Jerusalem by Cecelia Holland

The best history books, I firmly believe, are those that treat the past as a narrative, rather than a date-by-date memorization exam. Historians such as David McCullough and Edmund Morris are renowned for their ability to breathe new life into stale old facts, by showing the intensely personal consequences of world-shaping events. Drama is always most effective when it resonates with real life, so what could be more dramatic than a well-written history or biography?

Or, in this case, a historical novel. Cecelia Holland's Jerusalem is set in the Holy Land circa. 1184, 90 years after the first Crusaders captured Jerusalem from the Saracens (Muslims) who had held it for four centuries. It was a time in which Christianity and Islam fought not for souls, but for territory and castles. It covers many of the same events as the disappointing movie Kingdom of Heaven, but unlike that politically-correct piffle, Ms. Holland portrays the characters how they really must have been: Deeply flawed human beings who were nonetheless tremendously and sincerely dedicated to furthering the cause of Christ (or Allah) through conquest and bloodshed. This was the tale that Kingdom of Heaven should have been.

Rannulf Fitzwilliam, a Norman from the coast of France, is a Knight of the Temple of Solomon--commonly known throughout history as a Templar. His sect is alternately respected and feared throughout Europe and the lands of Islam as the most ruthless and skilled of all the Christian warriors. Rannulf's rigid devotion to the monastic lifestyle of the Order is penance for the sins of his past--sins that still haunt him. As he defends Jerusalem against the Saracen armies, he must also be wary of the political intrigues that threaten to undermine the Crusader stronghold from within.

As Ms. Holland shows, the Christian leaders during the Crusades were more likely to bicker among each other than to fight the Muslims. The Crusades attracted some of Christendom's most ambitious and able leaders, and it was this combination of ambition, religious fervor, and jealousy that made the Crusades such a tragic period of history.

Ms. Holland writes with subtlety and beauty, and her characters are well-developed and endlessly interesting. Her tale is a melancholy one, full of longing and regret, but amid the gloom of pandemic warfare and shifting alliances, there is a glimmer of hope. Where others found only death and suffering, Rannulf found forgiveness and salvation. The longing for a peace that transcends this world is truly timeless, and it is refreshing to find a historical novel that understands that theme of hope.

Addicted to Spending

Robert Novak today reports on the growing discontent among conservatives over the spending spree in Washington. The Republican leadership seem to have given themselves entirely over to the notion that they must spend like drunken Democrats in order to maintain power. In so doing, I expect they will manage to alienate just about everyone. The Republicans have presided over a plethora of vote-buying schemes, but without actually buying any votes or gaining any popular support. If the purpose of enacting new entitlement programs is to curry public favor (and it almost always is), then what is the point of breaking the bank to pay for unpopular programs? After five years of an unprecedented spending spree, Republicans find themselves in a precarious position: vote-buying spending without vote-buying results to show for it. Now that's quite a feat in politics.

The bloated Medicare prescription drug benefit is a prime example. A few courageous Republicans, such as Mike Pence of Indiana, have called on the biggest entitlement increase in history to be scaled back, but Republican leaders and the White House will not allow the program to be altered in any way. My question: Why not? Is there any person on the planet who bases his support of President Bush on the prescription drug plan? Were any Democrats swayed? Were any seniors appreciative? Were any conservatives happy?

The answer to all these questions is a resounding no, and yet the Republican leadership cling to the plan as if their political lives depended on it. They may be right, but not in the way they think.

But the Republicans are not solely to blame for the huge federal deficits. Often times politicians are merely responding to the wishes of those who voted for them. Voters decry the government's free-spending ways, until they are asked to give up federally-funded projects in their home districts. As any freshman congressman knows, woe be unto the politician who fails to lavish his constituents with federal dollars. If the American people were serious about deficit reduction, they would reward representatives who refuse to send pork home, instead of punishing them.

And then there is the astounding sophistry of the Democrats. The mark of an unserious party is its willingness to attack its opponents no matter what they do. Democrats have fiercely criticized the Bush administration for its loose fiscal policies, but when the administration proposed some rather puny budget cuts earlier this year, the same people who criticize Bush for spending too much then criticized him for spending too little. These blatantly opportunistic and hypocritcal attacks offer a disconcerting reminder that for all the Republicans' faults, one need only look to the Democrats to see what a party that is truly bereft of ideas looks like.

What a tragedy it is that in these tumultuous times, America has only two choices: A party that is all too eager to abandon its principles in a misguided effort to maintain power, and a party that never had any principles to begin with.

