The Point of It All, by Charles Krauthammer

If there was ever a time we needed someone like Charles Krauthammer, it is now.  Sadly, the conservative commentator passed away in June.  It was a huge loss for the world of political commentary.  There are few talking heads on the air or in print today who possess his grace, wisdom, insight, and overall perspective.  Before he passed away, he gathered some of his work in the newly published The Point of It All: A Lifetime of Great Loves and Endeavors.  

These columns and essays span decades.  Even the older ones, though, remain relevant in providing context and insight for today's political environment.  On the personal side, Krauthammer reveals his love of chess and baseball in a number of the essays.  He also gives some insight into his physical limitations.  Krauthammer readers are probably aware that, while a student at Harvard Medical School, he became paralyzed from the waist down.  He finished his medical degree and practice psychiatry for several years before shifting to his writing career.

Krauthammer was a great advocate for the disabled, but chose not be defined by his disability or to use it as an excuse not to live productively.  He writes, "Disability . . . neither ennobles nor degrades.  I frames experience.  It does not define it."  In a letter to a young man who had recently suffered a spinal cord injury similar to his own, he wrote that "a good and productive and deeply enjoyable life is there waiting for you. . . . Life is more difficult with a spinal cord injury.  But the obstacles are not insurmountable."

The essays in The Point of It All cover a wide array of political topics and reveal Krauthammer's consistent, principled conservatism.  On guns, "There's only one gun law that would make a difference: confiscation. . . . And in this country, confiscation is impossible."  On politically correct efforts to reject the Western canon at universities: "Affirmative action for great books is an embarrassment. . . . A pastiche of 'global culture' for a population utterly ungrounded in its own produces the most haphazard jumble of knowledge."

In discussing the press, Krauthammer takes Trump's side--sort of.  The press is "the opposition party" whose front pages are "festooned . . . with anti-Trump editorializing masquerading as news."  Nevertheless, this is better than "a press acquiescing on bended knee, where it spent most of the Obama years in a slavish Pravda-like thrall."  

One can only hope that Krauthammer's admirers and former colleagues will take up his mantle of steady reasonableness and conservative thought.  I have seen, on at least two occasions, Fox News using video of Krauthammer's commentary even after his passing.  Clearly he has left a void.  Until a worthy successor appears, we can revisit his thinking in his many writings.


Thanks to NetGalley for the complimentary electronic review copy!

The Sex Myth, by Rachel Hills

Rachel Hills said she learned about sex as a teenager by reading Cosmopolitan.  Based on the headlines I see at the grocery checkout line, that's a shaky foundation.  In The Sex Myth: The Gap Between Our Fantasies and Reality, she explores the myths portrayed by Cosmo and other elements of pop culture and gives her assessment of sexual mores today.

In her efforts to be open and nonjudgmental, Hills tends to promote a no-holds-barred hedonism.  In her mind, sex used to be a secret, dirty thing that no one talked about and that was only supposed to happen for reproduction.  Now it is an open, public act that should be talked about, practiced, experimented with, and portrayed however, whenever, and with whomever one likes.  She tempers her position a bit by saying that there should be no shame in having no or very little sex, but her complete rejection of taboo and long-held cultural norms is disturbing.

Hills makes the error of caricaturing past views of sex, rolling in religious views with the past.  She needs to recognize the traditional Christian view: sex is for reproduction and pleasure, monogamy leads to greater sexual satisfaction in life, and the negative social, physical, and psychological costs of non-marital, non-monogamous sex are great.  (Granted, some Christians have taught a more repressive view of sex, but that no longer seems to be the norm, if it ever was.)

To Hill and her many interview subjects, there are no limits to the experimenting and coupling that one might pursue.  Alas, part of the "sex myth" is that one finds that most people are having a lot less sex than you think they are.  Also, it's not as big a deal as Cosmo and all those rom-coms make it out to be.  Hill tries to take the mystery and forbiddenness out of sex and describe it as just another bodily function that one may or may not participate in, and if one does, one may participate in any manner he or she pleases.

I just don't see a lot of value in The Sex Myth.  Maybe it gives a journalistic perspective on current sexual practices among the millennial generation, but she gives no indication that her interviews are anything more than randomly selected, anecdotal accounts.  Her presentation is far from being a representative sampling.  So, not much insight, moral vacuity, and no great conclusions.  Pass.


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

Pop Kult Warlord, by Nick Cole

In Nick Cole's Soda Pop Soldier, we met PerfectQuestion, one of the world's leading online gamers.  Cole appropriately opens the sequel, Pop Kult Warlord, with PQ winning the Super Bowl of gaming.  PQ says, "There used to be another Super Bowl, someone told me, before the Meltdown.  But it got all Social Justice and no one watched it anymore."  He's a pro, with more earnings than he can spend, and millions watch from home and gathered in stadiums to watch him play.  He's not necessarily in it for the money, but for the hunt.  But when, before PQ's even had a chance to have a good night's sleep after the Super Bowl, his agent calls him with an offer of five million dollars in gold for a month's work, even PQ can't turn that down.

