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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.