Veteran mountaineer and historian Roberts (The Lost World of the Old Ones: Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest, 2015, etc.) looks once more at the question of why humans are so bent on scaling the world’s tall places.
Climbers have worried that the planet’s peaks are getting overcrowded ever since Petrarch ascended Mont Ventoux, and indeed readers could be forgiven for thinking that Roberts was among the last to live in the golden age of adventure and exploration. Take, for example, his first contact with a people hidden away in the depths of an island rainforest: “I had never been part of such a strange cultural interchange, and I covertly stared back, wondering, What are they thinking? Who do they think we are? Why do they think we’ve come?” Good questions all. In the main, this is an amiable if surely adventure-packed collection of yarns and historical oddments; who knew that one of the first organized mountaineering expeditions in the world involved a theologian, a carpenter, and the “official ladderman to the king”? Roberts is as home in libraries as he is on summits, and he explores the literature of mountaineering and some of its genre conventions, if not clichés: the use, for example, of “martial metaphors on every page supported a narrative that veered closer to melodrama than to understatement.” So it is with the books that mark a true golden age, that of Himalayan mountaineering, which Roberts closes off at 1964, books that center on a pair of daring climbers while scarcely acknowledging the vast support staff behind them. The author is more generous in writing of the great teams that figure in any expedition, and, he notes, expeditions are continuing, now with young climbers who appreciate their predecessors: “I no longer worry that the skills and technology of the current band of alpinists relegate the deeds of my own generation to the limbo of ‘pretty good for its time,’ ” he writes.
Roberts ponders his mortality while celebrating the freedom of wild places. A book for anyone who appreciates good adventure writing.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-60986-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.
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The former first lady opens up about her early life, her journey to the White House, and the eight history-making years that followed.
It’s not surprising that Obama grew up a rambunctious kid with a stubborn streak and an “I’ll show you” attitude. After all, it takes a special kind of moxie to survive being the first African-American FLOTUS—and not only survive, but thrive. For eight years, we witnessed the adversity the first family had to face, and now we get to read what it was really like growing up in a working-class family on Chicago’s South Side and ending up at the world’s most famous address. As the author amply shows, her can-do attitude was daunted at times by racism, leaving her wondering if she was good enough. Nevertheless, she persisted, graduating from Chicago’s first magnet high school, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, and pursuing careers in law and the nonprofit world. With her characteristic candor and dry wit, she recounts the story of her fateful meeting with her future husband. Once they were officially a couple, her feelings for him turned into a “toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.” But for someone with a “natural resistance to chaos,” being the wife of an ambitious politician was no small feat, and becoming a mother along the way added another layer of complexity. Throw a presidential campaign into the mix, and even the most assured woman could begin to crack under the pressure. Later, adjusting to life in the White House was a formidable challenge for the self-described “control freak”—not to mention the difficulty of sparing their daughters the ugly side of politics and preserving their privacy as much as possible. Through it all, Obama remained determined to serve with grace and help others through initiatives like the White House garden and her campaign to fight childhood obesity. And even though she deems herself “not a political person,” she shares frank thoughts about the 2016 election.
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6313-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2018
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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