The Swiss Family Robinson

As a young boy, I enjoyed watching Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson.  What is maybe kind of weird is that I remember the family singing “O, Christmas Tree” more than any other part of the movie.  Like any true boy, the idea of fighting pirates on a deserted, tropical island easily captured my imagination, as did the concept of actually living in a tree house.  Could it get any better?  With my own children now getting to the point where they appreciate movies above and beyond Disney princesses, I have turned to the great movies of my childhood.  These clean, fun movies beat just about anything the movie studios have to offer us today.  For the economically-minded like myself, buying a DVD for $10.00 online also beats going to the movie theater, where you pay at least that for one ticket alone.  Anyway, I recently got to relive some childhood excitement when we watched the classic Disney movie.  It got me wondering, though, where they got their story from.

The answer is The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss (ISBN: 978-0-14-310499-5), but with all movies, the book was only a starting point, and then the screenwriters went from there.  (It’s worth noting that the original story hasn’t been in print much since its 1812 printing and that most people have read a French translator’s version that abridged the original and then added a new storyline halfway through.)    Then again, it’s only fair to note that it seems Wyss was highly influenced by Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.  The story follows a Swiss pastor and his family (his wife and four boys) as they venture off to the colonies to start a new life.  Their well-equipped ship is wrecked, but somehow all the articles and the ship itself is rather well preserved while all the passengers and crew die except the family.  They make a raft and alight on the island that is to become their home.  The family, through resourcefulness and through an expansive knowledge of the natural sciences, is able to get along rather impressively in their new jungle home.  They’re constantly making trips along the beaches and into the interior of the island in an effort to find out all they can about their new home and to discover new natural resources such as plants and animals they can use to make their life a bit more comfortable and pleasant.  Most trips result in a success of one form or another, and soon the family has a couple places to live, orchards, fields, and an abundant number of livestock and beasts of burden of all various types.  There are some adventures along the way with wild animals, explosives, and the rigors of life under the open skies.  The family’s chance for rescue and a return to society is foiled by rough weather, and they must await another such rare opportunity to come, but such opportunities and the adventures in the meantime are left to the reader to invent for himself.

The story was an interesting one and while overall an enjoyable one, not quite the page turner one would expect having seen the Disney movie.  There are no pirates and no romances to be found in Wyss’s novel.  In fact, he intended it mostly as a tale, cautionary in part, for his own sons.  Therefore, there is a somewhat formal feel to it, and not just because of the old-fashioned language or old-fashioned customs.  Those are, often, to be lamented since modern society does not embrace them, including reverence and gratitude before God, respect for one’s fellow man shown through respectful social interaction, respect for women, and respect for parents.  Like all fiction involving juveniles, the young men and boys of the family seem to be able to do much more and know infinitely more than people of their age really would, but maybe young men of the early 1800s really were just that much more ready to enter the adult world than boys of our times.  I also found it a little less interesting than it could’ve been because success was so forthcoming and because the characters, especially the father, seemed to have unlimited knowledge concerning wildlife, animal husbandry, agriculture, seamanship, and a myriad of other subjects.  Again, I realize the everyday man of the 1800s was more knowledgeable about these than most are today, but it seemed just a little too far fetched in the story.  Still, some dry passages notwithstanding, the book was enjoyable in most parts, is certainly not “children’s literature” as it was originally billed (mature teenagers at the earliest), and probably succeeded in its mission of inspiring the reader to be better since I came away wondering if it wouldn’t be possible to incorporate just a little more knowledge about the natural and mechanical worlds around me into my life.

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Мормоны в России

After returning from serving my mission in St. Petersburg, Russia, I have followed what I refer to as the “Russian news” (news about Russia, not necessarily in Russian) closer than I ever did before.  The people I came to understand and appreciate and the places I shed tears over as the plane took off as I departed St. Petersburg meant a great deal to me and I wondered how their great yet still somewhat mysterious country was doing.  Just as I didn’t follow Russia much in the news before I left on my mission, I rarely followed what was happening with the Church in the news before my mission.  We always got the Church News in the Deseret News, but I rarely cracked it.  There was a feature on the back page that typically told a little story like the stories in the back of the Ensign, and I read it sometimes, but that was it, and that feature hardly qualified as news.  I tend to pay a little more attention to the news of the Church nowadays.  It is not much of a stretch to think that just as my mission made Russia more important to me, it made the Church more important to me.

In Мормоны в России: Путь длиной в столетие (ISBN: 9-785-91189-005-6), or Mormons in Russia: A Century-long Path (my translation), by Sergei Antonenko, these two newer interests of mine are brought together in an academic, historical essay on the Church in Russia.  Antonenko gives a brief history of the Church, including its founding, Brigham Young leading the Saints to Utah, and its relative stability and growth since that time.  He also discusses in rather finite detail the theology of the Church.  The next big portion of the work is dedicated to what various pre-Soviet writers and intellectuals in the imperial Russia wrote and thought about the Church.  Dostoevsky and Tolstoy get specific mention.  Finally, the history of the Church in post-Soviet Russia is discussed.  Since this includes the late 1980s when missionaries traveled to the Soviet Union from Finland for the weekend only, it might be slightly inaccurate to say “post-Soviet Russia.”  As with the rest of the book, the writing about the Church in Russia has less to do with specific incidents such as organizational changes, legal registrations, or sensational events like missionaries being kidnapped, and more to do with how the Church has fit or not fit into Russian society and the general Russian consciousness.  It is, in places, a fascinating look into the perceptions — and souls — of Russia’s great people.

Overall, I thought the book was good.  I appreciated Antonenko’s even-handedness.  Discussions of Mormon doctrine can be fraught with misconceptions and sometimes outright lies when done by one who isn’t a member of the Church.  While Antonenko’s presentation wasn’t 100% doctrinally sound, it was very close.  I also found his pointing out of parallels in other world religions or in the scriptures to be refreshing.  His point over and over seemed to be that although Mormons have a bad reputation for believing some rather outlandish things, a person who is truly a student of religion would know that those things really aren’t that outlandish and are often rather mainstream thinking within certain groups or at certain times in the world’s history.  Antonenko is a religious studies expert and personally involved in multi-denominational cooperation efforts, which only adds to the respectability and sincerity of his presentation.  At one point he went so far as to note that he wondered why Mormons take so much heat from fellow Christians.  In fact, he couldn’t find anything wrong in being a Mormon and living a clean life free of alcohol and full of hard work, health, and effort toward strong family relations; it’s even better, he said, than claiming to be orthodox and being a drunkard, unhealthy, and having poor relationships with one’s family.  There were, of course, some things I thought could’ve been improved upon.  One, for example, was that I hoped the book would spend more time on actual members of the Church or the Church organization in Russia instead of so much discussion of Mormon doctrine and pre-October Revolution press about the Church.  Another would be the typical fascination with polygamy and other aspects of the Mormon Church that, although presented fairly and almost completely accurately, are secondary in a discussion of what constitutes Church doctrine.  More ink could’ve been spent on eternal families and the all-encompassing atonement of Jesus Christ.  Finally, I would’ve liked the book more had it been less philosophical and geared toward understanding the Russian psyche and more about the specific people and incidents that have given rise to two stakes of Zion in Russia.

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Bosnia: In the Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip

As a young boy — and to be honest, still today — World War I aircraft fascinated me.  Biplanes and triplanes seemed so exotic and were firmly a part of the romantic age of flying.  The appearance on the scene of monoplanes as the war drew to a close always seemed rather anti-climatic to me and even somewhat disappointing.  Thanks to a bit of help from my dad, I once even presented a special, extra-curricular report in school on WWI aircraft.  Only later did I learn of the stalemate trench warfare that was such a hallmark of WWI.  It was even later, probably in high school, that I was told that one man, then termed a revolutionary, now termed a terrorist, essentially started WWI through his actions alone.  When a Serbian assassin killed Franz Ferdinand of the ruling Hapsburg family, WWI was set in motion.  The high school teachers and textbooks forget that it was really wasn’t that simple, but the assassin, Gavrilo Princip, remained an interesting figure from an interesting part of the world.

