The Sex Lives of Cannibals : Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost

It is a flyspeck on the map, the merest hint of a place, a lonely tropical coral atoll in the middle of a cerulean Pacific. The place is the Republic of Kiribati, in the Gilbert Islands, an island that, while not quite at the back end of nowhere, certainly lives in that general neighborhood.

J. Maarten Troost's book The Sex Lives of Cannibals chronicles his two-year stay on the island of Tarawa. Accompanying his wife (who works for a non-governmental aid organization), Troost meanders into Tarawa with unrealistic expectations of a tropical south seas paradise. What he found was an over-populated, stiflingly hot, polluted (and occassionally toxic) island, infested with stray dogs, lackadasical and corrupt bureaucracy, and an overabundance of La Macarena playing at every turn.

Troost looks at life among the Kiribati (whom he seems to regard with a fairly odd mix of wonderment, fondness, respect and bemusement), moving from varied discussions on the general attitudes towards work, the desperate quest for some island foodstuffs not based on fish, encounters with sharks (and some flotsum that is too disagreeable to outline here), the Kiribati fondness for stray dogs (think back to what I said about foodstuffs...'nuff said), and the daily trials of infrequent and intermittant electrical power, poor water supplies and government bureaucracy. Of particular note is when the beer ran out...on the entire island....for four weeks.

He also, on occasion, seems to have captured part of that particular magic that the south seas seems to possess...

Here's a brief excerpt From The Sex Lives of Cannibals:

"Landing on a rock-strewn strip cleared of coconut trees was exactly as I expected it would be. Terrifying. The passenger door jammed, and we scrambled out through the rear cargo door and soon we began to feel like Martian invaders. I-Matang I-Matang, said a chorus of tiny voices. But they quieted when I bared my teeth, and the youngest even scattered into the bush. Parents in Kiribati tell their children to behave or otherwise an I-Matang will devour them, which has led to the wonderful result that the younger segement of the population believes I-Matang to be cannibals.

I, of course, did nothing to dissuade them."

As an added bonus, the lurid title of the book seems to excite some interest, particularly when reading it on crowded subway trains...again, 'nuff said. All in all a throughly enjoyable, highly funny read.

For more on Tarawa and Kiribati, visit Lonely Planet. Also recommended is Janes Kiribati page and this Kiribati site.

Tarawa was the site of a particular nasty battle in World War II. Find out more at Eyewitness to History and Tarawa on the Web. Visit Tarawa's namesake here.

Want a look at Kiribati? Here is Kiribati and Christmas Island from space....

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Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond

"I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculpter well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stampt on these lifeless things,
The hand that mockt them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817)

About ten years ago, sweating profusely in the Yucatan humidity and liberally gulping down bottled water, I hauled myself up a vine-strewn pyramid in the Mayan city of Coba, and stared out at the view. Coba was a comparatively new site (only located in the early 70's) and remains somewhat isolated and still, with a few exceptions, pristinely covered in jungle. From our vantage point you could see the remains of another four massive structures that poked out of the green foliage canopy. We watched red kites circling languidly in the humid air and snapped our photos before scrambling back down to mull over the ruins that lay before us. Nothing focuses your attention like a disaster. Ruin is a source of wonder.

Collapse looks at ruin.

Jared Diamond has followed up on his superlative Pulitzer Prize-winning work Guns, Germs and Steel with Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

He is very specific in his choice of titles - Collapse is about the choices that societies make, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, that in the end determine failure or success.

In Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond examined what made certain civilizations succeed, what were the catalysts of their success and growth. In Collapse, he flips the coin and looks closely at what makes them fail, drawing on a number of comparative examples to illustrate his key points.

Diamond looks variously at such locales as modern-day Montana ranch country, the remote Easter Island, Pitcairn & Henderson islands, the American south-west's Anasazi culture and Chaco Canyon, the Mayan Empire of Central American (my old friends from Coba), and the Norse Vikings of Greenland, Vinland and Iceland. Diamond also takes a look at modern day disasters and societal collapses such as the Malthusian events of Rwanda (which he tellingly ties to population overpressure, demographics and the cultural inheritance traditions), the horrific conditions of Haiti (and the telling opposite across the border, the Dominican Republic). He also looks at conditions in Australia, China and his own native southern California.

Diamond postulates five primary sets of factors consisting of: 1)damage people inadvertently inflict on their environment, 2) climate change, 3) hostile neighbor's, 4) decreased support from friendly neighbors, 5) the society's response to the problems. Diamond is careful not to cite a single reason for any collapse, but rather does a solid job of drawing together the varying elements and their collective impact on the society.

Collapse is long and, bluntly, at times a bleak and repetitive read, however Diamond exhibits a solid grasp of his subject, drawing out the particular threads and weaving them together into a coherent and compelling, if depressing, whole. The key role of how societies interact with the environment in their various states of social disintegration is chillingly convincing, particularly the well-documented collapse of Easter Island and the connections that Diamond draws between the factors such as deforestation, environmental stress, and ecological breakdown.

The implications for the near future for modern society is clear and stark - it is choice. Interestingly enough, Diamond refuses to rest as a Cassandra-like prophet of doom and gloom, and spends the remainder of the book carefully examining the tremendous success stories that are also in evidence.

After all the last thing that flew out of Pandora's Box was hope.

Interested in learning more about Easter Island? Check out Rapa Nui, the Navel of the World here, here and here.

Investigate the lost Vikings of Greenland here or read Archaology's online article.

Live in the American South-west? Learn more about the Anasazi and the Chaco Canyon civilization (including their sophisticated astronomical observatories).

