Author: thepassionatereader

This thoroughly researched historical novel covers only four days in late 1938. Hitler has threatened to invade and annex Sudetenland to expand the Third Reich. British, Italian, French and German leaders with their diplomatic staff meet in Berlin in a desperate effort to avert war. So far strictly factual. Two junior diplomats, one German and the other British, and both Oxford graduates, working independently at first, and then together try desperately to sabotage the process, more alert to the dangers of appeasing Hitler than the leaders (not so factual). Squabbling and scheming diplomats abound. Sir Neville Chamberlain becomes the hero who appeared to save the world from what seemed like certain war, at the last minute. His speech announcing that the leaders had reached an agreement ensuring “peace in our time” later became the main reason historians have betrayed him as a weak and foolish leader. It is always easier to judge leaders with knowledge of the consequences of their decisions, than to consider their decisions in the context in which they were made.

The plotting of the strategies and the character development is realistic and entertaining. And this is a timely cautionary tale about the dangers of yielding any ground to egotistical lying devious would-be dictators

Almost every time I took a break from this book, I found my wife watching a cooking show demonstration of how to concoct some delicious decadent complicated huge meal.

Deborah Cohen is a public health physician in California, now working for the Rand Corporation, a large think tank. She is certainly knowledgeable and passionate in her efforts to deal with what she describes as the epidemic of obesity in America. She advocates using the public heath measures that were used in the past to reduce the harm from poor sanitation, uncontrolled alcohol use, and tobacco to fight this blight.

Almost the first third of the book is devoted to an uncritical analysis of over one hundred social science studies that fairly convincingly show that modern obesity is not the result of poor self control on the part of individuals. It is rather the result of our unchanged evolutionary survival instinct to eat as often and as much as we can, combined with a changed “food environment”. The latter includes increased outlets for food (think vending machines, gas stations, food trucks, Costco), aggressive marketing of unhealthy but delicious foods, and coupling of these same foods with other pleasures in the media and movies. About thirty percent of grocery sales is of generally unhealthy items displayed at the end of isles or at the check out counter. And allegedly most grocery store chains make more profit from charging wholesalers for prime display sites than they do from retail sales. Appropriate comparisons are made to the devious and sometimes illegal marketing strategies of the tobacco industry in the past. As I read about the effectiveness of display site marketing, I began to question whether or not my reading choices were being subtly manipulated by the shelf placement of books at the Beaverbrook Library. None of us are immune to subliminal nudges.

I will not detail all of Cohen’s recommendations to remedy this situation, some of which seem realistic, some pipe dreams and some that seem quite silly to me. There is a heavy emphasis on draconian legislation, as one might expect from a public health guru. Dictate that all vendors standardize the size of some common items such as hamburgers? Require licensing for all food outlets and limit their numbers geographically? Force grocers to display healthy food choices in prime sites? Perhaps the silliest recommendation is to require licensing for waitstaff and busboys in restaurants. We do not need more restriction on the job opportunities for uneducated and unskilled workers by self-serving licensing boards. But there is a precedent with tobacco for limiting or banning advertising of harmful products. Could we ban all-you-can-eat advertising and the bundling of different foods together as combos which is a very effective strategy in the fast food industry? If I had to order the fries separately from the burger, or the eggs, toast, bacon and home fries all separately, I might decide that I didn’t need the fries or the bacon. But protests about bundling retail products together have not altered the business plans of Rogers, Bell, or Shaw. Should the Toblerone join the cigarettes out of sight behind the counter- still available but not in temptation’s path? There is a dearth of suggestions on how we might be ‘nudged’ as per Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in Nudge, as opposed to being forced to make healthy choices.

The discussion of the environmental impact of food choices is interesting. In Europe, an estimated 31,000,000 tons of food waste rots in landfills annually, contributing vast amounts of methane pollution to the atmosphere. Raising animals for food is not only inefficient energy usage, it also is environmentally harmful. Animals, especially ruminants, belch and fart vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere. I get a faint twinge of guilt when I cut into a sirloin. But if we eschew methane-producing foods, we need to cut out rice too, as the paddies also spew vast amounts of methane.

