Books I Read in 2021
I seem to have fallen out of the habit of writing reviews, again. So here are short summaries of the books I read in 2021. Where I also wrote a longer review, I have included the link. All are recommended, unless otherwise noted.
STEM Stuff
Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox, Apollo: The Race to the Moon (1989) and Andrew Chaikin, A Man on the Moon (originally published 1994, foreword 1998, new afterword 2007). These two books appear on everybody’s “Top 5” list of best books about Project Apollo. Chaikin tells the story from the astronauts’ viewpoint, where Murry and Bly Cox tell the story of the managers and engineers. Together, these two books give you a great view of the amazing achievement that was Project Apollo. Both books are written by gifted storytellers. Highly recommended.
Robert Stone and Alan Andres, Chasing the Moon (2019). Companion to 2019 American Experience documentary of the same name. Concentrates more on popularizers (Arthur C. Clarke, Willy Ley) than the documentary did. Starts off in the standard way (Tsiolkovsky, Oberth, Goddard), but correctly notes Goddard didn’t have much influence. Concentrates a lot on von Braun; in keeping with modern practice notes his involvement with slave labor. Not so much a technical story as a political and public relations one. Both book and documentary are good.
Eric Berger, Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX (2021) and Christian Davenport, The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos (2018). Engaging and well-written tales of the “New Space” business. Space Barons is a good popular summary of the last twenty years of space launcher development. Liftoff, as the title indicates, concentrates on the battle to develop SpaceX’s first working launcher, the Falcon 1. With respect to SpaceX, Space Barons is better with anecdotes of cost savings, and how cost was bigger consideration at SpaceX than elsewhere. Liftoff is better at describing their iterative engineering process and the hard-driving culture of SpaceX that burned its early staff out. https://brainonbooksmason.blogspot.com/2021/09/two-on-new-space.html
Nicholas Schmidle, Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut (2021). The astronaut in the book’s subtitle is Mark Stucky, a Marine aviator who just missed two NASA astronaut selections and eventually ended up with Virgin Galactic. He piloted SpaceShipTwo on its first flight above 50 miles, thereby earning commercial astronaut’s wings from the FAA. Schmidle was granted exclusive inside access at Virgin Galactic for four years. He used this access to skillfully weave an inside tale of the company and a handful of characters; mostly the test pilots. Unfortunately, that inside access left Schmidle incapable of giving us an objective view. https://brainonbooksmason.blogspot.com/2021/08/sub-orbital-space-is-hard-virgin.html
Donovan Moore, What Stars Are Made Of: The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (2020). Moore has given us a long overdue popular biography of the founding mother of astrophysics. Payne-Gaposchkin was first to figure out that stars are mostly hydrogen, and later went on to become the first female full professor of astronomy at Harvard. https://brainonbooksmason.blogspot.com/2021/02/what-stars-are-made-of.html
Naomi Oreskes, editor, Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth (2003). This book, comprising an introduction by Oreskes and seventeen papers, provides multiple first-person accounts of the mid-20th century revolution in earth science. Together, they provide an overview of plate tectonics, an engaging view of the excitement of a quickly developing field, and some reflections on the nature of scientific discovery. https://brainonbooksmason.blogspot.com/2021/04/how-we-got-plate-tectonics.html
History, Memoir, Biography
John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). Carter’s book caused me to read this, the book that made Keynes world-famous. It is remembered today for predicting the disastrous consequences of the Treaty of Versailles, but a modern reader might be startled by the connections Keynes draws between economic practices and political unrest. (A note for lovers of old books: the Portland public library loaned me a 1920 edition!)
Jacob Goldstein, Money: The True History of a Made-Up Thing (2020). I could never quite figure out the fascination with the gold standard. As I write this, an acre of good Iowa farmland is a little over four ounces of gold. But what makes it worth 4 ounces instead of 3? Or 5? Or 1? Nothing. Money, in whatever form--specie, wooden discs, pieces of paper--is worth whatever we agree it’s worth. Which is scary. But the stuff is just too useful to do without. Jacob Goldstein explains why it’s useful and how it works in this entertaining and informative text.
Peter S. Canellos, The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America’s Judicial Hero (2021). Justice Harlan dissented, often alone, from some of the worst Supreme Court decisions of his time: The Civil Rights Cases (1883), which gutted the Civil War Amendments; United States vs. E.C. Knight Co. (1895), which upheld the legality of monopolies; Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), which instituted the “separate but equal” doctrine; and Lochner vs. New York (1905), which held that a maximum hours law (and, by extension, most government regulation of business) violated “freedom of contract.” Some of Harlan’s dissents are startlingly prescient. This is a complete biography of Harlan but Canellos, a lawyer, and really comes into his own when discussing the court cases and how they fit into the development of American law. In reading this, I came to wonder if the logic of some recent conservative decisions will eventually be seen to be as tortured as the majority opinions in Civil Rights Cases and Plessy vs. Ferguson.
Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (2017). In 1964, Ellsberg and a professional colleague saw Dr. Strangelove. “We came out into the afternoon sunlight, dazed by the light and the film, both agreeing that what we had just seen was, essentially, a documentary.” He was in a position to know. Prior to becoming famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers, Dr. Ellsberg was instrumental in formulating nuclear war policy. In the book, Ellsberg tells some truly scary “war stories” from his nuclear policy career in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. In the second part of the book, he shows that our nuclear policy evolved naturally from our World War II practices, in which it became acceptable to bomb civilians in cities. Finally, he proposes a plan to back off from the nuclear brink. He recognizes “zero” isn’t politically practical (for now), so advocates reducing arsenals to a level low enough that civilization might survive, while still being high enough to deter an enemy rational enough to be deterred.
Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (2020). Erik Larson has written another historical page-turner. The Splendid and the Vile starts the day Winston Churchill became Prime Minister, 10 May 1940, and ends one year later. Churchill’s ascension coincided with the German attack on France; the first anniversary with Rudolph Hess’s flight to Scotland and the end of the Blitz. This is not military, political, or analytical history. It is, rather, the very human story of people in war. https://brainonbooksmason.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-splendid-and-vile.html
Sonia Purnell, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II (2019). The story of Virginia Hall, who worked very successfully under cover in France throughout the war, first for the British and then the Americans. After the war, she worked for the CIA until retiring in the 1960’s. Sex discrimination affected her entire career: her achievements were often denigrated and men with far less undercover experience kept getting promoted over her. It was only after Virginia’s death and a flurry of obituaries that the CIA belatedly recognized her work. Purnell writes in a straight forward, journalistic style, which means the book is only as interesting as its material. Luckily, Purnell has amazing material to work with.
Joan Wyndham, Love Lessons: A Wartime Diary (1985) and Love is Blue (1987). These frank books are the record of an ordinary teenager and young adult, obsessed with relationships and sex, in an extraordinary time. 17 when World War II began, she spends the first two years in London in the artsy Chelsea community. The blitz finally drives her to join the W.A.A.F., where she works with units that track air raids. Wyndham’s prose can be quite good. Her descriptions of being bombed and of bombed-out streets are first rate. She’s also a sharp observer of people; the characters of her set are delineated by her descriptions of their appearance and wry accounts of their doings. On the other hand, I kept wishing she’d grow up. https://brainonbooksmason.blogspot.com/2021/03/a-different-blitz-memoir.html
William Manchester, The Death of a President (1967). Manchester’s book about the Kennedy assassination takes over 600 pages to describe the events of 20-25 November 1963. I had trouble putting it down. He first describes the last two days of Kennedy’s presidency in a way that really makes you miss the guy. (From our modern perspective: he did a great job burnishing the Kennedy myth.) He then tells us in heart-rending detail what came after. I felt I was reliving the events as I read it.
Lisa Napoli, Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR (2021). A joint biography of Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer, Nina Totenberg, and Cokie Roberts. In addition to covering their early and professional lives, tells the history of public radio, from its days as “educational radio” through the founding of National Public Radio in 1970, ending with the financial crisis of 1983. An epilogue brings us up to the present day.
David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: Oil, Money, Murder and the Birth of the FBI (2017). David Grann tells a chilling story of a murderous white conspiracy that stole oil wealth from the Osage Indians in the early 20th century. https://brainonbooksmason.blogspot.com/2021/02/killers-of-flower-moon.html
Josephus, The Jewish War (Bellum Judaicum). Translated by G.A. Williamson (1959). Revised edition with new introduction, notes, and appendices by E. Mary Smallwood (1981). Account of the Jewish rebellion of 66-73 CE, written by a man who fought on both sides. Smallwood’s appendices and extensive notes are essential for someone, like me, who knows only what he was taught decades ago in Sunday School. I would not recommend this as a first book on the history of the era. If I had to do it over again, I’d find a popular secular history and read it first. Then, if you want to explore original sources, pick up Josephus.
David C. Wilcock, Foreign Aid and Agricultural Development in Africa: Lessons From a Career (2021). Rather dry but very informative volume by a retired agricultural economist with a long career with the US Agency for International Development (AID), the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and as a consultant. The main lesson: nothing is as simple as it seems.
