new dog old trick

Summer Reading

I have added a couple of recent books to my reading list in the right-hand column.  I've finished two books in the last couple of weeks that I highly recommend.

The first is Amity Shlaes excellent history of the great depression, The Forgotten Man.  This is very well written economic history, which sounds almost oxymoronic but it isn't in this case.  It's definitely revisionist history - FDR does not come off as the insightful economic savior that he is commonly viewed as.  It's amazing how feckless the political leadership of both parties was in dealing with a 10 year long crisis - and how much worse their actions made the crisis.  Lots of information that I had not been aware of.  Whether you agree with all of Shlaes conclusions or not I highly recommend this important book.

The second book is Walter Isaacson's biography of Albert Einstein.  Handles the science well for the general reader but even more so integrates the discussion of the science - and the scientist - into the whole person.  And Einstein was more than just the prototype of the absent-minded scientist.  Quite a bit of interesting information that was new to me - for example, did you realize that Einstein's Nobel Prize in Physics was not for his work on relativity?  I certainly didn't. 

The Smartest Guys in the Room

Over my driving vacation one of the books I finally got around to reading was The Smartest Guys in the Room. Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind did a great job pulling together the story of Enron up to the time of the bankruptcy. Even with all the time that has passed and all of the information that I have seen on Enron, it is almost sickening to read the story from beginning to end.

The focus of the story is really on Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andrew Fastow along with many other senior Enron executives. Lay comes across as appallingly disconnected from what's really going on inside the enterprise he helped to create and was supposed to be running during much of the 90s while Skilling is arrogance and hubris personified and Fastow is greed personified (not that there wasn't lots of arrogance, greed, and hubris shared among the entire executive team at Enron). I realize that I'm late to the party with this book, but it really is a book that anyone interested in corporate governance and ethics must read.

The one major player in the Enron tragedy that's not really focused on in the book is the Enron Board of Directors. These folks were supposed to be providing oversight and guidance and governance to the executive team at Enron. It's pretty clear from everything that happened that they were grossly (and maybe criminally) incompetent in carrying out these duties. I think there's another great book in the Enron story that's waiting to be written that gets inside of the operation of the Enron board and inside the interaction between the outside board members, the inside board members, and the rest of Enron management. While we're waiting for that book, you owe it to yourself to read this one.

Coming soon: Master and Commander

The ads have been all over television for the upcoming movie Master and Commander starring Russell Crowe. In anticipation, I have started re-reading the Patrick O'Brian novel of the same name.

Master and Commander is the first volume of O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series of historical novels set during the Napoleonic Wars. It's in the same tradition as Forester's Hornblower novels and Kent's Bolitho series of books covering naval warfare in the Napoleonic era, or Cornwell's Sharpe novels for that matter. (Why is it that the British do these series of historical fiction so much more and better than we do in America? Or is that my imagination?) O'Brian's books are in the same tradition - but they transcend the genre. They are far and away the best series of such historical fiction. They have fantastic historical detail. There are vivid characterizations. They are literate and well written, not mere melodrama like many such books. And there is plenty of swashing and buckling to keep propelling the stories forward.

I also just picked up a copy of The Making of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World to learn a little more about the movie. I'm intrigued at the prospect of the movie but also more than a little concerned. I love the books and I'm wondering how well they will be translated to the screen. For starters, the titles of two of the books in the series are included in the full title of the movie: Master and Commander and The Far Side of the World. As noted, M&C is the first volume of the series and The Far Side of the World is the tenth. So is the movie based on one of the novels? Or is it a distillation of material from multiple books? Or...what? Hopefully The Making of... will answer all of my questions.

In addition, I wonder how the core of the book - the deep friendship between Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin - will manage the transition to the screen. Will it be the foundation of the movie as it is in the books, or will we lose it to the greater visual appeal of naval warfare? One potential warning signal is that Russell Crowe is playing naval officer Jack Aubrey, which seems a great choice. But there is no one of such stature or star power playing Stephen Maturin. Does the movie become The Excellent Adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey or do we get something that more closely adapts the books? All questions to be answered in mid-November and despite my concerns I'm looking forward to the movie.

As to why the British do historical fiction series better - we'll come back to that question in a later post.