Check out the Maya at this site, or learn about Mayan culture at Rabbit in the Moon.

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Dr. Ian Malcolm: God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs...
Dr. Ellie Sattler: Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth...
- Jurassic Park

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece -- and Western Civilization - Barry Strauss

"Stifling in the August heat, even at night, Artermisium is a hub of activity. Seen by the light of bonfires, fifty thousand men are at work: here racing to patch damaged equipment, there hauling the bodies of the dead onto pyres, at one point filling water jugs and wineskins at the sprint, at another point leaving messages as disinformation for the enemy, who is close behind them. Some men are buckling on bronze helmets, others are tightening the leather straps of the arrow cases they carry on their backs, while most are holding nothing more than a seat pad made of sheepskin. As the men work, the area's familiar scents of brine, thyme, and pine needles mix with the odor of sweat and the stink of corpses.

The cove is lined, at the shore's edge, with about 250 triremes, moored stern first. From each ship, a pair of ladders comes down and a horde of blistered hands grabs onto the rungs, as rowers pull themselves up toward their seats. The rowers grunts mix with the crackle of firewood, while the cries of the rowing masters drown out other sounds.

The Greek navy is pulling out." - Excerpt, The Battle of Salamis, Barry Strauss

Building a strong and compelling picture of an event in the distant past, of the forces that drove its occurence and of the people that lived through it is not an easy task. Historians as a breed seem often narrow, didactic and detail-obsessed, taking the most fascinating moments and devolving them down to dry and dusty factual points, sending another generation of students drifting into the land of Nod in the back rows of the lecture hall.

The Battle of Salamis is not that type of history book. Barry Strauss has penned a superlative and riveting account of the epic naval battle of Salamis in 480 BC between the Greeks, led by the fledgling democracy of Athens and the canny, manipulative and vain Themistocles, and the overwhelming Persian forces of Xerxes.

Strauss vividly portrays the key individuals, events and circumstances, drawing on chronicles of both participants such as Aeschylus, and the later accounts of "the first historian" Herodotus, among others. The result is an amazingly readable account of the battle, the ships (triremes), the tactics (drawing the enemy into enclosed waters where speed and manuverability mattered more than size...and ramming, lots of ramming), and the long-term impact of the battle through the history of the western world (Greek victory at Salamis = success for democracy).

Strauss's efforts to portray the turning of the battle as one of democracy versus authoritarianism feels slightly overstated given the limitations on democracy at the time in both Athens (and the lack thereof in the other Greek city states) but the long-term historical impact certainly reverberates to this day.

Strauss has mastered the ability to give the reader a feel for the action, normally the strict purview of fiction writers, illustrating the event beyond just bare facts. In his words you can taste the woodsmoke and sweat, feel the thick knot of fear in the rowers stomachs and hear the creak of the oars and the thunderous crescendo of splintering wood before the rams...

Overall Strauss has written a crackling good history that is well worth your time.

Interesting in reading more? On the fiction side, I highly recommend Stephen Pressfield's amazing Gates of Fire, an epic account of the 300 Spartans who faced Xerxes before Thermopylae, The Hot Gates and also (by the same author) the book Tides of War covering the Athenian soldier Alcibiades. Tides of War in particular has a brutal, rip-snorting trireme battle at Syracuse that, in my opinion, ranks with the best of Hornblower as a naval battle scene.

Read Herodotus's account of the Battle of Salamis here, or visit modern Salamis here for a look at the island today.

Interested in learning more about Herodotus, the world's first modern historian (also called "The Father of Lies")? Check out Herodotus on the Web for a comprehensive link list or go to Herodotus's Histories. You can read Herodotus complete works online here.

For some details on triremes visit The Classics Pages, this site , or this one. Want to build one? Check out the Trireme Trust.

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The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

"Confusticate those dwarves!." - Bilbo Baggins

I first read The Hobbit at the grand old age of eleven and, at the time, thought it was one of the very best books I had ever encountered. Interestingly enough, more than 25 years later, it still remains a marvelous piece of work in my eyes. As a matter of fact, I just finished re-reading it with my six-year old son and the re-read brought with it the added joy of watching something you grew up with light up your child's eyes.

Chronicling the intrepid journey of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit of the Shire (with just a little bit too much Took in him for his own good) who is shanghaied from his own tea party by a group of thirteen treasure-seeking dwarves and one irascible wizard, The Hobbit is a delightful read. Bilbo is recruited by the wizard Gandalf to become the official "burglar" for Thorin Oakenshield and his twelve dwarven companions, as they journey across the Edge of the Wild to the far distant Lonely Mountain to face the implacable malevolence of the dragon Smaug.

From troll-hollows to the dreary spider-infested forest of Mirkwood, Tolkien has woven a wonderful adventure, leavened with character, humor, spark and a thread of a greater darkness tracing through the story, evident in the hissing fury of the riddling Gollum and in the deep and abiding malice that lurks behind the conversational tone of Smaug.

It is particularly different to revisit The Hobbit after having read Tolkiens' larger, more mythic trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, which expanded the world of Middle-Earth exponentially and, to a certain extent, removed it from Bilbo's more comforting adventure and warmer tale.

All in all The Hobbit is about as close to a perfect bedtime read for the kids as you are likely to find on any shelf.

While The Lord of the Rings has been brought to vivid life in the theatres, The Hobbit is apparently tied up in legal wrangling over the movie rights. Here's hoping that Peter Jackson gets the chance to bring The Hobbit to the silver screen in the near future. In the meantime, I recommend the 1978 animated feature which was a solid (if short) adaptation featuring Otto Preminger and John Huston among others.