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris begins with the somber-yet-frenzied aftermath of the McKinley assassination. Roosevelt, for the first time in his political career, initially seemed almost overwhelmed by the suddeness and responsibility of the job thrust upon him, even though he had planned to seek it in the 1904 election. He assured the corporate interests of the Republican party that he will continue the business-friendly policies of the McKinley adminstration. This federal relationship with capital would sour in later years, as Teddie drifted left ideologically.

Before reading this book, I was unaware of how prominent a role race relations played in TR's presidency. The South was enraged after Roosevelt dined with Booker T. Washington in the White House. Roosevelt also strongly and regularly denounced lynchings as an affront to civilized society, which further hardened Southern political animousity toward him. Although TR dismissed the outpouring of criticism as more revealing of his political opponents than of himself, he grew more cautious on racial issues over the years, to the chagrin of his black supporters.

If I had to compare TR with another famous historical figure, I would have to choose Winston Churchill. Both men were born to socially prominent families. Both had a romantic view of war as an avenue for personal and national advancement, but they also both resigned prominent government positions (albeit Churchill in disgrace) to fight on the front lines. They possessed similar views on race, and the superiority of Anglo-Saxon culture. They were fierce advocates of naval power as an instrument of foreign policy and national prestige. And perhaps most noticeably, the two men both viewed capital and labor with equal suspicion.

Roosevelt's passion was in foreign policy, and by any reasonable measure, he excelled at it. The Rough Rider won the Nobel Peace Prize for his successful efforts to negotiate an end to the Russo-Japanese War. Closer to home, he delicately-yet-unequivocably prevented European powers from re-establishing a colonial foothold in the Western Hemisphere. His most controversial foreign policy achievement, of course, was the acquisition of the right to dig a canal through Panama. Morris presents a fair appraisal of TR's diplomatic wrangling with Columbia, which seemed incapable of sticking with its previous agreements. Faced with such incoherent intransigence, Roosevelt dispatched US Marines to protect the fledgling Panamian government, which had just declared its independence from Bogato. By 1914, the world's two greatest oceans were linked.

Roosevelt inherited an impressive Cabinet from McKinley, chief of which was the supremely intelligent, witty Elihu Root. Root served as Secretary of War during the Phillipine insurrection, and helped the administration weather a scandal of human rights abuses there (yes, the similarities with today are uncanny). Root later served as Secretary of State during Roosevelt's second term, although by this time, TR was in effect doing all the diplomatic work himself.

In comparison to The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, this portrayal of TR is (probably for reasons having to do with his increased awareness of his place in history) less intimate. Morris is still a master storyteller, however, and he writes with a flowing beauty that wonderfully captures the time period. One interesting passage deals with Roosevelt's palpable heavy-heartedness during the wedding of his oldest daughter, Alice. She was the only child from his tragically short first marriage, and, in his effort to surpress the pain of his loss, he never spoke to her about her mother. Adding to Roosevelt's pain, Morris speculates, is the fact that Alice wore her mother's wedding dress. It is a moving account.

P.S.--Speaking of Roosevelt weddings, TR was the man who gave away Eleanore Roosevelt (his neice) to Franklin Roosevelt (his fifth cousin). Teddie did not seem to notice that the young man nearly worshipped him.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

In The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris gives us an amazing biography of an amazing man. This book covers TR's adventurous life from birth until the presidency. Much like his engaging subject, Morris is as much at ease with the intricacies of 19th-century New York politics as he is with the sweeping vistas of the Dakota Badlands.

The rapidity of Roosevelt's rise to power can only be described as astounding: A New York state legislator at 23, minority leader at 24, mayoral candidate at 28. Equally remarkable was the breadth and depth of Teddie's (he despised the nickname) experience and knowledge. He knew at least five languages, authored definitive books on topics as varied as early-1800s naval history and Western flora and flauna, and was a voracious reader, tearing through as many as three books a day, even as president. He was both cowboy and Eastern elite, scholar and politician, soldier and strategist. Roosevelt's life would make for implausible fiction, were it not true.

His life was not immune from tragedy, however. In the book's most subdued chapter, Roosevelt, only twenty-four years old, is faced with inconcievable anguish after the death of his young wife, Alice, and his mother on the same day in the same house, of separate diseases. His loss was met with the same determination with which Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill in Cuba, but it affected him more. He eventually remarried, but he never wrote of and rarely mentioned his dead wife for the rest of his life.

Roosevelt was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897, and lost no time in implementing his strategy to make the United States a major world power. America was destined for greatness, he argued, and any self-respecting nation should have a grand, imperial navy. When war with Spain broke out in 1898, he resigned his prestigious federal job to join the Army and lead men in battle. And yes, he was good at that, too.