Bosnia: In the Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip by Tony Fabijančić (ISBN: 978-0-88864-519-7) is a travelogue that traces the route of Gavrilo Princip’s travels through the former Yugoslavia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Set largely in the modern-day Balkans, the book uses Princip and his story as a way to understand the region’s complicated history and its rather sticky present through observation, interviews, and referencing historical sources.  The author, rather sympathetic to Princip before undertaking his research and travels, was also optimistic at the outset about the chances for the various ethnic and religious groups of the former Yugoslavia to mend things up a little bit.  By the end of his efforts and the end of the book, after traveling through thick forests, high alps, Mediterranean coastline, and the smog of big cities, he has changed his tune on both counts, considering Princip to have misjudged the impact of his actions, and not just misjudged, but having brought about more harm than good as well as coming to the realization that the peoples of the region, harboring some of the same prejudices and stereotypes as those held about 100 years ago as WWI broke out, aren’t breaking out of those molds any time soon. 

Tracing the life and travels of Princip proved an interesting motif and an interesting background to the pictures of the people and places of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia.  I was most struck by the fact that in the larger cities, much had been repaired or rebuilt when it came to buildings or infrastructure, but when it came to people’s feelings, most of those whom the author spoke with had experienced no rebuilding at all since the fall of Communist Yugoslavia.  The author, partially of Croatian descent himself, seemed to think that, much like Communist Russia’s experience, the ethnic harmony of the Communist time in Yugoslavia was not genuine.  While the Left likes to play this type of ethnic and racial strife up in America, I am of the opinion that very little of these types of feelings exist in America, and I think it is because of this that Americans, myself included, have such a hard time understanding an sympathizing with the people of the Balkans.  We’d rather worry about our own families’s welfare, our jobs, and our favorite sports teams than whether or not we should hate the people next door because they say a few words differently than we do, have a different last name, or belong to a different church.  The book was an interesting, although not gripping read, and there are better works out there if one is after pure history, but this provided a slightly lighter approach to both the history and the state of current affairs.

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The Three Musketeers

I have always been a firm believer in reading the book before I see the movie.  I guess there are a few reasons for this, but one is that I prefer to not have a movie’s set, costumes, actors, and incomplete story line influence my reading.  I find that my mind’s eye can usually come up with better scenery, more vivid characters, and increased excitement, passion, and other feelings than any movie can.  I also enjoy the fuller plots, characters that are explored in greater detail, and being able to catch the intangibles that just don’t port over from an original work to a reinterpretation, no matter how true to the original the copy is.  While there have been multiple theatrical releases of Dumas’ famous work, The Three Musketeers, during my lifetime, I have never watched a single one.  My general lack of interest in movies contributed to this, but I also wanted to read the book first.

As those more in tune with pop culture than me know, The Three Musketeers (ISBN: 0-679-60332-8) by Alexandre Dumas tells the story of the young d’Artagnan and his three protectors and friends, the eponymous three Musketeers, who go by their pseudonyms, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos.  Duelling brings d’Artagnan and the Musketeers together, and from there they fight duels and more serious battles together, continually looking out for each other.  They manage to get themselves mixed up in high-level intrigue as the queen of France, Cardinal Richelieu, the king of France, and the Duke of Buckingham play out their political ambitions, romantic interests, and personal aspirations in Paris’s parlors, on battlefields, and through behind-the-scenes intrigues involving soldiers, churchmen, and criminals.  There is a decent bit of action with horse rides, pistol fights, sword fights, battles between armies and between minds, and seduction.  In the end, the bad guys get what is coming to them, and in what seems to be a bit of a pattern for Dumas, not all of the good guys make it out alive.  D’Artagnan and his friends are more or less unscathed and have lived up to their immortal motto, “All for one, one for all!”

I, obviously, cannot compare the book to the unseen movies, but standing on its own, I enjoyed the book.  I was not sure what to expect after being slightly disappointed by The Count of Monte Cristo.  I thought there was a good mix of action, strategy, and romance.  I enjoyed the lack of philosophizing by the main characters.  The storyline flowed and was more or less believable (maybe this shouldn’t be a requirement for fiction, but the Count’s inhuman abilities to remember things as well as his supposedly oriental medicinal abilities were part of my underwhelming read of that other immortal Dumas story).  I thought the story was fun and easy to read, which cannot be said of all classics, but probably help make and keep this story a classic.

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Balkan Ghosts

“So foul a sky clears not without a storm.”— Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King John, 4.2.108
My childhood featured a couple major actions by U.S. armed forces: the Gulf War and the U.S.-led NATO involvement in the Bosnian War.  The former was broadcast into our living rooms, and I remember watching live footage of bombs hitting Baghdad while preparing for my dad's birthday celebrations.  The second was a smaller operation and much less well understood in the U.S.  As a teenager, I know I certainly didn’t get it.  What probably brought that war home for Americans was when Capt. Scott O'Grady was shot down, survived for a few days on bugs and other gross stuff like that, and was rescued by marines.  It was nothing short of miraculous that the story had a happy ending.  It also made people, myself included, pay more attention to a little-known and little-understood part of the world.

Balkan Ghosts by Robert D. Kaplan (ISBN: 978-0-312-42493-0), is self-styled as a travelogue, but is more akin to a feature story in a national magazine on current affairs.  Kaplan weaves his extensive travels and living experience in the region and the accompanying interviews and everyday events with historical perspective and the relevant biographical information pertaining to the important figures in the Balkans’ history, his “ghosts.”  Kaplan’s definition of the Balkans is a bit wider than most Americans’, so not only the former Yugoslavia, but Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, too, are included in the discussion of this fascinating geographical region.  Each country and each nation (ethnic group) has a few figures in its past who lived in such a way and made decisions in such a way as to continue to influence the way things are done and the way people think.  With the exception of Greece, the Balkans also deal with a specter of a different type, the continued need to deal with the harsh consequences of communist dictatorships that broke people and destroyed countries immediately after the Nazis and fascism gave the same thing a whirl.  It’s worth noting that the Nazis followed right on the heels of the Hapsburgs, who were, in most people’s estimation, better rulers than the succeeding ones, but on occasion no less ruthless.  The great figures and great histories of the various peoples are presented with all the raw emotion that is associated with Balkanization, and Kaplan points out that since the histories are great, the people pick those moments when their histories were at an apex and claim that cultural, linguistic, and territorial summit as the way things should be now before any other discussions can be had.  It puts them all in a hard place, but Kaplan argues that considering all the things these groups of people and these countries have been through, there’s really no way but up, although, as his reference to Shakespeare alludes to, it might be a painful process.

I thought the book was a good read, although I was slightly disappointed by a couple things.  One was that the book had received so much press, I thought it was going to blow my socks off, and it didn’t.  The other was that although Kaplan makes a convincing argument for including Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece in his book because of their obvious geographical location but also because of their similar historical paths and current problems, I was hoping for something that focused more on the American definition of the Balkans, the former Yugoslavia.  Still, I think I came away with a little more understanding of the region currrently and a much better understanding of its history.  Like all people European and Asian, the Slavs of southeastern Europe know and appreciate their history.  The troubles in the Balkans are one of those cases where that appreciation goes too far.  There are endless debates about European and American culture and which is better.  I typically fall on both sides of the debate, preferring to pick and choose what I like from both.  Americans’ propensity to not worry so much about the past and get on with today is something the Balkan nations could learn from.  In the meantime, Kaplan has opened the door and illuminated a few feet beyond the threshold of an exotic and unexplored (at least, by me) world that is only barely removed from the Europe and Russia that I know.

