Review: The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel’s Borderlands

The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel’s Borderlands by Amir Tibon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amir Tibon lived on Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7. With this wife and two young daughters, they directly experienced the terror onslaught of that horrific day. Hiding in their safe room, they could hear the mortars dropping, the bullets firing, and the Arabic spoken by the invaders. They stayed in their safe room for most of the day, only exiting once Tibon’s father, a retired IDF general who had rushed from Tel Aviv to save his family, had arrived. Noam Tibon’s story, as he and his wife make their way to Kibbutz, is an adventure all in itself.

Tibon is also a journalist for the Israeli paper, Haaretz, and knew he had to tell this story. He does it in three levels. First is the personal: his and his family’s experiences of that day and how they came to be living in Nahal Oz. He also tells us about what happens to many of the other kibbutz members. Second is historical: the history of the kibbutz and the history of relevant aspects of the conflict. Third is the political: what was happening in the spheres of politics and war. These are neatly woven together to present what that gives the book something more than being a memoir, history, or analysis book. Mostly Tibon refrains from analysis: though his views certainly come through. Netanyahu and his government do not come out well here. Tibon places a lot of blame on Netanyahu’s shoulders -- with at times good reason although the other side of things is not told.

At times this was a tough book to read; the accounts of what was happening on the kibbutz and to the families there was overwhelming. The courage and resilience it took to get through this is almost unimaginable. The book ends on a note of hope: for the hostages, for return to the kibbutz, and for peace.



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Review: Bright Orange for the Shroud

Bright Orange for the Shroud by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another McGee book, there is much to say that I haven't said in previous reviews. McGee is a great character; very much in the the knight-errant anti-hero category. One thing I am struck by as I make my way through these books, is that McGee's 'salvage work' is more often about people and not the goods he is trying to recover. So many of the novels, including this one, turn on McGee working to help rebuild, salvage, the individual or individuals he is helping. Given how this one ends, it is even more obvious here.

There was less of MacDonald's social commentary here, though certainly not absent. Though I often don't agree with McGee's view of things (at least not in total), it is always an interesting perspective to consider. He can be a bit too cynical at times for me, but he is picking out important threads.

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Review: The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Solution

The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Solution by Greg Lukianoff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Having read and followed Lukianoff (and Haidt) for years, there was not much that was new here. But it was still helpful and interesting to apply the thinking they have developed applied to the phenomenon of canceling. Rikki Schlott adds her experience and expertise to this analysis. They examine many cases of cancelling: from different kinds of institutions, for a range of reasons, from the left, from the right, and so on. Many of these are harrowing examples of illiberalism that showcases the harm and damage down. They also present useful conceptual tools to help analyze these cases, as well as steps forward we can take to reduce the phenomenon. An important contribution to cases for free speech and liberty.

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Review: Small Mercies

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lehane at his best. Boston noir: nuanced, real characters; trying to get by in a corrupted and imperfect world. Mary Pat is a fascinating character. She's a classic anti-hero. She's not conventionally heroic, her motives are not necessarily pure but she does what has to be done. She struggles to make sense of the situation in which she finds herself, but doesn't foreswore her own responsibility for it. She's also a bad ass.

The setting of the story is also interesting. In some ways it seems incidental to the main plot. But besides giving heighten tension (and disquiet at the overt racism of the time), the issue of busing is another instance of what I think is one of the main leitmotifs of the book. Parents wanting what is best (or what they think is best) for their children: trying to give them what they think they need. Another related motif is that in many cases what the parents are doing is actually harmful for their children. Nearly every character is a parent and struggles with doing what is best for their kids -- even though many fail miserably at it. That's part of the tragic element here: most parents love their kids and want what is best for them; but often we don't know what that is or how to give it to them. And as one character muses: we can't keep them safe. We can teach them, we can love them, we can do our best, but we ultimately can't keep them safe.


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Review: Retrieving Aristotle in an Age of Crisis

Retrieving Aristotle in an Age of Crisis by David Roochnik
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is rich and profound work of philosophy. Roochnik in just over 200 pages is able to explain and defend Aristotle in a modern context. From the title, I expected more of a direct analysis of how Aristotle's ideas might be used as a way to help navigate and even cure our 'Age of Crisis,' The book, however, is far more an explication and articulation of Aristotle's entire philosophic system. Obviously Roochnik does not got into great detail or dive into every puzzle and paradox of Aristotelian thought. But he is able to present the system, the world-view of Aristotle, from his metaphysics to his ethics to his politics. In this way it is immensely helpful and important. And further, it is this analysis of the Aristotelian world-view that Roochnik does, usually indirectly, use as a way of navigating our current age.

