The 8 Books I Finished in November (And the One Series I Decided Not to Finish)
If you prefer to listen rather than read, this blog is available as a podcast here. Or if you want to listen to just this post:
The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery by: Ross Douthat
Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History by: Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damien Paletta
The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by: Michael Lewis
Morning Star by: Pierce Brown
Star Trek: The City on the Edge of Forever Teleplay by: Harlan Ellison
The Economics of Violence by: Gary M. M. Shiffman
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by: J. R. R. Tolkien
Chorazin: (The Weird of Hali #1) by: John Michael Greer
The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by: Peter Hopkirk
I’ve always been a big fan of November. I’m a big fan of fall in general, and November has the start of the holidays going for it as well. Along the way, at some point in the month, one nearly always gets a spell of Indian summer, where the temperature is perfect and the leaves are still pretty.
It was particularly nice to be somewhat back to normal in terms of family gatherings. Last Thanksgiving our big family gathering was cancelled and so I took my immediate family to a restaurant. (I’m not saying that option was necessarily safer, it’s just the option we took.)
Writing wise I’m trying to prioritize working on my book as the first writing I do every day, which made the essays drag out a little bit, so I’m still trying to strike a balance there. But hopefully I’m dialing it in.
Finally, since by the next time this section rolls around it will already have passed. I guess this is the time to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I- Eschatological Reviews
The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery
by: Ross Douthat
224 Pages
Briefly, what was this book about?
Epistemology in an age of unlimited information and experimentation.
I suppose, if you want to split hairs, the story of Douthat’s battle with chronic lyme disease (CLD) also features prominently, but mostly it’s about epistemology.
Who should read this book?
It’s possible that over the two and a half years I’ve been publishing my reviews, that I have been too liberal with my “everyone” designation. As in:
“Who should read this book?”
“Everyone.”
I will be more parsimonious going forward, because I want “everyone” to mean something. Particularly now, because I really do think that everyone should read this book.
General Thoughts
After that intro the first question you might have is “Why?” “Why should everyone read this book?” Well to begin with Douthat is a great writer, and even Freddie deBoer, who was critical of the book, acknowledges that:
The Deep Places tasks us with becoming intimately familiar with Douthat’s body and mind, and succeeds in that way that is unique to reading. The book depends on that willingness to inhabit Douthat’s life, including its most private spaces, a profound change of pace even from his memoiristic first book. If he had failed to draw his readers in, if he hadn’t successfully opened up his self to be picked over by strangers, the book would have failed completely. At that first prerequisite task he’s succeeded, to the degree that it’s hard for me to imagine someone reading this book and not wanting desperately to alleviate Douthat’s pain. This is all the more impressive given the degree of difficult[y] here; it’s a book that requires a leap of faith. The size of that leap will depend on your priors.
If even someone critical of the book describes it as immersive and impressive, then hopefully you can start to see why I’m saying that everyone should read it. But it’s that last part, the “leap of faith”, the part that deBoer takes issue with, which is where the book goes from immersive and impressive to important.
As you may, or may not have already guessed, it's in the existence of CLD where deBoer and much of the medical world argue that faith is required. Faith, because there’s no proof. Or as Wikipedia says:
Chronic Lyme disease is the name used by some people with "a broad array of illnesses or symptom complexes for which there is no reproducible or convincing scientific evidence of any relationship to Borrelia burgdorferi infection" to describe their condition and their beliefs about its cause. Both the label and the belief that these people's symptoms are caused by this particular infection are generally rejected by medical professionals, and the promotion of chronic Lyme disease is an example of health fraud…
Despite numerous studies, there is no evidence that symptoms associated with CLD are caused by any persistent infection...
A number of alternative health products are promoted for chronic Lyme disease, of which possibly the most controversial and harmful is long-term antibiotic therapy, particularly intravenous antibiotics. Recognised authorities advise against long-term antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease, even where some symptoms persist post-treatment. Following disciplinary proceedings by state medical licensing boards in the United States, a subculture of "Lyme literate" physicians has successfully lobbied for specific legal protections, exempting them from the standard of care and Infectious Diseases Society of America treatment guidelines. Such legislation has been criticised as an example of "legislative alchemy", the process whereby pseudomedicine is legislated into practice.
In the book Douthat argues against all of that. That he did have CLD and it was because he was still infected. That the studies are wrong, and that it was only after massive experimentation with antibiotics, intravenous and otherwise, that he finally started feeling better. And all of this was only possible because of the existence of “Lyme literate” physicians.