Some recommendations seem to lack any scientific backing. Eschew bananas and other products shipped from afar because of the environmental harm of shipping? Not according to Mike Berners-Lee in How Bad Are Bananas? The carbon footprint of everything. Get lots of sun exposure to avoid vitamin D deficiency? Not wise, according to most dermatologists.

The writing style is a bit dry, pedantic, preachy and repetitive although she relates personal anecdotes that readers will find interesting. There is one major unwarranted assumption that underlies all the recommendations, i.e. that we know what a healthy diet consists of. There are hundreds of contradictory dietary recommendations even from experts, not counting the celebrity-endorsed quacks, and the experts have a long history of backing the wrong horse. Dr. Robert Lustig (Fat Chance), Nina Teicholz (The Big Fat Surprise), Gary Taube (The Case Against Sugar) and Helen Bishop MacDonald (The Big Fat Misunderstanding) all convincingly show that the recommendations of the heart-health and cholesterol-obsessed gurus with tunnel vision in the last half of the last century contributed to the epidemic of heart disease, obesity and diabetes, rather than reducing them. Helen Bishop MacDonald (full disclosure-she is an acquaintance and neighbour) even recommends that we enjoy the mutton fat and marbled beefsteak fat from those belching and farting ruminants because of the favourable ratio of different omega fatty acids therein. Phew! Now I feel better about my love of red meats.

Economics is said to be the dismal science, but perhaps nutrition science should win that label. Or psychology, with its penchant for contrived experiments on university students and its frequent confounding of correlation with causation. Cohen draws on all three of these fields to not-entirely-convincingly explain the increasing problem of obesity, and to provide less than entirely realistic solutions. In spite of recommendations to reduce its use, this book should be widely read-but with a pinch of salt.

Next week- another great historical novel and an insight into prison life.

This extensively researched book by the well-known Pulitzer Prize- winning Washington Post journalist does a thorough job of conveying to the reader the disorganization and chaos of the Donald Trump presidential campaign and the first 14 months of his presidency. More than that, it conveys the shallowness, egotism, ignorance, arrogance and vindictiveness of the president. But almost anyone who has not been living under a stone and has a brain has had multiple other sources of information that would lead to the same judgement. Apart from historians looking back on this time period and trying to make sense of it, who else needs more details about this example of chaos theory in action?

It is difficult for the average reader outside of the D.C. beltway, at least this average reader, to keep track of the dozens of acronyms, the ever- changing job titles and the revolving door personnel in the White House and the Pentagon. A list of acronyms, major personnel, and a time line with the dates of major events would have been very helpful to readers who don’t make a living analyzing politics.

The last date mentioned in the book is March 12, 2018, and the book was published by Simon and Shuster on September 11, 2018. That should have given the author, publisher, and intermediaries adequate time to get it polished into something coherent, with logical flow and decent grammar. Yet the flow is anything but logical with individual chapters jumping randomly from foreign policy, to immigration, to economics to environmental concerns and the interminable internal bickering, and jumping back and forward in time. The lack of proofreading is glaring- “By any reasoning, the exercise was serious preparation, but it was at this point, one available contingency on the shelf being practiced.” Although Woodward hints that when he uses quotation marks it conveys actual direct quotes, at times the use of these seems almost random. It seems obvious that this was a rush job by a journalist and a publisher with a tight self-imposed deadline, well aware that there would be a very short time interval in which to sell the story- and the book.

Definitely not worth $30.00

I read this memoir in about 24 hours and really enjoyed it-initially. Two young serial entrepreneurs decide to start a book club for inmates at Collins Bay medium-security prison near Kingston and this is the author’s documentation of what happened as a result.

