Henry Petroski. Remaking the World (1999)

     Henry Petroski. Remaking the World (1999) Jon gave me this book for Christmas. Petroski wrote historical essays for American Scientist, a magazine that appears to carry on the original intent of Scientific American, which was much more focussed on technology (and even DIY) than the current version. His essays are very much like Gould’s, but the style is somewhat more neutral and pedestrian. I get little sense of Petroski’s personality, which is a pity, since his choice of subjects indicates a lively mind and wide range of interest.
     His emphasis on the non-technical aspects of engineering is important. Most people lack scientific and technical insight (we need a word like “illiteracy” for this), which means that the context of engineering works is often incomplete. The yearning for quick fixes prompts politicians and their constituents to trust the technocrats too much (see the “heightening” of “security measures” at airports recently). On the other hand, nimbyism and paranoid Ludditism result in know-nothing rejection of economically viable and ecologically effective solutions (see the resistance to H1N1 vaccination).
     All in all, a good book, with useful nuggets of information here and there. For example, “bug” as a glitch or unexpected flaw in design predates computers. Petroski quotes a note in Edison’s diary, in which Edison refers to “Bugs – as such little faults and difficulties are called –”. I’ve suspected that the “insect in the electronic works” was a story a little too pat to be true, and am happy to have my suspicion confirmed. *** (2010, previously posted)

William L. Shirer. The Rise and fall of Adolf Hitler (1961)

     William L. Shirer. The Rise and fall of Adolf Hitler (1961) This little book is aimed at school children, which means it’s simplified, and in places simplistic. It also affirms some of the post-war disinformation, such as that Austria was conquered by Hitler. In fact there was plebiscite, and 98% of those voting wanted Anschluss. And over 95% voted. The movement in favour of Deutschösterreich (German Austria) was strong even before Hitler moved to Germany. This movement originally wanted the “real” Austria to secede from the Hapsburg empire and take its proper place alongside or even as part of the German hegemony. When Hitler referred to the “mongrel” Slavs, he was merely repeating some of the attitudes of this movement.
     Shirer describes Hitler’s legal manoeuvres as trickery, rather than stressing that Hitler learned the lesson of the failed Putsch: that he would achieve his aims only if he could get hold of the legislative levers, and change the laws so that everything he did was legal. That includes the Holocaust. He saw the law as a tool for providing the legitimacy (same root, BTW) he needed. I can’t think of a single modern dictator who operates otherwise. Even the ancient Roman tyrants acted within the law – they just made sure that the Senate voted them the right to do as they wished.
     Shirer claims repeatedly that the story he tells is based on documents and other evidence, and as far as I know the facts are all true. This is a book that middle school children should read, I think, especially with a teacher who can help them see its implications for today’s politics. Saviour politics are a threat to democracy that never goes away. We live once again in a time when too many people are hoping for some powerful leader to keep them safe, and the same mixture of political ignorance, apathy, fear, and cocooning that brought Hitler to power is once again strong. So also is the polarisation: when people see nothing but disaster around them, they focus on a single, simplistic solution, and demonise those who disagree with them. People like me, who were more or less successfully inoculated against the delusions promoted by a wannabe tyrant, and can see the signs of creeping tyranny, are often seen as extremists. **½ (2010)

David Popp, ed. 102 Realistic Track Plans (2009)

     David Popp, ed. 102 Realistic Track Plans (2009) Track plans have a fascination out of all proportion to their significance. Their appeal is universal. Whether a model railroader is a novice dreaming of the ultimate layout, or a seasoned builder, a track plan attracts the eye and mind, and everyone that studies one will think of ways in which it could be adapted to his or her space and preferences. When the plan shows a layout that was actually built, so much the better. That means that at least one person knows it works.
     All the plans in this book are of actual layouts featured in Model Railroader and Great Model Railroads over the last few years. The smallest ones will fit on a card table if built in N or Z, the largest ones fill half a basement or garage. Some have strange alternative routes, or favour one direction over another because of poorly planned reversing tracks. But all of them work, in the sense that their builders operate trains more or less prototypically. All of them have a good balance of landscape, townscape, and track. Many exhibit ingenious ways of arranging staging yards, or draping a multi-lap mainline around the room so that the scene does not look too crowded, or adaptations of real track arrangements. All were planned as layouts rather than as track plans, but “track plans” is the term familiar to novices, who are a large part of the target audience. Short articles on track planning (measuring the space, drawing the plan, devising a general scheme, etc) give the novice reader the advice (s)he needs.
     What’s missing are the names of the original builders or planners, IMO a major omission. The captions could be a little more informative in terms of hints for operation, for example. Other than that, this is a very good book. If it’s reissued as a trade paperback, it may eventually replace 101 track Plans, Kalmbach’s best selling book ever. *** (2010)

Chris Leigh. Britain’s Railways from the Air (1987)