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God Wants a Powerful People

As a kid, like just about every kid, I spent hours and hours chucking a basketball up at the hoop after drawing up an elaborate scenario in my head in which the team I was playing on (usually BYU or the Utah Jazz) was down a point or two with only four or five seconds to go in a championship game.  If I made it, my teammates and the fans went wild and I went on to fame and forture.  (If I missed, I was fouled or there was a problem with the clock or something else bizarre happened which allowed me to try again for that game-winning shot.)  I mention fame and forture only because that is a common thread in most people’s dreams as a kid.  I think that as people grow older and realize that they’d probably be happier with the fortune if it didn’t come with fame and even the forture part is not a necessary condition for happiness, those ideas fade a bit.  On the other hand, it’s not just kids that look up to people they consider to be heroes, and good examples in famous people, thought hard to come by, can lead to a lot of good.  I think of that in connection with Church leaders because some of them achieve a certain degree of celebrity status, especially in the Mormon Corridor.  President Hinckley may be the best example of this, but there are certainly others.

Sheri Dew was one of the Church leaders who reached a rather high level of celebrity status in the Church, and maybe even a little out of it, largely because of her supposed novelty: a never-married member of the Relief Society presidency.  She, like many other Church leaders who have become celebrities in their own right, used that increased ability to get a message out by writing a few books.  God Wants a Powerful People (ISBN: 978-1-59038-813-6) is one of them.  The premise of the book is simple.  God is generous and is willing to make His children powerful people, people who can accomplish a lot, help a lot of other people, and in general make the world a better place.  God wants to bless us.  When we do certain things, like striving to be righteous, the blessings flow, and by taking advantage of them, we become powerful people, changing not only our own lives, but the lives of those around us.  The book includes examples from everyday life on how we can go about becoming on of these powerful people, scriptures, ideas from Church leaders, and some common sense thrown in, too.  As with anything in the gospel, the biggest keys are probably putting words and ideas into action and relying on Jesus Christ in all of our efforts to improve and to help others.

As I have mentioned before, I am typically quite skeptical of these types of Church-related books.  I love the Church’s manuals, other official publications, and, of course, the scriptures.  Sometimes I think of these books as self-help lite, and the self-help genre is lite to begin with.  The trouble is, the gospel message is true, really no matter how it’s delivered, so in the end, I can rarely come down on these books.  They are not great literature, but there are often things that stand out to me and make me think about the way I live my life and about the things I can change to make myself better.  Unlike the self-help books, which are rarely, if ever, based on eternal truths, the ideas in Sister Dew’s book were concrete and real.  The discussion of the priesthood and the power that it holds if wielded by a righteous man was impressive.  The requirements for being righteous aren’t complicated or arcane; they simply need doing.  I was also impressed by the counsel to do things early — everything from getting up the morning to applying gospel principles to ourselves and our lives should be done early.  Early adopters of all things gospel will be powerful earlier, too, thereby bringing about the greatest good in their own lives and the lives of other people.

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Russia’s Revolution: Essays, 1989–2006

Russia is a fascinating country.  I am not sure when I really started to think that.  It was probably when I was very, very young.  I remember getting glimpses of the winter Olympics in 1988 (I admit that my memory is fuzzy on this one, and it might’ve actually been 1984) on an old black and white TV perched precariously on a bookshelf in the family living room and wondering why the Russians wore hockey jerseys that had “CCCP” emblazoned across the front.  What could that possibly mean?  I mean, everyone knew how you spelled Russia.  Even the abbreviation of the unweildy official name of the country — USSR — didn’t match up with CCCP.  Only later did it process in my head that they spoke Russian in Russia and it wasn’t until even later that I learned they used the Cyrillic alphabet.  Early Olympic viewing was mixed with coming to understand that in Soviet Russia, one didn’t get to choose one’s profession (this was, of course, an oversimplification, but sometimes such statements still do an adequate job of explaining things).  My young mind imagined a country full of people assigned to do household chore-style jobs (those were really the only jobs I was familiar with) from the time they graduated from high school until the end of their lives.  I felt especially bad for the guy stuck with emptying the garbage cans day in and day out.

Leon Aron, author of Russia’s Revolution: Essays, 1989–2006 (ISBN: 978-0-8447-4242-7), was always interested in Russia because he was born in the USSR.  Although he emigrated and came to America after the Soviets started letting Jews leave, he remained interested in his homeland and became a respected commentator and scholar on the land of Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Stalin, and now Vladimir Putin.  Aron has written extensively on all things Russia, and in this book, he compiled essays that take the reader through life in Russia from the early days of Boris Yeltsin through the middle years of Putin’s first term in office as Russia’s president.  Aron describes Yeltsin and his democratization efforts.  He is quite a fan of Yeltsin, praising his statesmanship and ability to hold together a country that had partially fallen apart and threated to completely implode on a daily basis.  Aron touches on every aspect of Russia reborn, including food, oil, politics, oligarchs, literature, the military, and international relations.  All of these vastly different aspects of life in the post-Soviet Russia give an idea of what was happening in the country at the time the essay was written.  Aron finishes up his compilation with discussions of Putin, a — to put it mildly — controversial figure and one of Russia’s largest struggles during the 1990s, Chechnya.  Aron’s point, even with the various negatives that Putin and Chechnya seemed to usher in, was that much good has happened since the Soviet Union fell apart in Russia and even though there have been and continue to be bumps in the road (and they’re often big bumps), things are probably going in the right direction, but the only way to tell is to wait and see.  The West didn’t get to its heights in 20 years, and Russia won’t either.

I wasn’t quite sure how relevant a book of essays about some stuff that took place over twenty years ago would be.  As I read through the first half to two-thirds of the book I was even a little put off because the author came across as so excited about the prospects of Russia’s future.  Even during Yeltsin’s presidency, I wasn’t overly impressed with the direction Russia was going.  The discussions of food and literature were interesting and showed Aron’s skill in writing about a wide variety of subjects, but I found the discussions of the oligarchs, Putin’s so-called reforms, and the failings of Russia’s military to be the most relevant to today’s situation.  I thought the writing was very solid, but I liked the overarching point of the work, too.  I have always been a proponent of the idea of giving democracy and capitalism in the ex-Soviet space a lot of time before they take hold, let alone blossom.  Aron takes that long-term view, too.  The only depressing thing about the view is that Aron directs his commentary to the West in a hope to convince both everyman and policymakers that the typical view of a Russia ready to implode and bring the world down with it isn’t quite true, but it’s not really Americans or western Europeans that need to adopt this long-term view.  Regular, everyday Russians need to be more patient than they probably are.  (Not just Russians, but most people in the post-Communist world.)  There are going to be problems as Russia tries to emerge from its past, but it’s going to take a lot of time and multiple generations before things are at the same level as the West (and to be honest, the West is digressing, but that’s a story for a different day).  Average Russians need to be patient and keep working to make things change before they decide that the new order of things is a failure and that the old methods of authoritarianism, top-down control of the economy, and a lack of many basic freedoms were better for whatever reason.

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The Count of Monte Cristo

Back in high school, at the end of a year of AP calculus, the teachers decided the best way to use the legally mandated seat time was by showing us movies.  While this would be a great time to jump off on a tangent regarding the follies of state-run schooling, I will refrain, and I could go off on wasted tax monies, but, that, too, must wait for a different place and time.  One of the movies that many of my classmates were very excited about was called the Count of Monte Cristo.  Not having anywhere near the level of pop-culture exposure as my peers, I didn’t get what all the rage was about and ended up sleeping through most of the movie.  Still, my curiosity was piqued, and I have always wondered what caused such commotion.  Almost twenty years later, I’m still not much for movies, especially if they've been made since about 1980, but I have come to appreciate classic literature much more than AP English could ever have hoped to instill (there's something to be said for reading something of one's own volition and being forced to read something).  A good adventure story makes a book that much more appealing.

