A New Book About Stieg Larsson

I am waiting until I finish the third book in the Larsson series that began with "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," but for those of you who have read all or part of the series, I thought you might be interested in the new book that his long time girlfriend has written about him.  Here's what the NY Times had to say about it.

Great Listing of Summer Book Suggestions from NPR

There are too many cool categories to list, but NPR has pulled together a lot of great summertime reading suggestions for adults and young adults, including Nancy Pearl's "Under the Radar" picks--great reads that you may not have heard about.

You know Nancy Pearl, right? She is the author of "Book Lust" and the model for the librarian action figure, which is super cool and comes complete with shushing action.

http://www.npr.org/series/summer-books/

"The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War," by Lynn H. Nicholas

I thought I had a pretty good understanding of what the German artists of the 1930’s had suffered. I knew that Hitler had fired the staff and completely shut down the Bauhaus school (founded by Gropius, it boasted a roster of amazing teachers including Klee, Kandinsky, van der Rohe & Albers). I knew that Beckmann and Ernst, like so many others, had fled across the Atlantic with as many of their works as they could salvage. I knew that the “degenerate” art exhibition that he put together to ridicule the modernists had succeeded in turning most of the German public against those artists. I knew that Kirchner had burned many of his own paintings just to prevent the Fuhrer from having the pleasure, and I knew that he eventually took his own life as a result of having over 600 of his works confiscated, then either sold or destroyed. But what I didn’t understand, until reading “The Rape of Europa,” was the sheer scale of the theft and destruction of art all over Europe carried out by the Nazi forces and very often ordered directly by Hitler himself, or the enormous number of art works still unaccounted for.

Nicholas spent 10 years researching her book and to say it is exhaustive would be an understatement. For such a scholarly work (and even for a not-so-scholarly work) it is a page turner from start to finish. There is so much drama, so much tension, so many “I can’t believe they did that!” moments, that as emotionally wrenching as it can be, it is infinitely readable and I had a hard time putting it down. Reading about the staff at the Louvre packing up their entire collection and shipping it out to the countryside sends a shiver down the spine. And every time I remember the words of one of their curators, as he sunk to the stairs watching “Winged Victory” being inched gently down a ramp and out the door, “I shall not see her returned,” I tear up. When I think about the Tchaikovsky museum being used by the Nazis as a motorcycle garage, and pages and pages of his original manuscripts found later with tire marks and oil on them, my hands curl into fists. When I remember the staff of the Hermitage Museum, whose collection is even larger than that of the Louvre, suffering through winters with broken windows, constantly under threat of shelling, taking turns chiseling ice from the walls, many of them starving to death during the siege, it breaks my heart.

There is always looting and destruction in war, but Hitler took it to a level never seen before. He stole the entire Amber Room from Catherine the Great’s palace—literally took every piece of amber lining the walls. To this day the panels have never surfaced. He took the enormous and invaluable Ghent altarpiece, painted by van Eyck and measuring over 15 feet wide, he had stone fountains disassembled and shipped to Berlin. And he sold or destroyed anything he didn’t want for himself or for his new museum.

After the war, castles and salt mines were found crammed floor to ceiling with art. Hundreds of rail cars, packed to capacity, on their way into or out of Germany were recovered. When the dozens of trucks carrying art back into Florence came parading down the streets, people gathered to cheer them on and to weep with joy that their cultural treasures were being brought back home.

More than 60 years later, however, the story is still not over. Tens of thousands of art works just from Poland alone have not yet been found and returned. The contemporary art world struggles constantly with determining the true provenance of pre-WWII artworks and most major museums and auction houses have been sued by holocaust survivors who claim rightful ownership of major pieces.

“The Rape of Europa” tells the first part of this story, and it is a complicated, emotional, and fascinating one.

If the book sounds interesting to you, you’ll also enjoy the documentary of the same name, which was an additional 6 years in the making. Here’s the trailer: http://www.rapeofeuropa.com/theTrailer.aspx

"Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation," by David Edwards

In "Artscience" Edwards presents an interesting look at how scientists and artists are moved to explore each others worlds, even to the point of earning advanced degrees in seemingly unrelated areas of their current expertise in order to expand their understanding and perceptions of what direction their work can and should take.

