When Character Was King

Technically, since he was president until 1981, Jimmy Carter was the first president in my life, but I was too little to know anything about him, so Ronald Reagan, who served from 1981 to 1989, is the president who I think of first when I think of the first U.S. president during my lifetime.  Reagan is famous for a number of things, all of which those who like to politicize everything argue about.  One is economic policy, which I don't think I'd ever heard about or even thought about as a kid.  Another was foreign policy, and even as a kid, I was pretty attuned to this.  Russia and her satellite states broadcast an ideology of oppression, were a clear and present nuclear threat, and fought wars and proxy wars to spread misery and oppression.  In a way, it had a personal connection.  I was well aware of my German heritage and was always fascinated by Germany.  Germany, of course, was separated by a wall, and not a wall of defense, but one meant to prevent people from leaving, from seeking a better life or from the "pursuit of happiness."  Reagan, famously, called on Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, to "tear down [the] wall!"  Even as a young kid, I understood that Reagan was a man of principles and a man who knew how to lead.

In When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan by Peggy Noonan (ISBN: 978-0-14-200168-4), the former Reagan staffer (speechwriter), journalist, and columnist gives her take on the fortieth president.  The story starts when Reagan was a kid and ends as he succumbs to the Alzheimer's and the ailments of time.  One learns where he got his worldview from and how his early life influenced where he got.  Reagan's father, I learned, was an alcoholic, but he still imbued his son with principles that served him well in seeing the greatness in all people and in upholding America's tradition of equality.  Reagan's mother was a strongly and actively Christian woman, which also became a major part of his character.  He believed in God and believed God wanted to be part of people's lives.  One reads about Reagan's involvement in Hollywood.  He was arguably an up-and-coming star, but never went big time because he got involved in the actors' union and the more political side of things.  His political career was dogged by accusations of being just an actor, and acting likely helped him as he campaigned, but his real talent was likely in speechmaking to begin with.  The book recounts Reagan's entry into politics.  He was not, it seems, overly ambitious, but saw his involvement as a chance to help people, and that's where character came in.  Reagan had standards and stuck to them, providing for people a stable and strong standard behind which they could rally.  He was unabashedly religious, had no tolerance for racism, and knew that there was a distinct difference between democratic forms of government with capitalistic and those of the "evil empire," the Soviet Union.  Principles made it so Reagan, with an unwavering rear guard in his wife, Nancy, could set goals — goals based on character and principles — and achieve them, improving lives around him in the process.

I really didn't know what to think about the book before reading it, but I did somewhat doubt the decision to pick it up since I figured a weightier biography of one of America's all-time great presidents might've been in order before this shorter one that could really only promise an overview of the many things Reagan undertook and accomplished.  I learned some things about the man and his life, though, and was happy with the depth of the information about the bigger events in his life.  I thought Noonan did an admirable job with what might be called the backstory to Reagan's political career, which is really where his character was formed — in his childhood, in college, and as an actor and union activist.  I think she made a good argument for the role that character played in what Reagan was able to accomplish, whether it was overcoming political defeat, recovering strongly from being shot, or helping bring about the demise of Soviet Communism.  Overall, the book was an enjoyable read and really only solidified my view of Reagan as one of the all-time great presidents.  There were things I liked about the Bushes, but the book's title says it all about Reagan and that era, because it wasn't principles in certain times, as I feel it was with the Bushes, but princpled, strong leadership all the time.  It also made me want to learn more, so I will, someday, find my way into a weightier, more academic biography of this great man.

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Gulliver's Travels

I am not a big movie fan, but a few years ago, the comedy actor Jack Black did a movie based on the classic novel Gulliver’s Travels.  I don’t much care for movies, so I know even less about actors.  What I did know was that Jack Black made a movie about being a Mexican professional wrestler.  It looked massively dumb, and I never saw it.  Black’s modernized take on the classic novel didn’t look much better, and I avoided it, too.  I hadn’t ever read the book, but, as everyone knows, the book is better than the movie.

Gulliver’s Travels (ISBN: 0-14-143949-1) by Jonathan Swift is an interesting novel that was originally published as political satire.  Now far removed from the contentious political scene of XVIII-century Great Britain, it has withstood the test of time and continues to be popular.  This is mostly thanks to the first part of the book, where the book’s hero, Lemuel Gulliver, visits Lilliput, home to a humanoid race only inches tall.  Gulliver has a number of adventures in this part of the world, including participating in a battle and putting out fires, which saves the island’s royalty.  He also ends up being trapped in some distant land where the inhabitants are giants, which also provides for some adventure, but mostly being carried around in a box by a girl.  Gulliver’s third voyage features a few different islands and a people who have figured out how to live on a machine that perpetually floats in the sky, landing only if the inhabitants are trying to crush the people on the ground below.  Finally, Gulliver finds himself in a land where the ruling inhabitants are horses.  The most inferior race in this quarter of the world are essentially humans, but in a wild and feral form.  In each place, Gulliver is exposed to differing methods of government and people.  He seems to learn from each, although always very patriotic when it comes to his homeland.  Finally, after his visit to the land of the horse beings, he is disgusted with mankind, claiming it to not think and to be disgusting and wild in nature.

I, like most modern readers, did not get much of the political satire in the book.  I would probably agree with many others that the Lilliput episode was the highlight as far as adventures went.  The other sections were significantly drier, although they still had their interesting points.  I noticed that by the end, although likely starting in the third episode, I was more attuned to the commentary on the behavior of people.  One of the points that Swift made multiple times in the book is that people spend a lot of time in conflict with one another because we choose to magnify little differences.  He also thought people succumb to thinking the grass is always greener on the other side, especially when it comes to the pursuit of scientific and technological advancement.  Finally, Swift, as I read him, was a big proponent of honesty.  If people would be honest in their dealings and in what they say, the likelihood of our never-ending conflicts decreases to a large degree.  The combination of the story of travel and adventure with commentary was interesting, although I think it tended to detract from the book a little, making it too slow in places.  I thought it was a decent book, but probably not one that I would pick up and read again just for the fun of it.

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Rise and Fall

Yugoslavia did not play a large role in my life until I came to Sarajevo for work.  I was too young, really, for the 1984 Olympics to mean anything.  I vaguely remember the old, small, black-and-white television showing ice skating competitions from the games.  Later, I learned that Yugoslavia was part of the Communist bloc.  Beyond that, I knew nothing of it and heard nothing of it until the 1990s, when it all, quite literally, blew up.  War, ethnic cleansing, and genocide are probably not what the peoples of this Balkan region wanted to have help them get on the map, so to speak, but it did.  There has been no shooting here for twenty years, but when people learn that I am working in Sarajevo, 90% of the time, they ask about the war and if that makes it a problem to live, work, and play in Sarajevo.  The effects, of course, do, but the war, of course, does not.

