The Mirror at Midnight - Adam Hochschild

Traveling across time and space in South Africa, Adam Hochschild examines the state of the country as he visits it in 1990. Focusing on an upcoming Afrikaner national holiday, what it represents and how it is perceived by differing ethnic groups Hochschild weaves together South Africa's past and present.

Besides giving the reader a better understanding of one of the main narratives of South African history the book remains especially poignant given the picture it paints of undemocratic, white-ruled South Africa, a few short years before its first democratic election in 1994. Witness the Afrikaners in the last throes of complete political power and the inhuman lengths both sides have gone to - though the balance lies largely on the hands of the whites - to contest for what power there is.  Travel with Hochschild as he visits Afrikaner battle memorials and hears what blacks and whites have to say about the country's thorny past.  And see the United States' and much of the western world's tacit and sometimes not-so-tacit complicity in propping-up the failing system of apartheid.

At its best the book examines the different ways we choose to remember history and how this process of remembering cannot be divorced from issues of power: who has it, who can mobilize it, and who is allowed to impose it on others.  By contrasting the historical scholarship surrounding the Battle of Blood River with the differing ways the event was portrayed in South Africa across the ensuing years, Hochschild cleverly illuminates a fractured society at a crossroads between the inevitability of majority rule and the last grasps by the ruling parties to assure their own position going forward. The story of South Africa's independence is so unique in world history and Hochschild's work adds a vital wrinkle to understanding the country's transformation.

Strength to Love - Martin Luther King, Jr.

A collection of sermons, altered slightly for the written word, by perhaps the greatest American spirit of the past century. Given the specificity of themes - the white and black church, desegregation, and the Cold War - much of King's writing reads as relevant as ever. 

Throughout each sermon King places at the forefront of his reflections an absolute and unshakable belief in the goodness and grace of God. For those who do not see the work of the divine imbuing the world around them this may seem difficult to surmount. However, King beautifully connects his faith to his unswerving commitment to social, racial and economic justice.

"A religion that professes a concern for the souls of men and is not equally concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a spiritually moribund religion." p. 149

Far from removing the arena of religion from the rest of human experience, King refused to shy away from notions that science and religion had many different things to tell each other: that an deep appreciation of each only enhances our understanding of the other. Similarly King freely quotes Shakespeare, Thoreau, Lincoln or James Russell Lowell to color contemporary religious and ethical points.  Clearly at home in the realm of western civilizations' greatest thinkers, King's synthesis of themes and willingness to explore the implications of their ethics and his faith illuminates far-seeing implications for the manner in which men live within our society. Whether Christian or atheist, young or old, poor or rich, there is much in King's ethical underpinnings that can serve any person in better reflecting on how he or she lives in this world and what it means to move towards our better angels.

Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad

Marlow returns to recount life as it has happened to one young Englishman, he who the natives of Patusan have dubbed, "Tuan", or "Lord" Jim.  This ex-deckhand and ex-water clerk strikes Marlow, and indeed many older men who encounter him as a young man of decided character and vigor.  Unfortunately for Jim, he is unable to escape the shortcomings of his soul and is thus doomed to allow the seas of life to forever toss him hither and yon.  

"He looked with an owner's eye at the peace of the evening, at the river, at the houses, at the everlasting life of the forests, at the life of the old mankind, at the secrets of the land, at the pride of his own heart: but it was they that possessed him and made him their own to the innermost thought, to the slightest stir of blood, to his last breath." p. 178

At its core, Lord Jim is a story about men who life happens to.  Throughout the reader cannot escape the notion that Marlow, Jim and Stein are men who are struggling to find their place in the world and deal the best they can with the opportunities life allows them.  This is not to limit their own agency, but rather to highlight that we are creatures of the world around us, not separated from it.  So often we cannot but move along and wait to see how the world casts our part and try our best to live up to our ideals along the way.  Wherever any man - or woman - wanders, Marlow's narration, and Jim's experience, seems to tell us that we cannot escape who we are and that each account will be settled, whether within one's own conscience or by the world we inhabit.  In this regard Marlow and Jim present as opposites: Marlow has seen and down much and allows that he has at times acted rightly and at times been found wanting, yet he remains able to move along, knowing that his future is often only loosely connected to his past.  Jim however cannot escape the weight of his shortcomings; his drive for an ideal, one that we remain unsure is ever attainable, stalks him throughout his life.  From this there can be no escape.