     Chris Leigh. Britain’s Railways from the Air (1987) Leigh has assembled a lovely collection of air photos, many taken in the 1920s and 30s, when aerial photography was difficult, to put it mildly. He reprints a photo showing the photographer hanging onto a large plate camera, while the pilot looks over his shoulder, prior to take off.
     Considering the relatively slow speed of the photo emulsions of the time, the inevitable shaking of the plane itself, and the difficulty of maintaining the aim of the camera, it’s amazing how clear the images are. Actually, even though this book was printed in the late 80s, printing technology was generally still not capable of transferring the film image to the page without a severe loss of detail and a compression of gray scale in the shadows and highlights. Or else the publisher assigned the printing to an older firm still using older technology, and so saved some money. In any case, Leigh often refers to things he must have seen when he examined the original prints or negatives, but which the reader cannot make out. It would be nice to see the book reprinted with current technology, or issued as an e-book with large image files scanned from the negatives.
     Even so, I enjoyed the book. One thing that struck me was the large number of allotments near the railway lines, some of them on a patch of ground between the tracks and an industrial site, and so on. Another thing is how empty much of rural England was before the second world war: the housing estates that now crowd round country towns and villages were almost entirely absent. Some of the railway installations were enormous: it’s difficult to realise how much land railway yards and junctions could take up. Nowadays, the tracks have been lifted from most of them, and the sites host shopping malls, light industries, or apartment blocks. *** (2010)

Tim Wilco. More Funny Things on the Way to Church (1983) & Bill Stott. The Crazy World of Gardening (1987)

     Tim Wilco. More Funny Things on the Way to Church (1983) Just what the title says, and all true, if the people who submitted these anecdotes are to be believed. A few real knee slappers, but mostly gentle chucklers or wry smilers. **½

     Bill Stott. The Crazy World of Gardening (1987) Again, just what the title says. The cartoons will prompt more or less pleasant memories in all gardeners. These two books are Christmas gifts from Fay, who knows I like to be amused. **½ (2010)

Two railway histories

     Glen W. Curnoe. The London & Port Stanley Railway 1915-1965 (1976) A compilation, not a book, but a good read for the railfan, and especially for the L&PS fan. Photos vary in quality, but are generally well-reproduced. Curnoe has assembled a useful and pleasing collection of pictures and reminiscences. Recommended for them as likes these kinds of books, and no doubt useful for anyone who intends to write thorough history of the line. **½

     John H. White. Early American Locomotives (1972) White has collected engravings and drawings illustrating the development of steam locomotives in North America from the beginnings to about the 1890s. Visually very nice, with brief but informative captions, and an introductory survey. I’ve looked through this book many times. It amounts to a demonstration of the engraver’s art and skill *** (2009)

Alexander McCall Smith. Heavenly Date (2003)

     Alexander McCall Smith. Heavenly Date (2003) McCall Smith has a deserved reputation as a story teller, but I find his tales more than a little lightweight. He writes for what was at one time a major market, mass magazines. In the 50s and 60s most magazines, even those focussing on niche interests, carried short fiction. Now, only women’s magazines provide a reliable market, and it’s no accident that McCall Smith has a higher status among women readers than among men. These short stories are pleasant entertainments, but no more. A couple disturb a surface that hides darkness, as in Bulawayo, a story of a wife’s decision to abandon her husband for a fling with a boy, but McCall Smith leaves it up to the reader to imagine that darkness. At his best, he displays the same kind of cool ruthlessness as Alice Munro: He just shows you what happens, and how poor or ill-considered choices, or mere accident, can cause catastrophe. This dispassionate view of human frailties lifts him a notch or two above the merely good. **½ (2009)

Linwood Barclay. Bad Guys (2005)

     Linwood Barclay. Bad Guys (2005) The narrator, a reporter for the city paper, which improves his income but not his level of anxiety, which remains high. Turns out it’s justified: Zack becomes entangled in a homicide, the Mob, crooked cops, a car with drugs in the door panels, and so on. The mobster collects Barbie dolls, so when Zack attacks the collection itself, he’s distracted enough to lose the firefight. All ends well, but it’s taken 40 TV-scene sized chapters to get there. Barclay wrote a column for the Toronto Star; this accounts for the ring of truth in the newsroom scenes. He has a sly sense of humour, he delivers dead-pan comments that take a second ro two to hit, and touches of parody and satire of the hard-boiled ‘tec story. Entertaining enough that I’ll read any other of Barclay’s books that I find. **½

David Sedaris. Holidays on Ice (1997)

     David Sedaris. Holidays on Ice (1997) Occasional pieces by a satirist who at his best rivals Swift, but too often is merely bad tempered. All these pieces deal with Christmas. “Santaland Diaries reports on Sedaris’s stint as a department store elf; his observations on the tyranny of sentimental expectations are astute and hilarious. “Based on a True Story” satirises the contemptuous and self-deluding attitudes of the self-styled creative people who want to make money with movies and TV shows supposedly about actual events. It uses Swift’s technique of impersonation of the satiric target, and succeeds as Swift’s “Modest Proposal” does: it makes us squirm as we half-recognise attitudes in ourselves uncomfortably close to those attacked. Sedaris has a reputation as a humorist, but humour is at most a side effect of his true talent, that of clear-eyed observation of the follies and vices that beset us all. ***