Rise and Fall by Milovan Djilas (ISBN: 0-15-177572-9) provides one man’s (Djilas (Đilas) himself) view of the Communist rise to power in Yugoslavia.  Since he was one of Tito’s closest aides and advisors, he provides an inside perspective that is largely unrivaled.  He also chronicles what he considers the falling away of the Yugoslav Communists from their revolutionary ideals.  As he comes to realize that Communism, as implemented in Yugoslavia, isn’t what was promised, he becomes disillusioned with it, enough so that he published material critical of Tito and the Communists, leading to nine years as a political prisoner.  Djilas covers a lot of ground in a little over 400 pages.  He gives a short account of the wartime Communists, but mostly focuses on life under Tito after the war.  He talks about foreign relations, internal politics, bizarre Communist Party perks like special stores for the elite party members, the cult of personality surrounding Tito, and the oppressive nature of a totalitarian or dictatorial political system.  Interestingly, Djilas’s falling out was not with Communism; it was with what Communism had developed into in Yugoslavia.  The reader even gets a small glimpse into Djilas’s personal life as he discusses his marriages.  Finally, the totalitarian oppression claims the once high-ranking government official and he spends almost a decade as a prisoner because of his ideas, not necessarily even that radical.

If one wants to study Yugoslav history at all, this is likely not the appropriate place to start.  Djilas made his name in the West because he was considered a dissident in a system that the West saw as inherently evil (rightly so) even though he was not proposing anything radical and certainly not a departure from Communism.  While that contributes to my thinking that Djilas was not the best person to take up as any kind of symbol or hero of the opposition in Yugoslavia, that is what happened, and this book is one of the results.  It assumes a certain level of familiarity with the history of Yugoslavia, which, if one lacks, results in a rather dry read in places.  On the other hand, the intimate insider view of things is appreciated and unique.  I found his discussion of Yugoslavia’s short-lived falling out with Russia fascinating.  Many modern Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians paint Yugoslavia as different from many of the other Eastern bloc countries for a few different reasons.  One of those reasons, they proudly proclaim, is that they weren’t just a puppet state of the U.S.S.R., like the Warsaw Pact nations.  Reading Djilas’s take, Yugoslavia towed the line set by Moscow as much as it could, so things really weren’t that different.  Those types of insights made for an interesting read.

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To the Rescue

I have always looked up to Church leaders as good examples, and the prophets in particular.  Since President Kimball died when I was only 5 years old, I only vaguely remember him.  I remember President Benson better, in large part because of his lifelong commitment to Scouting, and he was the prophet while I was heavily involved in Scouts.  I remember President Hunter mostly because the Bountiful Temple was dedicated while he was the prophet, and I participated in that temple’s open house and dedication.  President Hinckley is probably the first prophet I remember because of the things he taught.  He is also the first one that I looked to as a role model.  He was a very positive person and chose to see the bright side of life, no matter the situation.  Before President Monson was even the president of the Church, I saw him as a role model.  His many stories, most of them based on his personal experiences, showed that he had developed many of the character traits that truly good people possess.  Over and over again, I found myself listening and thinking that I should, somehow, implement what he was talking about in my own life.

To the Rescue: The Biography of Thomas S. Monson by Heidi S. Swinton (ISBN: 978-1-60641-898-7) chronicles the amazing life of service that President Monson has led from an early age through the present day.  The timeline for the biography is straight forward, starting with his early childhood and ending with his time as the leader of the Church.  He learned from parents and family around him in what was, at the time, a typical childhood.  It follows him through high school, a mission, early marriage, employment, and a variety of Church callings.  Along the way, there are many familiar stories, but there are sometimes some additional details that weren’t always part of the many sermons President Monson has given.  There were also some additional stories.  It was interesting to read about President Monson’s family a little bit and about his professional experienes.  There was a lot of time spent on President Monson’s service as an apostle in what was then East Germany.  The Church history aspect was interesting, as it was with some of the other episodes from his life, but they often seemed more like pioneer stories because of the great faith shown and the hardships endured.  What was consistent no matter what part of his life was being discussed was the dedication he showed to serving others, whether that be in his family or those around him.  President Monson was never too busy to help someone out, talk to them, visit them, give them a blessing, or share time and possessions with them.  It becomes abundantly clear as the life of this man is chronicled that he understands very well that Heavenly Father is serious when He says that the worth of souls is great in His sight.  President Monson has cultivated that genuine love and concern that is a trait of our divine Father and made it a part of his own personality. 

I never really doubted I would find the book interesting, but I think that I underestimated the power behind the stories.  There is sense of warmth and comfort in the stories from home, whether they be from his childhood or when he was a father.  The stories of service, love, and compassion are often familiar, but never dull.  In fact, they’re just the opposite.  They are inspiring and teach true principles.  I don’t necesssarily remember the details of who, when, or how, but a desire to be more in tune with the Spirit and more ready to help others is clearly left in your mind and heart after reading even a few pages.  Really, you can’t ask much more out of a book.  Thomas S. Monson has led and continues to lead an extraordinary life of service.  It is one worthy of emulation and one about which reading is well worth one’s time.

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Surviving Hitler

World War II has always been fascinating to me.  As a kid, it was simply the aircraft and other military hardware that intrigued me.  Outside of the big bombers, I especially found half-tracks to be interesting.  Another thing that is interesting about World War II is that the Axis and Allies alliances were clear and were fighting for a clear right and wrong.  It makes it easy to read about the bold heroes that risked their lives, often losing them, fighting for what was right.  The resistance fighters, brave soldiers, everyday people joining the underground, and those who had the physical and mental stamina to survive the truly horrid death camps were heroes to be admired.  Their steadfastness in selflessly choosing the right is to be copied.  I have no question of that today, but sensed it even as a young child.

Surviving Hitler: The Unlikely True Story of an SS Soldier and a Jewish Woman by O. Håkan Palm (ISBN: 978-1-60907-847-8) tells the story of two of the everyday people that made it through the horrors of war.  A memoir- or journal-style narrative takes the reader through the lives of the young woman, Agnes Erdös, a Hungarian ethnic Jew, and Gustav Palm, a Norwegian, as World War II placed its heavy imprint on their lives.  The Germans invaded Norway and Gustav joined the German army.  He was a good soldier who had luck on his side a couple times.  Agnes was raised in a well-to-do family, but as Hungary fell to the occupying forces, her life abruptly changed, and she ended up as one of the many in the Nazi concentration camps.  Sheer determination, coupled with a strength fortified by faith in God, got her through that most awful experience.  Through a series of events, both of them found themselves in Scandinavia after the war, trying to put their lives back together.  They met each other, fell in love, and were married.  Part of the healing process was a search for ultimate truth, and they found the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  There are some reminiscences from the author, the couple’s son that makes it seem that the healing process was a slow and often painful one, but these good people, who had endured much, forged on, helping others throughout the rest of their lives, ultimately conquering the scars of war.

Overall, the book was an enjoyable read, which is probably a little more of an endorsement than I thought I would be giving when I first opened it.  The reason I didn’t think I’d like it when I started is because of the journal-like format where you read a chapter from one person’s point of view, then a chapter from the others, and then back again.  It makes it seem a bit fluffier and not the kind of solid history book I would normally want to read.  I found it an interesting story, though, and maybe a first-hand account isn’t so bad since more thorough and scholarly histories have already been written.  This gives a unique voice to one of the many different aspects of the terrible war.  Notwithstanding my enjoyment of the book, I still think the title is a little sensationalist.  Gustav, the SS soldier in the story, was not a German Nazi bent on the extermination of the Jews or some other hateful ideology.  He was a young man who made what turned out to be an ill-fated decision.  At the time, he made the best decision he could based on what he knew.  It just so happened that he fought for the Germans.  In some notes to the book, someone explained that President Thomas S. Monson had met the couple and encouraged them to turn their story into a book.  I am not sure what he saw in the story, but my guess is that it was something similar to me — a story that makes the power of the atonement and the miracle of forgiveness that much more real.  For a different look at the war and bit of a human interest angle, the book is an interesting and quick read.

