Puttering in the Study

Roosevelt's Navy: The Education of a Warrior President, 1882-1920 - James Tertis de Kay

This was a magnificent little book.  It focuses on Roosevelt's tenure as Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1919, ending with his nomination to the vice presidency in 1920.  It notes that from his earliest days in college he wanted to emulate the career path of his distant cousin Theodore Roosevelt, from Assistant Secretary of the Navy, to Governor of New York, to the White House, and follows his development as a young man and a young politician in Albany to Washington, where he saw firsthand the work necessary to prepare and lead a nation at war.

I have read numerous biographies of FDR, but none that expressly focused on the education he was receiving in playing a significant role in Pres. Woodrow Wilson's administration.  FDR's office was next to his chief, Sec. of the Navy Josephus Daniels and only a short walk across the street from the West Wing of the White House, where cousin Theodore had moved the president's administrative offices only a few years earlier. 

In fact the exterior of the West Wing shown in this picture I had taken on what is still called the Navy Steps is (despite extensive renovations during FDR's tenure) is still that that was there when FDR worked in Room 278 of what was called the State, War & Navy building (ignore the parapet FDR added - he was hoping Congress would) under Daniels.

The book is a very insightful analysis of FDR's decisionmaking process - good and bad - as a young politician, but its strength is pointing out the experiences he had that helped foreshadow what he would do as president when faced with similar challenges to those he saw Wilson face in 1914-1919. Of course at the time FDR was looking backwards towards his Uncle Ted's tenure in the office and how he could use the office to similarly promote his subsequent political career.  But what he took from the experience of watching Wilson would in the end play a much larger role in FDR's management of World War II and the creation of a postwar international organization.

One point I'd never seen mentioned before was when Roosevelt was confronted with the absolute need to arm merchant vessels in face of Germany's decision to begin unrestricted submarine warfare.  His problem was that the ships could not purchase the necessary ordnance, and the Navy could not provide it to them.  FDR's solution was to have the Navy "lend" the necessary ordnance to the civilian vessels.  Although Daniels and Wilson eventually decided against even this halfway measure (I think - on rereading I am not certain what happened to the proposal) it may have been in Roosevelt's mind over 20 years later when he came up with Lend-Lease.

Any treatment of FDR in 1916-1918 must include a treatment of his relationship with Lucy Mercer, but the book's is remarkably slender.  It spends less than four pages on the issue, but only because there is so little to draw conclusions from.  And because it bears little relationship to the larger issues the book is concerned with.  In the end, Roosevelt - confronted by his wife and his mother - reluctantly made the decision that stopped the relationship before it hampered his political career.  That he restarted it 25 years later is a subject for another book.

Hornblower and the Island / Hornblower and the Journey Home - James Keffer

 

 

These two books are part of a series Hornblower's Legacy by author James Keffer. It is fan fiction set within the framework of C.S. Forester's Hornblower novels. In betweeen the two that I read are four books about a naval officer associated with Hornblower William Brewer.  (I think Keffer made up the character, but it's possible he was in Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies), but I just read the first and last, which about principally about Hornblower

The first book fits in several years after the events in Lord Hornblower, and finds Hornblower appointed to the governorship of St. Helena to deal with a restive former emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The second book takes place over 20 years later, long after Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies, and follows Hornblower's adventures as the British representative to the exhumation of Napoleon prior to his repatriation to France.

Overall, I enjoyed both stories greatly, and didn't see anything that I thought was grossly inconsistent with the originals, nor bad writing. There are several points I think are to be made, though.

First, Hornblower and the Island, the first book in the series, follows Forester more closely. In every book except Lieutenant Hornblower – which follows Bush instead of Hornblower - Forester follows Hornblower only, spending a great deal of time on Hornblower's internal struggles and monologues.  By contrast, Keffer willl have scenes where other characters are the subject, such as Lady Barbara or Napoleon.  The second book is full of this, and the scenes with Hornblower are, while perhaps still the majority of the scenes in the book, only a part of the tale.  Perhaps unavoidably, the internal struggles are almost wholly absent.

 

Which leads to my second small nit. Following his elevation to the peerage, Hornblower's wife should be identified as Lady Hornblower, not Lady Barbara, but Keffer never does this. It's a minor point, but is odd that after Forrester specifically explains this point in Lord Hornblower, Keffer doesn't pick up on it. Perhaps he thinks that Lady Barbara would still continued to have been used informally.

