like Power called The Blight is quickly taking over the galaxy, enslaving trillions of beings and killing all those that stand in its way. There may be a “Countermeasure” to defeat The Blight, but nobody knows for certain; and this Countermeasure, if it exists at all, is on the ship that crashed into Tines World. A small band of people (two humans, two tropical plant-based aliens) set off to rescue the children and find The Countermeasure, but soon find themselves pursued by an entire fleet of The Blight’s minions.

Any one of these ideas — the group-mind Tines, the Zones of Thought, The Blight — would have been enough to build a novel around; the fact that Vinge threw them all into the same 600-page work shows that this is a guy with creativity to spare. The writing isn’t the best I’ve read, but the scope of the story and the striking originality of the concepts make is clear why this one snagged Science Fiction’s highest award.

It has probably not escaped your attention that, in recent days, defective yeti has been yammering on and on about comic books. It may surprise you to hear, then, that I don’t actually read comics books — not any more, at any rate. But as noted before, I love the idea of comic books, and love the four-color champions documented therein. And this superherophilia was recently brought to the fore by the excellent novel The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, the newest book by Michael Chebon and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Having narrowly escaped Prague in 1939, Josef Kavalier teams up with his cousin Sam Clay in New York to fight Hitler in the only way he can: through the use of comic books. The two young men, capitalizing on the popularity of the then-novel “Superman,” convince a local publisher to sponsor a monthly comic book entitled “The Escapist” which chronicles the adventures of a Harry Houdini-like hero who has sworn to “free those who languish in tyranny’s chains!” Kavalier and Clay are content to fight (and defeat) the Axis each and every month for a while, but soon both the war and the comic book business take a turn for the worst. At the dissolution of their comic book partnertship the men strike out in their own directions, but they never forget the two-fisted tales that brought them together as a team.

Chebon (pronounced “SHAY-bon,” I’ve discovered) writes exactly the kind of novel I like: a lyrical history of a few memorable characters on their voyage from youth to adulthood. (Not unlike another of my favorite authors, John Irving’s, as exemplified by World According to Garp and Ciderhouse Rules). This style, combined with a subject matter I already adore, made this one of the best fiction books I’ve read in years. A very satisfying story, and one that I would heartily recommend to anyone who enjoys comic books, the idea of comic books, or just a damned fine yarn.

I can’t recall exactly what possessed me to place a hold on The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade. But apparently I wasn’t alone in wanting to read it, as it took over six months for my library’s to scare me up a copy. The author, Thomas Lynch, is a man of many hats, including those of “Funeral Director” and “Poet,” both of which were firmly perched upon his head when he penned this lyrical little book. In fact, the author does a pretty good job of demonstrating that excelling in undertaking requires the same mindset as poetry: a love of the living, a respect for the dead, an attention to detail, a willingness to ponder the unthinkable, and the understanding that passion and humor are not mutually exclusive.

Undertaking starts out as a treatise on the profession of funeral direction — a book to to serve as a counterbalance to American Way of Death, I suspect — but sashays into the realms of autobiography and philosophy by the midpoint. While not the most consistent book in tone or subject matter, it’s an excellent read all the same. Since most of us only think of death in terms of it being Something We Don’t Much Want To Experience, Lynch, having of necessity put a lot of thought into this subject, has come to many conclusions that we might not have the wherewithal to come to ourselves. For example, Lynch remarks on all the folks who approach him and announce that, when they die, they just want to thrown in the cheapest of pine boxes and buried without pomp. “You won’t be swindling my relatives out of their hard earned money!,” these people tell Lynch. “I’m going to the grave as the model of minimalistm” But as Lynch points out, none of these people live their lives according to this anti-consumer philosophy — oh no. Instead, they have decided to wait until they are dead — wait until they no longer care, in other words — and then become the poster-child for simplicity. It’s nothing but a last-ditch effort to be remembered for virtues you never actually possessed, and to do so my denying those do care — the family and friends — the chance to see you off in a manner that would best aid them in the coping of thier loss. Far from demonstrating selflessness, this common desire is selishness taken beyond the grave.

Remarkably, “The Undertaking,” while not exactly a pick-me-up, manages not to unduly depress. There’s something refreshing about a guy who just comes right out and says “look, friend: you’re gonna die and there’s nothing you can do about it. But here’s a thing or two you might like to know about the process before it actually comes to pass.” It makes you wish that more things in this world were as certain as your own demise.

I got my copy of The Undertaking from the Seattle Public Library.

I first heard tell of Whispers on the Color Line in a Slate article entitled Consumer Rumors which discussed how unsubstanciated alligations about companies spread differently in different communities. As a case in point, the Slate author discusses the long-standing rumor that Snapple (the beverage that was such a rage ten years ago) is owned or at least funded by nefarious groups. Oddly, in white communities the belief was that Snapple was affiliated with anti-abortion groups while in black communities the story insisted that Snapple was owned or funded by the Ku Klux Klan. (You can read the snopes.com report on this urban legend here.) This is what the book’s authors call a “Topsy/Eva Rumor’ — a myth that has different antagonists depending on the race of the community in which is spreads.