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It Is about Islam

Ever since September 11th, 2001, Islam has been a big part of what America thinks about.  As with most things in modern American culture, the general American has been content to let a few blabbermouths on his favorite 24-hour news channel serve as his source of information regarding a religion that claims nearly 1.6 billion adherents.  I am not fully free from this sin.  Having lived for some time in Bosnia & Herzegovina and having spent a couple months in Azerbaijan, I like to think I’m not as clueless as the next guy.  What I do know tells me that there are certain people who believe that Islam teaches them to do horrible and disgusting things to people.  I see that line of thought as a threat to America, to the West, and to liberty in general.  Overall, the religion, schools of thought based on the religion, and the culture, like all things foreign, are intriguing, especially since they have a real influence on the world today, and I enjoy the chance to take in something new that touches on many areas of interest at once.

In It Is about Islam (ISBN: 978-1-5011-2612-3) by Glenn Beck, part of Beck’s “Control” series (although I’m not entirely sure because it doesn’t fit the government overstep discussion that is so central to the other two books in the series), the reader is given a crash course in Islam, then typical media and government lies about Islamic extremism (Beck uses the word “Islamism” for this) are discusses and exposed, and then Beck gives a couple basic suggestions on how to move forward.  Based on my own understanding, the background information was solid.  I was intrigued to learn about the contact early Americans had with Islam and the process they went through to properly educate themselves about it.  The “Lies” section was good.  It was likely easy for the research team to gather the material.  There was no need to go into statistics or anything like that.  Simply gathering material from the Koran, the Hadith, and the words of the extremists themselves, did it and showed just how the extremists come up with what they believe.  Finally, there were a couple suggestions on how people should arm themselves with real information and not be willing to be stuck with what the media and politicians try to feed the American public.

I really wasn’t sure how I’d feel about this book.  I know a lot of Muslims, largely because I have spent (at the time of this writing) nearly two years in a country that has a majority Muslim population (~51%, but still a majority).  Bosnia & Herzegovina, though, is famous for being a Muslim lite country, although that has changed a bit since ISIL came on the scene.  I know that the nuts believe they are carrying out the will of God according to the Koran.  I also know some really solid people who are Muslims and don’t live anything like the extremists.  In the end, I ended up agreeing with Beck’s argument that while there are many Muslims that don’t agree with the extremists, it doesn’t really matter because we’re not worried about them; we’re worried about the extremists because they themselves believe they’re engaged in a holy war and that they themselves are carrying out God’s will according to the Koran.  It doesn’t matter what regular Americans think or what elites think or what non-extremist Muslims think.  What matters is what the extremists think, and it would behoove us to call it what it is so we can actually move forward against what is a real threat.  I was probably most disappointed by the section at the end of the book because it lacked any real, concrete suggestions.  The other book in the series have, but this was a bit fuzzier and just asked readers to be educated (one thing I hope to do is read the Koran even though Beck quoted from the Saudi-approved English translation).  I agree that’s important, but in our very literal world today, I think that most people need to be given the step-by-step guide.  My advice would be to not swallow the lines the politicians are always giving us along with doubting just about anything one hears in the media.  Once one figures out the real story, wield the truth and demand justice and common sense by getting vocally and actively involved in local politics.  The book gives the example of some city in Texas having a local sharia court.  If more people who believed in the Constitution stood up, that wouldn’t be happening.

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American Sniper

I am pretty old.  I don’t always feel it, but I am.  There are a couple ways I can tell this.  First, in high school and college, I played a lot of basketball and volleyball.  The first year home from my mission I played a lot of basketball.  I remember playing for hours on end on the courts at BYU’s now-demolished Deseret Towers.  I could do that every day.  Nowadays, on the rare occasion that I even get to play decent basketball, my skills have atrophied and I feel the effects of a couple hours of running around when I wake up the next day.  Second, I remember sometimes running around the neighborhood with friends carrying plastic machine guns.  We were often policemen or soldiers as we stole around a corner or pushed or way through low-growing brush in an empty lot.  Nowadays, guns kill people, not the person pulling the trigger, and helicopter parents everywhere try to keep their kids from touching anything even remotely gun-like.  My current, mundane desk job is a far cry from the excitement imagined as a kid on the NBA hardwoods or as an elite soldier racing down a zip line suspended from a helicopter in enemy territory, but sometimes it’s interesting to re-visit those day dreams.

American Sniper by Chris Kyle (ISBN: 978-0-06-223886-3) is a book that does just that.  It also visits, in a very personal way, the other realities of being a soldier, such as separation from friends and family, and the stress that comes from that and from always being in such high-adrenaline situations in war zones.  The book is the first-hand account of a Navy SEAL and his experiences throughout his time in the service of his country and his fellow man.  It follows him from high school to his helping form a company to train other security professionals once he got out of the military.  Most of the details in the book come during his time as a sniper in Iraq.  He explains how the American soldiers went about their business in the hostile areas where they operated.  He explains what goes through a soldier’s mind before, during, and after action.  He goes through the extremely painful process of losing a friend in battle.  The book also describes the heroic efforts of those who were seriously injured to work hard to overcome their new disabilities and make something of their lives.  Readers are let in, to a certain degree, to the psyche of the author as he describes, mostly in general terms, his philosophy on life and on some of the things he did while in the Navy.  There’s a little fun along the way, but the journey is mostly hard work, a lot of sweat, and quite a bit of blood, too.

I remember hearing about the book a couple years ago, but not being super interested at the time.  Then someone decided to make a movie.  Books are always better than movies, so I got a copy of the book.  For the most part, it was pretty gripping.  It’s pretty much all action all the time (and includes all the typical foul language of a modern soldier’s memoir).  Even the parts where Kyle tells about being at home and dealing with his wife and children have an edge to them because he was on edge and not always dealing with his struggles in the best way.  In the end, he learns a lot from what he goes through and definitely becomes a better person, especially in his family life, and that was neat to read.  The war sequences are very interesting.  They are fascinating to me because I have never experienced anything like them.  Kyle makes a simple case for his belief that what he and the rest of the U.S. military were doing was right, and that was interesting to read, too.  It really had only two points.  First, by engaging America’s enemies on their home turf, they had little to no opportunity to engage us on ours.  Second, the people America was fighting against were people who wanted to kill Americans and subject others to their will.  The soldiers felt they were protecting Americans and helping the Iraqi people be able to live according to the desires of their consciences.  It was really that simple for him.  It’s that simple for us, too, and I am thankful that men like Chris Kyle were willing to put their lives on the line for the rest of us.  It is a sad subscript to the book that Kyle was killed a few years after writing the book by a former soldier he was trying to help, using his own experiences as something to learn from, re-adjust to civilian life.

