Gwynne Dyer is a Cana­dian jour­nal­ist (now based in the U.K.), and an expert on mil­i­tary sub­jects, who has had a glob­ally syn­di­cated col­umn for many years. I don’t always agree with him, but he is com­pe­tent, writes hon­estly, and doesn’t pre­var­i­cate. He’s gen­er­ally a voice of com­mon sense. Unfor­tu­nately, for the last decade, his col­umn hasn’t appeared in very many Cana­dian news­pa­pers. The major­ity of big Cana­dian papers have been under the con­trol of the malig­nant press bar­on, Con­rad Black, and his suc­ces­sor, in recent years. Dyer is per­sona non gra­ta. This book con­tains a selec­tion of the columns that most of us, here in his native land, have missed.

Dyer’s strong point is that, unlike most jour­nal­ists, he knows how the mil­i­tary works, how deci­sions get made in it, and what war real­ly involves. He also knows some­thing about the cul­ture and his­tory of the world in gen­eral. This puts him way ahead of most jour­nal­ists. He is weak­er when try­ing to sec­ond-guess the motives of politi­cians and the oli­garchs who wield real pow­er, a weak­ness which he very hon­estly admits. He calls atten­tion to the columns where he didn’t hit the mark. Read more »

I spot­ted this in a Good­will book-bin and snatched it. What a lit­tle trea­sure to come across! In 1931, the young com­mer­cial artist Theodore Seuss Geisel, who had already assumed the non-de-plume of “Dr. Seuss”, was com­mis­sioned to il­lus­trate three col­lec­tions of amus­ing quotes from school essays. His biog­ra­phy states that it was this that con­vinced him that he should try mak­ing a book for chil­dren. Dr. Seuss’ inim­itable style is already evi­dent in these illus­tra­tions. The school­boy bloop­ers select­ed are still very fun­ny. Some exam­ples: “Grav­ity was dis­cov­ered by Isaac Wal­ton. It is chiefly notice­able in the autumn, when apples are falling off trees”, “The Zodi­ac is the Zoo of the Sky, where lions, goats, vir­gins and oth­er ani­mals go after they are dead”, “A cow is very like a bull, but a bull hurts more”, “To stop a nose­bleed, stand on your head till your heart stops beat­ing.”, “The arti­choke was an ancient instru­ment of tor­ture”, “Hered­ity means that if your grand­fa­ther didn’t have any chil­dren, then your father prob­a­bly wouldn’t have had any, and nei­ther would you, prob­a­bly.”, “Thomas Paine was a rare indi­vid­ual, obsessed by com­mon sense.”, “Cana­di­ans raise bowl wee­vils for their wool.”, and who could for­get “Socrates was addict­ed to hem­lock, which even­tu­ally cor­rupted his morals.”? Dr. Seuss’s draw­ings do full jus­tice to these gems of error. I don’t doubt that this book is col­lectible, but it would take a gang of furi­ous Scots­men armed with clay­mores to pry it away from me. [appar­ently it isn’t worth any­thing much — a friend checked up on it] Read more »

14612. (Michael Cun­ning­ham) A Home at the End of the World
14613. (Ian Rankin) Strip Jack
14614. (Kim Stan­ley Robin­son) Fifty Degrees Below Zero
14615. (Dean Mahomet) The Trav­els of Dean Mahomet, An Eigh­teenth-Cen­tu­ry Journey 
. . . . . Through India [ed. with an intruc­tion and bio­graph­i­cal essay by Michael H. Fisher]
14616. (Tim Wynne-Jones) A Thief in the House of Memory
14617. (Allen F. Davis) Spear­heads For Reform ― The Social Set­tle­ments and the Progressive
. . . . . Move­ment 1890–1914
Read more »

Tim Wynne-Jones lives in the pic­turesque town of Perth, Ontario, about an hour’s dri­ve from Ottawa. A small-town Cana­dian sen­si­bil­ity is the frame­work for this nov­el, writ­ten for teenagers, but it is not the nos­tal­gia of Leacock’s Sun­shine Sketech­es by a long­shot. It is clos­er to the haunt­ed past and stiffled hopes in Sher­wood Anderson’s Wines­burg Ohio. A Thief in the House of Mer­mory is beau­ti­fully writ­ten. The prose style is exquis­ite, full of inven­tion and word­play, and the dia­log feels true. Despite the dis­turb­ing and depress­ing sub­ject mat­ter, the book is not just the prod­uct of facile cyn­i­cism. It is about con­fronting the past and deal­ing with it, and the deci­sion to know the truth even if it brings you pain. Wynne-Jones is clear­ly writ­ing intel­li­gent, mov­ing, and tech­ni­cally superb fic­tion for the “young adult” mar­ket, and the Toron­to pub­lisher Dou­glas & McIn­tyre is not putting obsta­cles in his way. I will eager­ly inves­ti­gate his oth­er books, and the publisher.