 

Which leads me to my third point. Keffer, perhaps unavoidably, has Hornblower become more garrrulous and positively chatty. It is perhaps unavoidable that in fan fiction writers will avoid the withering self-criticism that Forrester has Hornblower engaging in throughout the series, but I couldn't help but see some places where he missed some opportunities for Hornblower to question himself and instead had him sharing doubts and concerns openly, in some cases with Barbara, which is simply not in character, as the last two Forester books make clear.  He simply cannot unburden himself with anyone with the possible exception of the Comte de Gracay, yet he does so here.

 

Of course, Keffer is writing about times where Hornblower should have been less prone to self-doubt and self-analysis, and certainly he may have been able to overcome it later in life as in the second book, but it still seems to leave out a central part of the character.

 

The other major hole in the books was in Hornblower's immediate adoption of Bonaparte as someone he not only respected but considered a close friend. With the first book following fairly closely on the heels of Hornblower's traumatic experiences during the Hundred Days when Napoleon tried to return to power, including the death of Marie Gracay, it simply did not make sense to me that given what Forester says Hornblower thought in that book, Hornblower would have been so friendly to Napoleon immediately. The reasons why he would have eventually respected him and developed a friendship were well presented, but he should have started from a much more hostile position, and engaged in a great deal of self-doubt and loathing, weighted down with guilt over the countless friends and the lover that Bonaparte's activities had killed before he reached the point of friendship that Keffer has him at. That friendship should have been hard-won and the central theme of the book, but it is simply a given.  Again, I read this almost immediately after reading Lord Hornblower, and it just didn't mesh with what Forester was saying in that book that Hornblower was thinking.

 

I won't spoil the one major change Keffer makes to the Hornblower canon, but I can't help but wholly approve of it. If Star Trek could do it, surely Hornblower could be given a little grace.

 

In the end, I enjoyed the pair of books very much - I think I read the second start to finish in a single day. I don't think I am going to read the Brewer books, but I do recommend the Hornblower ones if you care about the character in the series.  They reminded me a little of the Downton Abbey movies.  They take characters that you care about and only subject them to mild worry.  I'm okay with that.

The Local – Joey Hartstone

On a recent New York Times recommended reading list is a new legal thriller – this time set in Marshall and featuring a (fictional) local patent lawyer.  I thought readers might like a review from a local perspective.

The book is a murder mystery set in Marshall, and features a native Marshallite (and former law clerk) who works as local counsel in the burgeoning patent docket.  So the three things you might want to know are (1) how close is the book’s EDTX patent docket, compared to the real thing; (2) how close is the book’s Marshall, compared to the real thing; and (3) is it a good read?

The Book’s Eastern District of Texas Patent Docket

Authors of fiction have the privilege of altering reality when selecting the setting for their book.  For example, Jake Tapper’s recent political thriller posited a world where vacancies in the U.S. House of Representatives are filled by appointment by governors.  That allowed him to install an unusually politically inexperienced congressman as required for the plot of his book.

Similarly, here, either because he didn’t consult sufficiently with a patent lawyer or decided for his own reasons to alter the structure of the local patent docket, Hartstone created a docket where patent venue can be established wherever a single act of patent infringement has occurred, and the entire Eastern District of Texas consists of a single district judge presiding over a court where jurors are drawn exclusively from the citizens of Marshall Texas, which he assumes would mean six high school degrees between eight jurors, with at least one not only illiterate but vocal about it. So when the courtroom deputy came up one copy of the court’s instructions short in a patent trial, Juror Number Three tells the judge not to worry about it because “I can’t read none anyway.”  Uh, not quite.

Hartstone’s EDTX docket originated with judge-created patent rules, which is accurate enough, but he departs from the real district by characterizing the docket as being based on EDTX jurors awarding “ungodly sums of money” which he attributes to jurors “who are overlooked for their entire lives” being given a modicum of power.  In truth, local patent verdicts tend to skew low – not the 20x what the (fictional) plaintiff asks for, establishing the docket.  The reason the EDTX docket started out with 18 straight plaintiff wins in the early 2000s had nothing to do with the jurors, but with the defense trial teams from patent prosecution shops who simply didn’t know how to try a lawsuit before a jury compared to the former personal injury lawyers that were representing plaintiffs.  By 2006 they had figured this out, and ever since verdicts have been almost exactly even, with some years (2007 and 2013 come to mind) representing bloodbaths for plaintiffs.  In general, the district portrayed in the book is the district portrayed in the recurring hatchet jobs about the Eastern District in the popular and legal media – right down to the skating rink “that Samsung put up.” Locals know better – in fact I was the city commissioner that moved approval of budget for the city purchasing and installing a skating rink for our Wonderland festival two decades ago - years before Samsung knew that Marshall was spelled with two “l”s.

