The Social Animal by David Brooks

This book, the story of married couple Harold and Erica, is supposedly "the happiest story you've ever read."  Harold and Erica are not real people, they are fictional constructs David Brooks has created as the framing device for a book about social and psychological research, much of it truly fascinating.

Thus, we are first introduced to Harold's parents, and as they meet one another, and their attraction develops, we are told what "studies have shown" (the book's most frequent phrase) is going on beneath the surface, in the brain, the psyche, the personality, of each of Harold's parents, which causes them to react to each other the way they do.  As Harold is born and develops, we are told what various studies have shown is going on in his cognitive and character development, and how his genes and his environment are affecting that development, etc.  We meet Erica a little later in life, and follow her and Harold through adolescence, adulthood, and old-age.  Along the way, we are introduced to various personality and psychological studies and theories helping us to understand their lives.

Harold and Erica don't live in real time.  Rather, it is roughly 2010 when Harold's parents meet, 2010 when Harold and Erica go to High School, 2010 when Harold and Erica marry each other, and still 2010 when Harold dies.   Putting Harold and Erica in real history would apparently distract from the purpose of the book, which is not interested in how people's lives have been affected by the actual events of real history, living through the Korean war or the Carter-era recession, say, but is interested in how people's lives are affected by their own psychological and personality traits.

It's a little hard to figure out where Brooks is going with all this, or what larger point he is trying to make.  Apparently it's something about the need to better understand what modern science is telling us about the psyche if we want to make better political choices.  Or perhaps the need to understand the "social" nature of man in order to make better personal choices.  Despite initial headings on Brooks' "Purpose" the overall point is never made very explicit.

But that's not the real problem.  The real problem is that introductory idea that Harold and Erica's lives are "the happiest story you've ever read."  The thing is, Harold and Erica's lives don't actually seem that happy, and Brooks' insistence that we see their lives as an example of what we should strive for to live a happy life rings awfully hollow:  Harold and Erica have no children.  They belong to no church.  They seem to have no real moral code.  They (and their author) use vulgar and crude language.  Harold's high school years are promiscuous, and after their marriage Erica cheats on her husband so Brooks can talk about the psychology of shame. Although Erica becomes involved in a Presidential administration, and Harold takes up his creator's Hamiltonian political ideas, you never get the sense that either have become adherents of some larger social or political cause that gives their lives great meaning.   It is true that Harold and Erica both become extremely successful and prominent, but one never gets the feeling that their lives have been lived for some purpose beyond their own success and prominence.  For "social animals" Harold and Erica have ultimately led pretty lonely lives.  When they die, their existence doesn't seem to have meant anything for anyone but themselves.

The subject matter of this book, what we believe we've learned about the unconscious mind in the last 30 years, was fascinating, and I had a hard time putting it down.  Some of Brooks' satirical social observations about modern life are hilarious and spot-on.  But in the end the book left me with a bad taste in my mouth.  This is not the happiest story I've ever read.  It's not even a particularly happy story at all.  And the claim that I should see it as such left me cold.

The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”   C.S. Lewis

I like childrens and young adult books for the same reason I enjoy fantasy and sci-fi: they can deal with big plots, major symbols, and the deep questions of life, in a way that authors of a standard grown-up thriller or literary fiction would be embarassed to tackle.  But why read at all if you can't deal with big ideas?

The Mysterious Benedict Society lays the whimsey on a little too thick at times (a girl who always carries a bucket, another character who never sleeps, a villian who happens to be the long lost twin of the hero's mentor).  Even in children's or young adult literature, I find this annoying.  Give me a fully realized fantasy world like Hogwarts, allow some well-defined magic to exist in that world, but then make everything else as familiar and real as possible so I will want to suspend my disbelief and spend time in a place that seems real.

Nothwithstanding this one weakness, when Mysterious Benedict works, it works well, and it kept me reading to the end.  There are some important ideas here for young people and old people to learn, such as:

-there are different types of intelligence, all valuable in their own way;
-when recruiting for a secret mission to save the world, it's as important to test for moral character as for ability;
-if some person or group wants to take over society, their first step will be to manufacture a false "crisis" followed closely by taking over the media.