Visit the Tolkien Society, or to learn something more about the creator of Middle-earth, read J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator.

Here's a real-world hobbit that has scientest puzzled and intrigued...

And here's a dragon to boot..

There are absolutely tons of websites dedicated to the Lord of the Rings films but for the best info, check out theonering.net. Tour Middle-Earth at this site...

You can also find a movie trailer for The Hobbit at iFilm patched together from various sources. No, as far as I know it isn't real ...yet.

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Blue Blood - Edward Conlon

According to the NYPD website, the New York Police Department currently employs 39,110 cops, a force larger then the standing armies of some countries. At least one of them is a solid writer.

Edward Conlon's Blue Blood takes readers deep into a gritty, street-wise portrait of life in the NYPD, its politics, language, foibles, quirks and characters as well as the relentless nature of the urban police beat.

Blue Blood is part memoir, part history and part journey through the looking glass, tracing Conlon's history and roots in the NYPD, his experiences as a rookie cop in decaying Bronx housing projects, to narcotics stakeouts and the daily paperwork of a detective, the events of 9-11, as well as the day-to-day and life and death issues that cops face on the street. Conlon as a writer is canny and often blunt, offering a welcome perspective on such issues as police corruption and abuse, but also thoughtful and keenly observant, casting an often wry eye on NYPD practices, politics and the criminals they pursue.

Well-written, authentic and nuanced, Blue Blood is a unique, if lengthy, look at life behind the badge.

For more on one of the world's most famous police departnments, drop by the NYPD website. You can also visit the NYPD Police Museum and the NYPD Shop online - for those of you that desperately want a set of NYPD shooter glasses or your own police station. Unfortunately no handcuffs available.

Trace the history of New York's Finest here, or check out The Insider for a look at what is happening in the Big Apple. Check out the view from Times Square, or, if you prefer your New York from a couch - just watch these guys.

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Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 - Steve Coll

"When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before."
- Kim, Rudyard Kipling

The Great Game is alive and well and living in the cold, stony peaks of the Hindu Kush.

Ghost Wars is Steve Coll's superlative account of the tangled morass of the last twenty-five years of byzantine manuvering, chaos and war on the Afghan frontier. The war against the Russians was conducted mainly through proxies - the Muhjaddeen and the warlords, the Pakistani government, and the quioxtic brillance of Massoud. Coll outlines the early rise of US policy towards the region, tracing carefully the gradual emergence and steady growth of US involvement as the Muhjaddeen war against the Russians gradually became a key element for US policy.

Coll judiciously examines the post-war American neglect of the region (literally dropping off of the policy radar screen overnight) and the sudden and abrupt roll-up of the CIA's covert support operations (exacerbating the political vacuum), its impact on both the rise of the Taliban and the development of Al Quada and Osama Bin Laden.

Reading Ghost Wars amply demonstrates that none of the subsequent events of 9-11 was surprising in retrospect and that, bluntly, no one involved is a new or unknown player. Bin Laden in particular was amply demonstrating his direction, policy and goals but was initially overlooked and ignored, and later indifferently dealt with, despite mounting evidence of danger. Neither the Clinton nor the Bush (Jr. & Sr.) administrations escapes censure for their failure to recognize the approaching storm and the glimpse Coll offers into the inner workings of covert policy in the region both fascinates and frustrates.

Coll's book is a must-read for anyone genuinely interested in understanding the complex interplay of history, politics, culture and religion in Afghanistan and is, on top of being exhaustive and comprehensive, an excellent, gripping, high-quality and well-written read. Highly Recommended!

Also of note, and previously reviewed on BookLinker is George Crile's Charlie Wlison's War.

You can find an free online copy of Rudyard Kipling's classic Kim at the Gutenberg Project. I also heartily recommend Kipling's The Man Who Would be King and the excellent film version with Sean Connery and Michael Caine.

Interested in the real Man Who Would be King? He did exist - check out Ben McIntyre's biography of Josiah Harlen, ex-doctor, soldier-of-fortune, Prince of Ghur and pretender to the Afghan Throne (he also runs afoul of Flashman here...)

Check out another solid Frontline report on Afghanistan here. Also good is Hunting Bin Laden, a report that was put together prior to the attacks of 2001.

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Wolves Eat Dogs - Martin Cruz Smith

Cynical, melancholy Moscow special investigator Arkardy Renko has a serious problem. One of Moscow's newly minted billionaires has taken a fatal plunge off of a twenty-story condominium - suicide or murder? As Renko dryly observes "We prefer suicides. Suicides don't demand work, or drive up the crime rate."

In his fifth book featuring his laconic, down-trodden detective, Martin Cruz Smith is at the top of his game. Wolves Eat Dogs takes Renko, filling his role as Moscow's most dogged and quixotic gumshoe, from the heady environs of the new Russian elite down a twisted, wayward path into a deadly quietly radioactive heart of darkness, the 30-mile Exclusion Zone surrounding Chernobyl.

Tautly written, intriguing and quite frankly offering a more humane glimpse of the Russian pysche then western fiction typically offers, Wolves Eat Dogs is a terrific and unique mystery, with Renko, as ever, leading the reader deeper and deeper into uncharted territory - in this case, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, with its eerie abandoned towns, burgeoning wildlife, icon-thieves, corrupt car parts dealers and obsessive scientests. Smith weaves an involving and immersive mystery with first-rate characters and plotting, in a very unique setting. I highly recommend it!

I would also recommend a look at Renko's earlier adventures - Gorky Park, Polar Star, Red Square, and Havana Bay.