(I’m not sure if Douthat still thinks he’s infected, or if he thinks his CLD has moved on to being “post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome".)
So who do we believe, the “recognized authorities” or Douthat? Well even Douthat initially wanted to believe the “recognized authorities” and that’s part of what makes the book so compelling. The way it demonstrates the journey of someone who desperately wants to believe the recognized authorities, but the longer things go the worse their advice gets and the more attractive the fringe becomes.
He starts off in the exact opposite position as someone who actively rejects fringe thinking and really wants to “follow the science”. So when the doctors in DC tell him he doesn’t have Lyme disease, he believes them, and really tries to come to terms with a world where his bizarre array of incredibly serious symptoms are all just psychological. But treating it from this angle is singularly ineffective, and things continue to get worse. But then, he moves to the Northeast where Lyme disease is endemic, even “by the book” doctors tell him, “Oh, you obviously have Lyme disease.” At this point should he follow the DC science or the Northeastern science? Presumably the latter because they have more data, right? Does this trend continue towards believing people on the internet who’ve actually cured CLD? No? Why not? Where do we draw the line?
Answering this question of how to conduct science when you’re the subject, is the entire point of the book, and why I think it’s a book about epistemology. Douthat’s process is important enough and interesting enough that I’m going to include a very long quote from the man himself.
The first, an infectious disease specialist in New York City, had an avuncular, reassuring manner. Yes, he said, I probably had Lyme — my symptoms fit, the blood tests missed lots of cases, he saw people like me all the time. But no, I didn’t need to worry that much about the disastrous chronic cases I was now reading about on the internet. Yes, some Lyme cases took more than a few weeks to clear, and he usually prescribed antibiotics for a little longer than the official guidelines. But that would be enough, he promised: I would be much, much better by the holidays, and well within a year.
The second doctor had a wood-paneled office one town over from our new Connecticut house, more like a den than a clinic, and books and pamphlets littering the waiting room, each seeming to offer a different theory on how one might treat an entrenched case of Lyme. He talked to me for 90 minutes, took copious notes, asked a thousand questions, and informed me that chronic Lyme was an epidemic, wildly underdiagnosed and totally mistreated. Could he get me better? Probably, but I was obviously very sick, and it would take a while. Most of his patients took high doses of antibiotics for around a year; I might need more; some needed years and years of treatment.
The first doctor reassured me; the second doctor frightened me. So I chose to believe the first one, to trust his version of the science, and for months I followed his prescriptions — while also seeing doctors who told me that even his approach was too aggressive, that if I had Lyme disease at one point I no longer did, and that I should stop the antibiotics altogether and wait for my body to recover on its own.
But the body’s experiences are their own form of empirical reality, and as a patient you can’t follow a scientific theory that doesn’t succeed in practice. And in the end the reassuring doctor’s theories didn’t work — I didn’t get better on his steady dose of antibiotics, the constant pain didn’t go away — while the advice to go off antibiotics entirely led to disasters, where I stopped the drugs and disintegrated quickly.
So I went back to the doctor who frightened me, feeling that otherwise I could be sick forever, sick until I died. And the rest of the story unfolded, over a very long period of time, roughly as the dissenting faction of Lyme doctors would have predicted.
...after about a year of trying different combinations of antibiotics and extremely high doses, I finally found a cocktail that first made my symptoms more predictable, and then enabled me to begin slowly gaining ground, month upon month and year upon year — in a process that has taken me from almost-constant pain to something approaching normal life and health.
So that dissenting doctor — and others like him, and many researchers doing work on Lyme disease treatments outside the official line — saved my life. But I also saved my own life, because I was the only one who could actually tell what treatments made a difference.
So what is one to make of all this? DeBoer reads the whole book (which is full of much more stuff than could be included in the quote) and ends his review by pointing out the ways in which the book “triumphs”, but then immediately follows that declaration with this final paragraph:
But I still don’t believe in chronic Lyme. And I wish I could say I was sorry.
I ended up reading deBoer’s review before I read the actual book, and after reading the actual book I was stunned by this assertion. And it raises a host of questions in my mind:
When he says he doesn’t believe, what’s his certainty level? 51%? 100%? Did reading the book move the needle at all? If so, by how much?
How does deBoer feel about other diseases on the fringes? Does he just have a beef with CLD? What about chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)? How does he feel about people who think CLD may be misdiagnosed CFS?