The portrayal of what local counsel do is also a little off - we rarely get to close, and no lawyer in Harrison County has ever stood in front of a local jury and said “Go Mavericks”.  Why?  Because whether it is a state court jury chosen from the citizens of Harrison County, or a federal court jury chosen from six counties, Marshall is only one of many high schools in the area, and the quickest way to piss off anybody locally is to make a derogatory comment about their high school.  But, again, the book assumes that both federal and state juries are chosen only from the residents of the city of Marshall, so the above doesn't apply.   And that actually enhances a few plot points, so, again, I’m not certain that the author – a screenwriter – didn’t deliberately simplify the judicial system for his own dramatic purposes, building in a local bias.  Which, again, is completely legit.  I just mind when Congressmen do it.

But for purposes of the book it is a distinction without a difference, since while I was expecting Hartstone to base the novel on a patent infringement case, and the supposed predilections of local jurors in federal court, which is what he initially seemed to be laying the groundwork for (and knowing the shows he’s written for it seemed likely) the novel goes in a completely different direction.

Thus while the novel’s characterization of practice in federal court - with banging of gavels and multiple fistfights in court and f-bombs lobbed at district judges by lawyers and litigants alike - is quite entertaining, if something less than accurate, the action quickly moves out of federal court.

The Book’s Marshall, Texas

Okay, no book about Marshall that was written without someone from Marshall looking over the author’s shoulder is going to be perfect, but this one is pretty damn close.  Hartstone has clearly never actually been to Marshall (he repeatedly refers to the Confederate soldier statue on the square as bronze, and makes a mistaken topographical assumption that will become important later) but he gets the big things right – how much we know about each other, how far back experiences and disputes go, and how important high school football is.  I particularly enjoyed his illustration of just how much of a jackass someone in a small town can be. It's a full-time job for some people. Sometimes an inherited position. And characters repeatedly identify with and relate back to incidents in high school football, and that’s exactly how we are.  I was walking the first New York Times reporter around town 20 years ago and told him that the right question would start a 15 minute story about the late 1980s and early 1990s Marshall football teams – and not just the one that won the state championship in 1990, but the one built around Odell Beckham a few years earlier.  (Like my dad, Odell went on to play football at LSU, and later had a son who played football too). Hartstone knows where the closest federal correctional facility is, what the hotels are, and if he doesn’t describe the downtown parking arrangements around the courthouse with complete accuracy (to say nothing of the security ones), it becomes clear later in the book that he needs a specific setting for his plot.  And no, the old courthouse courtroom doesn’t have mahogany floors, but it is a terrific place to try a lawsuit.

So points for a pretty accurate depiction of the town, even if the constant references between fictional Marshallites to the “old Harrison County Courthouse” and the “main/town square” are a little grating.  (It’s the “old courthouse” and “the square”).

One other thing.  Every book club in town is interested in who the characters “really are”.  It is to the author's credit that it is absolutely plain that none are based on a real person.  Clearly the judge at the beginning of the story did the same thing that Judge Ward did in 2000 coming up with patent local rules, but neither that character nor any of the others bear any similarity to any of the judges or lawyers that I know either in federal or state court.  Which isn’t surprising – Hartstone is an experienced screenwriter and didn’t develop the story by coming to Marshall and talking to local lawyers and judges and then lightly fictionalizing a story about a case.  He came up with a story and characters, and realized the story could grow out of a setting he’d heard about from patent lawyer friends. It's not a story about the patent docket per se.

The Murder Mystery

So how good is the actual story?  I read it three weeks ago when our family was on vacation.  I downloaded the morning we started one of two half-day tours in Vienna, and stayed up till almost 3 am to finish it.

As I said, Marshall and the federal patent docket is only the setting for the beginning of the story.  After that, you’re in a small Southern town familiar as a legal thriller setting for generations, and your attention is on the characters and the plot twists.  And that’s what kept me up half the night finishing the book – I just couldn’t put it down until I knew whodunit.

And it was only at the end that I figured out why the story wasn’t making sense to me – it was because I’m too Marshall.  The plot of the story places particular emphasis on the local counsel’s office at the corner of Franklin and Bowie, and what could be seen of the federal courthouse from there.  But I could never get past that - because that was my Aunt Toddy’s house.  She was actually the aunt of a friend of my dad’s, but I grew up mowing her yard, and when after she passed her home became everyone’s favorite downtown restaurant, it was actually where my wife and I had our first date.  And I knew you can't see the back door of the federal courthouse from there.