Find out more about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster at Chernobyl Info, Chernobyl: A Nuclear Disaster and the Chernobyl Children's Project International. For a more detailed look at the overall health impact of the disaster ten years after, visit the Nuclear Energy Agency's Chernobyl Assessment page.

Why not take a visit to the Exclusion Zone? Follow along with Elena's motorcycle run through the Zone at Kiddofspeed - Ghost Town. Here are some more photos to check out.

Interestingly enough, due to a dearth of human presence, the Exclusion Zone is rapidly becoming a natural haven for Ukrainian wildlife.

Thinking of playing tourist? Better read this first.

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Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II - Robert Kurson

There is something deeply fascinating yet profoundly unsettling about this book.

It is, among other things, a story of high adventure, obsession and the cold face of imminent death. Shadow Divers is the true story of a group of deep-sea wreck divers who challenge themselves on the thin edge of the survivable, diving more than 200 feet into the cold Atlantic, venturing into twisted wrecks like the Andrea Doria and others, hunting souvenirs, bragging rights and a shivering adrenaline high.

Shadow Divers focuses on John Chatterton and Rich Kohler, who, investigating a mysterious wreck off the New Jersey coast, discover lurking 230 feet below the surface, a ghost from World War II, a sunken German U-Boat lying where none should be. Driven by the challenge of uncovering and identifying the boat, Chatterton and Kohler undertake a seven-year odyssey, diving repeatedly into the chill depths of the sea and into the musty records of World War II to discover the secrets of the wreck.

Deep-sea wreck diving is among the world's most deadly endeavors and the dives on the shadowy U-Boat are no exception. Kurson's vivid prose pulls the reader into the situation and at points is so profoundly tense it is almost impossible to put down. It is, as the expression goes, like watching a train wreck about to happen...terrified fascination and sick amazement are at war in your stomach when you read this book.

Kurson's narrative weaves the lore, dangers, technology and practices of deep-sea wreck diving, with the characters and practioners of the sport, pulling you into the excitement and the discovery...so when disaster strikes, although not unexpected, it is deeply unsettling, horrifying and vivid.

Similar to Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air which recounted the terrifying 1996 disaster on Mount Everest that cost five lives, Shadow Divers left me with a certain empty, morbid and questioning sense of "why?" and a mixed bag of both admiration and head-shaking irritation at the often pointless thrill-seeking.

Overall a definite first-rate book and one of the very best of the year.

Interested in learning more about U-boats? U-Boat.net is the place to go. Also check out the terrific Nova documentary and supporting website "Hitlers Lost Sub", for a look at the Shadow Divers' submarine, a virtual tour, maps of other sunken U-boat wrecks and an interactive feature on the chilling dangers of wreck diving.

Here's the website for the Wreck of the Andrea Doria, described by Kurson as "Mount Everest" for wreck divers. If you are wise, you will just stick to reading about the wreck...

Here's the Atocha, for the red-blooded, gold-hunting treasure-enthusiast in your family...

And some last thoughts...

They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

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Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life - Ray Harryhausen, Tony Dalton

In the prehistoric days before the advent of a thousand digital channels, DVD's and VCRs, my local television channel would run a Sunday Afternoon Matinee. My brothers and I would sit, enthralled, watching Godzilla stomp Tokyo into smoky rubble, or some slithery beast ooze out of a bog and chase down some hapless passerby, or watch, as some wooden-voiced actor bounded about the screen improbably fighting a dozen skeletal swordsman or a towering bronze statue.

More often then not, we were watching the uniquely detailed work of Ray Harryhausen.

Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life is a glorious, fascinating and fun meander through the life, films and career of one of Hollywood's pioneering special effects masters. Harryhausen's magical beasts and evocative stop-action special effects were a source of inspiration for dozens of today's directors and directly led to the current state-of-the art work of such luminaries as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (although Harryhausen himself notes that despite the exquisite detail of today's computer-generated special efffects, he still prefers models and stop-animation for their "soul").

Harryhausen's highly illustrated book traces his roots in the special effects industry, his mentors Willis O'Brien and George Pal, and the various film influences (King Kong naturally enough)that shaped and impacted his work on such films as Mighty Joe Young, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Valley of the Gwangi, Jason and the Argonauts, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Clash of the Titans, and, my personal favorite, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.

An Animated Life is fundamentally a book for a film buff, so temper any expectations of a detailed or seamy insider look at Hollywood in the 50's and 60's. You will however love having the curtain pulled aside on how Harryhausen and his cohorts pulled off much of their cinematic sleight-of-hand. For someone infected with the romance of the pulp films of the era, An Animated Life is a fabulous book but...

If however you really don't care for silver screen derring-do, the deep background on the Rhedosaurus, foul monsterous creatures from the depths or magical mythological beasts.. well, ...what the heck is wrong with you? Get a life.

For a complete round-up of Harryhausen's work, check out the ever dependable Internet Movie DataBase or read the profile at Sci-Fi Masters.

Check out this tribute to Harryhausen (with special guest appearance by He-Man's Skeletor), its just plain...surreal.

Check out this online explanation of Dynamation that gives you a good overview of how Harryhausen brought his intricate creatures to life or visit the Stop-Motion Animation site for some lessons on how you can develop your own stop-motion film.

Now I have to go, my six-year old son and I have to snuggle up, eat popcorn and watch The 7th Voyage of Sinbad... love that cyclops.

Thank you for reading BookLinker! Comments and feedback are always welcome (as are links)!