Tony Platter, Exoneration Finally: The true story of a Vietnam reporter’s fight to prevent conviction by the US government (2021). The story of Plattner’s seven-year fight to exonerate his name after being accused of publishing classified information in Aviation Week. The book is far from a dispassionate account, pervaded as it is by palpable outrage and overly frequent protestations of wounded innocence. But it’s a good story, generally well told. https://brainonbooksmason.blogspot.com/2021/08/exoneration-finally.html
Racism and Sexism
Imani Perry, Breathe: A Letter to My Sons (2019). A deeply personal meditation on racism, how it affects her young children, and how she must teach them to navigate life in a racist, white world. Similar to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me but, if anything, more gut-wrenching.
Martha C. Nussbaum, Citadels of Pride: Sexual Assault, Accountability,
and Reconciliation (2021). Powerful,
masterly review of the evolution of attitudes and law about sexual harassment
and assault over the last half century.
Nussbaum holds appointments in both the University of Chicago Law School
and philosophy department, and writes with deep knowledge of her subject. Highly recommended.
Politics and Government
Michael Lewis, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (2021). In 2018’s The Fifth Risk, Lewis explained the dangers of government incompetence and of politicizing technical institutions. And then COVID-19 came along and gave us a real-life example. Following the swine flu debacle in the 1970’s, the CDC started to be politicized; the Trump administration accelerated that and dismantled its pandemic response unit, which helps explain the early, fumbling response to the pandemic. Lewis, one of the best writers of long form journalism, follows two people, Charity Dean and Carter Mescher, who figured out early on how serious COVID was going to be and fought to get effective action. Highly recommended.
Alexander S. Vindman, Here, Right Matters: An American Story (2021). Autobiography of the lieutenant colonel who first reported Trump’s attempt to extort an investigation of the Bidens from the president of Ukraine. In one sense, a typical patriotic American story of an immigrant who came to this country, found opportunity not available in his home country, made good, and chose to serve. In another, a damning inside look at the Trump administration.
Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century (2021). I suspect most people bought this for delicious dirt on Trump. There is that, but the book is primarily about the causes of the populist surge: rising inequality and lack of opportunity for the people and places left behind. Hill structures the narrative around her own rise from the devastated, de-industrialized north east of England, paying careful attention to the help she got along the way. She includes disturbing parallels between the U.S., U.K., and post-Soviet Russia and warns that unless we address the opportunity gap, things will only get worse.
Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? (2020). Argues that the attitudes generated by meritocracy are at the root of our political problems. Those who succeed take credit for their own success and blame the unsuccessful for their failures. Those who fail to rise blame themselves and resent the successful for disrespecting them. The system results in increasing inequality, increasing resentment, and, eventually, political instability. A perceptive work that challenged my preconceptions. https://brainonbooksmason.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-tyranny-of-merit.html
Bob Woodward & Robert Costa, Peril (2021). Although sold as a 1/6 Insurrection book, it doesn’t end there. Covers the 2020 presidential campaigns, pushing through the COVID relief bill, and the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. Biden comes through as very hands-on; Trump as completely unreconstructed. Recommended for fans of Woodward-style insider gossip.
Literary Fiction
Jane Austen, The Watsons (c. 1804) and Joan Aiken, Emma Watson (1996). The Watsons is a partial novel, believed to have been abandoned about time of Austen’s father’s death in 1805. It comments on some of the issues raised later in Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility, but in a livelier and more openly judgmental style. Joan Aiken finishes the work in the same lively, judgmental style.
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814). We love the heroines of Austen’s earlier novels, Elizabeth Bennet and Elinor Dashwood, for their intelligence, wit, and initiative. In Mansfield Park, written a decade later, the witty, ambitious one, Mary Crawford, loses out to the timorous, self-righteous Fanny Price. It’s as if Aunt Jane is apologizing for her earlier, irreverent work. It may be why Mansfield Park is one of her less popular novels. That’s a shame because there is so much in it to enjoy, particularly the pen portraits of manipulative Aunt Norris, dimwitted Mr. Rushworth, indolent Lady Bertram, and, yes, the witty Crawford siblings.
Joan Aiken, Mansfield Revisited (1985). A thoroughly entertaining sequel to Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, focusing on Fanny’s younger sister, Susan Price. In keeping with modern sensibilities, Aiken rehabilitates Mary Crawford.
Lauren Oyler, Fake Accounts (2021). The unnamed narrator, already distressed over Trump’s election, discovers her boyfriend is secretly a QAnon-type conspiracy blogger just before he is killed in an accident. She moves to Berlin and lies a lot as she experiments with creating fake personas in real-life interactions (dates, job interviews). A meditation on social media, fakery, and the difference between our public and private selves, that asks whether anything or anyone can be trusted. Literate, sexy, and often quite funny.
Richard Powers, The Overstory (2018). This Pulitzer Prize-winning book follows six people as they try, in various ways, inside and outside the system, legal and illegal, peaceful and violent, to save the American forests. Partially based on Suzanne Simard’s work on forest ecology. The writing is a gorgeous evocation of the natural world, combined with a plot that sweeps you along. Readers may be disappointed by the uncertain ending.