Roochnik also provides a defense, at times a limited and circumspect defense, of Aristotle's philosophical arguments and claims against modern critiques. By casting Aristotle's thought as fundamentally about 'saving the phenomena," Roochnik is able to show that some of these critiques miss the point or fail to hit their mark because they don't actually see what Aristotle is doing. Aristotle stars with the human experience of the human world and moves out from there to explain and understand, never losing that foundation or context.

I found the book fascinating, a joy (but challenge) to read, and insightful. Much like his Beautiful City: The Dialectical Character of Plato's "Republic", I found it illuminating and helpful for my teaching and my own understand of these great thinkers.

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Review: The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America

The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America by Coleman Hughes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a follower of Hughes work, there was not a lot new here but it was great to have it laid out and presented in one spot with an integrated throughline. In this short volume, Hughes presents the history of the civil rights movement and its colorblind (race-neutral) approach. He then shows how the new so-called anti-racist thinkers are actually quite racist; dubbing them neoracists. These are the likes of Kendi, DiAngelo, Hannah-Jones, and Coates. They peddle ideas about race that are wrong, not rooted in reality or data, and harmful to the goals of more equality. He shows how inconsistent and contrary their ideas are to the civil rights movement, and Dr. King in particular. Hughes also discusses better, more effective ways to think about race, and how to work towards more equality.

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Review: The Dead Sister

The Dead Sister by Jonathan Dunsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This fast-paced, action-packed hard-boiled detective novel is set in Israel in 1949. Lapid is hired to solve the murder of a young Arab woman not too long after the end of Israel's war of independence. This provides for some interesting drama. Lapid is a classic hard-boiled detective. He has strict code and sense of justice; though it is not always aligned with the conventional sense of morality and justice. Though there are strong forces lined up against him, Lapid won't back down from seeing that justice is done. Highly recommended!

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Review: Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century

Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century by Orson Scott Card
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A great collection; it covers a wider variety of the history and breadth of styles of 2oth century science fiction. I enjoyed nearly all the stories; some were excellent. I would have liked a bit more context for the stories themselves -- at least some sense of why Card chose these particular stories. Was it just that the story tickled him? Was it influential? Did it have some impact on the field or the author? Card provides a short bio of the author, but I would have liked more on the story itself and the why of its inclusion.

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Review: Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot

Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot by Reed Farrel Coleman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Coleman brings a bit of the hard-boiled style to Parker's Stone. The writing style and depth is better than Brandman's and Coleman definitely brings his own interpretation to the characters. Brandman was doing an imitation, a cover of the classics if you will. Coleman is more taking Parker's creation and doing an interpretation. He's not trying to imitate Parker or produce something that might fool someone into thinking it was Parker. Instead he's keep the themes and core melody, but adding elements that are more his own. Some people obviously don't like that; but I think it works. There are elements that are not quite right -- the main one being Stone's heavier drinking. I don't have a problem with Stone drinking more again, but I think Coleman might have provided some context for that and built towards. And while Coleman's Stone is not as witty nor does the dialogue have quite the same pop as Parker (who's could?!); Coleman does a good job of getting the essence of it right.

The story itself is more interesting and compelling than Brandman's novellas. This twice as long as Brandman's and so the story has time to develop and reach a conclusion. I like the fleshing out of some Stone's baseball background and how that ties into the present. That feels like a nice connection to Parker's writing as well.


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Review: Robert B. Parker's Damned If You Do: A Jesse Stone Novel

Robert B. Parker's Damned If You Do: A Jesse Stone Novel by Michael Brandman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Of the three Brandman Jesse Stone novels, I think this one was the best. It still had several of the flaws that the first two had, but I think Brandman was starting to get more of a feel for it. There were more Parker-esque type characters, set ups, and resolutions. There were a few things that were off, but the story was also tighter than the previous two.