The book closes with Roosevelt winning the New York governor's race in 1898, and then becoming McKinley's vice president at age 42. Tomorrow I will give my review of Morris' next chapter in a proposed trilogy of biographies, Theodore Rex, which covers Roosevelts' eight years as president.

And now, I must take a moment to gush. I've read and loved several great biographies by many accomplished historians, but The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt surpasses them all in its beauty, its empathy, and its insight. I can't recommend it highly enough.

P. S. -- On an interesting sidenote, Roosevelt loathed Thomas Jefferson, seeing him as weak and lacking in character.

Prepare to be Outraged Again

Two months ago I wrote on the effort by some terrorism apologists to hijack the World Trade Center Memorial and turn it into a platform for every anti-American accusation imaginable. These people, I said at the time, simply cannot allow such a prominent public venue to be without politically correct America-bashing. And if you can offer some words or symbols of sympathy to the terrorists whose depravity created the need for a memorial in the first place, so much the better. It shows how open-minded and tolerant you are.

Well, they're at it again, this time in Pennsylvania. Flight 93, the fourth plane to be hijacked that terrible day, was different than the other flights; it was where America first began to fight back. The passengers of Flight 93 knew there would be no landing, and on a day when the alphabet soup of government agencies failed so miserably to protect America, these citizens decided to take matters into their own hands. Knowing that the terrorists' destination was either the Capitol or the White House, Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, and several other burly men recited the 23rd Psalm with an air traffic controller, and then charged the cockpit. In the ensuing struggle, it is thought, the plane crashed, killing everyone aboard.

One would think that a fitting memorial to the brave passengers of Flight 93 would reflect their defiance. After all, had they passively awaited their fates, we would now be talking of Capitol memorial or a White House memorial instead of one in a Pennsylvania field. But 9/11 was not about war, the touchy-feely crowd tells us, it was about a lack of understanding. It is that plaintive, whiny sense of victimhood and "tolerance" that the memorial design draws upon, not the spirit of anger and resilience that characterized the heroes of Flight 93.

The design is called "Crescent of Embrace," as if the lesson of Flight 93 was that terrorists should be hugged, not fought. But the proposed memorial's totally inappropriate tone of reconciliation is not its most outrageous feature--that distinction belongs to the design's symbolism. The design calls for a crescent of maple trees to line the site, surrounded by black stone. Symbolism is very important to architects; their entire profession is devoted to deriving meaning out of structures. Like poets, any symbols they use in their work are deliberately chosen to convey a (sometimes hidden) message.

The symbolic significance of the crescent and the black stone may not be immediately obvious to everyone, so allow me to explain: For centuries, the crescent moon has been an “internationally recognized symbol of the faith of Islam.” Many Muslim nations bear the Crescent of Islam on their flags. The Black Stone of Mecca, the Ka’ba, is the focal point of Islam's holiest city, and each Muslim is required to make a pilgrimage to it at least once in his lifetime.

So the Flight 93 memorial design calls for a crescent and black stone...well, I suppose it could be a coincidence, as the site's designers claim--although Muslims, when shown the design, immediately associate it with their faith. But look at this graphic, in which the memorial's design is overlaid by the Crescent of Islam, and tell me the symbolism wasn't deliberate:



This design is so outrageous, so blatantly offensive, that I'm surprised there has not yet been a bigger public outcry. Apparently the absurdities of political correctness know no bounds--adherents to radical Islam killed thousands of Americans on 9/11, and we respond by building memorials laden with Islamic symbols. It would be like designing a World War II memorial in the shape of a Swastika. Call me old-fashioned and intolerant, but the site of America's lone victory on that horrific day should be a monument to the heroism of a few brave passengers, not a monument to the ideology of their killers.

The Third Option by Vince Flynn

Regular readers of this blog (and I know you're out there!) will notice that my reading list has been a bit...heavy of late. The last couple of months I've read books on such cheery topics as war, the meaninglessness of (secular) life, and the end of Western civilization as we know it. Now all I need is a Russian history book to make my grim list complete.

So where do I turn for some lighter fare? Well, to a spy novel, of course: There's nothing quite like conspiracies and political intrigue to brighten the mood. So it's too bad that, as spy thrillers go, Vince Flynn's The Third Option is decidedly bland. The protagonist is CIA operative Mitch Rapp, the US government's most skilled assassin. Rapp and his fellow shadow warriors are the government's "third option;" when the first two options of diplomacy and military action are ineffective, they get the call. At a moment's notice, Rapp is ready to be plunged into a world where he can trust no one, and where any wrong move might be his last.