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The Possessed

While in college at BYU, I took a Russian literature in translation course.  We read a number of books, most of which I thought were pretty good, a few of which I didn’t much care for.  One that I thought was a good book was Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.  I remembered that book to have dark, brooding, often just outright insane characters, yet it was a good read. A while back, one of my aunts was cleaning out some old junk and came across some books she read in college.  Some of them were Russian classics.  I took up her offer to become the owner of these books that cost under $1.00 back when they were published in the 1970s.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s the Possessed (often called Demons in more modern English translations), translated by Andrew MacAndrew, was one of those books.  The book is the story of a provincial town in late tsarist Russia that undergoes a short period of chaos when some sons of the town’s prominent citizens return from abroad, university studies, or time in Russia’s crown-jewel cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg.  The young men come back with anarchist, atheist, and nihilist views and what seems like a role in an overarching plan to bring down the established government.  The young men play off the fears of the older members of the town’s citizenry, which aren’t really fears of government or the future, but more about their place in society and other more mundane fears.  Doing this, they wreak havoc messing with romances and balls, get involved with the town’s convicted felons, and even murder someone.  What was probably the saddest part of the novel was how after the murder, the victim’s wife and newborn son died.  All of it was caused by the anarchists working to spread their ideas and being willing to eliminate their opponents if necessary.  After the murder, the anarchists were mostly dealt with by the authorities and things fell back into their routine in the town after a shake-up in the government.  Other than the misery they caused, the atheist anarchists accomplished nothing, and that was probably Dostoyevsky’s point in writing the novel: atheism, anarchism, and nihilism are sure ways to bring about one’s destruction and the destruction of those around us.  He also noted, as another of the novel’s characters died, that a firm belief in God and Jesus Christ was a sure antidote to those negative philosophies.

As predicted, the novel had dark, brooding, misguided, and certifiably insane characters.  It was honestly kind of hard to get through at times.  It’s not the kind of book that you pick up one afternoon and finish later that evening because you just couldn’t put it down.  On the other hand, it’s very well written, and easy to follow the story, if not always the philosophy of some of the characters, which is probably just because the ideas of nihilism and anarchy are such fringe ideas in our current society.  By the end of the book, even with all of the death and destruction that many people consider to be hallmarks of Russian literature, I was a fan.  It showed very clearly the depths to which the philosophies of nihilism, atheism, and anarchism can lead people.  They lead to destruction on a personal and societal level.  They lead to spiritual and physical destruction.  While Dostoyevsky didn’t focus on the Christian message very much, he made the point clearly that to redeem oneself and to redeem the human condition, one must accept God and live by the standards that acceptance demands.  That is a message worth reading any time.

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Spy Dust

The world of spies, probably because it’s so shrouded in mystery, has always been intriguing.  I think this holds true for most people, as evidenced by the abundance of books advertising themselves as historically accurate as well as the standard fiction.  Both genres have seen success as movies.  My interest in spies typically does not dwell in the world of fiction, but in the realm of history and current events, although I did read and mostly enjoy the original Bourne trilogy.  World War II and the Cold War have always interested me, and that is also true as far as spying goes.  I actually heard about the book Spy Dust a few years ago, but never read it, thinking the title was maybe just a little bit too outlandish to really be about something that was real.  (It turns out that it really is a real thing and something not just used by intelligence services, but police departments, too.)

In Spy Dust: Two Masters of Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations That Helped Win the Cold War (ISBN: 978-0-7434-2853-8) by Antonio and Jonna Mendez with Bruce Henderson, spy dust itself plays a rather minor role.  The two authors and their craft, disguises, get the majority of the attention.  The story follows both authors in their CIA careers a few years before they came to know about spy dust through an operation that saw them defeat the theretofore undefeated powder.  Antonio was a master of disguise with years and years of experience; Jonna more of an extremely talented up-and-coming star in the CIA.  The book focuses on their teamwork to exfiltrate someone they claim was a well-connected and high-placed Soviet spying for the U.S.  The operation included a handful of Americans and the Russian and his family.  They used all their disguise know-how, which includes a lot of things that aren’t so much about disguises, but simply about how one ports oneself and how people are not able to notice every little thing if what one is doing mostly follows the normal routine.  The daring operation defeated the Russians’ spy dust and got everyone out of the country safely.

In general, I enjoyed the book.  I thought the main story as well as a couple of the smaller operations discussed in the build-up to the one that gave the book its title were very interesting.  When they finally got to telling about that final operation, it was actually pretty exciting reading, and I think I whipped through it pretty quickly with great anticipation, even though it’s obvious the book wouldn’t have been written had the operation gone south.  My big complaint with the book was that it was slow in some parts.  This is especially true when it comes to discussions of the romantic relationship between the two authors, who eventually married.  They talk about it having an impact on their work, but that still seemed to me to be a minor detail and not something that needed to take up scores of pages.  Maybe shorter books don’t sell?  I personally thought the big operation in Moscow could’ve handled a little more detail, and with the discussion of the authors’ personal lives left out, the book would’ve really been cool.  It was an interesting look at one small but important piece of the Cold War, but probably could’ve more than just interesting.

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War and Peace

An extraordinary strength of vitality — the strength

which in that vast space amid the snows maintained

the life of this original, peculiar and unique people.

— Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), War and Peace

My first exposure to War and Peace came as a young boy when I saw a ridiculously fat book sitting on a counter at one of my grandparents’ houses.  I was intrigued enough to crack it open, but the endless pages of small print about Napoleon and the Russians meant absolutely nothing to me.  Still, I was fascinated by the idea that someone would sit down and read a book over 1,000 pages.  After returning from my mission to St. Petersburg, Russia, I ended up deciding to double major while at BYU, and Russian was the major I added.  One of our classes was a survey of Russian literature (in translation).  We read a number of books during the one-semester class (the reading assignments were killer), but I gained a larger appreciation for some of the Russian classics.  That class probably inspired me, in general, to seek out more classical literature in addition to the history and politics books that I typically enjoy.  At some point, I knew I’d tackle that ridiculously fat book from my childhood.

War and Peace (ISBN: 978-0-19-953605-4) by Leo Tolstoy (Louise and Aylmer Maude translation) is arguably what we would call historical fiction today.  The only difference is that it was written soon after the events it depicts and likely had some direct impact of one sort or another on its author.  He definitely paints his version of the events surrounding Napoleon’s campaigns.  There is a lot of Tolstoy’s philosophy woven into the story, but essentially, the story follows a few main characters through their youth and into adulthood as they embark upon their careers and family life.  Tolstoy’s characters are varied and present all kinds of different people with all sorts of different character traits.  The reader also gets to become acquainted with the characters in all kinds of situations, which lets one see the best and the worst of the characters.  There are hundreds of members of the supporting cast, some playing a more important role than others.  With so many people in the book, it’s probably a legitimately arguable point just who the main characters are, but I think it was Pierre and Natasha, the two that one sees from beginning to end in the book.  Natasha, young, beautiful, and fun-loving, is the object of just about every young man’s fancy.  She falls in love, spurns her fiancé for the temporary affection of a married man and known womanizer, later repents of that mistake, but must suffer when, seemingly through chance, her original fiancé, wounded severely in the war, is evacuated from burning Moscow along with her family and dies as they make the trek.  Pierre as a young man is short-sighted, rash, and searching for something more in life than the dissipated life he leads drinking, playing cards, and chasing women.  Throughout the book, one sees him struggle to figure out what life is about.  He tries Masonry, civil service, an ill-advised marriage, and philanthropy.  None of them really do it for him.  When captured by the French while observing the battles near Moscow, he meets a peasant soldier from whom he learns a lot about the meaning of life.  After Napoleon’s retreat, the changed Pierre is re-acquainted with Natasha, and eventually they go on to form a happy family.

