Book Review: American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology (2019). Diana Walsh Pasulka.

I heard about this book a couple of years ago, when Ezra Klein, the New York Times columnist and podcaster, interviewed the author on his podcast, The Ezra Klein Show.

Dr. Pasulka is a PhD Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of North Carolina, who stumbled into the world of UFO believers and researchers when she realized that there were extensive Biblical and historical references in her own Vatican archives research to stories of miracles going back to the early Middle Ages, which, if stripped of the belief system of whatever religious perspective was at play in these accounts, seemed remarkably similar to modern-day UFO sightings.

This led her to begin to explore modern UFO believers and their claims, and to take their stories more seriously as real physical or psychological phenomena which should be studied scientifically as well as philosophically. She was also fascinated with new forms of religious belief and experience in the age of “miraculous” technologies, such as we’ve seen since the mid-20th century.

In the process of researching and investigating the history of the modern UFO era, she discovered for herself (before the New York Times revealed it to the world in 2017) that there were many very serious scientists, government officials and wealthy tech individuals pursuing UFO research, but that until recently they almost uniformly refused to admit it publicly, for fear of being ridiculed or undermining the more conventional parts of their careers.

American Cosmic is somewhat unique among UFO books, in that it is a scholarly and philosophical exploration of UFOs and UFO literature in the context of religious experiences going back to ancient times, and forward into our modern technological era. It makes for an interesting and thought-provoking read on this puzzling phenomenon. Recommended.

Book Review: Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations (2019). Admiral William McRaven.

This is the autobiographical account of a distinguished career as a Navy SEAL and U.S. special operations warrior by probably the longest-serving and most famous recent SEAL of them all.

McRaven rose to the top of the U.S. special operations world in the post-9/11 era, in the course of which he was there and in charge of some of the U.S. military's most famous operations, including the capture of Saddam Hussein, the rescue of Captain Phillips (of the Maersk Alabama cargo ship) from Somali pirates, and the killing of Osama Bin Laden. He also participated in and led literally thousands of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Admiral McRaven is a good story-teller with a career full of participation in and command of complex, difficult special operations events. As an increasingly high-ranking officer, focused on issues of team formation and organizational leadership rather than individual martial prowess and exploits, he brings a very different and welcome perspective to the story of the SEALs and the larger special operations community of the U.S. military.

I recently reviewed Code Over Country by Matthew Cole, which delved into the significant problems that developed within SEAL Team Six and its veterans over the past three decades, particularly its tendency to value loyalty to the unit commander and the team above its members' larger duty to the country, and the extent to which some of the veterans of this unit both covered up mistakes, and also began to use their wartime experiences for self-promotion and self-aggrandizement after their retirements.

Admiral McRaven was specifically identified in that book as someone who had stood in opposition to these negative tendencies as they were developing within SEAL Team Six, so it is interesting and enlightening to hear his own account and perspective on his entire career, and the challenges and issues he identified and faced in the SEALs and the special operations community during his many years of service. Recommended.

Book Series Review: The Crazy Rich Asians Trilogy: Crazy Rich Asians (2014), China Rich Girlfriend (2015), and Rich People Problems (2017). Kevin Kwan.

The first and best known of this three novel series, Crazy Rich Asians, was the basis for the blockbuster romantic comedy film of the same name (2018). 

It tells the story of a young Chinese-American woman and college professor, the daughter of a single mother who immigrated from mainland China, who falls in love with a handsome young Chinese man in New York, not realizing that he is the only son and primary heir of one of the oldest, most powerful and wealthiest families in Singapore. 

The problems begin when he invites her to a friend’s wedding back home in Singapore, without warning her about his family or his position in society there, and she begins to experience and realize the full power of the social forces arrayed against her, and her otherwise happy romance with her charming and attractive boyfriend.  

China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems continue the stories of the same cast of absurdly wealthy contemporary characters and their families from Singapore, mainland China and Hong Kong, presented as modern-day novels of manners, but with a large amount of tongue in cheek. 

This is all fun, light entertainment mixed with plenty of amusing social commentary. Kwan clearly enjoys detailing, relishing and skewering the excesses, cluelessness and foolishness of the over-privileged and over-indulged super-rich from Chinese society and elsewhere. Recommended.

TV Review: The Mandalorian. Seasons 1 & 2 (Disney+).

I watched the whole first season of Disney’s first venture in monetizing the Star Wars galaxy for streaming TV with only modest enthusiasm, but it improved steadily over the course of the second season.