There is a paucity of evidence that getting convicted criminals to read and discuss a lot of books alters their behaviour and reduces recidivism, but the idea seems intuitive. My wife pointed out to me one paper she found addressing this- a pathetic 2015 Ph.D. thesis paper of a student in Toledo that doesn’t stand up to critical analysis and to me seems to be just pseudo-science. It seems that most of the literature on this issue concerns juvenile offenders, not adults, and certainly not female offenders, and is full of social science gobbledegook. Obviously a lot depends on the choice of books and the skills of the leaders of the endeavour. I doubt that there has ever been a better need for and opportunity to do a scientifically rigorous double-blind controlled trial in social sciences than one to assess this effect.

I had not read some of the books that the prisoners discussed, but I knew the themes of most of them. I once read a how-to essay on how to impress others and appear to be intelligent and well-read by referencing and discussing books that you have not read. With online reviews perhaps including mine herein, that has become very easy.

The book provides an interesting insight into the culture of prisons and shatters the stereotype of prisoners as a homogeneously incorrigible lot of bad actors, with no morals or conscience. This may be its major virtue.

It is not clear to me whether the inmates or the two upper middle class women leaders benefitted the most from the experience, either psychologically or financially. One of the instigators wrote a book about the experience, and the other, as a result of this undertaking became the CEO of what has become a large charity, no doubt drawing a good salary.

The author’s flaunting her wide knowledge of English literature becomes a bit annoying, frequently citing books that are not on the book club agenda, and she seems to hold the view, common to many literati, that knowing a lot of literature will automatically make one a better person, which is a bit of a non-sequester. Is it better to be a philosopher or a pig? The problem with that question is that only the philosopher can answer it.

It is clear that from the start that at least part of the author’s motivation for getting involved was to eventually write a book about it and presumably to make money doing so. It is telling therefore that she ceased to be involved as soon as she had enough material for the book.

Still, a very enjoyable read, not to be taken too seriously.

Less Medicine, More Health. H. Gilbert Welsh. 2015. 194 pages

Dr. Welsh is a brilliant professor of family medicine at Dartmouth. He and I have exchanged emails about our previous books, his Overdiagnosed and my Medicine Outside The Box which have a lot in common although I will never match his writing skills. We share many iconoclastic views about modern medicine. So when I saw this later book in the library, I knew I had to read it.

In a scholarly compelling treatise, laced with numerous anecdotes and humour, Dr. Welsh destroys seven myths about modern medical practices: all risks can be lowered, it is always better to fix the problem, sooner is always better, it never hurts to get more information, action is always better than inaction, newer is always better and, it’s all about avoiding death. His anecdotes sometimes relate real tragedies, such as the orthopaedic surgeon who developed life-threatening and difficult to detect chromium poisoning as a result of choosing the newest hip prosthesis for himself.

This book is an easy compelling read that should be of interest to anyone who is ever a patient, i.e. pretty much everyone. There is considerable overlap in the information with that in Overdiagosed. If forced by time constraints to choose one or the other, I would recommend Less Medicine. More Health.

Now for one negative. In the introduction, he relates the story of a man who almost bleed to death after having a liver biopsy of a mass that was found on imaging while investigatingD an unrelated problem. The mass was an innocuous hemangioma. I happen to know a bit about this subject and why anyone would ever biopsy a liver mass that turned out to be an hemangioma is beyond me. The imaging characteristics of the very common liver hemangiomata are diagnostic, and there is never a need for a biopsy. This was not a good example of feeling the need for more information but rather an obvious medical mistake. Apart from this poor example of the messages he is delivering, I cannot find any fault with this book.

When I noticed a rave review of this new book in some magazine, I knew that I had to take a closer look. I had so thoroughly enjoyed reading his biography Long Walk To Freedom that I was sure this one would be educational and enjoyable. I then made the mistake of mentioning it to my wife, and a few days later the book showed up in our mailbox. Buying this book was a big mistake.

To begin with, the format of the book is far from reader-friendly. The letters are logically laid out chronologically for the whole time he was incarcerated, from 1962 until 1990. But a quick glance at any book that includes a Foreword, an Introduction, and a ‘Note on the Letters’ at the start, very extensive footnotes in impossibly small print on almost every page taking up to 1/2 of the page, with those footnotes in turn referring to an eighteen page Glossary at the back, and an eight-page small print index should alert potential readers that this is not going to be an easy read.

