Category: Books

In his book The Courage of Their Convictions, author Peter Irons seeks to remove the “masks of the law” that covers the faces and the stories of individuals who have taken a stand on an issue and fought it all the way to the Supreme Court. The book examines sixteen different cases with two chapters devoted to each; the first chapter covering the history of the case, and another chapter in which the the individuals behind the case tell their own stories. The cases span five decades and cover four major issue areas; religion, race, protest and privacy.

Not all of the individuals in the book won at the Supreme Court. Some saw victory come to later cases that followed their own, and others have not. In Lilliam Gobitis v. Minersville School District, for example, the court’s ruling that the school district could compel a student to salute the flag was overturned just three years later. In other cases, such as those that relate to a woman’s right to choose, or against state sodomy laws, individual rights remain subject to the current makeup of the court, and national levels of tolerance in general.

I knew I would enjoy this book from the preface, in which the author shared a quote from the poet e.e. cummings’ poem, “i sing of Olaf glad and big“, in which Olaf the Conscientious Objector declares, “there is some shit I will not eat”. In the poem, Olaf dies in prison for his protest. His real-life counterparts are many. This book tells the story of just a few, who took a stand for their beliefs, often at great personal risks over the course of many years, because they likewise were served some shit they refused to eat. These often anonymous Americans have played an important part in defining and protecting the rights that characterize us as Americans. This book was an informative and enjoyable read that I’d recommend to anyone.

Last September I read a book called What’s God Got to Do With It? that introduced me to the life and writings of Robert Ingersoll, a famous politician and orator of the late 1800s who was an advocate of secular government and a leader among those who described themselves as Freethinkers.

I enjoyed that book very much, and started searching for more on the same subject matter. Ingersoll left a voluminous written legacy, and I considered digging more deeply into his works. But my searching led to to a broader view of the subject that appealed to me, Freethinkers; A History of American Secularism.

Everywhere you look in America today, the religious-right is working to inject religion into government. George’s Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and efforts to teach “Intelligent Design” in classrooms, are but a few examples.

Frequently, proponents of such change argue that attempts to separate church and state go much farther than our founding father’s originally intended. Freethinkers is a fascinating history of that reveals what a monumental accomplishment it was for America’s founders too succeed at creating a secular government, and traces the role of freethought through wartime, the woman’s and civil rights movements, and up to the present day, that I heartily recommend to anyone.

My reading comes and goes in spurts. Sometimes I’ll tear through books quickly, and sometimes life’s distractions just won’t allow me the time that I rather be spending reading. My pile of books ‘on deck’ is growing higher.

And because I don’t get as much reading time as I’d like, I really don’t like it when I’ve wasted any of it. If I start a book, I’m gonna finish the book. But not this time.

I wanted to read the book Wicked in anticipation of seeing the musical while it’s in Washington. But the musical is sold out, and the book has bored me to tears. I got a little more than halfway through it before admitting defeat. I wanted to like this book, and the idea of a prequel to give background to The Wizard of OZ had real appeal to me. But it just never grabbed me. So I’m setting this one aside to move onto other volumes.

To the person who bought the book by following the Amazon link on my site, well, I hope you like it better than I did. And thanks for the 51 cents referral fee.

I’ve been paying closer attention to The Constitution lately. It’s an amazing document that sits at the core of our Democracy and the rights that distinguish us as Americans. Yet at the same time it is a political football, under constant threat of revision to score political points (Help, my marriage is being threatened by gays, please alter the Constitution to defend it!), and subject to interpretation by a changing and fallible judiciary. But through it all, the essentials endure. Or so I thought until last year, when I discovered that my home-buying decision had required me to sign away a Constitutionally protected right.

Floyd Abrams‘ career has taken place in the legal trenches where the grand ideas of Constitutional protections come face to face with the more complicated circumstances of real life. In his book, Speaking Freely, Abrams describes in fascinating detail a variety of 1st Amendment related cases he has argued in court; from The Pentagon Papers case early in his career, a number of media-related libel cases, then-Mayor Guiliani’s attempt to shut down a Brooklyn Museum of Art over an exhibit, to the fight against Campaign Finance Reform.

Somewhere inside me there’s a frustrated lawyer wanting to get out. I am fascinated by the law, its use, abuse, and those who practice it. Even I was a little surprised how much I enjoyed reading these tales of sometimes arcane details of various lawsuits related to free speech. Let’s face it, this doesn’t have the sensationalism of an O.J. Simpson trial. But the the consequences to all Americans on how these fights are settled can be profound. I expect most Americans would say that the Freedom of Speech is a good thing, and rightly so. But things can get sticky when some test that right by actually using it.