This is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ment. Dean Mahomet came from a mod­estly suc­cess­ful Mus­lim fam­ily in India in the 18th Cen­tury, just at the peri­od when the East India Com­pany was absorb­ing and tak­ing over the crum­bling Mughal Empire. At the age of eleven, he became the friend and con­fi­dant of a teenage British offi­cer, and for the next six­teen years they advanced togeth­er in that curi­ous enti­ty, the Indi­an Army. Togeth­er, they saw action at the siege of Gwalior, the Great Mutiny, and oth­er key events. When a sud­den (though appar­ently unde­served) dis­grace end­ed his friend’s career, D.M. chose to accom­pany him to his native Ire­land. He seems to have been per­son­ally charm­ing, and was thor­oughly self-edu­cat­ed in the lit­er­ary cul­ture of England.

In Cork, Ire­land, he mar­ried into the local Anglo-Irish gen­try. He wrote and pub­lished his book, which is an account of his mil­i­tary career, with an empha­sis on describ­ing the sights and cus­toms of the regions in North­ern India that he tra­versed. It must be remem­bered that, for him, most places in India were just as “for­eign” as Bel­gium or Den­mark would be to an Eng­lish­man. The descrip­tion of a famine is par­tic­u­larly engross­ing. Read more »

Kim Stan­ley Robin­son is always read­able, though the nar­ra­tive often stops dead so that the read­er can be sup­plied with large quan­ti­ties of sci­en­tific, his­tor­i­cal, or polit­i­cal infor­ma­tion. It’s to Robinson’s cred­it that he can pull off these dis­qui­si­tions with­out los­ing the read­er. But it makes his nov­els a bit emo­tion­ally cool. This is Robinson’s Glob­al Warm­ing nov­el. It begins, inter­est­ingly, with the city of Wash­ing­ton rav­aged by a dev­as­tat­ing flood. The descrip­tion of the clum­sy and inad­e­quate response is won­der­fully pre­scient — the book was released only months before the New Orleans flood, and must have been writ­ten in 2004. The book didn’t strike ter­ror into my heart, as was intend­ed, since the sci­ence fic­tional premise is that the Unit­ed States is sud­denly forced to have Canada’s cli­mate. I’ve been out­doors in fifty-below zero weath­er numer­ous times, and, while a brac­ing expe­ri­ence, the phrase “fifty below” doesn’t have quite the same scare val­ue for me that it does for a Californian.

This nov­el pleased me. It’s well-writ­ten, the char­ac­ters come alive, and the author doesn’t pussy-foot. Cun­ning­ham takes three char­ac­ters from child­hood, bring­ing them up to youth­ful adult­hood. They end up form­ing a pre­car­i­ous fam­ily and raise a shild. Noth­ing very extra­or­di­nary hap­pens. But it is all done with great skill. The book is grown-up. As I turned the pages, I was remind­ed of my pro­tracted strug­gle with the cur­rent situ­ation in Sci­ence Fic­tion pub­lish­ing. I grew up with Sci­ence Fic­tion, and I would rather write in that genre than write the sort of thing that Michael Cun­ning­ham does. Read more »

14594. (Gavin Men­zies) 1421, the Year Chi­na Dis­cov­ered the World
14595. (Louise Levathes) When Chi­na Ruled the Seas
14596. (Bir­git & Peter Sawyer) Medieval Scan­di­navia From Con­ver­son to Reformation,
. . . . . cir­ca 800‑1500
14597. (Ellis Peters) The Sum­mer of the Danes Read more »

Far­ley Mowat engaged in some unre­strained spec­u­la­tion with his “Alban” pre­his­toric explor­ers. Now, Gavin Men­zies goes absolute­ly wild with spec­u­la­tion in his “recon­struc­tion” of a gigan­tic glob­al explo­ration by the Chi­nese admi­ral Zheng He in the year 1421.

It is well known that a large Chi­nese Impe­r­ial fleet, under the direc­tion of Zheng He (or Heng Ho), the eunuch aide-de-camp of the ear­ly Ming emper­or Zhu Di, under­took sev­en long voy­ages that com­bined trade, diplo­matic and explorato­ry motives. Chi­nese trade and explo­ration of the East African coast is well accept­ed by his­to­ri­ans. Zheng He’s voy­ages are well doc­u­mented by his sec­re­tary, Ma Huan, whose chron­i­cling of some of the voy­ages was wide­ly print­ed and dis­trib­uted, and there are col­lat­eral accounts by Fei Xin and Gong Zhen, both offi­cers on some of the voy­ages. There is also plen­ty of cor­rob­o­ra­tion in Ming dynasty pub­lic records. Zheng He’s celebri­ty was such that plays were being per­formed about him while the voy­ages were still going, and a cen­tury and a half lat­er, an immense­ly pop­u­lar his­tor­i­cal nov­el, Jour­ney of the Three-Jew­eled Eunuch to the West­ern Oceans by Luo Mao­deng, retold the sto­ry with embell­ish­ments. Read more »