Chaos theory and music composition may seem to be worlds apart, but diving deeply into one can bring unexpected and varied insights into the other. By examining several examples of artists and scientists and researchers from France, Germany and the United States, he drives the point home again and again: we have much to learn from each other and we are capable of collaboration with people in very different fields. Perhaps Edwards' development of Le Laboratoire, an artscience center in Paris, can help usher in a new era of the Renaissance Man. It certainly feels to me that the West could stand to loosen it's grip on the idea of specialization a bit and we could all probably learn a lot by casting our nets wider.

As Einstein famously said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." And Edwards shows us that knowledge of a discipline outside of our own can be a catalyst to spark the imagination and drive innovation. Pretty powerful stuff.

"The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World," by Eric Weiner

This was an interesting read. I'm quite guilty myself of thinking in terms of "If I just lived in _______ I'd be happier," so I was pretty excited to discover that this book more or less endorses the idea that the society you live in can indeed make you either happy or miserable. So now that I've given the gist of his findings away, let me backtrack...

Weiner spent years as an NPR foreign correspondent, and had already traveled to some of the most miserable, war-torn and disease-ravaged areas on the planet. So he quickly clarifies that his new investigation will eliminate places under such obvious duress that happiness would not really be possible. If a country has been decimated by civil war for the past 20 years, it's pretty safe to say that the people of that country are going to score pretty low on the "rate your happiness from one to ten" test. So he focuses on countries that are not currently fighting wars on their own soil, and which are not facing devastating droughts, famine or disease.

Weiner looks at the stats, creates his list, and prepares to spend one year traveling the world to visit the happiest places (Iceland, The Netherlands, and Bhutan) and unhappiest places (Moldova and Qatar) on the planet. Before he dives into his official trip, however, he visits Rotterdam's World Database of Happiness, hoping to get some better idea of how to measure happiness. He talks to researchers who have spent years trying to determine the nature of happiness, the value of happiness, and how a largely undefinable abstract can be quantified in any meaningful way. They turn out to be surprisingly incapable of shedding any light on the subject, and he leaves feeling rather unsure of how this experiment might turn out.

In the course of his travels, Weiner spends time meditating at an Indian ashram, smoking hash in Amsterdam, and interviews wise men and women in Europe, Asia, and the good ole US of A, and he shares some eye-opening discoveries with his readers, such as:

*In order to have a happy society you don't necessarily need wealth or
democracy. They have neither in Bhutan, which rates highly in happiness terms,
but they have both in Qatar, where people seem relatively miserable.

*In all happy societies, trust in one's fellow citizens and government, and a
reverence for the society's culture are hugely important.

Along the way we learn about Weiner's own struggles with depression and pessimism and ultimately he weaves an interesting tale that's not so deep that it turns into an existential exercise, nor so shallow that it can be easily skimmed. If you've ever wondered what makes a place, a mere location, happy or miserable (or if you've ever wondered if happiness can be created or transplanted), this is a worthwhile and satisfying read.

"We Need to Talk About Kevin," by Lionel Shriver

"We Need to Talk About Kevin" is about marriage and especially parenthood, and may qualify as being the most disturbing and terrifying examination of those institutions ever written. Well, at least to someone like me...

There are people who think that movies such as "The Exorcist" are more frightening than movies like "Jaws." I'm not one of them. Mostly because I don't believe in demons and ghosts, so I see those stories of the supernatural as pure fiction. Some of them can jolt me with a good scare, but I sober up immediately afterward and then forget about it. But I DO believe in sharks, I have seen them with my own eyes, and the final 20 minutes of "Jaws" will forever live in my nightmares precisely because sharks ARE real. And as unlikely as it may be, it is also very possible that one day I may find myself on a boat and notice a large dorsal fin emerging from the surface of the water making it's way ever closer. I draw this distinction because "Kevin" is that kind of scary. What makes it so very unsettling and utterly unforgettable is it's plausibility.

Eva is nearly 40, happily married, and has a fulfilling and successful career. She's never really wanted children, but she and Franklin find themselves talking more and more often about having a family. He finally decides that he really does want kids and she decides to go along with it, despite some serious lingering doubts. Almost from the moment that Kevin is born there seem to be problems. He develops a dark side to his personality that he is able to disguise to his father and other key figures, but seems to delight in exposing to his mother. Her insistence that Kevin is being intentionally difficult and manipulative causes serious rifts in their once strong marriage, with Franklin seeing her as overreacting and cold. Eva tries to dismiss her fears and tries to cling to her husband's assessment until their second child, Celia, is blinded in one eye by a strange accident that happens when she is alone with Kevin.