The prolific French writer Alexandre Dumas’s epic adventure, The Count of Monte Cristo (ISBN: 0-679-60199-6), tells an intricately woven tale of injustice, revenge, hope, mercy, and even forgiveness.  The first part of the book gives the reader no indications whatsoever of the impending treachery and troubles as one is acquainted with the hero, Edmond Dantès, a dashing, honest, and hard-working sailor about to fulfill a few of his life's dreams.  A jealous neighbor, a competitor for the affections of his love, and colleague who couldn't bear seeing Dantès promoted before himself stop those plans, though, and send the main character's life in a totally different direction.  Prison, though, affords us with our first adventure: sneaking out of prison in another prisoner's body bag.  After that, there are many adventures to be had with Dantès on ships, with smugglers, and finally, in Paris as he exacts revenge on those who put him in prison and deprived him of his father, his beloved, and his desired job.  In Paris, the rich Count of Monte Cristo wows the elites, works his way into their lives, and manages to bring those lives to screeching halts, usually through ignominious deaths.  Although Dantès exacts his revenge, he starts to realize that maybe it's not all about justice, especially as he sees his former girlfriend reduced to a thoroughly depressed and unhappy state.  His shows mercy almost to a fault toward those who were once nice to him, but eventually even to one of his avowed enemies.

The book was an enjoyable read, but toward the end, I mostly felt sad for the main character and wished that the book could have included a stronger redemptive message.  It seems that Dantès's final act of forgiveness and ability to again find love were afterthoughts by Dumas.  They didn't make up for 1,000 pages of a man spending all his time and energy on finding ways to be smarter, stronger, and better prepared than one's avowed enemies so one could more fully destroy them.  Dantès's confusion of God's justice with his desire for revenge was also somewhat distracting from the story.  Finally, while I turned page after page as quickly as possible, and enjoyed the story, I realized that the vast majority of the story took place in the parlors of the Parisian elite.  It was adventure minus swords, guns, ships, armies, and other, more traditional forms of daring.  Still, the intriguing web of characters, storyline that was complex at times, and quick-moving events make for a good read and it is understandable why the Count of Monte Cristo is such a fixture in western culture.  It is also worth noting that as I read the book I found myself thinking a lot of the Princess Bride and figured that the author of that book and (later) screenplay must've been intimately acquainted with the Count of Monte Cristo.  It’s a very long book, but the unabridged version is really the only way to go since it provides the richest character development, deeper understanding of the plot lines, and a more complete picture of the settings, motives, and world views of the characters, all of which makes the reader more easily drawn into the world of the characters — one full of faraway places, exotic people, intigue, crime, high society, petty theft, politics, and human foibles and emotions.

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We

During my early teen years, I read a bunch of books my parents had laying around.  There was quite a variety since many of the books were the popular fiction of the 1970s or books they had read during high school or college (the marginalia gave away which books were which).  I read everything from First Blood and Shōgun to Watership Down and a collection of Mark Twain short stories.  I don’t know how much I remember from these books, a few of which were probably beyond my years.  Although I could understand the words and the basic plot, the subject matter was sometimes too violent or too sexually graphic for the young teenage mind, and I tend to remember those sequences in the stories instead of the story lines.  Another book that resulted in a similar experience for me was 1984, although I did understand it enough to know that it was a warning against various political ideologies, including communism.

1984 is considered by many to be the epitomy of the dystopian (utopia gone wrong) novel, but it was not the first.  Many years before 1984 was written, Russian author Eugene Zamiatin wrote We (ISBN: 0-525-47039-5).  Zamiatin wrote his book, this edition translated by Gregory Zilboorg, to protest the direction the Bolshevik Party was taking the Soviet Union.  Zamiatin was a Bolshevik, but did not subscribe to the Leninist idea of zero tolerance for dissenting ideas within the party.  In the book, there is one, giant state (called the United State) that controls every single aspect of its citizens’ lives, down to the number of times they chew their state-provided food rations.  The protagonist is one of the elite thanks to his role as the designer of a very advanced spaceship that will soon export the ideas and ways of the United State to some other people (ostensibly on another planet).  He starts a journal since all citizens were encouraged to write something to send on the rocket.  However, he meets another citizen, an attractive female, who introduces him to some concepts he’d never thought of before, such as acting and thinking for oneself.  He is eventually introduced to people outside the walls of the United State, and a plan is hatched to use a test flight of the rocket to get both disaffected citizens of the United State and the people outside the wall to some new place in the world.  The plan doesn’t go off, though, thanks to a spy, and the protagonist is forced to undergo a radical new surgery that removes his ability to imagine and then watches as the woman he loved is tortured.  After the operation, he is again completely loyal to the totalitarian regime.

The book was an interesting read, largely because it seemed so relevant to today.  State control of every aspect of our lives seems to be something we’re slowly moving toward.  I found the food example to be particularly germane with various cities, schools, and other government-run organizations banning particular foods.  One example that seemed to go against modern statist ideas (and this failing to foresee modern statist tendencies was present in 1984, too) was the United State’s desire to control its citizens’ sex lives.  Modern statists preach sexual promiscuity and encourage uncontrolled sexual expression, no matter the consequences.  (On the other hand, population control seeems to be the end goal of both.)  It goes without saying that much that goes on in the schools in America is similar to the schools of the United State.  Thinking for oneself is not encouraged, but parroting revisionist history and other ideas is.  The logic so highly touted by the United State, kids in schools are taught that some ephemeral concept called science is where all trust should be placed.  It is interesting to see how the government in We preached that by eliminating choices, eliminating people’s ability to imagine, and making people more and more the same (i.e., social equality), they would acheive true happiness.  Of course, nothing is farther from the truth, and the characters in We recognized that once they had experienced the ability to think for themselves and make their own decisions.  Liberty, the ability to make a choice, is what allows us to experience true happiness.  It does not intrinsically bring us happiness, but allows us to choose those things that do bring happiness, and we can do that regardless of the ability of poeple around us to make poor decisions.  As Zamiatin realized, we don’t need a state directing our decisions; we need the ability to present and live by our own precepts.  We need liberty.

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One More Strain of Praise

One of the most profound parts of restored gospel is the fact that God has a prophet on Earth today.  Whenever God has seen it fit to have His Church on the earth, it has been headed by a prophet.  Anybody can read about this in the Bible and in the Book of Mormon.  While some people argue that we don't necessarily need prophets “because times are different now,” it's really just the opposite.  Since “times are different now,” we are ever so much more in need of divine guidance.  Again, some would argue that we can get that guidance through personal study or personal revelation.  While those, too, are true principles, they do not apply in all situations, and it's, again, rather easy to look around and see what happens when we're left to individually sorting things out.  The variety of resulting ideas, attempts, practices, and philosophies is quite staggering and inconsistent with a God of order Who has declared that there is but one path that leads to salvation.  God's designs have always been communicated to us through prophets, and it's nice to know that practice isn't going anywhere.

As with having a prophet, the modern Church has the same organizational leadership structure as the ancient Church.  That means we have apostles just as the ancient Jews and Nephites did.  While only the senior apostle can exercise all of the revelatory and administrative keys for the Church, the apostles are also prophets, seers, and revelators.  Even when not acting in an official capacity, it is worth listening to their counsel.  In One More Strain of Praise (ISBN: 1-57008-679-6), Neal A. Maxwell offered some of just that type of counsel.  Elder Maxwell briefly recounted some of the experiences of his life, including his battle with cancer, because he thought they had taught him something and made him a better person.  He explained that he was able to better comprehend and understand Christ's atonement, His infinite love, and the interplay between mercy and justice.  He explained how this critical understanding helped him and can help all people be happier, be more grateful, and share both the message of the atonement and the accompanying joy through loving service.