Many Russians with whom I have discussed literature have told me that if one enjoys Dostoevsky, one will likely not enjoy Tolstoy.  I had previously found this to be true, as I thought Crime and Punishment was a great book, but found Anna Karenina to be excruciatingly painful to read (it can be summed up like this: some rich woman has an affair and then kills herself).  I, therefore, approached War and Peace with some trepidation, but was pleasantly surprised.  Others may, of course, get something different out of the book, but I found Pierre’s change from a going-nowhere youth to a respectable family man with an overwhelmingly positive attitude on life that rubbed off on others to be a great message, especially since it coincided with him coming to terms with his belief in God.  I was intrigued by the thoroughly pro-Russian view presented by Tolstoy throughout the book, especially as it concerned the war years.  He was quite dismissive of foreign leaders, both civilian and military, although — somewhat surprisingly — the Russian tsar didn’t really escape his scorn, either.  Tolstoy presented the great Russian general Kutuzov as a fallible man and even soft in his old age, but also one who was above the fray, which I found to be a quality worthy of emulation.  Some of Tolstoy’s discussion of fate versus agency was difficult to follow philosophically, and even given a little time to digest it, I’m not one hundred percent sure I completely understand what he was trying to say.  What I got out of it, though, was the part of the book I liked least.  Tolstoy argued that fate or pre-destination determines the way our lives play out.  He claims that we need the illusion of free will or agency to function, but that we really play little to no role in how it all works out in the end.  He argues that in a given moment, it seems like we are making choices, but when you step back from the moment and see the whole timeline laid out before you, it becomes apparent that it was, in reality, impossible to make any different choice.  That is, of course, the exact opposite of what I believe, and what is taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which agency is central to all that happens to us.  The choices we make have a direct effect on what happens to us as everything has consequences, good or bad.  So, the story was enjoyable, the Russophile viewpoint was interesting, although Tolstoy may dispute that he was presenting that outlook, and the philosophy was difficult and disagreeable.  Overall, War and Peace was a worthy read.

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Conform: Exposing the Truth about Common Core and Public Education

I had a very mixed experience as far as school is concerned.  I experienced both home school and public school.  While much more common now than when I did it, I continued a somewhat unorthodox path through college, attending a private, religious school and doing things like testing out of classes and taking independent study classes.  Eventually I got a master’s degree online.  The odyssey started in third grade, when my mom took me out of public school because she thought there was only one teacher at the school that could properly help me.  I was an advanced student for my age and prone to misbehavior when bored.  After a couple years at home, I asked my parents to send me back since that’s where my friends were.  At the end of that year, I was more than happy to be back at home for sixth grade.  Junior high, which scars many a person for life, tried hard with me, too, especially since we moved between my seventh- and eighth-grade years.  In high school I had a steady diet of AP classes mixed with various gym classes.  I considered early college for my senior year, but had a couple good friends at school, so decided to stick it out.  The benefits were skipping class to play basketball and running on the track team, where lots of girls practiced in nothing but short shorts and sports bras.  Academics were beside the point, and I breezed through even my AP classes.  The point, of course, is that throughout my schooling, the standard one-size-fits-all approach did not serve me well.

In Conform: Exposing the Truth about Common Core and Public Education by Glenn Beck, Kyle Olson, and Kevin Balfe (ISBN: 978-1-4767-7388-9), the authors attack the federal government- and union-led approach to education in America.  The first half of the book is dedicated to debunking the typical arguments one hears about why public schools are the only way to go.  They also focus on the idea that the government should control schools, curricula, and even what students eat.  They present argument after argument showing that centrally-controlled education fails the vast majority of students outside the average and even a good many who are average.  They show that the current system encourages mediocrity, whether that be in students, teachers, or the school systems themselves.  Education policy is controlled by bureaucrats far removed from the process, unions who, despite what they say, care more about collecting money for their bosses than what teachers or students need, and administrators, legislators, teachers, and union officials who have an agenda to push.  The second part of the book talks about what us normal people can do to change.  We don’t have to conform to the system, the authors argue, but if we want to control our own or our kids’ education, we have to be involved in bringing about the change we want to see.  We have to participate in school boards, in meetings, on curriculum committees, and in elections, as voters, candidates, and campaign workers or volunteers.  They cite examples of places real change has taken place and note that more can happen should we choose to make it happen.

The book is a follow-on to Beck’s book about gun control and written in exactly the same manner and style.  This book does not live up to its predecessor.  I found the arguments to be weaker and not as convincing, although they were still all true.  The school question is a big one, and they touch on many different aspects.  I think the writing was a little scattered in places and could’ve used some focus.  I enjoyed the suggestions at the end of the book.  It is Beck’s style to encourage participation and responsibility instead of just complaining about a problem.  While he prophesies a lot of doom and gloom on his shows, I think his overall message is one of optimism, but only if we choose to get involved in the processes around us that affect our lives.  If we’re not involved, they’ll pass us by and we’ll really only get the messed up society we deserve.  The voice of the people usually gets it right, but all the people have to make their voices heard.  I like that message.

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Assisted: An Autobiography

As a kid, I was pop culture-challenged.  Who am I kidding here?  I still am.  That even extended into the sports world, and when my neighborhood friends and I would get together to play some basketball in our back yard or in a nearby driveway, it usually involved picking a team to be.  If the Jazz weren’t available by the time it was my turn to play, I was at a loss.  The Jazz were, to a certain extent, the limit of my knowledge of the NBA when I was a really young kid.  As I got older, though, they continued to be the true focus of my knowledge of the NBA.  I just wasn’t (and am not) interested in other teams, nor do I have the time to get into other teams or players.  I care about the Utah Jazz.  It was easy to become a Jazz fan with guys like Karl Malone, John Stockton, and Mark Eaton on the team.  They were all blue-collar guys, and it showed in the way they played.  I never wavered in my love for the Jazz, but I don’t hesitate at all to say that it has dropped off since Stockton and Malone are no longer playing.  They were special.  Stockton was also alluring as a role model, both on and off the court.  He was intensely private, but I always felt that he was not really hiding anything, and the even-keeled guy that “never dogged a play in [his] life” was the same guy we would see were we to see him off the court.

Assisted: An Autobiography (ISBN: 978-1-60907-570-5) by John Stockton, if nothing else, proved me right in my assumption.  Memoir might be a better description of the book, but those arguments about semantics take nothing away from a rather thorough look at Stockton’s life as a little kid roaming the neighborhood with his friends on long summer days to his time as an NBA star and through his post-retirement activities.  He told about his upbringing, his childhood, his high school days, his experiences in college, including various summer jobs, basketball, and dating.  He talked about making it in the NBA, being a rookie, changes in the game, some of former Jazz owner Larry Miller’s quirks, and a host of other things that fans and disinterested parties alike might find interesting.  He talked about his family, and his parents and wife in particular.  He discussed a couple of his coaches, including Jerry Sloan, an NBA great and another hard-nosed, down-to-earth, blue-collar guy.  Stockton’s discussion of the Olympics was fascinating because he was very open about his love for his country and the great responsibility he felt putting U.S.A. on his chest.  He discussed his life after basketball, except that it hasn’t really been life after basketball as some of his kids of played at a very high level, he’s restored a warehouse and turned it into a community sports center, and he’s still involved in the occasional pickup game.  Finally, as part of the proving my assumptions true, his tale is woven throughout with references to family, God, prayer, hard work, and other old-fashioned values.

