John Adams – David McCullough, 2001 ★★★

Looking Out for Number Two

Popular historians need more than get their facts straight; they must entertain while they edify. Few did this better than David McCullough, whose biography on John Adams won him his second Pulitzer Prize. 

Often overlooked for his contributions to the American Revolution and its aftermath, or else depicted as duller or plainer than his fellow Patriots, Adams was due for a reappraisal. But in rebalancing Adams’s legacy as a selfless prime mover of his nation’s birth, did McCullough push too hard in the other direction?

Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: You don’t mind it so much when the case presented – however dubious in several particulars – is this engaging, humorous, and enjoyable to read. Adams at times seems to breathe through these pages.

Asterix And The Big Fight – René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo, 1966 ★★★★

It Takes a Village

Enemy occupation involves more than one type of opponent for those engaged in active resistance. There are the occupiers themselves, and then there are collaborationists, people who accept their new overlords and expect others around them to do the same.

In the case of the unnamed Gaul village which Asterix calls home, the collaborationists are often more trouble than the Romans, never mind history. Back in the day, independent-minded Gauls didn’t have recourse to a magic potion that made them indomitable.

For a long stretch of Asterix And The Big Fight, neither does Asterix. That departure from formula is one big reason this seventh entry in the classic comic series is so much fun.

King Lear – William Shakespeare, 1605-1606 ★★★★½

Grimmest of the Grim

Of all Shakespeare’s plays, King Lear hits the hardest. It offers the grimmest scenes, the coldest ending, and the bleakest worldview, turning the classic elements of tragedy on its head. Instead of offering catharsis, it presents despair.

But is it bottomless despair? That depends on the audience. In its early stagings, what the audience saw was quite different than what appears today. Theatrical managers as late as the 1800s famously pulled back on the carnage and even gave their audiences a revised happy ending.

Reading the play today is to understand the impulse. MacBeth wipes out an entire family, but no one in that play is as reduced by the human toll as we see Lear and Gloucester become. Hamlet may touch on existential themes, but the lack of any overarching morality is bracing here:

The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul – Douglas Adams, 1988 ★½

The Gods Must be Crazy

Can a hit record prove the key to solving a mysterious beheading? Will a horoscope’s dire prediction prove for once to be correct? Will a refrigerator’s possibly sinister secret force Dirk Gently to make an overdue renovation in his ultra-messy apartment?

After some 240 pages, I’m not sure I can answer any of those question, nor care very much either way. The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul manages to be rather long, very dark, and wholly frustrating finale to the Dirk Gently mysteries.

I don’t know where to begin. Let’s start with the gods.

Put Out More Flags – Evelyn Waugh, 1942 ★★

Mind You There's a War on

In September 1939 a 21-year British holiday from history came to a sharp end. War was declared and Poland carved up by Germany and Russia as the rest of the world looked on. It was time to strike back.

Only it wasn’t, not right away. First came something called the “Phoney War,” eight months of waiting and hoping. Just two years later, Evelyn Waugh set about mocking that time of simmering conflict and self-rationalization was as experienced by London’s smart set.

Put Out More Flags is a satire written in the anything-goes spirit of Waugh’s earlier, peacetime works. Government ministries set about planning ridiculous strategies, seeing the enemy everywhere but where they actually are, getting men killed by sheer lack of imagination.

Under Kilimanjaro – Ernest Hemingway, 2005 ★★★★

Iceberg Turned Upside-down

Like for many others, my Ernest Hemingway studies began with a teacher in front of a blackboard with an iceberg drawn on it.

“Notice with the water level we only see the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “That’s what Hemingway did with his writing. There is so much underneath he doesn’t explain, but you know it’s there. All you get is the basic plot and some character dialogue. The reader does the work.”

With Under Kilimanjaro, that concept is literally turned upside down. In its 445 pages, what you get is pretty much everything Hemingway experienced on his second safari in Africa except a plot. There are multiple story arcs, but no clear single throughline. It’s kind of a mess, yet more fun than several of Papa’s more disciplined works.

When The Women Come Out To Dance – Elmore Leonard, 2002 ★★★½

Keeping it Tight

This short-story collection by Elmore Leonard can get overlooked in his total output yet includes one of his most influential stories. It also displays how he owned the genre of crime fiction enough to deliver engaging, wry tales of life regardless of any degree of law-breaking.

The story of note, “Fire in the Hole,” would be better known to television audiences a few years later as the basis for the pilot of a long-running series, “Justified.”

While that is the most representative (and satisfying) example of Leonard’s tough-guy fiction in the collection, it’s far from the only thing worth reading.