Things get stranger and more frightening from there and ultimately Eva's worst nightmares are confirmed when Kevin commits an unspeakably violent crime.

Shriver goes back and forth between telling this story of Eva's life before the crime and showing what her life is like in the present day, where she goes regularly to visit Kevin in juvenile prison and where, in her day to day life, she is treated like a pariah. The story examines the idea of evil and it's causes. Is it nature or nurture? How responsible can a parent be for the actions of their teenage child? The dialog between jail-bound Kevin and his broken, distraught mother are perhaps as frightening as Kevin's crime. At least they would be to his mother, when he reveals in small, incremental bits of insight portioned out over months or even years, how very influential she really was in shaping his philosophy of the world.

"Kevin" is not an easy read, although Shriver does an amazing job of making something so unpalatable and horrible truly provocative, in the best sense of the word. I got utterly caught up in the story and didn't want to put it down. For those who enjoy a challenging and thought-provoking look at some deep societal and philosophical questions, I would highly recommend it.

"Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy And Art," by Susan Aberth

Kudos to Susan Aberth for giving Carrington's work it's due in this beautifully illustrated and equally beautifully written book. I had seen a couple of Carrington's paintings via Janson's, but I really had no idea of the breadth and depth of her work, or of her fascinating life until I got hold of this. Her art has been repeatedly referred to as “surrealist” and “feminist,” although she herself never embraced those labels. To me her images are too personal to qualify for such broad and lazy terms, and instead bring to mind the work of outsider artist Henry Darger in that they are strange and otherworldly and although there is obviously a narrative right there in front of your nose, you’ll never really get the whole story unless you are the artist yourself. In this book the rich reproductions of Carrington's paintings and sculptures take center stage, as they should, but there is also plenty of substance beyond the alluring and mysterious imagery. Aberth gives us a mini-biography that reads like a fun and thrilling work of fiction, although the subject makes it all too easy.

Carrington was born in England and had an Irish nanny who introduced her to the Celtic myths and legends of witchcraft and the supernatural, and those early images would inform her work for the rest of her life. Fiercely independent, she went to Paris against her parents' better wishes and soon found herself in the Surrealists' circle. Max Ernst left his wife for her and when Hitler's troops were poised to take France, his internment (he was a German on French soil) drove her into a Spanish mental institution. Her stay there would also be fodder for numerous paintings and a brilliantly unusual novel, "The Hearing Trumpet." Via Peggy Guggenheim's influence, they both were able to secure passage out of Europe, along with several other leading artists of the day, and they settled in Mexico where they soon become part of the art world there, including being guests at Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo's wedding.

I checked this one out from my library, read the book cover to cover, poured over the glorious reproductions in detail, and when that wasn't enough, I purchased my own copy of it plus a copy of "The Hearing Trumpet" so I could experience Carrington's written work, too. (It demands its own review, which will be coming shortly.)

Carrington passed away just a few weeks ago, at the ripe old age of 94. While I was saddened deeply by the news, I was very glad to know that Aberth's book had been published a few years before she died, so she could enjoy seeing her work and life's memories collected for a new generation before she left us.

"Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond

It's an exciting and rare thing, so I love it when I find a book that takes theories from several various disciplines and blends them into a work that offers a totally new perspective on the world.

Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" is an inspired work that merges geology, archaeology, history, biology, agriculture and anthropology (am I missing anything?!) to offer a thorough, and thoroughly satisfying, answer to the fundamentally human question, "why do some societies on this planet have so much while others have so little?". As the title of the book suggests, it has a lot to do with the development of weapons, immunity (or lack thereof) from disease, and technological advancement. And in turn, those factors rest upon other matters, the most important being basic geography (is the soil fertile, are the crops and animals nutritious, are there plentiful natural resources, is the weather conducive to supporting varied types of plants and animals, etc.).

The research that went into this book is nothing less than a man's entire adult life. Diamond has traveled the globe in many capacities and has consulted with friends, colleagues, and the native peoples of various continents to piece his theories together. Like all truly great thinkers he has mixed science with creative insight to come up with a startling new way for us to understand our planet and the dramatically diverse human societies that have sprung up on it's surface to either prosper or wither.

Diamond won a Pulitzer for this book, and PBS created a three-part documentary based upon it, which can be viewed on their website at www.pbs.gunsgermssteel/.