How much of his dismissal is tied into Douthat’s Catholicism? Which is to say his belief in other non-scientific phenomena? (I’ll have just a little bit more to say about this in the religious section at the end.)
Finally, and most importantly, what does deBoer imagine he would do if he were in Douthat’s shoes? If he had the same symptoms and those symptoms all responded in the same way to the same things? Would he still not believe in CLD? Or does he imagine that it couldn’t happen to him? (Perhaps because of the aforementioned religiosity?)
The problem with that, is it’s already happening to all of us. Which takes me to:
Eschatological Implications
I don’t have the space to go into why it happened, and in any case I’ve touched on those subjects elsewhere—the history of the internet, and conspiracy theories and the various ideological camps, each seemingly possessed of their own fringe ideas. But somehow we’ve all ended up suffering from the same epistemological chaos as Douthat. Most (though not all) are fortunate enough that it doesn’t affect their health and doesn’t leave them in constant pain. For most people it’s ideological and evidentiary chaos. A million voices screaming at them all the time that this thing is important, no this other thing is important. With very little way to make sense of it except by doing their own crude experiments, following their gut, and choosing which flavor of the fringe they find most palatable.
Yes, there are still authorities, but beyond the obvious fact that their authority has been diminishing for years, it’s also much harder to be an authority, as knowledge, opinions and innuendo have proliferated, seemingly exponentially. And so, like Douthat we are left to construct our own authority on those issues we care most deeply about. In this effort, it’s clear that we’re not all that good at it, but that also it doesn’t take much to be better than the experts. Or, to put it another way, is there really any greater authority on Douthat’s condition than Douthat? Before the internet, sure? Afterwards, no way.
I don’t know what this atomization of authority means for the future of our society. But I do know that it’s happening, and that Douthat’s is the best book I’ve seen for describing what that atomization feels like from the inside.
II- Capsule Reviews
Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History
by: Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damien Paletta
496 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Who should read this book?
I read two books about the pandemic last month. Of those two I would recommend reading Michael Lewis’ (see my next review) before reading this one. But if you have already decided that Trump is THE bad guy and you just want that decision to be confirmed, you will probably really enjoy this book.
General Thoughts
It is my eventual intention to take this book and the next book, plus a third book which I have yet to read and pull all of them together into a post mortem on the initial handling of the pandemic, along with what I believe are some long term lessons we should take from things.
Until that point, the key thing to know about this book is that it’s not a book about the pandemic, it’s a book about what Trump did during the pandemic. As an example of what I mean, when the book gets to the point in the narrative when BLM protests erupt in the wake of George Floyd’s killing the authors spend three pages talking about Trumps march to St. John’s Church and only a paragraph discussing whether the large gatherings might contribute to the spread of the virus. The former had nothing to do with the pandemic while the latter represented one of the biggest questions of the whole period.
Not only is the book focused on Trump, it has clearly taken sides as well. The very first thing it does is introduce Trump as the bad guy while introducing Fauci as the good guy.
Despite what I feel are its evident biases, I do think that the insider account of how the pandemic was handled at the highest levels is very interesting and useful, but unfortunately the biases mean that it’s also very narrow.
The Premonition: A Pandemic Story
by: Michael Lewis
320 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Modern attempts to prepare for pandemics going back to George W. Bush, and how this preparation played out when we actually had a pandemic.
Who should read this book?
At this point I’ve only read one other book about that pandemic, which is not surprising, the story is still ongoing. But out of those two I would definitely recommend this one. But it’s also entirely possible that the real definitive work is yet to be published.
General Thoughts
Lewis is a great writer, and this is a very enjoyable book. As I already said I’m going to wait to really dig into it in a separate post. But I guess it’s worth comparing this book to the previous book. In this book the Trump administration is something of a villain, but it’s not the villain, nor is it all directed at Trump either. Also one gets the impression from Lewis’ book that there were a lot of moving parts, and that it’s really difficult to isolate which ones could have saved us and which ones really hurt us. Which is to say Lewis’ is definitely the more nuanced of the two.
Perhaps the best way to compare the two books, though certainly not 100% accurate, is that Lewis is promoting the Mistake Theory version of the story. While Abutaleb and Paletta seem to be promoting more of the Conflict Theory version.
by: Pierce Brown
544 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The concluding events of the initial Red Rising trilogy, where the Gold’s finally get what’s coming to them, or something, I got about 20% of the way through it and couldn’t stomach it anymore.
Who should read this book?