An easy read, it certainly is not, but is it educational or worth the effort?

It sheds a bit more light on the great man’s humility, (he vows in one letter to never write an autobiography -(“…through me the Creation intended to give the world an example of a mediocre man.”), idealism, family loyalty, stamina, determination and morality than does the earlier biography, but not by a lot. And it exposes the cruelty and deviousness of the apartheid regime in detail. Most of the letters were never delivered and remained out of the public’s reach until the diligent editor found them in various archives. And it is certainly not his fault that the letters are often addressed to or discuss numerous relatives, friends, acquaintances, tribal chiefs, administrative officials, and fellow freedom-fighters all referred to with peculiar multiple unpronounceable names in several different local languages. His use of names, words and phrases in isiZulu, isiXhosa, Afrikaans, and Bantu may justify some of the footnotes, but were still distracting to this anglophone. The average reader will find it impossible to keep track of the hundreds of names. I counted up thirty unfamiliar names in one two page letter, but I was impressed with the number of people Mandela must have known personally and the huge social network he maintained. There are many letters that relate exclusively to family matters that will be of limited interest even to historians. Other letters are duplicated in both (often illegible) handwritten and typed formats.

In spite of the careful editorial work and notes between some of the letters setting out the background, there are some peculiar inconsistencies. In a letter to the Minister of Justice dated February 12, 1975, Mandela discusses in the past tense a conversation they had had on December 27th, 1975. And in a letter to Winnie dated Sept 1, 1976, he refers to her letter of September 29th, and then one paragraph later notes that on September 26th she will be turning 42.

I struggled though this book, tolerating only small doses a few times a day, looking for nuggets. But the best nugget was on the dust cover of the hard copy, a quote that I had earmarked within the text before discovering that someone else had also dug out this gem: “A new world will be won not by those who stand at a distance with their arms folded, but by those in the arena, whose garments are torn by storms and whose bodies are maimed in the course of the contest.” The following prescient insight was in a 1971 letter to a friend. “The trouble, of course, is that most successful men are prone to vanity. There comes a time in their lives when they consider it permissible to be egotistic and to brag to the public at large about their unique accomplishments.”

For academics researching the history of apartheid, this book will be an invaluable resource. But I am disappointed that the editor and the publisher have crassly capitalized on the great man’s name to pitch this book to the general public. There is a deceptive Barrack Obama quote praising Nelson Mandela on the back cover as though he was praising the book, which he probably has not read. And at least some professional book reviewers, who may not have read it in its entirety either, seem obliged to play along. Don’t be, like me, deceived by this hype into buying this book; but be sure to read The Long Walk To Freedom

I was browsing in the fiction section of the library when I recognized this author’s name on the jacket of this book, from her stories in The Atlantic and The New Yorker, so I signed it out. I am glad I did. This epic first novel is a treasure of extensively researched historical fiction, a War and Peace for modern times. Set in New York, Moscow, Washington, and numerous other places, the complex plot covers the era of 1933 to 2008; families are torn apart by blind loyalty to political beliefs, best friends are betrayed amid the paranoia, duplicity and distrust of the Stalinist purges, and moral dilemmas, family loyalties and eternal truths are delicately explored.

An idealistic young educated American woman leaves what she sees as the corrupt U.S.A. in the 1930’s for the utopian Soviet Union. In spite of deprivations, deceptions, loss of family ties and almost losing her life in a Siberian labour camp, she ever wavers in her loyalty to Marxist ideals. Life in the cruel, paranoid, antisemitic world of the Stalinist era U.S.S.R. is graphically depicted. In many ways, this reminded me of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. But the plot is much more complex, including the abandonment of U.S. citizens in Moscow by the U.S. government, the fate of U.S. prisoners of war in the Korean War, the convoluted relationship of U.S. entrepreneurial industrialists with corrupt Russian oligarchs as they plan to cooperate in developing oil fields in the Barents Sea after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the problematic relationship between Russian Jews and the birth of the state of Israel.