I picked up “Whispers on the Color Line” beecause I have long been fascinated by the origin and dissemination of urban legends. The text is a very interesting read, if a bit dry at times and occasionally guilty of straying from it’s premise. It begins with an overview of how rumors get started, how they are propagated, and how they get modified with transmission. Now, everyone thinks they know how rumors get started, because everyone has played the old game telephone: person A says something to person B, person B repeats it to person C but — due to a misunderstanding or a misremembered word — alters it a tiny bit, person C tells a very slightly modified version to person D, and by the time person Z hears it it’s an entirely different phrase. The authors concede that misunderstanding is one way that rumors begin, but the focus of the book is more on intentional (if subconscience) transformation. When repeating something that they’ve heard, a person will often (perhaps unwittingly) embellish and change facts to fit their preconceived notions. For example, person A tells B that someone in town was shot by some people in a car; person B tells C that someone in town was shot by some gang members in a car (because this person assumes that anyone conducting a “drive-by shooting” must be in a gang); person C tells D that someone was shot by some black gang members in a car (because D believes that all members of a gang must be black) and so on. Pretty soon you have an urban legend urging you never to flash your headlights at someone driving with their lights out.

Injecting racism into stories as we retell them serves two functions, claim the authors. First, it allows us to express our racism in a socially acceptable way: after all, you’re telling an absolutely true story rather than expressing an opinion, so no one can call you to the carpet. Secondly, these stories reinforce our own comfortable (if incorrect) stereotypes: if you can convince yourself that the story is true, it will serve as further “proof” that your deeply held convictions are well-founded.

Say that you are a black man, and you strongly suspect the powerful factions in the “white-run US” are plotting to eradicate African Americans. Then someone points out to you that the popular beverage Tropical Fantasy is only being sold in black neighborhoods. You combine this curious fact with your own suspicions to come up with the idea that the KKK is putting a drug in this drink to sterilize black men. Now you can tell this to other people without sounding paranoid because it’s “true.” And, knowing that it’s true, you can feel justified in your own paranoia. Likewise, whites who warn others about black gang-members gunning down innocents feel justified in their beliefs that blacks are inherently violent, because they have “first-hand” knowledge of this “true” event.

Whispers on the Color Line studies racial rumors about consumer products, morality, violence, crime and genocidal conspiracies. The book ends with some “Tips on Coping With Rumor,” although anyone interested enough in either urban legends or race relations to read this book probably doesn’t need the advice. (On the other hand, you can probably never be told not to believe everything you hear too many times.)

I got my copy of Whispers on the Color Line from the Seattle Public Library.

It takes Stefan Fatsis 114 pages to acknowledge what readers have already come to suspect. “Right now,” he writes, “Scrabble is the most important thing in my life.” He’s got plenty of company. In “Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players” Fatsis documents the lives and travails of those for whom Scrabble-playing is a way of life. That alone would make for an interesting read, but what makes “Word Freak” even more compelling is that, well before the midpoint of the book, Fatsis has already joind the ranks of the Scrabble-obsessed.

Competitive Scrabble, it becomes rapidly apparent, is a wholly different game from that which families play on their dining room tables. For one thing, it’s always a two-player, head-to-head affair. For another, the World Famous Crossword Game isn’t really about words once you reach the upper echelons of play — it’s more about memorization, visualization and the ability to do absolutely astounding anagramation on the fly. Because players aren’t required to know the definitions of the words they play, they often make no effort to do so and instead opt to simply memorize the thousands and thousands of letter combinations which just happen to be in an approved dictionary. Really, the “words” could just be string of numerals — it would all be the same to these guys.

It also becomes clear that the best Scrabble players in the world are not just really good causal players — like chess grandmasters, these folks are a breed apart. What do you make of a group who, in their free time, hang out in cafes and challenge each other with anagrams. (“What’s TRANSMEDIA plus a V?” cries one. “MAIDSERVANTS!” a second replies a few moments latee.) They play and discuss and analyse and ponder Scrabble to the exclusion of just about everything else, using their spare moments to reviews lists of five-letter words and recreate historical Scrabble matches on their computers. Indeed, it’s unlikely that Fatsis could have found a more colorful cast of characters in any sport as he found here.

Although I am a board game enthusiast, I do not much care for Scrabble (or word games in general). But, even so, I quite enjoyed this book. Fatsis is a very good writer, and is introspective enough to recognize and report his own strengths, weaknesses and emotional upheavals as he participates in tournaments alongside the masters. At 350 pages the book is perhaps a little overlong given the subject matter, but is generally a fascinating and enjoyable read.

I purchased by copy of Word Freak from Amazon.com.

The surest way to find out if someone has read the His Dark Materials series (short of asking them outright) is to start raving about Harry Potter; If the person has read this trilogy by Philip Pullman, sooner or later they will give an exasperated sigh and announce that while Harry Potter is a fine (if light-weight) diversion, The Golden Compass is so much better.

The Golden Compass is set in a world which could be mistaken for Earth until about page seven, after which a host of subtle and not-so-subtle differences start showing up. In the latter category is the fact that the souls of people do not reside inside their bodies, but rather manifest themselves as external and distinct entities in the forms of animals. Also curious is that the theologians of this world are preoccupied with something called Dust: a kind of physical, magical, or religious particle which seems somehow tied to conscienceness. Much of the story revolves around the quest to discover the true nature of Dust and the journey of the young Lyra as she travels across her world and into others — including our own.

It took a while for The Golden Compass to hook me — two-thirds of the way through and I still could have put it down forever. But once the hook took hold, I devourer the rest of the novel and tore through the next (The Subtle Knife). Unfortunately I found the third book, The Amber Spyglass, to be something of a disappointment. While the first two books seemed meticulously plotted, many of the major plot points in Spyglass did not strike me as being thoroughly thought through. (A friend and fellow enthusiast of the series hit the nail on the head when he describe the final book as feeling “rushed”). But even so, the His Dark Material series is an involving and though-provoking read, and one I highly recommend.