After reading book 2 of the series I decided that it was a combination of Dune, Game of Thrones and the Hunger Games, but bloodier and more duplicitous than all of them. If that sounds appealing maybe you should read this book. For myself I can’t recommend the series and I probably can’t even recommend just reading the first book.
General Thoughts
Imagine if someone experienced the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones and said, “I’m going to write a book that is nothing but Red Weddings!” That’s how book 3 felt to me. Before abandoning it, I decided to read the plot summary on Wikipedia, I was not wrong.
Star Trek: The City on the Edge of Forever
Originally by: Harlan Ellison
Adapted by: Scott & David Tipton
128 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A graphic novelization of Harlan Ellison’s original script for “The City on the Edge of Forever”. One of the best regarded of the episodes from Star Trek’s original series.
Who should read this book?
If you like Harlan Ellison, Star Trek, or graphic novels, you will probably enjoy this book.
General Thoughts
Wikipedia asserts that “The City on the Edge of Forever” is frequently named as the best Star Trek episode of the entire Star Trek franchise. Harlan Ellison always maintained that they butchered his original script and that what you saw was just a pale imitation of the majesty of the original. Having heard this accusation for years, when I saw that there was a graphic novelization of his original I bought it immediately, so that I could finally decide for myself.
It was great, and thoroughly enjoyable, but having read it I would say Ellison oversold things, and was probably insufficiently appreciative of what they had managed to do with the actual episode. But if you’re familiar at all with Ellison that probably won’t surprise you. Still the man could write.
244 Pages
Briefly, what was this book about?
That the conventional wisdom that cartel violence is different from mob violence, is different from terrorism, is wrong. That really all violence can be explained using economic incentives.
Who should read this book?
Previously we had an “everybody”? Well this one is “nobody”. Shiffman is so taken by his one idea, that he pushes it past the point of utility into being less useful than the idea he’s trying to replace. Plus he spends way too much time getting into the minutia with his various examples.
General Thoughts
Answering the question of, “Why should everyone read this book?” is difficult. For this one I have to answer the opposite question, which of course is far easier. Given how many books are out there, to a first approximation the vast majority of books are read by nobody. Why should this book be any different? I suppose the next question is, if the book shouldn’t be read, is there a point in reviewing it either? Particularly as one of the highly selective reviews of the world renowned We Are Not Saved blog?
Perhaps not, but given that I read it for a book club I ended up with some fairly extensive notes, and it would be a shame to let all that go to waste.
Shiffman’s one big idea is to note the similarities between the actions of violent organizations and the actions of normal businesses. Pointing out how both are responding to market forces and financial incentives. This is useful and interesting, but Shiffman is so taken by the idea that he tries to squeeze everything into that framework. I think this could have been a far more useful book if he had also used this model to draw a contrast between violent organizations and businesses. A couple of examples:
First, I have a friend who feels that a disproportionate number of people at the highest levels of business and government are psychopaths. If you also believe that, and also believe Shiffman, then it’s not surprising that you would also find psychopaths at the head of violent organizations. But clearly rising to be the head of the Medellín Cartel, or the Lord’s Resistance Army, or Al Qaeda selects for psychopathy to a far greater degree than being the head of a Fortune 500 company. And I would be inclined to argue that it is this quality that is more predictive of success in a violent organization than being a savvy businessman. Shiffman talks about sadism, but dismisses it as being only a tiny part of the story. I would argue that it’s one of the key differentiators between a normal business and a violent organization. But since Shiffman’s project is to minimize these differences, he also minimizes its role.
Second, Shiffman talks extensively about how important ties of family and ideology are to the cohesion and success of violent organizations. That:
People face scarcity, and so have almost constant need for others: need to know the “us” and the “them” so we know who to look out for and who will look out for us when matters of survival and growth arise. Issues such as “radical Islam” matter only in the way that branding and marketing matter for a firm.
But family and ideology generally aren’t that big of a deal in a normal business, and comparing “radical Islam” to branding and marketing, is a gross exaggeration of the power of marketing and a gross understatement of the appeal of radical Islam.
In both of these cases leaning into the contrast between the two would have been more informative than what Shiffman did, which was to lean into the similarities.
Yes, there are similarities between violent organizations and business, but this is neither as groundbreaking nor as widespread an insight as Shiffman thinks.
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
by: J. R. R. Tolkien
320 Pages
Briefly, what was this book about?
I assume everyone knows what this book is about.
Who should read to this book?