Rats : Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants - Robert Sullivan

"And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling."
- Robert Browning

I used to take a short-cut through a back alley near my home, cutting two minutes off of my morning commute to the local subway station. Generally the laneway was empty of foot traffic except for the handful of parked cars and the garbage dumpsters festoned with cryptic graffiti and spray-painted tags. The alley was damp, deserted and the air layered with that dank, moist smell, just short of rotten but still driving in that general direction.

That particular yellow-lit morning, I was startled to see a furtive, pale brown creature about half the size of a housecat saunter out carefully from behind the local pizza parlor, dragging what look like about half of a medium-sized pizza behind it. It looked up, saw me, paused as if to say "What?" incredulously, then resumed its labor, dragging its hard-won prize along the edge of the curb. Obviously take-out. I spotted the long, thin, hairless tail trailing it and realized, with a profound bemusement, that it was a rat.

I don't know why I was so startled. Rats are as much a resident of the urban byways as people, albeit generally just a little more circumspect.

Rats by Robert Sullivan delves into the hidden world of rattus norvegicus, the infamous city-dwelling Norwegian Rat or Brown Rat (although they are often as not grey, off-pink, tan, whitish, or other color variations). Sullivan, whose previous off-the-beaten-path works include The Meadowlands, a study of the fetid swamplands outside of New York, (famous as a garbage dump and the sort of place the Sopranos might plant their former business partners) is really the perfect guide to a study of the urban rat, bringing the right mix of humor, readability and infectious curiosity to the subject.

Rats provides insight not only into the world of the rat, but how rats have grown with humanity, the lives they build in the thin margins of civilization and, how they frankly flourish mightily at times in their relationship with people. Rats offers a penetrating slice through the usual urban byways, weaving history, urban planning, archaeology, and natural history together into a fascinating and highly readable mix.

The book offers a number of eye-opening (i.e. disquieting) facts that lend a certain adventurous and squirmy feel to your next walk downtown. For example, a single pair of rats has the potential for 15,000 descendents in a single year. Think about that, the next time the kids run screaming through the house, knocking over furniture...

Weird as it sounds, one of the best books of the year is all about rats...

Learn more about these pesky rodents here and here. For the Hollywood take on rats, well, the all-time must-see rat movie is the original Willard, it's sequel Ben...or the recent Willard re-make.

Got rats? These guys might be able to help...or if you prefer, you can always call The Pied Piper.

Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America - Steve Almond

Homer: "Got any of that beer that has candy floating in it? You know, Skittlebrau?"
Apu: "Such a beer does not exist, sir. I think you must have dreamed it."
Homer: "Oh. Well, then just give me a six-pack and a couple of bags of Skittles."

Candy seems like an apt topic around Halloween and Steve Almond's Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America is a saliva-inducing, hedonistic choclate voyage.

The aptly named Almond is, to be blunt, unhealthily obsessed with candy and Candyfreak is his own personal analysis of his bonbon fixation, from early childhood onwards, culminating in his cross-country trip to visit the last of America's independent manufacturers and purveyors of cavity-inducing deliciousness.

Candyfreak is, at best, an uneven journey, albeit a well-written one, that slowly draws you into the author's fascination and passion for candy and choclate. At first, reading Almond's endless descriptions of a particular brand of sweets, you start to wonder what on earth he's carrying on about, but after reading a few, you actually start to slip into the same sugar-rushed fetish frenzy. After reading this book, every chocolate bar you munch on your way to work becomes a pause for thought and a brief attempt to try to capture some of the sheer joy he seems to find in this food.

Alas in the end Candyfreak is a good but fairly thin product, partially due to the relative dearth of independent candy manufacturers today and partially because the book seems to coast along in uneven spurts, without a real direction or culmination of his odyssey. In long run, Candyfreak is, like its subject matter, highly consumable, with some flavorful morsels that roll elegantly off the tongue, but once it is gone...well, the moment ends.

Interested in candy? There is a veritable smorgusboard of candy-related sits ont he Internet, enough to make every dentist able to retire to Key West...

For some of Almond's favorite objects of obsession, check out the Twin Bing, the Goo Goo Clusters, and the Idaho Spud.

Grab more candy here, here and here. Still hungry? Visit the CandyFreak site for a complete list of deliciousness...

My personal favorite candy - boring old chocolate M&M's - refrigerated, so that you can crack off the candy-coating in your teeth....

It was a dark and stormy night....

I couldn't resist blogging this, despite being laid up with two severed tendons in my right hand for the next six weeks...

The results are in for the 2004 Bulwer-Lytton Contest (see the site for details if you don't have a clue what it is....I can't explain right now, typing with just my left is far too much work.)

Grand Prize Winner:
  
She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight . . . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail . . . though the term "love affair" now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism . . . not unlike "sand vein," which is after all an intestine, not a vein . . . and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand . . . and that brought her back to Ramon.
Dave Zobel, Manhattan Beach, CA
 
Runner-Up:

The notion that they would no longer be a couple dashed Helen's hopes and scrambled her thoughts not unlike the time her sleeve caught the edge of the open egg carton and the contents hit the floor like fragile things hitting cold tiles, more pitiable because they were the expensive organic brown eggs from free-range chickens, and one of them clearly had double yolks entwined in one sac just the way Helen and Richard used to be. - Pamela Patchet Hamilton, Beaconsfield, Quebec

And my personal favorites....