Science Fiction
Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (2020). In 2024, a killer heatwave kills an estimated 20 million in India. After, the UN creates a Ministry for the Future to represent the interests of generations yet unborn, and to help with implementation of the Paris Climate Accords. The world is saved from global catastrophe by a combination of clever government action, decentralized reforms, and a little terrorism.
Martin L. Shoemaker, The Last Dance (2019). In 2083, Captain Nick Aames of the Mars Cycler Aldrin refuses an order to take on new decks and is investigated for mutiny by a young IG, Park Yerim. Aames is an in-your-face perfectionist who doesn’t tolerate fools, and over the years he has built a fanatically loyal crew. Shoemaker spins a good yarn – several of them actually, as the flashbacks are novelettes in their own right. But Aames, to me, is a fundamentally unlikeable character. There are many models of leadership, and it rather mystifies me why drill-sergeant-type leaders like Aames continue to fascinate.
Gerald Brennan, Zero Phase: Apollo 13 on the Moon (2017). An alternate history in which the Odyssey’s oxygen tank blows while Aquarius is on the moon. Told from the point of view of its commander, Jim Lovell. Some fun technical detail, but overall not very good.
Political Fiction, Thrillers, Romance Novels
Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War (2021). Revives the tradition of couching a political-military warning in the form of a World War III scenario. On the technical front, 2034 seems to be relitigating the 1970’s and 80’s argument between “go big” and “go smart”. On the political front, 2034 argues that America has lost its way. As one of its Indian characters says, “America didn’t used to start wars. It used to finish them. But now it is the reverse; now you start wars and don’t finish them.” The resulting loss of legitimacy is endangering the US’s position as the dominant world power and keeper of the peace. 2034 is a well-written, thought-provoking page turner that propelled me along, even though I knew (more or less) how it was going to end. https://brainonbooksmason.blogspot.com/2021/08/visions-of-world-war-iii.html
Hillary Rodham Clinton & Louise Penny, State of Terror (2021). Terrorists have planted dirty bombs in three American cities. As Secretary of State Ellen Adams races to find out where they are, she uncovers a far-ranging domestic conspiracy to overthrow the government. Veteran mystery writer Penny has teamed up with Clinton to write a taut political thriller. Political junkies will like the pen portraits of typical Washington types.
Stacey Abrams, While Justice Sleeps (2021). Abrams’s first novel published under her own name. Justice Wynn of the Supreme Court is rendered comatose and, weirdly, a young first-year law clerk is named his guardian. She discovers he has been privately researching a controversial case before the court, involving a biotech merger that may be based on unethical experimentation or falsified results. She races to uncover the truth Justice Wynn was working to find at great personal risk to herself. An inside-Washington legal and political thriller that’s just crying for Hollywood treatment. Engrossing, swept me along.
“Selena Montgomery” (Stacey Abrams), Rules of Engagement (2001). This is the first of eight romance novels Stacey Abrams published under the Montgomery pseudonym. A pair of undercover agents undertake a dangerous mission in a fictional middle eastern country while being constantly distracted by each others’ smokin’ hot bods. Too much romance and not enough intrigue for this reader.
Diana Gabaldon, Outlander (1991). A WWII combat nurse, on her second honeymoon immediately after the war, finds herself transported to the rebellious Scottish Highlands of the 1740’s in this engrossing historical romance novel. It’s a well written monster of a book (main text is 652 trade paperback pages). For those of you familiar with the TV series, the first season closely follows this book, sometimes scene for scene.
Elinor Lipman, Rachel to the Rescue (2021). This starts out as a political satire of Trump-era Washington, but then morphs into a sweet romantic comedy. Includes some sharp observations of typical DC types.
Other
Carol Bly, Letters from the Country (1981). Collection of essays from small town Minnesota, originally published by Minnesota Public Radio from 1973-79. Quality is uneven, but some are very good. I particularly recommend the first and the last, “From the Lost Swede Towns” and “Growing Up Expressive.”
Evelyn Millis Duvall, PhD, Why Wait Till Marriage? (1966?). I found this mid-60’s text while unpacking my books and decided to read it because I thought it would be a hoot. It turned out to be more of a grim reminder. Recommended for anyone suffering from 60s nostalgia. https://brainonbooksmason.blogspot.com/2021/08/why-wait-arguments-for-chastity-in-1960s.html
Zachary Auburn, How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety (2016). Satirizes far right arguments by reformulating them for cats. Besides the title essay, includes essays on several other topics to talk to your cat about, such as evolution, abstinence, and satanism. This was probably funnier in 2016, before Trump was elected, than it is now. Although it has its moments, not recommended.
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