I wanted to read this book the moment I saw it existed.  Everyone knew John Stockton the leading assist man in the history of the world, but many felt they did’t know John Stockton the person.  Like I said, I figured he was kind of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person, but I was intrigued to read nevertheless.  The book was a draft of fresh air with each turn of a page.  Stockton comes across as down-to-earth, brutally honest about some of the mistakes he’s made and shortcomings he’s got, and, in a way, an everyday guy that other everyday guys can identify with.  Former Jazz coach Frank Layden, in a statement to the press when the Jazz drafted the unknown John Stockton, explained that he was Catholic and his dad owned a bar, so there really shouldn’t be any questions about him.  Stockton didn’t think that would go over in Utah, largely Mormon and largely dry.  I think he might’ve missed the point about those two characteristics equating to a person that was a good guy and that knew about old-fashioned work ethic.  Stockton proved to be that guy and probably more.  In a world fraught with vice like the NBA, Stockton was different and stepped up to the plate when it came to responsibility of being a role model that is inherent to the position.  His thoughts on other issues, like abortion and family, were also very refreshing coming from a public figure.  The book was well worth the time spend reading it and only solidified my respect for the greatest point guard ever to play the game.

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My Name Used to Be Muhammad

“I never thought I’d cry when my father died, but I wept like a baby.  I miss him terribly. What I really miss is what we never had.  I would have spent another fifteen years in prison in exchange for the opportunity to be close to my father as a boy. I so badly wanted to please him.  I wanted to hear his praise.  I wanted to kick a soccer ball with him. I wanted to paint him a picture and have him tell me he liked it.  I wanted to tell him I met a girl and fell in love.  I wanted to ask him for advice. I wanted to talk to him about something other than religion.  I wanted him to say something to make me laugh.  I wanted him to put his hand on my shoulder and tell me about a time when he made a mistake as a boy.  I wanted to see him miss my mother. I wanted to be his boy.   Most of all, I wanted him to want me.”
— Tito Momen
One of the most fascinating classes I took in college was a comparative religion class.  This was arguably my introduction to Islam.  I had run into some Muslims while on my mission in Russia, but my understanding of their religion was superficial at best.  It was in my world religions (I think that was its actual name) class that I learned more about the religion that claims more adherents than any other on our planet.  Since then, my travels as well as the events that have often taken center stage in the news have increased my knowledge of this fascinating religion.  As a staunch member of my own church, I find conversion stories to be miraculous, inspiring, and simply interesting.  Islam is known — rightly or wrongly is up for debate — for being extremely harsh in dealing with those who turn against it.  Conversions from the strong traditions of Islam to the all-encompassing doctrines of Mormonism are especially interesting from this standpoint.

Tito Momen, in My Name Used to Be Muhammad (ISBN: 978-1-60907-710-5), told just such a story.  His background was one of utmost Islamic piety in northern Nigeria to accepting Jesus Christ as his Savior and embracing the other doctrines and scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  The journey was an interesting one, often wrought with peril.  Momen’s childhood and teenage years were fairly typical for boys in the area where his family lived.  His father was extremely strict, occasionally abusive, and based everything he did on his religion.  His plan for young Momen involved formal schooling with the ultimate goal of becoming part of the Islamic clergy.  Momen wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea, wishing to please his father and rather enjoying his schooling.  The only thing he didn’t really get was the lack of an outlet for his natural talents and the lack of room in his culture for questioning those in authority.  At a college in Damascus, Syria, he tired of abusive, extremist professors, eventually getting in a physical altercation with one that he despised the most.  While having the potential to be a real disaster, it ended up putting him on a path toward his eventual conversion.  He was able to go to Cairo, Egypt, to continue his schooling.  There, he met a very diverse group of people, including within the faithful Muslim community.  He learned that the northern Nigerian brand of Islam wasn’t the only one, and that many of those people were still good, faithful members of the faith.  He also ran into those who weren’t.  This diverse crowd led him to think a lot about his faith, and while he admits to making some choices that were not becoming of him, his upbringing, or really anyone, the process of change was something very foreign to someone coming from a background of total, blind obedience.  Eventually, he was kicked out of school in Egypt, too, having written an essay questioning Islam.  A French friend had converted to Mormonism in the meantime and introduced Momen to the Church.  After his conversion was complete, there were troubles with some of his former friends and acquaintances who were considering violence as an option for dealing with the apostasy from Islam.  An attempt to leave Egypt on a fake passport landed him in prison, where he languished for fifteen years before miraculously being let out.  Like the conversion story, the story of Tito Momen getting out of prison showed that God loves us, cares about us, and is involved in the details of our lives.

The book was, as I expected, incredibly interesting.  I know relatively little about the part of the world in which these events were set, so learning about them was neat.  Momen’s conversion story was, of course, incredible and displayed an incredible about of faith and humility.  His is one of those stories that makes a person think something like, “If this guy could go through all that he did, of course I can get through my middling problems.”  It’s an inspiring story that held my attention throughout the book.  The only thing I think could’ve been improved on was that his life story was told in decent detail, but maybe there could’ve been a little more detail given to his conversion to Mormonism.  I realize that it’s a deeply personal thing and that the impressions, thoughts, and feelings we have as we seek answers to our earnest prayers are personal and hard to describe.  Still, they are real, and there are events and thoughts associated with them that would be of interest.  It would firmly be rated PG-13 were it a movie, but it all accurately depicts life in North Africa and the Middle East.  I’d recommend the book as one of general human interest and religious interest that I really enjoyed.

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 © MMXIV John Pruess.

Bosnia: A Short History

Eastern Europe is, in general, a fascinating part of our world.  There are many reasons for this, ranging from greasy, tasty street food to dilapidated concrete housing blocks, as well as the contrasts and conflicts such as earthy traditionalism coupled with rich and vibrant cultures that have produced many world-class authors, artists, and musicians that are embedded in the cultures of the peoples of Eastern Europe.  It seems that conflict, in one form or another, has also been a fairly stable part of a history otherwise riddled with instability thanks to imperial conquest, religious disputations, and the natural result of a mixing of conflicting cultural values because of the region’s geographical location between the East and West.  The countries of the former Yugoslavia all, to one level or another, suffer from these divisions and contradictions.  Bosnia and Herzegovina may be at the forefront when it comes to so many opposing ideas, views, and cultures shoved into one country’s borders.  The Balkans’ similarities to the Caucasus have intrigued me for a while, so learning more about the history of the Bosnian people seemed like a natural fit for my curiosities.