The legend about Padre Castillo's gold being buried deep in the Blackwolf Hills had lain untold for centuries and will continue to do so for this story is not about hidden treasure, nor is it set in any mountainous terrain whatsoever. - Siew-Fong YiapKowloon, Hong Kong
 
It was a dark and stormy night--actually not all that dark, but more dusky or maybe cloudy, and to say "stormy" may be overstating things a bit, although the sidewalks were still wettish and smelled of ozone, and, truth be told, characterizing the time as night is a stretch as it was more in the late, late afternoon because I think Oprah was still on. - Gregory Snider, MDLexington, KY

Check out the site for more...

Now goodbye for six weeks...

Hiatus

Well, it's official. I managed to sever the flexor tendons on my right hand in the baby finger and the ring finger. The surgery happened the day before yesterday and now I am officially left-handed for the next six weeks or possibly longer.

The Dad Chronicles and Booklinker will be in hiatus until recovery. So get the hell off your computer and go enjoy the summer.

See you in six weeks!

Island of the Blessed: The Secrets of Egypt's Everlasting Oasis - Harry Thurston

"Ex Africa semper aliquid novi - There is always something new out of Africa." - Pliny the Elder

Egypt has ever been about the Nile. It's seasonal floods have carried rich silt along a narrow strip of arable land ribboning 4,000 miles through the desert, it's rhythm sustaining the life, culture and development of one of the world's most monumental civilizations.

But life did not begin with the Nile.

Deep in the Egyptian Sahara, 400 miles from the familiar epic sites of Cairo, Giza and the Pyramids lies the Dakhleh Oasis, a green island in a sea of sand, rock and parched wilderness - a place that has been revealed as an archaeological treasure trove, with an almost complete record of continuous human habitation dating back more than 400,000 years.

Island of the Blessed (entitled Secrets of the Sands in the U.S. - not nearly as evocative a title...) offers an intensely fascinating look at a unique archaeological site. The Dakhleh Oasis is not the proverbial pond with a smattering of palm trees, but rather a region that covers more than 600 square miles, providing life-giving water to a variety of plants, animals and people - stretching back more than 400,000 years in history. It is, quite literally, an island of life in the bleak wasteland of the Sahara.

Thurston draws on more than 30-years of archaeological studies and carefully takes the reader through the slowly uncovering history and significance of Dakhleh. Among the evidence uncovered by the archaeological teams working in Dakhleh is neolitihic stone tools and prehistoric encampments, new evidence of some of mankind's earliest agricultural activities, an exquisitely preserved Old Kingdom town, Roman aqueducts, countless mummies, a vast collection of papyrus records and the world's oldest bound books. One crucial theory now being examined is that Dakhleh was the crucible for Egyptian civilization, predating the Nile River habitations and provided a critical role in the ongoing development of Egyptian civilization and trade.

Thurston has created a solid, highly readable work that captures the unique setting and environment of Dakhleh, and offers up colorful and vivid glimpses of the sometimes obsessive characters of the archaeologists who are slowly bringing the past to light. In addition to the archaeological record, the long sequence of continuous human habitation within the isolated oasis environment permits archaeologists and climatologists to develop a one-of-a kind environment assessment, measuring the environmental impact and growth of human habitation within the isolation of the Dakhleh Oasis over an extended period of time. The research brings to light some of the detrimental impact that unchecked human growth and overly extensive agricultural practices can have on the water supply, a practice that may, in time, bring the Everlasting Oasis to an ignominious end.

For more on Dakhleh, check out The Dakhleh Oasis Project. For information on the world's oldest bound books, visit this site on ancient Kellis.

For more information on the Sahara Desert, visit PBS's Sahara website or read Michael Palin's account of his sojourn in the world's largest desert.

For some fabulous websites on Egyptian archaeology, check out Eternal Egypt , a huge and extensive multimedia site, and the Theban Mapping Project which offers an interactive atlas of the Valley of the Kings.

Want a birds-eye view? Check out this image from NASA's Earth Observatory website. If you look carefully in the western desert, you can spot Dakhleh.

Thanks for reading BookLinker! Please post a link to the site and tell all your friends to drop by (somebody tell Instapundit! I need an insta-lanche!).

Rain Fall - Barry Eisler

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid... He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. " - Raymond Chandler

Set in Tokyo, Barry Eisler's book Rain Fall (and it's sequel Hard Rain) is an excellent, hard-boiled Chandleresque action-thriller about an assassin-for-hire that specializes in "natural deaths". Half-Japanese, half-American, Eisler's John Rain is a character in the classic Chandler mold - a man with his own particular rigorous code of honor. When a client violates that code by lying to Rain, he is forced into investigating the circumstances of the murder he has just committed. Following a labyrinthine trail Rain finds himself caught between the competing interests of both his countries, the Yakuza, and the deeply held corruption of the Japanese political scene.

Eisler's character, setting and circumstances move Rain Fall and its sequal Hard Rain a cut above the common action-thriller. Rain's cultural background and profession make for an interestingly agreeable anti-hero with all the requisite nicities. Eisler's depiction of the neon reef that is modern Tokyo is, however, superlative.

Eisler successfully captures the unique feel and setting of the city of villages, the legions of salari-men packing the trains, the glare and needle-sharp opulence of the Ginza, the noise and bustle of Shinjuku and hectic ambience of Roppongi clubs. Eisler seems to be one of the few fiction writers who capture the essence of how a city feels, not just how it looks and his familiarity and love of Tokyo permeates the book. It brought back to me the feel of walking through Shinjuku in the cold night rain, the sky lit only by the towers, the streets wet and slick with water and light, the scattered groups of drunk salari-men meandering past with the loose rhythm of the elevated train runbling overhead and the blaring, relentless accompaniment of the pachinko parlors and the arcades spilling out of their bright doorways...

Tokyo's one hell of a city, and deserves to be featured in more fiction...