All true concepts, all worth knowing.

Washington, A Life, by Ron Chernow

The chief argument made by Chernow in this massive tome, is that Washington was a deeply passionate and emotional man, who learned to stoically suppress his emotions in order to be an effective leader, and who succeeded so well at that task that Americans have since come to see him, wrongfully, as rather bland.  Chernow wants us to get past that, and see Washington for the complex and interesting and passionate person that he was, instead of as a marble obelisk.  Here's some of what I learned from this book that I will remember most:

-Washington had one of the most shrewish mothers in history.  She constantly placed her needs ahead of his, for example vetoing an opportunity for a Naval career early in his life which would have prevented him from caring for her (although that veto turned out for the best, for Washington and his future country).  Despite the many successes of his storied career, there is no record of his mother having ever expressed any pride in his accomplishments.  There are, instead, numerous examples of her having constantly complained of being neglected throughout her life, even though Washington actually did much to care for her financially.  Washington's ability to suppress his emotions may have been learned at an early age in trying to put up with this nasty woman.

-Washington played a key role in the first skirmish of what became a worldwide war, known in North America as the French and Indian War. His experiences in that conflict involved so many unlikely escapes from certain death (in one instance evidenced by a coat riddled with bullet holes and a hat shot from his head, but himself unharmed) that it is easy to believe he was preserved by providence for future greatness. The snubbing he and other colonial officers received at the hands of officers from Britain gave his later desire for independence a very private and personal motive.

-Washington became rich via deaths of family members which were personally painful to him. The early deaths of his father, his older brother, his older brother's widow and orphaned child (and his future wife Martha's first husband), all helped Washington to inherit assets which caused him to become one of the richest  people on the continent, in terms of land and slaves.  Nevertheless, like so many other Virginia planters, he was constantly cash and income poor.

-Washington may have been, by the standards of the day, a kinder master than many slaveholders, refusing for example to sell slaves if it would break up a family, and recognizing and honoring slave marriages, even though this policy led to his holding more slaves than he could economically productively retain.  Nevertheless, he had a moral blind spot when it came to slavery.  He complained of slaves' unwillingness to labor effectively or productively, speaking of them as though they were salaried employees who were obligated to provide an economic return, he was apparently incapable of understanding why a slave would lack the incentive to work productively.  He was capable of ordering his slaves to work long hours outdoors on days which he described in his own journal as too bitterly cold for him to leave the home.  He would pay to recover fugitive slaves and at the end of the Revolutionary War he insisted, as part of the terms of the British surrender, that the British return slaves which had fled to British control in exchange for promises of freedom (the British, to their everlasting credit, refused his demands).  Washington did finally take steps towards morally redeeming himself, to some small extent, by writing a will which would free all of the slaves legally owned by him, upon his and his wife's death.  

-Washington's experiences in the Revolutionary War, as a largely powerless Congress was unable to properly provision his forces, made him a lifelong advocate for a strong central government.  

-Washington's return of his eight-year-old commission at the end of the Revolutionary War, instead of turning his popularity and power at that moment into a grab for civilian power, was seen in Europe as one of the most noble acts in history.  For his part, though, Washington seemed less concerned with his historic reputation than with a sincere and heartfelt desire to get back to his beloved Mount Vernon, whose constant improvement was his first love.

It was a wonderful coincidence that I was reading Ron Chernow's biography of Washington when we visited D.C., where reminders of his life are everywhere.  This is the portrait of Washington returning his commission to the Continental Congress, which hangs in the Rotunda of the Capitol.  King George III is reputed to have said, when learning that Washington intended to resign as a General and go back to his farm after the Revolution, "If he does that, he'll be the greatest man in the world."

Me and my sweetie at Mount Vernon.  Maybe Washington's love for this place was the real difference between him and Fidel Castro.