I’ve decided it’s not enough to maintain a ‘What I’m Reading’ block as I do on my blog, and not make some better effort to offer some thoughts about the books after I have read them. And so, I’m going to try and do that now.

And the first of the newly regular book reviews will be Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I didn’t start reading Harry Potter books until well after the third one. Only after they had become the phenomenon that they are did I decide I needed to get caught up and find out what the fuss was all about. Having finished the latest, I’m all caught up again. My problem is my lack of any memory. Unlike my daughter, the Potter Encyclopedia, I can’t recount the details of the previous books as if I just read them, and so I struggle like a muggle to recollect what for Harry happened just the previous year, but that I read five years ago.

But even with that handicap, Harry remains an easy and fun read. Harry’s growing up, and has become a BWOC (Big Wizard on Campus – duh), and so is struggling with increased work and responsibility at school; tougher classes and being captain of his Quiddich team, the burden of having been labeled ‘The Chosen One’ who prophecy and previous experience says is destined for some epic battles to come, the attention and training that Hogwarts Headmaster Dumbledore gives him, and the fact that he’s matured enough to start noticing girls, not just any girl… Harry fancies his best friend’s sister. (I will resist the obvious temptation to insert any joke related to a wand in Harry’s pants here… better I don’t read such thoughts into children’s books).

All in all, I was a bit let-down by this book. To me it felt like it was all build-up, with little payoff. Obviously, with two books promised still in the series, it’s really just a chapter along the way in a bigger story. But the big news of this one… a major character dying, didn’t provide a satisfying ending. For any reader who’s gotten this far in the Potter books, you really can’t NOT read it, right? Just be prepared for this book to be a set-up with a big fat “To Be Continued…” at the end of it and hope for better in volume six.

This weekend, for my son Will’s birthday, we’ll be taking a crew of boys to the movies. And the film of choice will be A Series of Unfortunate Events. But before going to see the film, I decided to crack the books. The books have been favorites with the kids, and we have something like ten volumes of the series lying around, so I got my hands on ‘The Bad Beginning: Book the First’ last night and finished it this morning. It was great.

And now I’ve just finished ‘Book the Second: The Reptile Room’. And it was as good. The writing is wonderful. Throughout the books, which are offered as a retelling of these unfortunate events in the voice of Lemony Snicket, our storyteller frequently turns directly to the reader to offer a funny but practical definition of a term used or to describe some dramatic element as in these snippets of an excerpt which describe “dramatic irony”.

There is a type of situation which occurs all to often and which is occurring at this point in the story of the Baudelaire orphans, called “dramatic irony”. Simply put, dramatic irony is when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant, meaning.

…

As you and I listen to Uncle Monty tell the three Baudelaire orphans that no harm will ever come to them in the Reptile Room, we should be experiencing the strange feeling that accompanies the arrival of dramatic irony.

…

For no matter how safe and happy the three children felt, no matter how comforting Uncle Monty’s words were, you and I know that soon Uncle Monty will be dead and the Baudelaires will be miserable again.

In fact, from the book’s dedication “For Beatrice – My love for you shall last forever. You, however, did not.”, to the rear cover warnings that remind readers that they are “free to put this book back on the shelf and seek something lighter”, the books are draped in dark foreboding and doom.

They remind me of the dark, but still tremendously amusing, works of Edward Gorey, of whom I am a big fan. When my daughter wondered how it is that these books come off as funny, when the story is so tragic, I didn’t have much of an an answer. But I shared a copy of Gorey’s classic and grisly alphabet book The Gashlycrumb Tinies with her. I guess it’s the same reason we can laugh at someone else’s painful fall in a ‘Funniest Videos’ episode. Sometimes we just have to laugh at pain and misery, especially if it’s someone else’s.

A am very much looking forward to catching up on the nine books in the Unfortunate Events series that I still have to read. Will Count Olaf be the villain in all of them? Can he succeed at stealing the Baudelaire fortune from these unfortunate orphans? Can Lemony Snicket maintain the story, or will the formula get tired? Will the movie be any good? I don’t know, but it looks promising.

For further reading:

Dastardly Good
The Washington Post, 12/17/04

Out of This World: The Designer Behind ‘Lemony Snicket’
The Washington Post, 12/18/04