Sound familiar? That's because those sentences could be used to describe just about every spy novel ever written. The constant maneuverings of betrayal and counter-betrayal have all been done before, but usually much better than in The Third Option. It is hard to get excited about yet another "twist" where yet another hitman is hired to silence the hitman who killed the other side's hitman...and on and on it goes. For a truly suspenseful and unpredictable spy novel, try anything by Robert Ludlum. This was my first foray into Mr. Flynn's work, and I don't plan on returning.

The Constant Gardener

British novelist John Le Carre is known for his murky plots, his flawed characters, and his slow pace. If nothing else, The Constant Gardener, the latest of his books to be adapted to film, recreates Le Carre's disjointed and fragmented style very accurately, with its frenzied camera cuts and layered plotting. Like the prose it emulates, it is a style that I usually find to be a bit distracting, even while I appreciate its purpose. Life is often confusing and vague, and Le Carre's spy thrillers reflect that ambiguity. Unfortunately, when translated onto film, that music-video editing style tends to dissipate tension rather than build it. Traditional-style camerawork may have helped here.

But that is only a stylistic quibble. The movie itself merits a much more substantial response. This is a film that craves to be important, and to reveal and remedy social injustices.

Ralph Fiennes plays Justin Quayle, a passive British diplomat stationed in Kenya, where he must, in addition to representating Her Majesty's government, keep his wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz) out of trouble. Tessa is a fiery social activist (in one of the film's many flashbacks, it shows how the couple met during a debate over the Iraq war) who has offended the wrong people. Two minutes into the film, she and her Kenyan friend are killed on a deserted stretch of dirt road, ostensibly by "bandits."

The mysterious circumstances of his wife's death lead Justin--tentatively at first, more aggressively later--to uncover Tessa's secret life. He finds that she was deeply involved in efforts to expose the British government's relationship with pharmaceutical companies that test advanced drugs on unwitting African patients. These drugs sometimes have lethal side effects.

The deeper Justin probes into his wife's work, the more disturbed he becomes. Has he been unknowingly abetting involuntary pharmaceutical tests all this time? Have people died while he looked the other way? After Tessa's murder, he can trust no one, not even his collegues in the British government. He launches an investigation of his own to vindicate his beloved wife's lifework. Along the way, he must comes to grips with what the final answer may cost him.

For a film of such subtlety, the political message is surprisingly overt. That message is undermined, however, by the film's latent disingenuousness--the fallacy that pharmaceutical companies, who sell live-saving drugs for profit, can do anything to please left-wing social activists. Assume for a moment that the main premise of The Constant Gardener is true: Pharmaceutical companies, in an effort to avoid years of laboratory tests and to get new drugs to AIDS-stricken Africa as soon as possible, sometimes test drugs on patients who are already dying. If it is occurring, the practice is, at best, morally ambiguous. But imagine if it was revealed that pharmaceutical companies had developed a drug that was 90% effective and would save thousands of lives throughout sub-Saharan Africa, but they would not release the drug for several more years due to safety concerns. I daresay that the same people who are most outraged that pharmaceuticals are testing drugs on dying patients would be doubly outraged if the pharmaceuticals withheld drugs from dying patients. It is a no-win situation for the drug companies, and, tragically, a no-win situation for the millions of AIDS patients currently suffering in Africa.

The Constant Gardener, despite its stylistic distractions and shallow political message, is fairly well-executed, well-acted, well-written and innovatively plotted. The music, a haunting mix of African folk music and melancholy chords, is particularly good. As a movie, The Constant Gardener is decent, but as a social commentary, it falls short. It is not as important as it wants to be.

A City in Agony

All of America has stood transfixed with horror as New Orleans, a city poor in wealth but rich in history, has descended into chaos and anarchy. Like all catastrophes, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has brought out the best in humanity, but also the worst, as marauding mobs of rapists and thugs freely roam the wreckage of the flooded city. Rescue attempts to free those who have been trapped for days have been met with gunfire. All levels of government, until very recently, seemed to have been overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the disaster. Five days since Katrina made landfall, bodies still float in the streets, and thousands have yet to recieve aid. Each passing day seems to reveal more horrors. Like many Americans, I have watched these tragic events with a growing sense of outrage and shame.

Less than a month ago I wrote on the illusion of civilization found in many urban centers; now, like the homes of thousands of Gulf Coast residents, that illusion has been swept away by the impersonal forces of nature. The death throes of a city that was once the home of a half million souls provide a sober reminder of man's tenuous grip on civilization. The authorities should deal harshly with those who have taken advantage of the breakdown of civil order to indulge their own primitive lusts. Nothing is so demoralizing to a people--or so degrading to a society--than unchecked lawlessness.

As federal authorities struggle to cope with the devastation in New Orleans, I can't help but be reminded that there are other, more insidious forces in this world that wish to do us harm. I shudder to think what a terrorist attack would do to us right now.