- Washington's popularity was essential to the formation of our country.  The highly controversial constitution would likely never have been enacted were it not for the assurance the country was given by his presence at the Constitutional Convention, and the knowledge that he would likely act as the Country's first executive under its aegis.  Similarly, the unity felt in the Country towards Washington allowed constitutional government to get off to an 8 year-start which established it as the status quo before the Country devolved into partisan bickering once he left office.  Had a unifying figure like Washington not been the Nation's first President, and not stayed in office for at least 8 years (six years longer than he wanted), the constitutional governmental forms may never have had a chance to take effective root.

 

- Washington was skeptical about the French Revolution, rightfully foreseeing that it would devolve into bloodshed and tyranny.  He was also skeptical about any foreign power, even one like France, which had assisted us in our Revolution, forming any long-term special friendship with America, which went beyond that nation's interests.  He was also a fierce advocate for a strong central government with a strong executive, based on his firsthand wartime experiences with the frustrations of limited government.  As a result of these positions, he found himself increasingly aligned with Hamilton's Federalists, and at odds with the Jeffersonian Republicans, whose romanticized views of the French Revolution blinded them to its excesses, and whose fear of monarchy caused them to advocate for a weaker central government and executive.  As most of the prominent Jeffersonian Republicans were Washington's fellow Virginia planters, Washington's last years found him severing ties with most of the members of his own political and geographic class, as his friendships with fellow members of the Virginia agricultural aristocracy, men with names like George Mason, Jefferson, and Madison, came to an end.

-  We are extremely lucky that a universally popular figure such as Washington existed at the beginning of our country, without whose unifying influence we might have won the war for independence only to become balkanized shortly thereafter.  We are also extremely lucky that the unifying person in question was a person of Washington's character, who showed no desire to make himself a dictator for life, as so many other successful revolutionaries, before and after him, were to do.  This is a long book and I probably wouldn't have gotten through it if I had tried to read it instead of listening to the audiobook on my iPhone while commuting in my car.  But it is a book that should be read by all Americans.

The Mistborn Trilogy, by Brandon Sanderson

Imagine that at the end of Lord of the Rings, Sauron had reclaimed the ring and taken over Middle Earth.  Now flash forward about a thousand years to a society built on Sauron's dystopian corruptions, and you have the setting, essentially, for these novels.  Then imagine that the heroes who have set out to overthrow the evil "Lord Ruler" of this dark land are not valiant warriors or immortal elves or something, but a gang of grifters for whom overthrowing the devil is just the biggest con of their lives.  That setting and that premise would make these books worth reading in and of themselves.  But Sanderson makes this all even better by giving us wonderfully lovable characters, including some presumably lead characters who he's not afraid to surprise us by killing off, and some presumably tertiary characters who he's not afraid to elevate to unexpectedly titular status.  Plot twists abound, that involve discoveries over the true history of the Lord Ruler's reign, and how that history has been officially corrupted and secretly preserved.  The fight scenes are the Matrix meets Tolkien.  Just a really wonderful and fantastic read.  Everything I would want in a fantasy series.

If I have any gripe with Sanderson's writing, it's that his magic systems are just a little too elaborate for my taste.  Maybe it's a generational thing, and younger readers who grew up learning elaborate rules for playing computer role playing games expect a magical system to be thought out with all this detail that I have a harder time getting into.   I enjoy it when a magic system has some internal rules and logic, especially when those rules help with the world building and advance the plot, for example as in Jordan's Wheel of Time books in which the "tainted" nature of the male half of the magical "true source" has affected the entire culture and history of his world.  I would agree that those kinds of details can be useful in creating a world which seems real.  (I've read Lord of the Rings many times in my life, and I still have no idea what kind of magic Gandalf is actually able to do). 

Many of Sanderson's rules of "Allomancy" (a magical system in which some people are born with the ability to gain special powers by ingesting certain metals) accomplish helpful plot purposes, and  make sense in ways that can be kind of fun and symbolic (the Newtonian idea that every magical act you perform has a consequence and reaction, for example).  But Sanderson's magic system soon becomes so elaborate that it can stop seeming like magic at all, and instead feels like either the science of an alternate universe, or the overly developed rules for playing a tediously complicated video game.  Nevertheless, that's just my own personal preference, coming from someone who learned to love reading Fantasy in an earlier era.  And it ultimately didn't keep me from still loving these books.