Each of the 43 chapters starts with an official-looking slightly smudged stamp of the year and the location. The chapters are not sequential, jumping back and forth between 1933 to 2008, and from Moscow, New York, and Washington D.C. to Siberia. Nor is there one narrator- some chapters are related in the first person singular, others from the viewpoint of a disinterested third person. This makes it a bit of a challenge for the reader to keep the characters and their relationships straight, as does the usual Russian practice of using multiple names for individuals, depending on the circumstances. The first few chapters need to be read slowly and carefully (or reread, as I did) in order to keep track of who is who in what follows.

There is a lot of introspective analysis of motives and moral problems by various characters, but this never comes across as sappy sentimentality; rather it infuses the story with depictions of universal human weaknesses and dilemmas.

Among many memorable lines, I chose two. “A memory is a difficult thing to judge from a distance” and, in relation to the unfairness of life, “Fair is a place where pigs win ribbons.”

Inevitably, this work will be compared to A Gentleman in Moscow, which I reviewed last week. This story’s plot is much more complex, and there is much more suspense and intrigue. I am ambivalent as to which one to recommend if you only have the time or the inclination to read one Soviet-era historical novel, but on balance I would recommend The Patriots, which I just finished this week. I changed the order of the reviews I had planned to post this week, in the hope that readers will enjoy this book as much as I did. And no, I have no relationship to the author or the publisher. This is not a paid plug.

A Gentleman in Moscow. Amor Towes  2016  480 pages

In 1922, an aristocratic count from the tsarist era is accused of writing a poem critical of the newish Bolshevik government, and a Soviet tribunal sentences him to house arrest in the famous and luxurious Metrpol Hotel on Red Square across from the Kremlin for the rest of his life. The description of his adaptation to this restriction over the next forty years by maintaining his dignity, tolerance, loyalty, and good manners is striking and heartwarming. The changing lives of various guests and workers at the hotel, and the pervasive political atmosphere of suspicion, intrigue and fear as they interact are central features of this epic historical novel. 

Do not read this book for the action or suspense-there is very little of either. What there is is a powerful depiction of one human being’s resilience and adaptability. The ability to find some tiny exquisite pleasure in the midst of extreme hardship, betrayal, and persecution may be a feature of the Russian character, or just those portrayed in Russian historical novels, but it is carefully portrayed here. In this respect it reminded me most of Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and his The Gulag Archipelago, and Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago, among others.

There are many memorable quotes in this beautiful story. Among my favourites it this:  ‘For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.’ Or perhaps:  ‘If patience wasn’t so easily tested, then it would not be a virtue.’ Or even ‘It is a fact of human life that one must eventually chose a philosophy.’ 

The author has pointed out that the doubling of the time intervals between chapters in the first half of the story and the halting of them in the second half is a metaphor for the way we seem to experience the evolution of our lives. This was lost on me until he pointed it out, although it is, in retrospect, very apt.

Amor Towes’s background as a former New York City investment banker makes him an unlikely novelist. He has said that the inspiration for this book came from his familiarity with the lives lived in luxury hotels around the world in his former occupation. Unlike most novelists who turn to writing in midlife and turn out a bestselling debut, his first novel, Rules of Civility is quite bland and unimaginative compared to this one, his second. 

Kenneth Branagh is to produce and star in a movie adaptation of this story. I will certainly watch it when it arrives, although I have often been disappointed in film adaptations of great novels. Do not wait for the movie, but be sure to read this beautiful story.

A Higher Loyalty. James Comey. 2018. 277 pages

This book gives the reader a very enlightening, informative perspective on recent U.S. politics, from a high profile dedicated Republican insider. I struggled to find any meaningful criticism, but I usually can win that struggle. I was not amused by his conclusion early in the book and apparently early in his life that he could do more to benefit society by becoming a lawyer than as a doctor.