I finally figured out that the author had assumed there was a line of sight from the fictional law office to the back door of the courthouse.  And there would have been, had the topography not resulted in a drop of several dozen feet between the courthouse square which, as locals know, is on the hill where in 1843 Peter Whetstone pulled out his whiskey jug and proceeded to get the commissioners deciding where to site the new town so drunk they decided to call it a day and put the town square on Whetstone's property.

So yes, I highly recommend it.  But not for the patent docket or local counsel aspect.  That’s just where the story starts.

Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay - Craig L. Symonds

There hasn't been a comprehensive biography of Fleet Adm. Nimitz since Craig Symonds' mentor E.B. Potter wrote Nimitz in 1976 - and this isn't it either.  Instead, Symonds has written an account of Nimitz' command leadership during the Pacific War, leaving out, except where a look back is necessary, Nimitz' prewar career.

As a result, the book focuses on what readers are most interested in – what did Nimitz do during the war, why, and what effect did it have on the course of the war?

I am familiar with Symonds' prior work – I have read and listened to his book on Midway multiple times, as well as his his overall book on the history of the war at sea, and had the pleasure of meeting and conversing with him at length about Midway and Dick Best at the 2019 World War II symposium in New Orleans, where I brought first editions of all his books, which he was kind enough to sign.  I don't mean the battle of Midway, by the way – I mean the movie Midway where we compared impressions on the historical accuracy of the movie.  He was, as you might expect, less enthusiastic than I was, although I recall we both would have loved to see Dick Best's reaction to his movie portrayal. 

This is the point where I usually complain that I had a problem because I was reading the book at the same time I was reading another book on the same subject.  I didn't have that problem here – I'm actually watching Prof. Symonds' lectures on the Pacific war through a Great Courses program, so I had the benefit of hearing his voice as I was reading his words – it might as well have been an audiobook. 

But it is a very good addition to the literature on an extraordinary individual, and I highly recommend it.  The Potter book is good for background, but it was nice not to have to slog through the long peacetime career.

Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War - Paul Kennedy

This was my second read of this interesting little book.

Kennedy studies five problems that the Allies faced in World War II, from how to get convoys safely across the Atlantic, to winning command of the air, stopping a blitzkrieg, seizing and enemy-held shore, and defeating the "tyranny of distance".  He explains the role that engineers played in solving each of the problems. It's a good story - as usual it suffers when I am simultaneously reading other more global accounts of the war which slice the issue differently.  I think a reader who was not reading something else on the same subject at the same time would probably enjoy this more than I did.  As it was, I was reading parts of the same story in at least two and at times three books at the same time, which I am learning is not conducive to an enjoyable experience with the book

Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America Paperback – Jared Cohen

I knew I'd be interested in the topic, but not "this" interested.  33 years ago my professional report (LBJ lingo for master's thesis) was on the American vice president, with a preceding paper on the "accidental presidencies."

Admittedly I focused on the 20th century accidental presidents, but even so, Cohen's book brimmed with things that I did not know.  I knew nothing about the very interesting presidential accessions in the 19th century, and given that they occurred approximately 20 years apart for 120 years it was interesting to see how the same figures actually played a part in more than one transition.

Terrific book on the White House in the 19th century, and on the many stories surrounding the 20th century presidential deaths and offices well.  I learned a lot about the Harding to Coolidge transition that I did not know, as well as some excellent commentary on what Lyndon Johnson didn't do right in the author's view.  But, again, the best part of the book was in the highly entertaining accounts of the transitions and personalities in the 19th century.  I will never look at John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, James Garfield or Chester Arthur the same again.

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible And Why / Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them) - Bart Ehrman

One of my favorite Teaching Company videos is Dr. Bart Ehrman’s on the New Testament, where he goes into what I now understand is the historical–critical analysis of the books of the New Testament. The lectures provide a fascinating insight into the books, along with background into when they were created, what they mean, and how they were changed throughout history.

These two books cover the same ground. The first focuses on what we know of the history of changes and alterations to the texts going back to our earliest copies, which are still removed by hundreds of years from the very first versions. The second focuses more on the differences between the texts, with Ehrman insisting that we consider what each author has to say standing alone, and recognizing that they might well be contradicting each other, and why that might be the case.

The claim that every word of the Bible is correct as it sits today is not one that I was brought up with, but Ehrman presents the case – which is well recognized in most Christian seminary and theological institutions today – that that claim simply is not sustainable, and that whether approaching the texts from an analytical or a devotional perspective, a reader benefits from understanding how the texts started and how they were changed – sometimes unintentionally and sometimes quite deliberately throughout history.