Bosnia: A Short History by Noel Malcolm (ISBN: 0-8147-5561-5) explains just who the Bosnians are and who they have been throughout history.  Their history, like those of all the peoples of the Balkan region, is muddled thanks to it being at the crossroads of the East and the West.  Although rarely sought after militarily, both the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs brought it under control at different times.  Before that, though, Bosnia had carved out its own identity seperate from its neighbors, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia.  Bosnian history goes back to the ancient Illyrians and continues through Rome, Byzantium, and various Slavic tribes and rulers.  It continued, to a certain extent, in the short time period between World War I and the introduction of Communism.  It made it through the fall of Yugoslavia and continues its unique fractured and rather dysfunctional way today.  Religion, both Christianity and Islam, as well as earlier, pagan forms of worship, have played a major role in the forming of the Bosnian people.  The history, like much of Eastern Europe, is fragmented and often overly complicated, but it is rich and features a people who present something unique to the world.

Books about obscure topics have a tendency to by dry.  That only applied to this book in the section about the Bosnian Church.  Malcolm decided to dedicate an entire chapter to the church, which, in my opinion, was a debatable choice.  The subject matter was definitely relevant to the book’s overall argument, but there just wasn’t enough material to keep things moving in that section.  One would really have to be a specialist in the field to care enough to get into that chapter, which dragged because of arcane details about an enigmatic at best religious organization.  Other than that one flaw, I thought the book was interesting and presented on a relatively small number of pages a lot of essential information about the region and its people.  Given that the Balkans are such a complex collection of peoples, histories, religions, and modern states, it was quite a feat to get it sorted into coherent chapters and present any kind of argument.  Malcolm tried to make two major arguments.  First, Bosnians were and are a distinct ethnic group in the Balkans.  They are not some kind of off-shoot from the Serbs, Croats, or any other people.  They have a clear and distinct history.  This argument I think he succeeded at making.  Second, he contended that Bosnians have lived in relative peace with their neighbors, the Croats and Serbs, and the modern-day state of affairs, which led to the wars and attendant war crimes after the break-up of Yugoslavia were actually anomalies.  I did not quite agree with his assertion because whatever peace did exist, it seemed to live under a surface taught with tension.  Maybe the Bosnians did not enter into out-and-out warfare with their neighbors on a regular basis, but they certainly did not go out of their way to cooperate or increase connections.  In fact, his drawn-out bit about the Bosnian Church seems to support my idea in that they went for their own church not because of any great theological differences as compared to Orthodoxy or Catholocism, but simply because they preferred isolation from their neighbors, who presented a real and present threat.  The book was informative and makes one think, no matter the conlusions the reader reaches.

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.

The Morning Breaks

Russia and the other Slavic countries to which it is closely tied are fascinating places and they are captivating across a wide variety of fields.  Russian history is interesting with its ties to Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; Russian politics, whether that be Putin or Stalin or Gorbachev, are intriguing; endless spellbinding tomes have been written about Russian spies, foreign policy, and military affairs; Russian food like pelmeni, bliny, and pirozhki is excellent; and the Russian people are equally engrossing and mind boggling with their mix of hospitality, Oriental-style ways, European sensibilities, and rude coarseness.  If one wants to study a particular angle, it can be done in Russia.  Russia also has a fairly rich religious heritage, the Soviet attempts at state-sponsored or state-enforced atheism notwithstanding.

In The Morning Breaks: Stories of Conversion and Faith in the Former Soviet Union by Howard L. Biddulph (ISBN: 978-1-57345-152-9), one can read about a relatively new chapter in that deep religious history.  President Biddulph was the leader of the first mission in Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union (his responsibilities actually started just before the USSR fell).  He describes the miraculous nature of the early missionary work in Ukraine, often incorporating the thoughts and experiences of the first, pioneering Ukrainian Saints.  Some of testimonies of these people, always simple, are very strong.  All the experiences show the loving guidance of a Father in Heaven who wants His children to succeed in all that they undertake.  He talked of the people who made the Church successful in those wild times because of their extreme faith and true willingness to be instruments in the hands of the Almighty.  There were some of the typical-for-Eastern-Europe struggles with infinite layers of bureaucracy that were resolved; there were smaller miracles such as the sun shining through as Ukraine was dedicated for missionary work; and there were the many individualized miracles that took place each and every time a missionary decided to open his mouth one more time or an investigator decided to follow through on a commitment.  After a long period of stagnation and darkness, the Iron Curtain had fallen and the light of the gospel shone through to take its place.

The book was written in a very informal style with many excerpts from President Biddulph’s journals, his wife’s journals, and letters from or interviews with the early Ukrainian Saints.  It was, of course, intriguing for me, a former missionary in the territory of the former Soviet Union, to read about how another one of those countries came to meet the gospel.  Ukraine is fascinating from the standpoint of Church growth because it was opened to missionaries right on the heels of Russia, and is much smaller, but seems to have done much better as they had a stake there first and a temple, too.  I liked the stories, a couple of them similar to things I experienced first hand.  Missions are something it’s easy to wax nostalgic about, but they’re also something that has the power to rekindle the desires for righteousness and obedience to God’s law that were so strong while serving, and that is probably the best part of the book.

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.

Control: Exposing the Truth about Guns

The U.S. Constitution is an amazing document.  Worked out, written, and ratified by inspired men, it created a form of government that had never been tried before.  More importantly, it enshrined rights that men have not because some government deigns confer them, but because they are provided by God.  The Founding Fathers had very intimate experiences with governments that were tyrannical in nature and oppressed their subjects.  When they designed the Constitution and subsequently wrote the Bill of Rights, they did so knowing what could go wrong with governments.  They had also just recently experienced the Revolutionary War and knew what it took to cast off the shackles of persecution from a government that no longer serves the express purpose of government, to help its citizens “exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life” (D&C 134:2).  They very clearly understood that the overthrow of a government was a very serious act, but that in extreme circumstances, it was necessary.  In fact, in the Declaration of Independence, they wrote, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”  An unarmed populace was extremely unlikely to be able to carry out its right to a government that ensured liberty: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”  They therefore wrote the second amendment to the Constitution, ensuring our right to the arms necessary to protect our rights.

The Revolutionary War and an oppressive monarchist government are ancient history in the average American’s mind.  That’s kind of too bad, though, because it has warped people’s minds as to why the Founding Fathers thought it so important to bear arms.  In Control: Exposing the Truth about Guns by Glenn Beck (ISBN: 978-1-4767-3987-8), the arguments typically trotted out by those who oppose guns (they would say they just support so-called gun control, but that’s just putting a fancy name on one thing so people think one is going on about something else) are dealt with one by one with logic and facts.  In fairness, the anti-gun crowd claims to be using logic and facts, too, but the book’s careful look at various studies puts most of the anti-gun arguments to shame.  The gun massacres that make headlines are shown to be the anomalies that they truly are, for example, especially since Beck gives page after page of example debunking the idea that gun massacres are an American phenomenon and that they’ve never been stopped by a level-headed gun owner.  Beck also talks a lot about our culture of violence and debunks a lot of the patently false and simply misinformed ideas regarding violence in video games.  In the end, though, he focuses on the real point of it all.  The examples, studies, facts, statistics, and even a few opinions all point to the idea that the Founders were men who loved liberty.  They regarded liberty with such high respect that they were willing to die for it.  They knew that only liberty provided the basis for the pursuit of happiness.  When we allow the state to control the choices we make, including choices about firearms, we are surrendering our liberty, making it harder for us to enjoy the blessings of liberty.