The characterization of many public figures who are household names is interesting, particularly Cheney, Ashton and Mueller, though he says little about Rumsfeld and seems to have blind spot for George W. Bush’s many faults. His comparison of Trump’s modus operandi to that of the Mafia dons he previously prosecuted is particularly apt. The best quote among many good ones is “The most dangerous place in New York is between Rudi Giuliani and a microphone”.

He seemingly adequately explains his reasoning as FBI Director in reopening the investigation into Hilary Clinton’s email usage close to the 2016 election, although I suspect that there is in this and some of his other tough decisions, a bit of post hoc justification. And others have argued that he was influenced by a campaign of Russian disinformation in the first place to override protocol and make public announcements about the email investigations, rather than leaving that decision to the attorney-general, Loretta Lynch.

Now for some negatives that I did manage to dredge up. Like most U.S. authors of nonfiction, he rarely acknowledges that there is a world beyond their borders. He never divulges any personal guiding life philosophy or anchor for his ethics. Is it based on some religious creed, secular humanism or some inborn moral compass without any unifying philosophy of life? Does it matter? Probably not, but It would be of interest to readers to know. His reverence for the U.S. constitution, a deeply flawed document, is common to almost all Americans but is hardly justified in my opinion. He seems to accept without reservation that more and better laws will automatically lead to a better society, a far from obvious relationship. To quote Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist, “the law is an ass.”

The unfortunate fate of this book is that no hard-line Trump supporter is ever likely to read it.

Continue reading Full Disclosure. Beverly McLachlin. 2018 341 pages

The Best Laid Plans. Terry Fallis. 2007, 312 pages.

This self-published first novel by an Ottawa area native is a delightful, funny, light read with some serious messages. Fallis despaired of finding a publisher for it and initially read it on a podcast. But it went on to win the Stephen Leacock award for Canadian humor. He has since written a sequel and five other novels, all fun to read, but this one is still my favourite. I was disappointed in the film adaptation.

The central character is an elderly eccentric, exacting widowed  Scottish professor of engineering, a rare breed of academic who expertly straddles C.P. Snow’s two cultures of science and humanities. He enters into what he is sure is a winning contract with his young single English Department boarder, the narrator of the story.  With no real interest in politics, he agrees to run for parliament as a Liberal in a very safe Conservative riding, planning to do no campaigning and certain to lose. In exchange the English professor agrees to teach the obligatory  ‘English for Engineers’ course that the perfectionist engineering prof finds agonizing to teach because the ‘cultural pygmies’ in the engineering class are disinterested and ignorant of the nuances of English linguistics. I won’t give away more of the twisted plot, but let’s just say that the Best Laid Plans of several characters go unpredictably awry.

The humour is wry, the political messages are still relevant eleven years later, and the characters are all slightly exaggerated but believable caricatures. They include devious and corrupt politicians (one caught with his pants down- how timely), eccentric retirement home feminists, and tree-hugging hippie environmentalists. The sex is subtle, not graphic or vulgar, and the nuances of the English language are use to their fullest.

Besides, what other novel has ever featured an engineer as the central character?

Next week, another Canadian novel Full Disclosure.

This is the first of my book reviews, if/ when I ever get used to navigating the WordPress site.

Nine Parts of Desire. Geraldine Brooks. 1995, 244 pages.

No, this is not a porn book, although in a way it is about sex or at least gender roles in Islamic cultures. Geraldine Brooks is an Australian-American journalist, author, and investigator who spent several years in the Middle East investigating ‘the hidden lives of Islamic women’ which is also the subtitle of this enlightening book. She seems to have a unique ability for a secular westerner to befriend and become a confidante of Islamic women from a wide variety of countries, including almost all of those with Muslim-majority populations except for those in southeast Asia, and some parts of Africa. In Egypt, Eritrea, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Iran, and The United Arab Emirates, she somehow gains access to humble illiterate subservient Muslim women and those in the upper echelons of societies including Queen Noor of Jordan. Her knowledge of the history of Islam in its multiple mutually incompatible flavours,  and the life of Muhammad with his multiple wives is impressive.