I thoroughly enjoy and think I benefit from understanding the different viewpoints of the different authors, and why they might disagree on certain points. It is also helpful to know that many of the beliefs that I hold were not in fact part of Jesus’ teachings during his lifetime, and instead reflect decisions in the early years of the church regarding doctrines that Jesus did not express opinions on. Or - and this is one of Ehrman’s points - we don’t know whether he did or not since we have no way of knowing everything that he taught, and in many cases whether what we are told he said is correct.

Now there are ways of sussing out what’s more likely true than not true that are very helpful - for example no new religion in its right mind would make up a boast that its leader who was executed as a common criminal. Or have a leader be baptized by an inferior, or grow up in a one-horse town like Nazareth. But this is what makes these things likely to have actually occurred. On the other hand, additions or changes to writings are less likely to be correct in general. So much of the books deal with these sorts of questions - what can we say about what Jesus actually said and did given the contradictions and changes.

But these are my favorite kinds of books. I learned a lot, and gained a better understanding of an area I want to know more about.

Alexander Hamilton - Ron Chernow

What is there left to say about this book? Not only did it fill an important gap in the popular biography of an important Founding Father – it inspired a groundbreaking Broadway musical that will inspire generations to come with the story of an extraordinary individual and the founding of our nation.
There was the odd sensation seeing the origin of song lyrics from the musical throughout. “Not Throwing Away My Shot” seems to actually have been inspired by the clear historical record that Hamilton told people he “was” in fact “throwing away his shot” in the duel with Burr. Burr actually did say that “the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me.” There was the heartbreak in the final portrait of a middle-aged Hamilton after his son Philip was killed in a duel.  I never knew he had made it to middle age, candidly, or that the light in his eyes had seemed to have gone out.
But there was substance I had not seen as well. No one comes out terribly well here, and the worst decisions were Hamilton’s, from the ill-advised publication of the Reynolds and Adams pamphlets to the panicked calls for the New York Legislature to find a way to set aside statewide electoral results in 1800, since they would in effect guarantee the Federalists’ loss to Jefferson’s emerging Democratic-Republicans later in the year. And ending, of course, in his failure to find a way to avoid the duel that would leave his family in poverty.
A terrific book, all in all. And it’s remarkable how well the musical tells the same story.

The Cartographers: A Novel - Peng Shepherd

The idea of a novel built around the hidden secrets contained in maps was catnip to me when I first read about this book. It’s a variation on the Dan Brown – style archaeological porn that I used to love to read, but weaves in enough urban fantasy to give it interest from that angle as well.
The story is an interesting one, but I quickly got the many similar characters mixed up, which kept me from getting as engaged in the story as I should have. The writing was also distracting, since most of the book is told in the form of narratives of events long past, but which contained such detail that they simply weren’t plausible as the “here’s what we did with your parents in college 25 years ago”. The work presented as flashbacks, but as real-time exposition, and the distinction kept being a distraction to me.
One other thing that I felt was a distraction was that a plot device was used twice. The story is that of a group of college friends, and it was I thought a very effective plot device when one of the current characters turned out to have been within that group, which the protagonist didn’t know. Then a few chapters later, another major character is revealed as having been one as well, which no one knew. It was clever the first time. It was just too convenient the second time.
Anyway, it’s a good story, and I enjoyed the book, but I think it enjoyed narrative a bit too much, at the expense of plausibility. I think the underlying story could have been told a bit more realistically.

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power - Jon Meacham

I am pretty sure this book has been on my Kindle for over ten years. It is an exhaustive biography of Jefferson, but focused on his career as a political leader. That is not to me the most interesting aspect of the man, and doesn’t fully explore all the things that made him both a genius and a highly controversial figure. But it did provide a mountain of interesting detail about his activities and conduct - even if it didn’t fully reflect his multiple interests in real time. You have to know more about him to know that he perennially had numerous ongoing projects which reflected his wide range of interests, and that is an aspect of his life I am always interested in.
But one thing Meacham does convey is a better understanding of Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings and his children by her. He nails Jefferson’s notations in his daily accounts as to his location and the birth of all of the children of slaves on his estate to confirm that only he - and not some other male member of his family - fathered all of her chilfren. The book also gets across how Jefferson lived on a daily basis with slaves who were not just 7/8th white and his children, but who had three of the same four grandparents as his two daughters - since Sally and Jefferson’s deceased wife were half-sisters. It’s hard to understand what that life was like - Meacham makes that a little easier to understand.