I am typically not one to delve into the world of Mormon literature.  I find that most of it underperforms.  I firmly believe that supporting something just because a member of the Church created it or because, at the very least, it complies with our standards is poor policy.  If artists and authors want my support, they must create great works that also comply with my standards.  Neal A. Maxwell's book was a little different in that it was a memoir and a doctrinal discussion rolled into one and did not really try to be art, but was much more factual in its presentation.  I thought the format worked well, but then, like he expressed in the beginning of his book, I believe one must apply the scriptures to oneself to get anything out of them.  I think that the overall message of happiness, hope, and gratitude helped make the book enjoyable and worthwhile.  More so because those personality traits are more easily cultivated when based on gospel truths than when based on anything else.  In a world where there is so much going on around us that would be easy to be depressed and overwhelmed by, it is nice to be reminded by one who was an apostle, a special witness of the reality and divinity of a resurrected Jesus Christ, that there are real reasons to not despair, not be troubled, and in direct opposition to those feelings inspired of the devil, there are real things we can do to cultivate positivity in ourselves and others.  I appreciated the uplifting message of the book and am glad that I overcame my disdain for Church-related publications that are not official Church works, picked up this short, easy-to-read book, and was reminded of things that I should be doing to make myself and those around me happier and more grateful.

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1776: The Illustrated Edition

I always enjoyed learning about the Revolutionary War.  The bravery of the American rebels was admirable to me, even as a little kid.  I never tired of the stories of Paul Revere, the Boston Tea Party, and the important battles.  Men of incredible intellect such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams impressed me because of their brilliant writings and inspired philosophy.  Men of action, those leaders and infantrymen in the Continental Army who far and away exceeded expectations, and General George Washington, in particular, had story after story worth telling.  I was also probably influenced by epic artwork such as Arnold Friberg's The Prayer at Valley Forge, which portrayed the deep faith that many of our Founding Fathers displayed and was worthy emulating.

In 1776: The Illustrated Edition (ISBN: 978-1-4165-4210-0) by David McCullough, the award-winning writer and historian added a little bit of a twist to his seminal 1776: paintings, maps, copies of original documents, and other visual aids that help bring the drama America's first year as an independent nation to life.  The book chronicles the activities of the colonists and the British throughout the year.  Since the Revolutionary War lasted another six years, there is actually not a whole lot of Revolutionary War coverage in the book, but the set-up is there, and the key battles of the year, such as Washington's crossing of the Delaware to defeat formidable and intimidating Hessian forces, are there in great detail.  McCullough explains the significance of the actions of Congress, Parliament, and the two belligerent armies.  As the year comes to a close, the stage is set for the next few years of war, but one could easily predict the eventual outcome given the improbable patriot successes and the momentum they, regarded as simple "rabble" by the elite British forces, had gained in such a short time.

The book was an enjoyable read, and its coffee table-style format was neat.  Every twenty pages or so, there was a sleeve with reproductions of letters, documents, and maps.  Almost every page had an illustration, painting, or other visual.  It did help bring it alive.  The illustrated edition, of course, does not contain all of the text of McCullough's original work, but there is enough to follow the stories, get details, and be amazed and inspired.  In the end, the book served as a very visual reminder of how amazing and miraculous the foundation of America was.  We are sometimes not as appreciative of what the Founding Fathers sacrificed everything for as we should be, and it's always good to be reminded.  It's even better to not just express our gratitude, but to do something about it.  Like those who sacrificed so much during 1776, our liberties are also not free.

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The Forty Days of Musa Dagh

History is captivating.  America's history, of course, is larger than life.  From the heroes of the Revolutionary War to the trappers, cowboys, and explorers that opened the West and from the Greatest Generation's service in World War II to putting a man on the moon, there are stories and stories of people doing what had to be done at great sacrifice.  I have also enjoyed learning the history of some other nations and peoples as I have become acquainted with them thanks to my mission, marriage, and travel.  What has been especially fascinating is learning about the people who were larger than life for other kids growing up and learning about their own countries and histories.  All the better that, as with American history, there are lessons to be learned.

In the Turkish extermination of the ethnic Armenian population within Turkey's borders during World War I, German author Franz Werfel thought he saw something the world should learn from.  To bring that message to the forefront, he wrote The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (ISBN: 978-1-56792-407-7).  The novel is a fictionalized account of a home-grown Armenian resistance movement that succeeded in holding off far superior — numerically and technically — Turkish forces for fifty-three days (Werfel's forty days were a reference to the symbolic Biblical number), at which point French and British warships rescued the survivors.  The book chronicles the efforts of (the fictional) Gabriel Bagradian and the villagers as they live off the land, fight valiantly for their freedom, and deal with everyday problems exacerbated by the situation.  The story is, of course, an adventure story, what with the battles, mutiny, illicit love, petty jealousies, special missions, and a wide array of characters from mayors, widows, common criminals, and carpenters to German foreign ministry officers, priests, Turkish military leaders, and French admirals.  Werfel told their stories in an attempt to warn the German people that they were headed into something eerily similar with the Germans playing the role of the Turks and the Jews the Armenians.  Werfel's account ends with one twist of his imagination, leaving Bagradian on his hard-won mountain to face certain death, but death as a free man.

The book was an interesting one, but not one that I finished thinking I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The complicated and contentious subject matter may have something to do with that, but Werfel's religious philosophizing probably had more to do with it.  Sometimes he was just too far out there, and his ideas seemed almost as delusional as his starved crazy characters.  It may or may not be fair to fault him for that — he was a Jew fascinated by Catholicism and religious belief in general; it would be natural for him to explore his beliefs in his writing.  When the book cut away from philosophy and focused on battles, night raids, treachery, escapes, and heated confrontation, it was a good read; when it strayed into philosophy, especially as it concerned the adulterous affair of Bagradian's wife and even some of Bagradian's own thoughts and behavior toward another woman, the book bogged down and was hard to push through (this is also how I felt about Tolstoy's Anna Karenina).  Widely considered to be a modern classic, it was indeed a masterful story, but sticking to the story would have improved the book.

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Volatile Borderland

Russia is a huge, multi-ethnic country.  I only vaguely grasped this during my time in Russia as a missionary; we sometimes ran into Muslims on the street (incidentally, they were usually much more willing to talk to us for a few minutes than the Russians), we bought watermelons from Azeris, I knew an Armenian missionary and Armenian members of the Church.  The Second Chechen War had a very indirect impact on me because all apartment buildings were put on lock-down for a few hours after the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999.  We walked around the streets of Pskov not knowing much and wondering a little bit about our safety.  Since my mission, I have continued to be intrigued by the many ethnic groups living in Russia, but the romanticism surrounding the Caucasus has also exerted a certain pull, even though it is usually far from the modern-day truth.

The collection of essays contained in Volatile Borderland: Russia and the North Caucasus (ISBN: 978-0-9830842-1-1), edited by Glen E. Howard, is an attempt at shedding some light on the movers and shakers of the Russian North Caucasus, what the future holds, and what is driving current reforms, repressions, and realities.  The authors are experts on Russia and the Caucasus, all either professors, journalists, or similarly qualified experts and policy advisors.  Chechnya, Dagestan, Krasnodar, and Sochi and the various peoples that inhabit them are prominent players in the analysis, but exotic-sounding places like Adygeya and Kabardino-Balkaria also garner significant attention because they form a buffer zone between the explosive and more Islamic eastern North Caucasus and the rest of European Russia.  As with most places in the world where high unemployment, Islamist thought, and rampant corruption have mixed, the North Caucasus is a tinderbox.  The Russian authorities have tried a mixture of ridiculously high federal subsidies and oppressive, totalitarian-style control, which seems to be tenuously holding things under control, but most of the essayists agree that this situation could go at any time.

The book was interesting because it touched on a subject that doesn't normally get a lot of ink.  There were a few differing opinions, but there was a definite trend in the thinking, largely anti-Putin and anti-Russian.  Interestingly, on the few occasions when an author decided to stray into foreign countries' policies or responses to the North Caucasus situation, it was typically anti-Western and definitely anti-United States.  I found the journalists' essays to be the least coherent and least informative.  The scholars' essays were much more well argued and could provide someone with a basis for formulating a policy.  Overall, I was disappointed with the lack of policy and over-abundance of dossiers of North Caucasian officials, most of which was set in the mid-2000s, which is kind of old news by now, with much of what was being discussed having already been overtaken by more current events.  I was also disappointed by the obvious lack of a proofreader that resulted in typos, mis-set type, and other distractions.  If one is interested in the topic, the book will still prove interesting, but is otherwise quite skippable.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.