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Review: Robert B. Parker's Fool Me Twice

Robert B. Parker's Fool Me Twice by Michael Brandman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Like the first Brandman Stone novel, this has the feel of the Jesse Stone tv show. The Jesse Stone character is well sketched, but we don't get as much of the inner life of the character. The supporting cast like Molly and Suits are fun but thin. The resolution of the plot lines is rather quickly, without much fuss, and unsatisfying in its obviousness. Nevertheless, I do enjoy being in the world Parker created and left us.

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Review: End Game

End Game by David Baldacci
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Exciting and fast paced, Baldacci delivers. Robie and Reel team up and solve Blue Man's disappearance. As usual, they leave a lot of bad guy bodies in their wake.

Reading performance is top notched. I'm glad they have two narrators; it helps to distinguish the characters.

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Review: The October 7 War: Israel's Battle for Security in Gaza

The October 7 War: Israel's Battle for Security in Gaza by Seth J. Frantzman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An important book insofar as it provides an important journalistic record of the first six months or so of the October 7 war. Frantzman condenses his interviews with many IDF soldiers, former hostages, and Israelis that survived that October 7 attack. These accounts are important to have on record.

Being published as quickly as it was, there are bound to be errors: both of fact and of grammar. The writing itself at times was a bit a staccato, sometimes repetitive, and the timeline wasn't always as clear as I would have liked. I think these were largely signs of the book being rushed to be published.

One of the things I most interesting in the book were the accounts of the new technologies and fighting tactics enabled by the former. Over the 6 months of fighting in Gaza, the IDF learned on the go to fight in new ways and with new technology. Frantzman does a good job of describing this.

The bigger picture analysis was probably the weakest part. That wasn't really the point of the book and in many ways it was too early in the process to get too much into that.

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Review: The Eye of Darkness

The Eye of Darkness by George Mann
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't know why, but the High Republic era is just not doing it for me. I don't hate it or anything, but as I've written in nearly every review of a HRE book, I find it hard to connect. The characters feel a bit wooden, cut outs. Maybe it's just the different authors for all these books, it's hard to get a consistent voice. There isn't a lot of character development by the Jedi. Some of the side characters are often the most interesting. A lot happens, but so little actually advances.

I'm a little concerned that the conflict with the Nihil is becoming too big and too protracted. There is a tough balance in making the Nihil a threat without turning this into a major, all out war (which would seem to run against canon).

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Review: Troubled Blood

Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This might be the best mystery of the series so far. I really had no clue until the reveal; there were many threads to follow, lots of red herrings covering the clues that in retrospect were right there! The narration is perfect; it really helps set the tone and mood, and helps with the characterization as well. Just like with Harry Potter, Rowling is so good at portraying fascinating characters.

Strike and Robin's relationship continues to deepen and grow. This is intriguing but I also worry how about Rowling is going to handle this as the series goes.

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Review: Central Station

Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a really interesting, and different, book. There is not much plot, it's more a patchwork of interwoven characters and little vignettes. But the characters and setting are so imaginative, so bizarre, and sometimes weird. It combines elements from many different genres, particularly fantasy and sci-fi, and has several callbacks to classic sci-fi.

I would have preferred a plot, a focus or problem that gets resolved by the characters through their choices. But this was still enjoyable because Tidhar crafts such creative settings and plays with the unfolding of future history in fascinating ways. (I was sometimes more curious about the past that is alluded to in the book, than the book!)

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Review: Rise and Kill First: The Inside Story and Secret Operations of Israel's Assassination Program

Rise and Kill First: The Inside Story and Secret Operations of Israel's Assassination Program by Ronen Bergman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an amazing work. It is detailed and specific (where it has to be and where it can be). It covers a wide breadth of Israeli history, starting in the pre-state period and runs up through Obama presidency. At times it reads like a Gabriel Allon novel: the level of detail and narrative for some of the operations is incredible: exciting, scary, thrilling.

It is, in part, a history of Israel: a history through the lens of fighting for survival and trying to get the upper hand in its wars through covert operations. But through this lens Bergman shines a light on many facets of Israel society beyond the Mossad or other Israeli covert agencies.

But it also humbling and a difficult to process work, for a Zionist like myself. I hold no illusions of Israel's perfection: moral or technical, but it is still a challenge to look at some of those failings squarely. There were many mistakes, errors: killing the wrong person, failing to kill the 'correct' person (missed opportunities to have taken out consequential targets), killing of innocents (so-called collateral damage). There were so many points when one has to stop and wonder how history might have been different if this particular event in time had turned out differently.