Faye Kellerman. Stone Kiss (2002)

     Faye Kellerman. Stone Kiss (2002) Decker is asked to help find the missing niece of his half-brother’s wife. But when he gets to New York, the family puts him off. He looks up an old nemesis, Chris Donatti, whom he sprung from jail because the evidence had been cooked, and who has become a major supplier of drugs and women. Donatti becomes a key figure in the denouement, and even more entangled with Decker and his family. This book is about the tangled messes of family, personal, and business relationships, not clarified by corrupt cops, religious scruples, and horrific family dysfunction. Donatti is a psychopath, which makes for tension and violence, but when his purposes coincide with Decker’s, he is an ally. He uses violence as a tool, with no particular pleasure.
     In fact, the book has a lot of violence. Kellerman is clearly angling for a wider audience. The result is a book that’s very TV. Even its elucidation of the sources of evil parrots that facile psycho-babble that makes so much American TV less than credible. The accounts of Jewish life are, as always, interesting, and I must take them at face value. In the books between the first two (I read the second one) and this one, Decker has discovered his birth family, which was Jewish, so he turns out to be Jewish after all. But he still has close ties to his adoptive family. Etc. These aspects of the narrative are more interesting than the violence, which feels more like a movie than real life. A minor disappointment, despite its swift narrative rhythm. ** (2008)

Howard Engel. Dead and Buried (1990)

     Howard  Engel. Dead and Buried (1990) Cooperman stumbles into an environmental scam: a waste disposal company is burying toxic waste in Fort George (called the Canadian Fort here), and dumping lethal fluids into Lake Ontario. The widow of one of the truckers wants him to find out who arranged the accident that killed her husband. The perp turns out to be an old warthog of a businessman who can’t accept that the corruption that made him rich is no longer an acceptable way of doing business. His wife kills him because he wants to replace his son with a parvenu who is as corrupt as he is, but sneakier. The usual motley cast of bystanders obfuscates the case, and Cooperman’s relationship with Anne Abraham moves few steps in the direction of seriousness.
     The plotting is fair, by hindsight, but too convoluted. What gives this series its charm and makes me go on reading is Cooperman and his friends and relations. Engel could develop these side stories more, but then the books would be at least half as long again, and he’s not a bankable enough writer to permit him that kind of indulgence. **½ (2008)

Mary Westmacott (Agatha Christie) A Daughter’s a Daughter (1952)

     Mary Westmacott (Agatha Christie) A Daughter’s a Daughter (1952) Part One: A widow with a headstrong daughter meets a nice widower recently returned from Burma, but the daughter doesn’t want her to marry him so she picks fights. The widow eventually chooses her daughter over her fiancé.
     Part Two: The daughter and her mother live a frantic social life. The daughter meets a sociopath who likes to collect women, do drugs, and otherwise savour “sensations”. When she asks for her mother’s advice, the mother says it’s up to her, so she marries the man, disastrously. A year or so later her old flame, who’s not done too well in the colonies, returns with the intention of saving her from her brutal husband. He does so., and they emigrate to Canada. The widow, after accepting a scolding from an old family friend who happens to be a psychiatrist, withdraws into blessed peace. It’s unclear whether she will be lucky enough to find a companionable man to spend the rest of her life with, but I suppose we can hope. In a movie version of this curious soap-opera, one would have floated up to the top of the social whirlpool and dragged her out of it.
     What’s most interesting about this book is the characters. Christie uses them (and others) in her mysteries. The gormless young man who needs a strong woman to make a go of it. The strong silent colonial type who’s awkward with women, but can play whatever role Christie thrusts upon him. The quiet near-middle-aged woman who has hidden depths (and sometimes is murders). The psychopath who uses other people as toys or experimental subjects. The no-nonsense man or woman who sometimes interferes with other people, but mainly dispenses insight and reminders of reality. And so on.
     An interesting book for anyone who wants to speculate about Christie’s inner life, I think. ** (Left at the beach house).

Margery Allingham Death of a Ghost (1934)

     Margery Allingham Death of a Ghost (1934) Reprinted 1985, when Masterpiece broadcast a TV series about Albert Campion, starring Peter Davison (Better known as a Doctor Who, and as Tristan in the James Herriot TV series). A mad art dealer murders a couple of people, and nearly murders Campion before he’s caught and deteriorates into drooling madness, rather unconvincingly for a 21st century reader who knows something about psychopaths.
     No matter: Allingham has created a nice mix of sleuthing, social comedy, satire (especially of the art world and New Age nonsense), and domestic and romantic drama. Better than most of the Campion books, it entertained me during the blank spots leading up to the major event which we were celebrating. I found the book at a charity shop run by the Port Isabel humane society; I will leave it at the beach house. **½