Robinson Crusoe

As a kid, both when I was pretty little and as a teenager, I found the idea of survival in the middle of nowhere intriguing.  I like to think this stemmed from being well acquainted with camping and from a healthy imagination tendered by plenty of time outside in the dirt in the backyard.  The possibility of bugs in our shelter notwithstanding, I found the wilderness survival merit badge in Scouts a lot of fun.  I read with interest the news stories about downed pilot Scott O'Grady, who was shot down over Bosnia and survived in the forest eating leaves, bugs, and avoiding patrolling Serbs.  Now that I'm not a kid, I am much less confident in my abilities to make it on the proverbial deserted island alone.

In Daniel Defoe's classic fiction, Robinson Crusoe (ISBN: 978-0-14-143982-2), the eponymous hero is also initially rather suspicious of his chances of survival after being shipwrecked in the middle of nowhere.  Having already lived through one adventure, he decides to give survival everything he's got, and works hard to salvage things from his old ship; learns through trial and error various farming, carpentry, sewing, hunting, and pottery skills; and explores the deserted island to learn just what is at his disposal.  Two things change his situation immensely: one, he comes to be a more fully committed and believing Christian, and two, he saves an Indian from his cannibal pursuers, thereby gaining the Indian's services for life.  That really comes in handy when Crusoe must fend off other cannibals and then a mutinous ship crew.  In the end, Crusoe considers himself greatly blessed as he is able to save some lives, a ship, and get back to England, where he settles into a comfortable, middle-class life.

I quite enjoyed reading the book.  As with all classic literature, there are a few slow points and it is sometimes hard to get through certain passages because of the modern reader's lack of knowledge regarding geography and history.  Some of the philosophy and theology was also slow, but it didn't take away from the story, which I thought moved along at a pretty good pace and was full of adventure after adventure.  The only real disappointment for me was that Crusoe was not able to help the Spaniards he came in contact with.  It seemed to me that with his knowledge of how much he would've liked to've got back to England and his newfound Christian desire to help others, he would've worked harder to get those guys out of their stranded state.  In the end, though, the book's a good read and it was kind of interesting to get acquainted with one of the books that most people read in their youth (I have found that I have a much greater appreciation for the classics now that I am reading them of my own volition).

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George Washington's Sacred Fire

In about first grade or so, every kid in America learns that George Washington was the first president of the United States of America, is on the $1.00 bill and the quarter, and "could never tell a lie."  Later, by about fifth grade or so, most American kids are being told by the same schools that George Washington was a backwards slave owning white man that was something or other called a deist, which is typically presented to mean something akin to atheist, and that the cherry tree story was a lie.  I guess it is always somewhat inconsistent to make broad generalizations, but for the 90–100 kids in fifth grade at the same school I was in for fifth grade, the above story is true, and I can't help but assume it holds for many, many others.  That early attempt at indoctrination didn't totally grab hold of me, and I always thought George Washington most definitely deserved his place on Mt. Rushmore as one of the greatest presidents in American history.  For me, he was a man most daring and intrepid as he led the troops across the Delaware River to surprise the British-allied Hessian forces in New Jersey.  He was also an incredibly humble and grounded man who should figure larger in our modern-day politicians' worldviews: he refused to become king and wanted nothing more than to return to his family and estate at Mt. Vernon.  Finally, Washington was a great spiritual leader.  His prayer at Valley Forge was always truly inspiring and reminded me of great leaders in ancient times such as Helaman and Captain Moroni.

In his very thoroughly researched work, George Washington's Sacred Fire (ISBN: 978-0-9786052-6-8), Peter A. Lillback (with Jerry Newcombe), attacks the revisionist history of my fifth grade class.  The book is a very careful examination of the case that has been made and widely accepted regarding Washington's deism.  Lillback explains the arguments that writers, including a Paul Boller that seems to have written the standard in Washington religion-related books up to this point, have used to cast our founding father as a deist.  He then picks those arguments apart one by one.  He does this largely based on Washington's own words.  He claims that this concept has received the short end of the stick throughout time.  One prominent example is that it is often claimed Washington never or almost never used the name of Deity.  Lillback found, after carefully combing through everything Washington ever wrote, that he not only used the name of Jesus Christ, he used hundreds upon hundreds of other names and titles for God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  Similar research and proof were conducted and presented regarding other arguments against Washington being a Christian including topics as varied as communion, service attendance, other religiously-motivated behavior, knowledge of the Bible, and library holdings (Washington collected, signed, and sometimes commented on religious books, including compendiums of sermons).  Lillback carefully establishes that Washington communed, attended services and participated in his church community, knew the Bible inside and out, owned many Christian books (and no deist ones), and, arguably most importantly, lived a Christian life.  That final bit is important, because even though Lillback amply proves through Washington's own words (the main text of the book is over 700 pages; the appendices, including hundreds of excerpts from Washington's written prayers or communications where he indicates he is praying, are a couple hundred more), one must always remember with Washington, it was "deeds, not words."

I enjoyed the book immensely.  (As a short aside before explaining that in a little more detail, the book didn't always flow as easily as I might've liked, there were a distracting number of typos, and there were a couple sections that seemed slightly redundant.)  I think I would've enjoyed even if it had not satisfied me with regard to Washington's Christianity.  First, truly understanding the beliefs and positions of the founding fathers helps us think about and understand the way we should look at government today.  Government based on Christian principles and executed to encourage not just a Christian lifestyle, but a fully Christian life and faith, is quite a bit different from what many claim the founders wanted and what the government should be doing.  Second, the man was simply amazing!  He was one of the rare men who practice what they preach, and of said preaching do very little.  While Lillback admits that the cherry tree story is hard to verify (he, though, does not discount it completely), Washington did not lie.  Washington was the humble man I learned about in kindergarten.  He was a great general, a wonderful statesman, and a moral giant.  I found myself over and over noting how important it was to be more like Washington in my everyday life.  He was known to have a terrible temper, but very few people knew that because of his incredible self-control.  That talent was present in other aspects of his personality, too.  Washington understood morality and its bearing on the kind of people and the kind of society we create.  Washington always strove to forgive and to improve himself so he, too, could be forgiven.  Most often, he succeeded.  He was thrifty and abhorred debt.  He was fair, positive, and worked hard to bring others up.  He was a man of prayer who knew where to look for answers he couldn't find on his own.  He knew Whom to thank for any and all answers.  While the book set out to explain Washington's Christianity and succeeded, it also ended up inspiring.

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On All Fronts

I have always been somewhat interested in the history of wars in general, but the world wars, and World War II in particular, are probably what capture my time and attention the most.  I am not sure how or why this interest came about.  When I was really little — in kindergarten, I think — I did a report (with a lot of help from my dad) in school on World War I aircraft.  I have always found the Fokker Dr.I (the famous triplane of the Red Baron) to be an incredibly cool airplane.  I always enjoyed the pictures of World War II bombers in a Richard Scarry book of mine as a kid, especially the B-17 Flying Fortress, whose moniker inspired invincibility in the mind of young kid lying on the moist grass of a summer evening while looking at contrails high in the sky.  Later, I learned that I had a real connection to WWII since my grandparents from Germany had experienced the horrors of war on the receiving end and my American-born grandpa had fought in the U.S. Army.  I always appreciated the stories from both sides.  As a young man, the story of Anne Frank both haunted and fascinated me.  Eventually, I was able to tour a Nazi concentration camp and visit the apartment the Franks lived in while in Amsterdam.  The resistance, of which those who harbored the Franks were part, is maybe the part of WWII history that spawns the most questions.  How did people get involved?  Why did they get involved?  Why did others not get involved?  In fact, in a museum dedicated to the wartime resistance in Amsterdam, a provocative sign explains that, in the opinion of those who put the exhibit together, some were underground leaders, others chipped in occasionally, and others maybe only resisted in their hearts, but all of those types are worthy of respect.  It is an interesting question that I admit I haven't found a convincing answer to yet, but I don't hesitate to admit that it's those who actively participated, whether in uniform or trying to escape detection in the underground, that command instant respect and make for intriguing reading.