The two main questions Bergman wants the read to struggle with is: Were these targeted killings effective? Were they are justified? The answer, it seems to me after reading this book, is very mixed. Some operations were both, some where justified, but failed to achieved either strategic or tactical goals; and others were not justified. Some of these latter might have been mistakes about identity, but sometimes they were from overzealousness, overconfidence, or complacency.

In the end, Bergman's answer seems to be that while Israel's killing operations where quite often tactical successes, the long-term strategic consequences have been and are ambiguous at best, but in some cases worse. Worse, not so much because of the assassination itself, but either from unintended consequences due to the assassination or from the overreliance on this tool instead of other strategies. Personally, I am not sure. Trying to figure how things might have gone, the counterfactual, can be a fool's errand: we just can't know how things would have turned it out, so it is hard to compare scenarios. But the morality of such killing is troubling to me -- though better one or two operatives than tens of thousands of conscripts on a battlefield. And many of those killed deserved what they had coming to them, but I am not sure that justifies it. I'd rather live in world where diplomacy solved everything. But we don't. We live in world where there are evil people trying to do evil things and sometimes the only thing to do is to kill such people. But that's a dangerous and perilous road.



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Review: Nine Dragons

Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A lot of classic Bosch here, with some twists. Unlike most Bosch novels, a good chunk takes place outside of LA. This is also the first of the Bosch novels to bring in Bosch's daughter, Maddie, in a substantial way and we begin to see the important role she will play in his life and the books going forward. It opens up a very different side of Bosch. Even though he's had partners and love interests, he's really a lone operator. But Maddie is going to force Bosch to have to adapt. It'll be interesting to see the similarities and dissimilarities between the tv show relationship and the book relationship.

Overall the story in this was action packed, the mystery took several different turns. Some of it a bit far-fetched, but kept you guessing.

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Review: Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought

Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought by David Biale
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

David Biale’s survey of Jewish secular thought is fascinating. It is wide-ranging, covering from the premodern periods into the medieval and modern eras and up through twentieth century thinkers. While Biale does bring in the various precursor traditions, most of the book, understandably, focuses on ways in which the Jewish thinkers dealt with, wrestled with, and tried to reconcile the various movements of modernity: rationalism, mysticism, nationalism, and so on. There is a way to read this book as a history of European modernity from the Jewish perspective(s). As such, much of it centers around Spinoza: his specific contributions to what becomes secular thought and also how later thinkers take and use Spinoza’s ideas for their own secularism.

The book looks at idea from philosophy, language, culture, or nationalism; and explores how Jewish thinkers responded to, innovated in, and rejected aspects of these on their paths to and through secularism. One of the themes, though not explicitly so, is that much of Jewish thought is focused on what it means be to be Jewish and to be a Jew. This takes on heightened importance in secular thought where one cannot merely point to religion, but even the religious traditions in Judaism struggle with this issue -- as evidenced in the Talmud itself. There are so many ways to be Jewish, even religiously, that this question is inescapable. And importantly, it provides the space within which secularism is born and grows.

Biale highlights key thinkers and how they deal with these issues. Some of these are more obscure, others are well known (figures such as Freud, Einstein, and Ben-Gurion). The intellectual tradition is rich and fruitful (though there are many dead ends as well). It is not a long book, though at times dense. By necessity, much is left out in order to provide the focus it needs. There are extensive notes and references for those wishing to use this as a jumping off point. I profited much from book and think it will provide a framework for future thought.




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Review: Leviathan Falls

Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Coming to the end of a book or book series that one loves is always bittersweet. It’s thrilling to see the story completed; to experience the totality of the work. But it’s sad to know it’s over: that one has to say good bye to the characters and to the world they inhabit. The Expanse series is just such an experience. The authors created indelible characters and set them in a fascinating universe. It never got dull or predictable; it balanced the small intimate moments and the cosmic level struggles. I appreciate how the characters (or at least some of them!) struggle with the ethical dilemmas and choices they face: there is a deep respect and open-eyed love for humanity in these books.

I wasn’t sure how the authors would land this plane: though I suspected something like the way it did as the only way. Nevertheless, the particulars were well-executed and helped to tie the whole series together. It is sad and tragic but also filled with hope.


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