Rain Fall and Hard Rain are both solid thrillers and well worth a read. It's a series I plan to follow in the future.

For more background on Eisler's Japan, check out The Enigma of Japanese Power by Karel Van Wolferen, Ruth Benedict's classic The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, and, for a look at the youth of Japan, read Speed Tribes by Karl T. Greenfield.

For some Tokyo bloggers, check out Tokyo Shoes, and Hunkabutta.

For some background on the Yakuza, check out this site, and Court TV's Library site. Personally I recommend Robert Mitchum in The Yakuza for a more enjoyable learning experience!

For another film that truly captures the essence of Tokyo, watch Lost in Translation...it has that jet-lagged feel.

Comments and links to BookLinker are always welcome!

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach

Deeply unsettling, morbidly funny, weird and disturbingly fascinating, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach is an unvarnished, questions-that-most-dare-not-ask, slightly off the wall examination of ...well, the practice and usage of human remains through history.

If it sounds like a bit of a reach, delving into a subject that most writers (and readers for that matter) would not care to visit, Stiff is a surprisingly good read. Skillfully written, tactful, sympathetic, respectful without being dull and heavy, strange without quite being off-putting, author Mary Roach weaves the ins and outs of such subjects as mortuary science, the history of surgery, autopsies, where plastic surgeons go for practice, medical experimentation, jello and gunshot wounds, crucification, human crash-test dummies, mummification and more into a riveting stew...just don't read it over your lunch hour. Seriously.

Stiff, despite its title, is anything but. Roach has a disconcerting habit of asking the people in charge questions that we all would have liked to ask, but were either too polite, too self-conscious or squeamish to ask. These queries, although they seriously make the reader question whether Roach would be someone to invite to a cocktail party, serve to beatifully illustrate the quandaries that we ourselves face, when confronted by the implacable certainty of The Father of Time.

My particular favorite moment was when the author was observing the "harvesting" of a doner heart from a brain-dead patient. Seeing the slippery, still-beating muscle being extracted, Roach promptly asked the doctor if they had ever dropped one on the floor...

Overall a well-written, excellent (if somewhat nausous) read. Remember to read outside of mealtimes...

For a look at the Internet's resident cadaver, check out The Virtual Man Project at the National Library of Medicine. Researchers froze a cadaver, then sliced it in ultra-thin slices creating an anatomically detailed virtual representation of the human body....For an added bonus, visit The Virtual Autopsy here or HBO's Autopsy website.

Just so you don't think it's just people under the surgeon's knife - someone autopsied a furby...

Here's some real Crash Test Dummies....and some more (especially 50th Percentile Hybrid III).

Lastly, here's the most famous cadaver of them all....It's Alive! ALIVE!

Thanks for dropping by BookLinker! Please tell all your friends, link to the site, toss off some comments and buy some books!

Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor

Hercules was probably one of the most famous early practioners of biological weapons, and one of its most prominent victims...

Slayer of the Lemean Hydra, Hercule's dipped his deadly arrows in the Hydra's blood, creating a fatal weapon - one that echoed down through Greek history claiming myrid lives. Eventually the Fates drew him full-circle and Hercules is destroyed by the gift of a cloak from his wife. The garment, secretly poisoned with the blood of Nessus, a centaur that Hercules has shot with his envenomed arrows, "burns like fire" until Hercules, in agony, begs his own son to burn him in a bonfire.

The legendary story of the 12 Labors of Hercules serves as both metaphor and warning in Adrienne Mayor's fascinating and highly readable examination of the usage and prevelance of biological and chemical warfare in the Ancient World. Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs is a timely and relevant eye-opener, touching on the practical usages of such tried and true weapons such as poisoned food, tainted water, bug bombs (scorpions and bees were apparently popular tools to loft onto besiging armies), snake bombs, burning oil, pestilence-ridden corpses, maddened cattle, pitch-covered pigs (ignited of course) and, of course, the precusor of modern napalm, greek fire. Of special note is the "mad honey" that Xenophon and the Ten Thousand encounter on their trek to the sea. Mixed from the rhododendron plant, the honey of Pontus is a famous and lethal toxin causing hallucinations and often death.

Mayor carefully outlines the often ambigious nature of chemical and biological weapons, particularly the fact that the ancients recognized the double-edged sword that they wielded had terrifying implications for their own populations if used unchecked. Mixing the mythological roots of bio-war with historical examples, Mayor has written a highly readable, utterly absorbing piece of work that, at the end, leaves you grimly fascinated and nervously appalled.

For some terrific information on the ancient world and such stalwarts as Hercules, check out the Perseus Project from Tufts University.

Worried about that fever? Check out the National Library of Medicine's Biological Warfare page...brrrrr. Hey, where'd that rash come from?

Damn, those guys are busy - here's their page on Chemical Warfare...damn, now there's spots with the rash...

Lastly, here's a copy of Sophocle's "Philoctetes", the tale of the man who inherited the dubious prize of Hercule's poisonous arrows...

Thanks for reading. Please post comments below. Links would be appreciated.

Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker
- James McManus

"Never play cards with a man called Doc." - Nelson Algren

I've never played a serious game of poker in my life.

The few times I've sat down and played a few hands, it has been in almost total ignorance of the odds, poker strategy and anything but the most basic dos and don'ts...but...the first thing I wanted to do having finished Positively Fifth Street was jet down to Vegas and set myself down at a table.

James McManus's book Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs and Binion's World Series of Poker is, for lack of a better word, infectious.