In On All Fronts: Czechoslovaks in World War II, Part 3 (ISBN: 0-88033-456-8), edited by Lewis M. White, there are many stories of people with Czechoslovak heritage fighting and resisting the Nazi occupation of their beloved land, fighting with the Allies to overthrow the Germans, and then fighting an unexpected enemy, their major liberator, when the USSR decided to prop up a Communist dictatorship in the post-war years.  The book consists of short contributions from a wide variety of Czechoslovaks involved in the war in one way or another.  The vast majority are contributions from men who served as officers in Czechoslovak regiments of Allied militaries.  Many served in the French Foreign Legion, others in the Royal Air Force, and a disproportionately large number served in the Red Army.  Other stories were from members of the underground resistance or partisans.  All had a very common theme: the liberation of what was a free and democratic country from the grips of a totalitarian Nazi government.  Stories of tense minutes hiding under the floorboards of a stranger's house, fighting off German tanks on swampy riverbanks, forced treks through the snowbound and freezing Tatras, and high-flying adventure in the skies over enemy territory make for interesting reading, especially since it is about a group that doesn't get much billing in the usual run-down of the history of World War II.  While the book largely focuses on military successes, there is room for a few stories of defeat as well as some realism that describes the banalities and redundancies that afflict all military bureaucracies the world over in all eras.  The end of the book sees a little change in focus as the stories do not have so much to do with the vanquished Germans, but with the intruding Red Army that presented a much different face than the French, the British, and the Americans.

The book was enjoyable and provided for an unexpectedly powerful and poignant ending, although it was admittedly hard to plow through in places.  Since most of the writers were officers and career military men, many of the memoirs seem technical and are filled with recountings of names, dates, lines held, and guns lost.  This is especially true of those who served with the Western Allies.  Those who served with the Soviets, in the Far East, or in partisan units provide for what I found to be more intriguing reading.  Their stories are full of crazy moments such as a Soviet captain telling a Czech lieutenant that if he doesn't succeed in battle, he'll answer with his head; or a Czech officer recounting how he and another officer had horses, but one morning during a particularly hard time in the winter, they awoke to only one horse, but the camp cook was proudly serving horse goulash in the mess hall.  Dry tales of artillery lines and military bureaucracy are counterbalanced effectively by your heart racing along with the resistance member hiding in a barn as the Nazis tear a farmyard apart.  The far reaches of the Gulag make some depressing appearances and, even having read books explaining the Gulag and Stalin, make the Soviet bureaucracy seem absolutely crazy.  Czechs escaping the Nazis by going into Soviet territory were promptly arrested and spent time in prison until the Soviets found a use for them by forming a Czech regiment.  Then, they were sometimes used as canon fodder.  Finally, as the war came to a close, those who had put their complete effort into fighting for Czechoslovakia in an effort to make it again free, found themselves fighting a new and entirely unexpected foe.  The Soviets had a little bit of a different agenda than the Allies on the western front, and started implementing things right away.  It was interesting to read about the disappointment of those who returned from the war only to find themselves looking to get out of Czechoslovakia again.  Some made it; others weren't so lucky and suffered torture and other inhumane treatment in prisons.  The part that was the hardest to believe was that it wasn't some far enemy (i.e., the Soviets), but a near enemy in the face of former classmates, those who one fought next to, or acquaintances from the same town.  Not only had the Soviets sold Czechoslovakia out, Czechoslovaks sold Czechoslovakia out.  Of course, that spawned a whole new generation of tales of an equally intriguing underground resistance movement; hopefully their stories are also recorded somewhere for us to both enjoy and learn from.

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Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith

When the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints first started using compilations of the teachings of past presidents of the Church as the manuals for adult priesthood and Relief Society lessons, they decided to use the teachings of Brigham Young.  I was on my mission at the time, so I experienced this series for the first time in Russian.  (The series has not been translated into all languages; for example, this year is the first year the manual has been printed in Czech.)  It should go without saying that I liked it.  You can't go wrong with reading the words of a prophet.  The editors, obviously, stuck with teachings and counsel that applies to fundamental principles and the basic aspects of our testimonies, but I would argue that fact is the very reason these books are so great.  The one question that always went unanswered for me, though, was when was the Church going to use Joseph Smith's teachings as our course of study?

In 2008, my question was answered, and the Church published Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith for use in priesthood and Relief Society meetings throughout 2008 and 2009.  Following the standard format, the book contains some historical information on Joseph Smith and then two years' worth of lessons (47 chapters in this case).  Each one is about one or another aspect of the gospel.  For the most part, the content of the chapters is taken directly from Joseph Smith's writings or sermons.  As a result of the nature of the time he lived in, a healthy amount of the material from his sermons is according to a scribe or someone who heard the message first-hand and then wrote it on their own.  All of the content has been carefully checked and corroborated by Church historians and editors before being approved by the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.  There is no room for doubt that one is reading the words of the prophet that opened this dispensation.  The words, or the things we are all supposed to learn and come to know as true, explain just why this period of time on Earth, with the fully restored true church, is so special.  From the Book of Mormon to the nature of God and from true priesthood authority to faith and from the organization of the Church to the reality of a living prophet, Joseph Smith laid out the teachings of God as he worked to restore the fullness of the gospel, and now we can read about it.

It's kind of embarrassing to write about this book now, but I only put up these comments once I finish a book, and even though we started using this book long ago and even finished using it in church long ago, I was always behind in my reading (it was this lack of reading from this manual that made me set a goal to read the most recent manual much more faithfully and diligently).  Still, what makes the book so good (as with all the books in this series) is that it doesn't matter when you read it, you will still learn.  I like how each concept gets a few pages of focused attention in a format that anyone can understand.  With each paragraph, I found myself impressed with one idea or another and always finished the chapter thinking I had learned something new, had an old concept reinforced, or knew what I needed to do to be a better person.  In D&C 88:118, God counsels His children, "[Y]ea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith."  There is no question that this book qualifies, and with prayerful study, your faith and testimony are guaranteed to grow.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.

Escape from Zarahemla

Ever since I first read Tennis Shoes among the Nephites, I have enjoyed Chris Heimerdinger's books, including those outside of his Tennis Shoes Adventure Series.  A few years ago, I was pleasantly surprised by Passage to Zarahemla, which stuck with Heimerdinger's tried and true formula centered around time travel, but gave us something new and different from the Tennis Shoes books since the characters were unfamiliar with time travel and not that familiar with religion, either.  As with most Heimerdinger books, it was left wide open, just begging for a sequel.

It took eight years, but Heimerdinger finally got around to writing the sequel, Escape from Zarahemla (ISBN: 978-1-60861-539-1).  In it, Kerra, Brock, their father, Chris, and their grandfather, Grandpa Lee, purposefully head off into a mysterious "rift in time" to see about some of the people left behind — Chris's Nephite wife and kid as well as Kerra's childhood friend (and now love interest), the Nephite soldier Kiddoni.  It doesn't take but a few seconds before they're entangled in an ongoing war between the righteous Nephites and Lamanites, who have banded together to take on the Gadianton robbers.  The twist to the whole thing is that the Gadiantons have someone in their midst trying to usurp power, a man rumored to practice a magic even blacker than that of your everyday Gadianton, Akuhuun.  Like all Heimerdinger adventures, the books, written for teenagers, move along quickly, and you're pulled right into the action, of which there is never a shortage.  One adventure after another befalls characters from throughout history, including an unexpected turn involving one of the gangsters that wanted to kill Brock after Brock ditched a quarter million worth of illegal drugs in the first book.  In the end, it seems like things are good, notwithstanding the honorable deaths of a few of the good guys, especially since Chris and his family are reunited, as are Kerra and Kiddoni.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series because it was a departure from the Tennis Shoes series.  Fresh characters and a modern-day setting that presented some hilarious passages as Gadianton warriors met 7-Eleven and that American icon, the car, for the first time.  While the action was as fast and as furious as ever, and I enjoyed the read, phrases like "the smell of ozone" notwithstanding, I was slightly disappointed in two things about this book.  One was that at the end, Heimerdinger managed to connect this series to his Tennis Shoes series.  In the future, the two series will be one.  From my point of view, this is too bad, because I liked the new faces and new story lines.  Second, I was disappointed that the action in this book took place in the ancient world.  This book felt more like a Tennis Shoes book than the first one, and we already knew Heimerdinger could write this.  The breath of fresh air that was in Passage to Zarahemla wasn't here, and considering the future plans for the characters, won't be here in the future, either.  I would've enjoyed more Gadiantons wandering through small, southern Utah towns.  Who says adventure and good, old-fashioned sword fighting fun can't have healthy doses of humor thrown in?  All in all, I thought the backstory to longtime heroes Gid and Huracan was well-written, even if it did make the book feel like a prequel, and enjoyed it, just not as much as I hoped I would.