Actually, as with the majority of the books, though I’m coy about it, I listened to this book. Specifically I wanted to listen to The Hobbit as narrated by Andy Serkis (the guy who did the voice and motion capture for Gollum in the movies.)
General Thoughts
The book is even better than I remembered. And I remembered it as being very good. Serkis’ narration was also a delight, as expected. If you need some “comfort” listening over the holidays, it would be hard to do better than this.
Chorazin: (The Weird of Hali #3)
255 Pages
Briefly, what was this book about?
It's the next book in the “What if the elder gods were the good guys?” series.
Who should read this book?
If for some reason you’ve started this series (perhaps on my recommendation) then there’s nothing in this book that should make you stop.
General Thoughts
This book spent a fair amount of time on world building, which was nice, though that did make the first part drag a little bit. But I thought the action and reveal at the end were satisfying enough to make up for it. As I have said in my past reviews, the chief appeal of this series is its premise. If the premise sounds appealing to you then you’ll probably like the book. If you have no idea what an elder god is, and the name Cthulhu means nothing to you then I would avoid these books.
The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia
by: Peter Hopkirk
564 Pages
Briefly, what was this book about?
The Central Asian rivalry between the United Kingdom and Russia which played out during the 19th Century.
Who should read this book?
If you like good history, then you’ll appreciate this book. Though make sure to read it with a map handy because you won’t have heard of most of the places where the action takes place.
General Thoughts
In some of my previous posts on Afghanistan I mentioned Mohammad Najibullah, the last president of Afghanistan while it was controlled/supported by the Soviets. In between Najibullah’s capture by the mujahideen and his execution by the Taliban he spent his time translating this book into Pashtun so that the Afghans could better understand how they got to where they are. To the best of my understanding the translation was unfinished when he died. But I can see why he undertook the project, if I hadn’t read about the history of things I’m not sure I would have believed it myself.
The book is worth reading just for the story of the First Anglo-Afghan War, or as the British call it the Disaster in Afghanistan. Take the biggest military fiasco you can imagine, multiply it by 10 and then imagine the most cinematic ending possible, and that’s the story. Essentially of the 16,500 British citizens, soldiers and camp followers who started the retreat from Kabul, only one nearly dead assistant surgeon made it to safety.
I’m something of a collector of horrible, preventable tragedies and this is one of the most terrible ones I’ve encountered. It makes me wonder if anyone associated with the recent withdrawal from Afghanistan had read this book, because beyond all of the interesting historical events, the book is obviously still relevant today. Up until a few months ago we were still fighting over Afghanistan. We’re still trying to figure out what to do in Central Asia. And we’re still suffering massive, preventable tragedies.
III- Religious Observation
The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery
Before leaving the book entirely I wanted to briefly include a comment about Douthat’s religion. Obviously Douthat’s faith is a big part of who he is and how he went about recovering. And there was one story in particular which really struck me, because Douthat describes an interaction with God which is almost an exact parallel to some of my own experiences with God:
On the last morning, I was up early as always and I carried my son, now six months old and heavy, down the long, low-tide strip of sand. The pain was mostly in one shoulder, though I knew it would be somewhere else soon enough. There was a spot where the sand gave way to barnacled rocks bewigged with seaweed, where the tide met the stones; sometimes in her youth, my mother had found sand dollars there. I had never found one in decades of looking, and over time it had become a game I played – If I find one today, it means that God exists. If I find one today, it means that the girl I have a crush on has a crush on me. If I find one today, it means I’ll get into the college I want. If I find one today, it means…
Inevitably, I had been playing the game all that vacation week, casually glancing in the shallows as I waded with my kids.
If I find one it means I will get better.
If I find one it means I will get better.
If I find one it means I will get better.
On that last day, though, I was in too much pain to play. I held my son in my right arm, watching the seagulls sweep above, feeling the fire spread down my left arm and side. At a certain point, the combination of beauty and agony broke me, and I began to sob there, on the empty sandbar beside the flat, blue bay, while my son cooed curiously, and from somewhere in the depths I came out with a desperate, rasping croak.
“Help me, God. Why won’t you help me?”
My eyes dropped to the water. There between my feet, as tiny as a nickel and as pale as a wedding dress, was the only sand dollar I have ever found.
I don’t think that everyone should read my blog, but neither do I think nobody should read it either. Rather I think you should read it if you think the next 20 years are going to be particularly difficult to navigate. And you should donate to it if you think I might in some sense be helping to navigate it better.