McManus was assigned by Harper's Magazine to cover the simultaneous twin stories of the Ted Binion murder trial and the annual Binion's World Series of Poker held at the Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas, the arguably most famous poker tournament in the world. McManus, a journalist, author and poet, also happened to be an itinerate amateur poker player who elected to use his $4,000 advance from Harpers to fund his own entry into the tournament (Read the book to find out how he did. Unlike the NY Times book review (SPOILER WARNING) , I refuse to spoil it for you by divulging the results...What were they thinking?).

The book offers a rather piecemeal look at Ted Binion's murder, using the crime more as an illustrative and cautionary tale of the author's own personality - the risk-taking, obsessive, "cliff-diver" face that McManus tries to generally keep in check ("Bad Jim" as McManus aptly terms himself). If you are looking for the details of a sordid crime drama, Positively Fifth Street covers the basics (Binion's tawdry drug use, the aspiring, leggy stripper girlfriend, the low-life pal who hooks up with her and plots Binion's ultimate demise, the fundamentals of "burking" and so on...), but is far more focused on the legacy of Binion in the poker tournament then on Binion himself. The murder trial does loom ominiously in the background but it seems to serve more as a grim reminder of the dangerous price of an unchecked lifestyle than as a raison-e'etre for the book, akin to the images of Death that can be seen perpetually lurking in the corners in a Renaissance painting. The murder is a reminder of mortality, chance and fate, and the luck of the cards.

Once the pasteboards start to hit the table, the book truly takes off, mixing each stage of the tournament action with a look at the intricacies of poker, the rise of "book-learned" system poker players, the rules of Texas Hold 'Em, the history of playing cards, and vivid portraits of the top professional poker players such as the cantakerous TJ Cloutier, top female player Kathy Liebert and others. McManus has woven a startling page turner that bluntly fascinates from beginning to end.

Interested in learning how to play Texas Hold 'Em? Check out Ultimatebet.com for the rules.

Author, blogger and actor Wil Wheaton drew my attention to Positively Fifth Street a while back through a mention of the book on his site and, as a poker player himself, recently posted a vivid and terrific piece on his own adventures in an illegal poker tournament at the Odessa in Hollywood. It's well worth a read.

Here's where you can find Binion's Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas, everything you need to know about the World Series of Poker, and Court TV's take on the Ted Binion murder trial.

If you are really, really taken with Positively Fifth Street, then this site might be for you....

Comments are always welcome, book suggestions, feedback and links to the site.

Thanks for reading!

Watership Down - Richard Adams

"El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed." - Lord Frith to El-ahrairah

If you proposed to someone that they read a 478-page book about rabbits, they would probably either look at you sideways like you were utterly insane or shout out in joyous recognition "Watership Down!". Richard Adams first published his utterly compelling tale of adventurous rabbitry in 1972 and the tale remains to this day one of the most creative and enjoyable pieces of children's literature ever set to paper.

Adams tells the story of a small band of rabbits that, aided by a prescient seer named Fiver, sets forth on a harrowing journey across the English countryside, escaping from their doomed warren (destroyed by land developers) to seek a safe home high on the Downs. The rabbits' odyssey take them through numerous fateful encounters, both treacherous and inspiring until, tempered by their adversity, they find themselves forced to face their most difficult challenge of all, using all their guile, skills and bravery against the repressive and dictatorial warren of Efrafa and its leader, the malevolent and powerful General Woundwort.

Adams prose vividly describes and awakens the English countryside in the mind of the reader, from a rabbit's point of view. You can almost feel the grass under your toes. Indeed, one of the few things I readily wished for while reading Watership Down, was a version abridged with sketches or pictures of all the damn plants (fleabane, purple loosestrife, pink butterbur, figwort, yellow mullein...the list goes on. I suspect one needs a certain grounding in botany to truly appreciate Adams understanding of the English countryside.). The other side of the coin is the strength of the various characters - Hazel, the decisive, intelligent leader; Fiver the precognitive runt whose intelligence and visions see the rabbits through diverse sets of danger; Bigwig, the rough-and-tumble fighter who refuses to give in - ever, and Woundwort himself as the battle-scarred and vicious, intelligent and obsessive rabbit that rules Efrafa with an iron paw.

Rich with political allegory and echoing with the touchstones of epic journeys, Watership Down is a book that, if you have not yet read it, will surprise you with its ability to pull you into the Lapin world. It remains a terrific piece of literature.

Of particular note within the book are the various tales of El-ahrairah, the Prince of Rabbits, interspersed within the story. El-ahrairah is a trickster, filled with cunning strategems who foils his enemies, infiltrates every lettuce patch and, in general, fulfills a legendary role within rabbit folklore. Of particular note is the recently published Tales from Watership Down, which collects a number of El-ahrairah's adventures (including several new ones) into a single volume. It is well worth a read.

For a look at the real Watership Down, Nuthanger Farm and the Crixa (they are all real places), check out this site.

Interested in a plot review and notes on Watership Down - you can find them here.

Finally, at least one blogger seems to know and appreciate the lore of Watership Down - check out the excellent Silflay Hraka. Read the book to find out what Silflay Hraka means....

If you can't bring yourself to read the book, there is a very good animated feature (done in 1978) which, barring an unfortunately syrupy theme song by Art Garfunkel (Bright Eyes), is true to the book in almost every way. It is now available on DVD and I highly recommend it (although it might be a little bit bloody for the wee tots...).

Comments are always welcome.

On a follow-up note, BookLinker is slowly trying to increase its traffic levels, so any links, comments, feedback, recommendations, friends, acquaintences, evil step-sisters etc. that you want to refer to us, it would be appreciated!

Thanks for reading!