The story takes place in a remote corner of the galaxy, after the destruction of the second Death Star, and the apparent death of the Sith Lord and Emperor Palpatine at the end of Return of the Jedi. It’s a lawless time – the New Republic is struggling to extend its well-intentioned reach, while the fractured forces of the evil Empire are still out there, and they’re up to no good.

Into this Wild West universe comes a lone ranger in shining metal armor, with a jet pack and a lot of other hi-tech weaponry. He is known only as “The Mandalorian” (a reference to his warrior  people and their beleaguered home planet), and he makes allies of convenience and a number of new enemies as he takes on a dangerous mission to save a small child of the Yoda species from mysterious forces.

There is plenty of Star Wars type action and scenery, and a whole new set of gritty characters, strange planets, and plot twists, with a surprise appearance by one of the major Star Wars characters at the end of season 2. Recommended.

TV Review: The Brokenwood Mysteries. All seasons (1-6). Amazon (Acorn).

This was a quirky but quite endearing mystery series, featuring a rumpled older detective inspector with a beater car and a love for American country music, along with his two young wise-cracking detective sidekicks (a woman and a man), and a delightfully oddball female Russian pathologist, who solve local murders in small town New Zealand.

I found by the final season that I was wearying of the story and the characters, which I find is not unusual with many TV series. Producers and writers don’t always know when it’s time to pull the plug on what was a very good idea when it started. With those reservations, recommended.

Book Review: December 6 (2003). Martin Cruz Smith.

In my ongoing search for reading and entertainment available from the library by e-book during the pandemic, I started looking for novels from the past in the thriller/mystery vein by well-known authors in that genre, and fortunately stumbled on this one.

I knew I'd read several of the very good Martin Cruz Smith mystery novels about his Russian detective character Arkady Renko a long time ago, but this book is about another sort of anti-hero protagonist, Harry Niles, a cynical, rebellious son of American missionaries who grows up in 1930s Japan.

Niles is a gaijin (a white foreigner) who is nevertheless steeped in Japanese culture, art and criminality from having grown up in it, yet with a part of his identify and loyalty still tied to his American family and roots.

The novel is a well-written, gripping story of life on the edge of danger in Japan during the China war of the 1930s, with a little bit of a spy thriller plot about the impending Pearl Harbor attack included, along with an interesting portrayal of the China war and the lead-up to World War II as seen from the Japanese side.

This was definitely a worthwhile, interesting and exciting read in an unusual and little-visited historical setting. Recommended.

Book Review: The Splendid and the Vile (2020). Erik Larson.

I had to take two runs at this one to finish it, primarily because I've already read a very large number of books about Winston Churchill, the Battle of Britain, and World War II, so I have a low boredom threshold for new books covering this by-now familiar territory. But in the end it was worth the effort, due in large part to Erik Larson's proven ability to bring history alive through his research, and through his descriptions of the lives of notable individuals living through interesting times and experiences.  

This latest Churchill biography focuses on the legendary British Prime Minister during the war years, and particularly on what people in his inner circle of family, friends and close associates were doing during this period. 

Some of it was new; other parts were by now familiar from earlier sources, and not all that fascinating. That made it a readable but not exceptional addition to the vast trove of Churchill books, distinguished from the others chiefly by the author’s access to interviews with and the papers of several of Churchill’s closest political supporters and family members. Recommended.

Book Review: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2018). Patrick Radden Keefe.

This popular book from 2018 is about the Provisional IRA (commonly known as "the Provos") and the murder of a mother of 10 children during "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Very well-written and suspenseful, this history of the Troubles, and the political violence and terrorist groups of the period (as experienced by a number of the Provisional IRA leaders, members, defectors and family members), was made possible in part due to confessions made by several of the Provos as part of a long-term history project at a major Boston university.

The participants in the study who provided testimony to the project were promised their words would be held in secret until the participants were all dead. That promise failed, however, when U.S. courts intervened on behalf of IRA victims and Irish police investigators, and opened some of the history project files, adding to the climate of mistrust, fear and retribution among the people, organizations and events of the period.

The author interviewed many of the key players, as well as the family members of victims of IRA terrorism, and particularly spotlighted the role and activities of Jerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein (the Provos' political front group), which was a recurring topic throughout the narration.   

This is probably one of the best and most moving histories of that bloody period, one that describes clearly the terrible personal costs of living and trying to survive in a civil war zone. 

Given the increasingly open advocacy by some in our own society for the idea that insurrection, religious and ethnic intolerance, paramilitary violence and civil war are what we need here in the United States, it can be read as a stark cautionary tale of what that experience actually feels like, and of the harm it inflicts on all those forced to live through it, regardless of which side they're on. Recommended.