The Road is a River, by Nick Cole

In The Old Man and the Wasteland, we meet the Old Man, who survives peril on his trek to Tucson, where he discovers the last refuge of a lone soldier who tried to keep civilization together.  In The Savage Boy, we meet the Boy who, after his soldier/mentor dies, proves himself as a warrior, finds love, and has it all taken away from him.  In The Road is a River, Nick Cole brings their stories together, completing the journey in the third book of the American Wasteland trilogy.

Having moved the people of his village from their desert outpost to the city of Tucson, the Old Man is feeling a little restless.  Everyone is settling in, scavenging what is left from the city, and reestablishing a civilized life.  But the Old Man picks up a radio broadcast from Cheyenne Mountain, the underground bunker in Colorado, where a group of survivors is trapped due to a cave in.  If he takes a tank and picks up a special weapon at a military base, he can come to their rescue.  He and his granddaughter set out on this journey, hoping they can find the fuel they need along the way and face down any dangers they encounter.

Along the way, they meet the Boy and mercifully invite him to join them.  His survival and fighting skills turn out to a boon, and together they make their way to Colorado.  Cole's prose is thoughtful and vibrant.  The ragged crew comes through some close scrapes with danger but Cole doesn't rely on implausible twists or silly plot points.  Though the world has changed, the laws of physics and human nature are still fully intact, and the story is thoroughly realistic and believable.

I will say this, after reading this trilogy: I admit that I approached it with skepticism.  Mad Max and all the sequels and imitators have really turned me off to this sort of post-apocalyptic fiction.  The American Wasteland trilogy definitely shares some traits with the genre, but it stands above with the humanity, plausibility, and thoughtfulness Cole brings to the stories.  So if you are a fan of post-apocalyptic sci-fi, you definitely want to pick this trilogy up.  And even if you're not, the American Wasteland trilogy is worth a read.

The Tyranny of Virtue, by Robert Boyers

Robert Boyers is one of those liberals that libertarians and conservatives like to hear from.  He's a liberal academic who has been around a long time.  In The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, the Academy, and the Hunt for Political Heresies, Boyers writes about the absurdity of the PC culture and the manifestations of it in American life and on campuses around the country.  In the name of tolerance, intolerance has grown out of control and reason. 

The essays sometimes tend to ramble, and lack a strong unity among them.  But it's interesting to hear about his experiences and perspectives as a contrarian in the PC world.  His decades in the academic life give him a platform and credibility.  It makes me wonder, though, if a younger academic could get away with saying some of the things Dr. Boyers says.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

On the Plain of Snakes, by Paul Theroux

Few have seen the world like Paul Theroux has.  Since the 1960s, Theroux has been writing novels and travel books that specialize in getting to know the cultures and people he experiences and meets.  His most recent book, On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey, relates his experiences traveling through Mexico and the U.S. borderlands. 

Part of the stated reason for his journey is in response to the election of President Trump, who has been vocal about strengthening the border with Mexico and who has been criticized for some of his public statements about Mexican immigrants.  Theroux makes his contempt for Trump and his views pretty clear, and is happy to report when he finds Mexicans who share his contempt.

Theroux's writing vividly captures the landscape and features of the land, but his strength is meeting everyday people and telling their stories.  (He does tend to spend too much time on Mexican literary traditions; I just found those portions of the book to be a bit dull.)  Personalizing the people of Mexico accomplished Theroux task of helping his readers see them as neighbors and peers.  He's less friendly to the Mexican government.  He's constantly in fear of getting pulled over, acknowledging that in some areas the police are actually members of drug cartels.  He also reports on mass kidnappings and murders, at the hands of cartels and of the state.  So his task of trying to make me more sympathetic to Mexico really made me want to avoid it even more.

Is Mexico a friendly neighbor?  In many ways, yes.  Theroux's time on the border towns emphasize the economic symbiosis that is so clear between our two nations.  But overall, the corruption and crime that mark so much of the country, by his reporting, give me pause and make me tend to agree with Trump--get that wall built!  This is a beautiful country with rich cultural traditions with a rotten ruling class that badly needs to be democratized and reformed.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

The Savage Boy, by Nick Cole

In book 2 of Nick Cole's American Wasteland trilogy, The Savage Boy, we meet the Savage Boy.  He has no idea where he came from or who his family was.  For as long as he can remember, he's been under the protection and tutelage of Sergeant Presley, who has taught him how to survive in the American Wasteland.  Sgt. Presley picked up the Boy during his decades-long quest to travel from California to Washington, D.C., to find out what, if anything is left of the American government.  Finding nothing but ruins, Sgt. Presley and the boy have headed back west, but before they can make the final stretch into California, Sgt. Presley dies.