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Not without My Daughter

Kidnapping is a subject that was terrifying as a kid.  I can honestly say that at times I have figured that any social awkwardness I may experience and discomfort when placed in the company of new people can be traced back to my early childhood and a visceral, albeit somewhat learned, reaction to all things stranger.  Of course, in the world of my childhood, kidnapping was carried out by strangers.  Maybe the 1980s were just a simpler time and people were more upstanding and that's why I didn't know about how in the U.S., most kidnapping is carried out by someone the victim knows, usually a family member.  Or maybe I just had a simplified view of the world around me?

No matter my view of the world, a gripping story of international intrigue, raw, primordial bravery, faith, and patriotism, is told by Betty Mahmoody and William Hoffer in Not without My Daughter (ISBN: 0-312-92588-3), a memoir of Mahmoody's experiences when her husband took her and their daughter to Iran and then forcibly kept them there.  Mahmoody starts with her flight to Iran from America's heartland, where she spent her entire life and moved from her blue-collar beginnings to entertaining and comfort of the upper middle class thanks to her Iranian husband.  She had various reasons for agreeing on the flight to Iran, but staying there indefinitely wasn't one of them.  That such a plan is her husband's plan is apparent within a week of arrival, and it's made worse by the fact that most of his family, and like most eastern cultures, family connections are extensive, is in on the kidnapping.  Mahmoody and her kindergarten-age daughter, Mahtob, endure the next two years under what amounts to house arrest in an unfamiliar and usually hostile foreign land where hatred for America is not only the official line, but something many citizens openly and actively agree with.  Eventually, Mahmoody is able to make contacts with various people, some simple shopkeepers, some foreign government officials, and others who are just the universal kind-hearted person you always hope exists out there.  She uses these contacts to organize a treacherous escape for her and her daughter, and through a few minor miracles, they are smuggled to freedom.

I vaguely remembered hearing about this or a similar case at some point in the news, so when I had the opportunity to read this book, the opportunity seemed very interesting.  The book didn't disappoint.  The bottom line is that the story is a good one — it's an enjoyable book.  I was appreciative of some other aspects of the book, too, though.  I was appreciative of the authors' descriptions of the big city, the lively markets, and sights, sounds, and smells.  I was intrigued by Mahmoody's return to the faith of her childhood even as she came to better understand and appreciate the faith of those around her, including those causing so much grief and pain in her life.  Unlike some critics, who have claimed Mahmoody's description of Iran and Iranians is calloused and even racist or bigoted, I found nothing of the sort in the book.  First of all, she wasn't trying to paint a picture of all Iranians or the whole country; she was writing a memoir, which by its very definition, describes her — and only her — thoughts and experiences.  Second, she pointed out that there were many kind and generous people in her life while in Iran, including those in her husband's family that she came to respect and to a certain extent, love.  Finally, I appreciated the patriotism.  Mahmoody is one who has experienced other cultures and other lands.  While the circumstances obviously bias her, she was remarkably even-handed in describing the things she saw and experienced.  Through all that, though, she came to appreciate her homeland, the USA, even more than ever before because of the real freedoms that we do have and others, sadly, often do not.

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The World's Most Dangerous Places

Trips were always something that intrigued me.  Family trips, whether they were overnight camping trips just up Farmington Canyon or drives across the heartland to visit famous cities like St. Louis, were highlights of my childhood even if it didn't always seem that way at the time.  I know I was envious of friends that had flown in an airplane and I hadn't as a kid. I think I was about 11 years old when I finally had that chance, and it didn't disappoint, but, then again, that was back in the day when a flight from Salt Lake to Orlando featured an actual meal even for people in economy-class seats and honest-to-goodness turbulence that had us bouncing in and out of our seats.  Everyone knows the sad condition of meals on planes these days and somehow they've managed to avoid most turbulence, too.  The magic of travel hasn't worn off yet.  In fact, ever since my stint in Russia as a missionary, it's probably only gotten stronger.  It was my time in Russia that firmly entrenched my preferred style of travel, too — eschew organized tours, get around like the natives, pack in as much as one can since one can sit around at home for free (if you're going to pay for it, you may as well see some of the world's most impressive sights), and embrace the chance to get off the beaten path, such as my short trip to Armenia.

In his fifth edition of his best-selling book, The World's Most Dangerous Places (ISBN: 978-0-06-001160-4), so-called extreme travel guru and author Robert Young Pelton explores some of the ins and outs of places that are most definitely off the beaten path.  He talks about some of the things one is likely to run into if you're trying to see the sights in Afghanistan, Iran, Zimbabwe, North Korea, or Russia.  The guide gives rather extensive information on adventure travel and the various ways to make it a reality in your life.  Then it delves into specific countries or regions (Chechnya, somehow, gets its own chapter even though Russia is also covered as a whole).  Each country or region gets a general overview, a run-down of some of the famous nutters that make the place a dangerous place to be, a list of other dangers that run the gamut from landmines to "67% of the hookers have AIDS," an idea of what getting a visa is like, and a list of some dates in the place's history that featured much death and general mayhem.  The book ends with a few more lists featuring things like what adventure tourists should pack and organizations that help people experience the crazy parts of the world while trying to "make a difference."

The book bills itself as a "guide to surviving hot spots, war zones, and the new[,] hidden dangers of global travel," but falls short of that goal.  It is undeniably often an enjoyable read, including some laugh-out-loud remarks thanks to the dry sarcasm and cynicism that anyone who has lived outside the U.S. for an appreciable amount of time will understand.  It is not hopeless commentary, but simply reality without the political correctness garbage that one suffers through when dealing with the media and academics.  Humor notwithstanding, there's not enough information specific to various situations to make the book any kind of real "guide to surviving" much of anything.  All the information provided is of a very general nature.  In fairness, it is probably meant to be that, but the advertising ought to be toned down if that is the case.  The sections on historical reasons and political reasons a place is now dangerous were often informative and nice overviews for someone like myself who needs some wit to make a place like Africa or South America seem even remotely interesting.  On the other hand, some of the facts were off, and when I see that the author says Russia is in NATO and labels a map of Russia in the Russia chapter as the "Commonwealth of Independent States," I have to wonder how much false information I read in the chapters about places I know almost nothing about.  Finally, one of the things I have come to admire a great deal in true guidebooks like DK's "Eyewitness Travel" series is a lack of opining; a guide book should just let you know how things are and not tell you if it's good, bad, or worth seeing or doing.  Pelton is obviously left-leaning, and that would not be a problem, except that it is brought up over and over again in the book, especially in his criticism of George Bush.  It grates on the reading and has little — if any — relevance to the subject at hand.  It should also be noted that some of the anecdotes included by journalists (for whom the book was written, in my opinion) include enough inappropriate language to garner the book an R-rating were it to be made into a movie.  The book is interesting reading as an overview to some crazy places that aren't on most people's radars, has some biting but often true commentary that will keep people interested, but has enough flaws to make me wonder how it became the phenomenon that it is.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.