Claudius The God – Robert Graves, 1935 ★★★★

Perils of Absolute Rule

A sequel to any great novel faces a steep challenge measuring up, especially when the original works well enough alone. After barely surviving the perils of the world’s most dangerous family, only to be made Emperor of Rome, how can poor Claudius entertain us now?

With Claudius The God, it is no longer a matter of surviving, but reigning. Will Clau-Clau-Claudius, the stuttering, staggering, drooling leader of the greatest empire ever known, make a royal hash of his empire, or restore a measure of Roman sensibility and prosperity?

For much of the novel, he seems on the road to creating marked improvement for his people and his legacy. Then he realizes it isn’t good to be the king, not for him and not for his people.

The First Salute – Barbara Tuchman, 1988 ★★½

Helping America Happen

Creating the United States was the work of more than one nation. What commercial and strategic concerns went into its birth? And what really cost the British crown their 13 colonies?

Barbara Tuchman takes a long view in appreciating the forces at play in the struggle, for example spotlighting the Netherlands’ bloody overthrow of Catholic rule in the 1500s. Subtitled “A View of the American Revolution,” the book explains how French and Dutch support, along with British ineptitude, helped realize the United States.

If you can tolerate the author hopping approach to developing a thesis and multiple detours into 20^th century politics, you may enjoy this colorful, fast-moving-once-it-gets-going account.

80 Million Eyes – Ed McBain, 1966 ★★

Lights, Cameras, Murder

If a sign of a great author is making a book readable even when there is little in way of story, then here is Exhibit A in Ed McBain’s greatness. This book is fast-paced and gripping, capturing authentic moments of life on its margins. But the plotwork falls short of form.

If you are already familiar with and enjoy the 87^th Precinct series of police procedurals, you can find things to extend your engagement with the series. But if you are a newbie wanting to give McBain a fair shot, this is not the book to start on.

80 Million Eyes is more a killer-and-filler entry.

The Bill James Baseball Abstract 1988 – Bill James, 1988 ★★★★

Knowing When to Leave

Bill James often talked about baseball careers being like watermelons. Even with the best of them, you had what he called the meat of the melon, the center part that was the ripest and easiest section to enjoy, but to get to them, you have to deal with rinds.

“Whenever you sign a player over the age of 28, you are buying into a market that is certain to decline,” he writes about the 1987 Baltimore Orioles, a team with a fair number of 30-and-over players.

Age is the great killer of talent, James would say. Apparently, the same thinking guided James himself, who made the 1988 edition of the Bill James Baseball Abstract his swansong, just a dozen years after it began. In a postscript, he claims to have lost his joy.

Nine Stories – J. D. Salinger, 1953 ★★★★½

Living in the Material World

How many times does one pick up a well-read book expecting one thing only to be surprised? It’s less common for me as I get older, but there are surprises. One of the happiest of them came recently, re-reading this notoriously downgraded staple of suburban libraries.

What you get here is a case for the short story as the supreme form of fiction. Each piece is its own jewel of storytelling economy and creative ambiguity. And as thematically linked ruminations on the human condition, they take on added luster in the form of concept album.

His Vedantic philosophy may not be for everyone, but one doesn’t need to be an acolyte to appreciate J. D. Salinger’s finest hour.

The Citizen Kane Book – Herman J. Mankiewicz & Orson Welles with Pauline Kael, 1971 ★★★★

No Pain, No Kane

Great art isn’t always about betrayal, but the two go together more than you might expect. In the case of one of the world’s most admired films, the stab in the back went deep, and if you accept the backstory given here, reaped its karmic reward with interest.

The shooting script for 1941’s Citizen Kane is combined with a groundbreaking essay on the film and its creation by Pauline Kael, longtime movie critic for The New Yorker. While no substitute for watching the film, the book makes fascinating supplemental material.

Kael’s essay, originally published in consecutive issues of her magazine, got most of the attention when the book was published in 1971. While praising the film on the whole, Kael made clear its greatness in written form was the work of Herman J. Mankiewicz rather than the film’s director and star, Orson Welles.

America In Search Of Itself – Theodore H. White, 1982 ★★½

Once More Unto the Breach with Teddy White

Before Ronald Reagan’s election as president in 1980, American politics had fallen into a rut. Elections had been between two clear known quantities who generally agreed on the state of the world and what the United States needed to do. Differences centered on process, not goals.

Reagan was different. While fellow Republicans saw some use for government, his view was far more negative. After decades of expanding federal reach, Reagan wanted not only to cut taxes but slash the bureaucracy that made Big Government big.

For many liberals, the arrival of Reagan in 1980 came like a slow-motion nightmare. With an incumbent president seemingly powerless under the grip of inflation and an embassy full of American hostages in Iran, Reagan’s ascendency had the makings of an existential crisis.