I am usually somewhat leery of these types of books because they’re written by big-name conservatives writing for a conservative audience.  They are sometimes peppered with references to the mental shortcomings of liberals or other knocks that make little sense (as a self-described conservative, I think the leaders of the liberal movement are anything but dumb).  This book had blessedly few of those, although there were a couple times I was exasperated by an inappropriate jab at the Left.  I was very impressed with the research and sound analysis presented in the book based on study after peer-reviewed study on everything having to do with the gun debate.  I especially liked how Beck examined the very studies often cited by gun-control advocates because Beck didn’t take them out of context or go for the soundbite quote.  That is probably considered boring by some and is why it doesn’t make the talking head shows or YouTube, but it’s informative and allows the reader to make a more well-informed decision.  There was only one section in the book out of at least a score that had me scratching my head at the end.  All in all, the argumentation was strong, and that’s good because the writing suffered from an attempt to keep it from being too dry.  I say be dry and make a stronger point based purely on logic and not at all on wit, which really isn’t an argument at all, although it, sadly, works all to well.  If you want to be well informed regarding what gun control really does and does not do and why it is so unhealthy for our nation (and, really, for people anywhere in this world), this book is probably worth your time.

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The Long Walk

In eighth grade at Kaysville Junior High, a rather unpopular teacher named Mr. Rice showed us Escape from Sobibor, a movie that tells the story of an uprising in a German concentration camp.  I remember sleeping through some of it, but I also remember being intrigued by it, having learned much earlier about Anne Frank and the underground activity she and her family were involved in.  Later, I learned about the Soviet prison camps, the Gulag.  As with the story behind the movie I saw in junior high, the idea of escape from a vast system, stereotypically cruel and secure in most people's minds, has always been intriguing.  (To be completely honest, escapes from modern-day prisons are pretty intriguing.)  There is something redeeming and inspiring in hearing of people who were willing to sacrifice their lives for the chance — not necessarily freedom itself — just the chance of freedom.

In The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom (ISBN: 978-1-59921-975-2) by Sławomir Rawicz, one can read about just such an escape and one that combines World War II history, the Gulag, and adventure travel into one.  Billed as a true story, the reader follows Rawicz, a Polish cavalry officer, from Moscow's notorious Lubyanka to the a small outpost of a prison camp in northern Siberia, and then about 4,000 miles south, to India, after his escape.  The escape itself is one of the few truly exciting scenes in the book, as the rest reads much like a travelogue, but it is all adventure after adventure as the small party of fugitives walks through Russia and then the wastelands of Mongolia and China.  They pick up a fellow escapee near Lake Baikal and experience Oriental hospitality over and over again in their travels through the deserts and mountains of western East Asia.  These usually touching, sometimes comical, visits are a major reason the travelers made it to India alive.  As is to be expected, they lose a few of the party along the way to starvation and exhaustion.  In the end, though, their desire to be free is triumphant, as they walk out of the hills and into the arms of a British Indian patrol.

I enjoyed the book, which reads like a novel.  The story was exciting, intriguing, and exhilarating.  It was interesting to read the story of torture at the hands of the Russians, the hardships experienced by the prisoners during the prisoner transfer operation across the vast expanses of Russia, and the way the labor camp was organized.  The escape and the adventures that laid therein were also fun to read about and did give off the sense of the indomitable human spirit.  The only thing that may be a bit of a negative about the book (aside from some mild strong language typical of Englishmen (Rawicz settled in England after the war)) is that it likely doesn't live up to its billing as being a true story.  The epic adventure has gone under the microscope of investigators and researchers a few different times.  Since the author lived in England, the BBC did a bit of research, as well as an American woman who wrote a book about her efforts and her inconclusive results.  The one thing that has been established is that Rawicz likely did not make the trek.  After that, one is left to make one's own conclusions including a number of possibilities ranging from him doing part of it to others completing the year-long hike and from the story being a compilation of others' adventures to it simply being a prisoners' tale that became, thanks to the horrors of war and the Gulag, impressed so strongly in people's minds that they genuinely believed the story was theirs or their acquaintances'.  I am personally partial to the latter two ideas, but think that the book was a great story regardless of veracity and even though I went into my reading of the book knowing about the controversy, and therefore approaching it as fiction, it does cause one to think about freedom, liberty, and the indomitable human spirit.

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От первого лица: Разговоры с Владимиром Путиным

People like to say that Russia is a big country and by so saying, infer that its physical size somehow influences the large amount of interesting things emanating from that country.  I am not convinced that is really how it works, but I do know that Russia is a fascinating country.  Before I went on my mission to Russia, I followed Russian politics the way most Americans did: I heard about it through the filter of American news organizations.  I knew Russia was the enemy, ideologically and militarily.  I also knew their athletes wore CCCP on their jerseys, and I just couldn’t figure out how in the world those letters stood for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  On my mission I solved the mystery of CCCP thanks to learning the Russian alphabet; I didn’t increase my knowledge of politics much, though, largely since that wasn’t something missionaries were supposed to be doing (and for good reason as there’s only so much time you have to be a missionary; politics can wait).  I did, though, begin my acquaintance with Vladimir Putin, easily Russia’s most powerful man.  On December 31st, 1999, I was with three other missionaries at a Church member family’s house to celebrate New Year’s Eve.  I mostly remember two things.  First, the Russian take on head cheese, kholodets, was pretty nasty.  Second, we watched on TV as Boris Yeltsin resigned and turned the country’s reigns over to Putin.

От первого лица: Разговоры с Владимиром Путиным (ISBN: 5-264-00257-6), or First Person: Discussions with Vladimir Putin (my translation), by Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov is a book that consists of not much more than a series of interviews with Vladimir Putin.  There were sections in which old friends, his ex-wife, an old teacher, and even his daughters made some comments, but it was mostly just transcripts of Putin talking to the three reporters.  Putin talked about his childhood, his schooling, his career ambitions, his family, his time in Germany, his athletic endeavors, and his meteoric rise from unknown in St. Petersburg to the heights of power in Moscow.  Putin went into quite a bit of detail about his childhood, schooling, judo exploits, and even talked quite a bit about his courtship of his ex-wife (they were still married when the book was written).  He also talked a lot about the early days of real, democratic politics in St. Petersburg, which was the springboard for his political career.  Finally, the reporters asked a lot of questions about the Russian issues of day, most of which had to do with Chechnya.  Putin explained why he chose the positions he did on Chechnya and how he figured it made Russia a more secure country.

The book was an interesting read because of the biographical feel to it.  I enjoyed reading about Putin’s early years.  The section about St. Petersburg politics was a little dry, but I did understand that it was key to Putin’s rise to power.  I found that Putin approached the interviews the same way he does all of his other public appearances: kind of dry and with a self-effacing element to it.  Other than a few of the answers to the Chechnya-related questions, he was pretty open and ready to share details.  With Chechnya and a couple internal Russian political affairs questions, the answers seemed a little more short and pointed.  The biggest drawback of the book is one that is not really anyone’s fault: it was written during Putin’s first term as Russia’s president.  Now that he’s in his third term, the book is quite out of date.  To be fair, I don’t think an updated book would be much different.  Any insight to one of post-Soviet Russia’s most intriguing figures is interesting, and this was no exception.

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.