My Other Life - Paul Theroux

"Reality for me was past, and it was elsewhere." p. 144

Morose, self-absorbed and over-dramatic concerning what he sees as his own lot of suffering in this world, Paul Theroux's My Other Life is nonetheless an insightful look into the the mind and journey of the author.  Cast as a fictive autobiography, it is unclear how much of what is related is an accurate depiction of Theroux's life.  Far from being the book's downfall, it is precisely this attempt to get at the spirit and import of his particular experiences, that makes Theroux's work uniquely instructive. 

Were this to be a drab recounting of his life and times Theroux's attempt would be wayward from the start.  Yet by making the focus life as it has been, shaded with life as it could have been and as he imagines it, Theroux has succeeded in (we think) providing a more complete portrait of the artist.  We are given the picture of a furtive, wandering, hopelessly fretful and perhaps too inwardly-focused man's reflections on his version of the truth of his life.  Whereas we would conceive of an autobiography as a retelling of a man's life and times, My Other Life is concerned with the life Theroux has led in his own head.


This is of course a tricky rope to walk and though this approach is the book's strength, it may also be its greatest downfall.  Reading the work requires a certain level of sympathy with the author as he has cast himself, without which the work may be a bore; this is the story of one man, make no mistake.  There is little to no character development and we cannot expect Theroux to grow and learn as all events are recorded after the fact and with an eye towards the larger point: that we take what we have gained from our past experiences, use them and learn from them as best we can and try to move forward purposefully and, hopefully, happily. 

Though Theroux must surely be the dominant light by which the story is understood , one cannot help but wonder if glimpsing just a few other stars would not better help us understand the daylight.  Because we only see him it is hard to tell why we should care that he has grown and traveled and shared his sometimes fictive, sometimes real experiences.  At the end it is hard to see if Theroux is any better off for all he has written and seen - though surely he would agree that he is unsure.

When the Game Was Ours - Jackie MacMullan (with Larry Bird and Magic Johnson)

An examination of the perhaps the greatest individual rivalry in American sports, When the Game Was Ours chronicles the relationship between Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird and Los Angeles Lakers floor general Magic Johnson.  Relying heavily on interviews with not just Bird and Magic, but a hole host of NBA legends, Jackie MacMullan shows us not only how these two superstars defined themselves and their basketball success by one another, but how they came to respect each other and became friends, bonded by their love of basketball and competition.

Here we see Bird and Magic pushing each other throughout their careers.  Win or lose in their NBA Finals match-ups, each of them was driven to always work harder, to be a more complete player, knowing that, across the country, the other was pushing himself just as hard.  In candid interviews both Bird and Magic explain their almost single-minded focus on one-upping each other throughout their careers.  Knowing that, if the Celtics could beat the Lakers, or vice-versa, surely either team could dispatch with the rest of the NBA.

At its best the book captures the essence of the era in which the NBA became a global brand.  Without Larry and Magic, without the Celtics versus Lakers rivalry the landscape of professional basketball the world over would be drastically different.  It is a lament for a lost era, but one certainly worth reliving and retelling.

The Greatest Show on Earth - Richard Dawkins

If evolution has an advocate it is Richard Dawkins and in The Greatest Show on Earth, this preeminent and broad-ranging thinker on the questions of how evolution has come to create the world we see today, he pleads for a greater understanding of the processes first elucidated by Charles Darwin.  Primarily written as a critique of and response to creationists, Dawkins' work makes the case for why evolution is not only a true understanding of life on this planet, but also how it can be beautiful and empowering to those with the eyes to see.