The Boy, along with his faithful horse, has to find ways to survive in a hostile world filled with hostile people.  He proves himself by killing a bear, and later by killing a threatening warlord.  He gets caught up in the siege of a village but escapes to work his way west to the San Francisco bay area.  Finally arriving there, he finds that the Army base to which Sgt. Presley wanted to report was long gone, and that a Chinese colony dominated the region.

Cole's portrayal of this post-apocalyptic future is bleak and all too realistic.  I couldn't help but cheer for the Boy, a teenager whose body bears deformities resulting from the nuclear remains of the war, but whose determination to survive overcomes his weaknesses.  Sgt. Presley has trained him well, preparing him to face the forces that constantly threaten the Boy's survival.  The Boy lives in the constant hope of finding a corner of the world that is not fraught with danger and evil, but he's constantly disappointed.  Even when he finds a path to happiness, evil won't leave him alone.

Cole's writing is intense and engaging.  The story is dark, but the the Boy's hope and determination are inspiring.  No matter how bad things are, he retains a hope that somewhere, someday, things will be better.

Fight for Love, by Rosie Makinney

According to Rosie Makinney (and many others), porn use is rampant in society, marriages, and even among Christians.  She married someone addicted to porn and they struggled through it together, healing their marriage and going on to help many other couples.  In Fight for Love: How to Take Your Marriage Back from Porn, she offers hope for escape from the cycle of porn in marriages.  Speaking from her own experience and the experiences of many others she and her husband have counseled and met, she shows a path to healing and reconciliation.

Makinney is adamant about a few things.  First of all, no matter what defense one might make of the industry or of particular genres of porn, she writes that "there is no way that pornographic use can be considered acceptable in the eyes of God."  Sexual immorality is roundly condemned throughout the Old and New Testaments, and Jesus leaves little question when he says that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has committed adultery in his heart.

Writing from a Christian, biblical perspective, Makinney calls on the church to own up to the issue of porn, speak openly about it, and offer paths to healing.  According to one survey she cites, "at least 78.8 percent of all men that attend evangelical churches watch pornography. . . . Sixty-four percent of all Christian families have an acute problem with pornography."  Yet churches, for the most part, are silent or uninvolved in leading men (and women) out of the traps of porn.  Churches have to be willing to "publicly show the world that Christians are just as tempted by porn as they are!"  The response, though is key: to show that "we have a great hope in Christ."

Makinney is very positive and hopeful, not condemning at all but encouraging and empathetic.  I did wonder about the disconnect between her numbers and the reality I observe in church life.  Here's my question: if a strong majority of Christians are using porn, why are churches not full of broken down marriages?  I mean, I know there are broken marriages in churches, obviously, and many couples become skilled at covering up their problems.  But if 3/4 of evangelicals are using porn, it makes me wonder if there's a continuum of users, from those whose marriages are basically unaffected and pretty healthy, to the worst cases whose marriages and lives fall apart due to porn use.  I think of a parallel to drugs and alcohol use, a continuum from the social drinker to the functional alcoholic to the addict who destroys his life with drugs and drink.  Nevertheless, whatever the degree of dysfunction that porn has introduced into a marriage, Makinney has help, and Jesus brings hope.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

The Old Man and the Wasteland, by Nick Cole

It's some years in the future, and a devastating nuclear war has bombed the world, as they say, back to the stone age.  Nick Cole's The Old Man and the Wasteland is a journey through a bleak, post-nuclear wasteland.  The Old Man still remembers the time before the bombs, and wants to find some semblance of order.  Setting out on a cross-country trek across the American Southwest, he works his way from his settlement in Yuma to Tucson.  Along the way, he meets up with some murderous dregs of humanity, escaping with his life but leaving a body count behind him.

Cole's vision for the future is bleak and hopeless.  Even those people who have not descended into pagan savagery only survive by scavenging.  It raises the question, how long after an event of total societal destruction would it take to begin to rebuild productivity and commerce, much less peaceful coexistence and cooperation?

The Old Man and the Wasteland blends action sequences with contemplative reflection on society and survival.  It's a brisk, compelling read that offers a taste of what is to come in the next two books in Cole's Wasteland Saga.

Saving History, by Lauren R. Kerby

I really enjoyed the approach Lauren R. Kerby to in researching her book Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation's Capital and Redeem a Christian America.  She tagged along on several "Christian Heritage tours," where tour guides take Christian groups around Washington, D.C., regaling them with stories of our nation's Christian heritage, highlighting historical and architectural tidbits that other tours overlook altogether.  In doing so, she aims to gain insight into the Christian Right and the political views of white evangelicals.  (Yes, she focusses obsessively on race, which is annoying.)