The title comes from an Arabic saying attributed to Ali Ibn Abu Taleb, a son-in-law of Muhammad. “Almighty God created sexual desire in ten parts; then he gave nine parts to women and one part to men.” This quip might be humorous if it were not so obviously ludicrous from a scientific biological point of view- and if it had not been used over almost twelve centuries to repress women and deny them the right to almost any sexual pleasure, with forced painful genital mutilation, and multiple other humiliations. And if women are by nature nine times as desirous of sex as men, why does Islam allow and even encourage polygamy which lets them experience only at most a small fraction of the pleasure that their husbands are provided? 

This book very powerfully documents the denial of basic human rights to women inherent in the Islamic faith, at least as currently practiced, not just in matters of sexual satisfaction, but in every facet of their lives. But it also paradoxically documents the vociferous defence of Islam by the majority of those oppressed women. The apologetic women hide behind the hijab, cannot even speak to a unrelated male because their voices might be too seductive, cannot leave the home without a male relative, and cannot be allowed any say in the choice of their husbands. This seems to me to be a system-wide example of the Stockholm Syndrome in action.

This  picture is very depressing, although Brooks sees some faint rays of hope. It is surprising to me that she sees this in the somewhat more progressive attitudes of her Shi’ite Iranian friends than in the Egyptian or Jordanian Sunni women. She became a close friend of Queen Noor (Now Dowager Queen) of Jordan whose vocal advocacy for women’s right to an education and equality is unusual in Islamic countries. But the Islamic credentials of the queen are suspect as she was an upper class secular American civil engineer prior to marrying the late King Hussain. It seems clear that any progress in granting rights to Islamic women will need to involve the influence of prominent wives of the ruling men. And some disturbing trends are also documented, such as the Saudi development of all-female universities designed specifically to avoid the exposure of Saudi women to Western higher educational institutions. And certainly coed institutions of higher learning where women might benefit from discussions with men are anathema to the Saudi Mutawain, the sadistic religious police of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, uncontrolled by even the Saud family.

The expectation of one borderless Islamic state that is going to solve all the world’s problems, expressed by some of the men Brooks interviewed, is fortunately an unrealistic dream, as events since this book was written clearly show. The interminable wars between different factions of Islam  are hardly to be lauded, but at least make this dire future unrealistic.

Returning to the supposed sexual theme, the widespread legal Iranian practice of Sigheh warrants separate comment. Obtaining this ‘temporary marriage’ permit (available to most men but only widowed women) with terms and conditions like a western prenuptial agreement) is apparently easy and seems specifically designed to satisfy the sexual urges of both men and women in an acceptable arrangement in that society. It can theoretically even be coupled (sorry for the pun) with polygamy. Although this practice is and always will be widely condemned in prudish western Judaeo-Christian cultures, is it really very different from the norm of Hollywood’s serial overlapping monogamy?

A personal hang-up. The author  of this book converted from some wishy-washy Christianity to Judaism to marry her husband, as did Marilyn Munroe to marry Arthur Miller and Ivanka Trump to marry Jared Kushner. Queen Noor of Jordan converted to Islam from Christianity to marry King Hussain. Some of my friends and relatives have converted from one religion to another to obey the dictates of a restrictive religion regarding marriage, not because of any conviction about the authenticity of the dogmas. I can understand ‘converting’ or at least faking it, if the alternative is death, as it often was in centuries past. But if religion means anything worthwhile it should be teaching universal truths. And how can these great truths change depending on the hormones and neurotransmitters that develop in an individual’s response to another human being?

In spite of a brief Afterword written after 9/11, this book is somewhat dated. An even more pessimistic assessment of modern Islamism is to be found in Nomad by Ayaana Hirsi Ali published in 2010, but even that is now dated. This will be my next review. With her extensive experience and contacts in the Middle East, it would be interesting to read Brooks’s views about more recent developments. Unfortunately she has turned her considerable writing skills to publishing several historical novels instead.

Replies/comments: cghent6@rogers.com