It is at this juncture of science, natural history, grace and wonder that Dawkins is at his best; one cannot help but marvel along with him as the reader is brought across time and space to see the intricacies of the life of cells, or the great arms race between predator and prey.  The process of natural selection and its impacts on absolutely every aspect of life on this planet are the star of the show and Dawkins makes them quite an attraction indeed.  The book is most valuable in the scope and scale of its explanatory power and if Dawkins' work has a greater utility it is to allow the reader to draw together the seemingly disparate strands of organisms, environment, genetics and natural selection.

That evolution needs a defense at all may strike the reader as strange, however Dawkins is livid at the notion that , so he claims, 40% of Americans believe in creationism in some form.  That Dawkins is so bent out of shape over this is wonderful for the community of readers, if, for no other reason, then that it means he will continue to provide works of this seamless integration and nuance.  However, one cannot help but think that the work is so much preaching to the choir.  The writing slows down greatly as Dawkins attacks creationism and, by certain extension, anything but the most scientific of epistemologies to viewing the world around us.  What remains unclear at the end (though this is supposedly the realm of his recent bestseller The God Delusion) is why it is so important that everyone view the world as Dawkins does?  Besides the intangible benefit of seeing our universe as it "truly is", what measurable impact does a defense of evolution hope to achieve?  We are no closer to being able to answer these thorny questions at the end of his work.

All of this is not to diminish the results Dawkins has achieved here.  One can argue with his motives and positions concerning social betterment, what is unimpeachable are his prose and ability to view the multiplicity of life on this planet and bring accounts, studies, research, and various disciplines to bear upon one another.  In this realm he is perhaps the most free-thinking and far-seeing advocate for the scientific view of the world since Darwin, and that is no mean feat.

Heart of Africa - Sihle Khumalo

On the move by public transport from Johannesburg to Kibuye, Rwanda, Sihle Khumalo provides a black South Africans' take on moving across the continent he calls home.  In many ways a typical fish-out-of-water story, Heart of Africa obviously takes on a different tenor because it is a rare travelogue written by an African on the move in Africa.  Much has been written by men and women of northern/western extraction about their movement across the developing world, but these works often idealize the lives within developing countries and the people they encounter.  Khumalo is at his best showing westerners that there is a grand diversity in the African experience and that we view the continent without differentiation only through our ignorance and to our loss.

Frequently Khumalo wrestles with his identity as a South African and how that impacts his views of people he meets along his travels.  All-too-frequently he is concerned for his own safety and the safety of his belongings.  This is far less a comment on the location of his travels then on his experiences living and working South Africa.  Though it is an easy dig at South Africa to complain of the country's crime problems, coming from the perspective of a South African the true pervasiveness of the problem is hard to escape; concerns for his safety have clearly affected Khumalo to the point that he has trouble feeling safe in crowds or trusting strangers.  It is to his unending credit that Khumalo is first, willing to undertake this journey anyway and, second, examine his assumptions and see that they do not fit with the countries he is moving through.  It is this willingness to examine the circumstances around him and the manner in which he responds to them that makes Khumalo's work so insightful.

If the book has any drawback it is that too much time is spent focusing on the logistics and not enough on how Khumalo's understanding of the world he is seeing and experiencing is changing and growing throughout his journey.  As a reader one cannot hope for any meaningful hard and fast conclusions from Khumalo that would not read as temporal and trite, however, given that we have come along with him on this very enjoyable trip, you are left hoping for a little more insight surrounding his relationship to himself and how that has grown and changed throughout the adventure.  Khumalo writes, "I hate it when life happens to me... I want, at all time to happen to life."  At its core, travel is often about letting life happen to you and understanding what that means for the person you are.  Khumalo has written a nice narrative about his travel, but we cannot hope but wish for a little more critical examination of his role in them.