As a participant and observer, she reports the content of the tours from the tour guides, many of whom have written extensively on American history from a Christian perspective.  She also includes interviews with her fellow tourists, who come from around the U.S. but who are primarily white, middle-class Protestants.  In short, her assessment of the tour guides is that they are charlatans distorting the historical record, and that the tourists are gullible rubes.

Besides the tour guides themselves, Kerby gives some background on the Christian heritage movement, mentioning influential books by evangelical authors.  In terms of the history of the movement itself, this is helpful, except that she is dismissive of the whole genre, without really engaging their arguments.  Perhaps she saw this as outside the scope of her book, but it's unfair to the scholars who have written these books to dismiss them out of hand because she doesn't agree with their points of view.

She captures the dilemma of these books and the tours: conservative Christians view themselves as outsiders and insiders, founders and victims.  They identify with the founding generation, maintaining that the faith of the Founding Fathers is in line with contemporary conservative evangelicalism.  Yet in recent decades, their faith has been sidelined in favor of secularism and liberalism.  This perspective is easy to caricature, and is more nuanced than many popular presentations allow, but Kerby is content to dismiss it rather than to engage it.

This is not a central theme of the book, but, to me, she lost credibility in her analysis of the 2016 presidential election.  She repeats the widely-discussed figure that 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump.  She favorably quotes those who say white evangelicals voted for him out of "fear, lust for power, and nostalgia for an imagined past" or "fear and resentment" or "racism, class anxiety, or misogyny."  She doesn't bother to mention what I believe to be the primary reason most evangelicals voted for Trump: he was running against Hillary.  Full stop.

Kerby's book is an interesting project but ends up being tainted by a strong bias against her subject matter.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

We Should Improve Society Somewhat, by Matt Bors

If you think Trump is literally Hitler, and that he will refuse to leave office at the end of his term, tyrannically leading the U.S. into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, you will love Matt Bors's comic collection We Should Improve Society Somewhat.  If you think Fox News is the voice of white supremacy, you'll love the book.  If you think a wall on the southern border is a racist symbol with no practical purpose, you'll love the book.  If you believe Brett Kavanaugh was a teen rapist and that Trump is a rapist who paid Russian hookers to pee on him, you'll love this book.

If all of the above sounds pretty unhinged to you, congratulations on being a rational person who will see occasional moments of humor or insight but will mostly be bored by the standard leftist anti-Trumpism throughout.  From a historical perspective, this is a good reminder of the ridiculous, extreme predictions of the disaster of the Trump presidency during and immediately after the election.  After three years of his administration, those fears and doomsday scenarios have not played out.

Unless you're a hard-core leftist Trump hater, don't waste your time with this book.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Consent, by Donna Freitas

When Donna Freitas was a graduate student, one of the leading professors in her field, who is also a priest, developed a crush on her and relentlessly pursued her and stalked her.  In Consent: A Memoir of Unwanted Attention, Freitas tells her strange, troubling story. 

At first, she was happy to be in his class.  He was a leading expert, renowned in his field, and she knew it was a privilege to be under his tutelage.  She frequently took advantage of his office hours, and was thrilled to gain his attention and interest in her academic work.  But then he began to seek more personal interactions, and his interest became more flirtatious and too personal.  As she tried to draw back from the relationship, he began to impose himself even more into her life.

In many ways, he was careful to behave in ways that would seem innocent.  A personal note, a phone conversation with Freitas's mom, a "chance" meeting--these things alone seem totally appropriate.  But when added up and repeated for a long period of time, it became a pattern of unwelcome attention, far beyond the accepted norms of professor/student or male/female relationship.  Freitas found herself in a bind because of the power her professor could wield over her professional future in her academic field. 

This is a fascinating story, but ultimately I kept asking myself, Why didn't she do something sooner?  Why didn't she say anything to other professors or administrators?  Of course, she asks herself the same things.  Her inaction was, in part, due to the slow, relentless way he wormed himself into her life.  To her credit, she grew in strength and confidence to the point that she could speak up and advocate for other women (and, presumably, men) in similar situations.  (Although I am so curious to hear his side of the story.  He remains anonymous.)

As a reader, this book grew tiresome to me.  As much as I know I shouldn't say this, she comes across as whiny for much of the book.  It's just a bit annoying.  Also, if you anticipate a thoughtful, broad look at consent, Title IX, rape, and sexual assault and harassment on college campuses, this is not the book.  I'm not saying Freitas's case is totally unique, but it seems like an unusual case that is not representative of other Title IX type cases around the country.  So I feel bad for what Freitas went through, but I don't feel enlightened on the overall issue.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!