His new client is a prince in Calistan, a Muslim caliphate carved out of a portion of Southern California after the Meltdown.  Rashid has seemingly endless wealth, and puts PQ in charge of Calistan's presence in a civilization building game.  For reasons that PQ doesn't immediately grasp, Rashid wants him not to build up the civilization in the game, as one might expect, but to destroy others, without regard to wasting the resources of other powers.  This game is a sort of petri dish of international relations.  Other countries have a presence in the game, and Rashid wants to establish Calistan's dominance by attacking them.

PQ quickly becomes convinced that he's being used, and that he's trapped in Calistan until Rashid is satisfied that PQ has done his bidding.  The class divisions and downright evil that reveals itself sours PQ's taste for the job to the point that he's willing to give up the gold if he can just get out with his life.  On top of that, his "agent" turns out to the a CIA agent; PQ is an unwitting pawn in a larger geopolitical plot.

As in Soda Pop Soldier, Cole weaves the online action and the IRL (in real life) action together seamlessly.  Even a non-gamer like me can appreciate the action and the interactions.  Besides these two worlds, PQ has long, vivid, detailed dreams, in which he's on a video-game-like quest to defeat an evil villain.  To be honest, for much of the book I thought this part of the story was an uncharacteristic distraction.  I should have given Cole more credit!  It all comes together in the end.

(On a side note, Cole really loves writing about food.  On two or three occasions, I was ready to book a flight to LA to track down the restaurants from which the meals in the book came.  It's rude to make a guy so hungry while he's reading!  Next time I'm in LA, I'll treat Nick to some donuts or some Pizza Ravi.)

Cole doesn't write much about the Meltdown, but he give some hints.  PQ says the "world before the Meltdown" was "a madhouse of grievance action and social justice.  And all of it a scam for cheap power and wealth redistribution."  Sounds pretty accurate.  When PQ is trying to get out of Calistan, he reflects, "If I ever make it back to America. . . I won't leave for a really long time.  Freedom ain't free, and. . . it's pretty great."  Amen to that.  These insights into Cole's point of view provide some background but he doesn't let political points detract from the story. 

Pop Kult Warlord is a fun, fast-paced read with attitude.  It's a worthy follow-up to Soda Pop Soldier and, hopefully, a set-up for an even cooler sequel.

Cracking the Cube, by Ian Scheffler

Like many kids of the 80s, I was enamored with Rubik's Cube.  I stayed up late trying to figure it out, couldn't, so bought a book that showed me how.  I never got very fast, but could reliably solve it faster than most of my friends.  Ian Scheffler got pretty fast.  He writes about his adventures in cubing in Cracking the Cube: Going Slow to Go Fast and Other Unexpected Turns in the World of Competitive Rubik's Cube Solving.

Part travelogue, part journal, part history, Cracking the Cube is a nostalgia trip for many.  Scheffler writes about the invention of the cube, its unlikely entrance into the international toy market, and its proliferation throughout popular culture.  He even gets to meet Rubik himself!  The cube made Erno Rubik Hungary's most famous and wealthy citizen. 

As Scheffler seeks to improve his own times, he gives historical and first-hand accounts of competitive cubing around the world.  I am very impressed that he got his average below 20 seconds.  However, that puts him a long way from winning most competitions.  The best cubers can solve it in five seconds.  If you're not solving it in ten seconds, you're not even close to the top 1000 in the world rankings.

Scheffler does a nice job of portraying the personal side of competitive cubing.  As he tells it, these aren't cut-throat competitions, but gatherings of passionate cubers who are always trying for a personal best.  Lasting friendships develop, and competitors openly share strategies.  People who are not into cubing at all might find some of his musings a bit tiresome, but I think even non-cubers can appreciate Scheffler's style and the passion he brings and describes in cube world.


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

White Picket Fences, by Amy Julia Becker

Amy Julia Becker's book White Picket Fences: Turning Toward Love in a World Divided by Privilege has such a nice title. . . but I don't buy into her argument.  She is in the school of thought that takes the short step from white privilege to white guilt.  She grew up in a world of privilege that the vast majority of white people would recognize as rare privilege: generational wealth, boarding school, Ivy League education, and all the social and career opportunities those things bring.  Like a lot of wealthy white liberals, she retains a hearty sense of guilt for the unfairness of it all.

Her experiences have been tempered by some of her life's circumstances.  She is a Christian, and sees her background and position as a part of who she is as a Christian.  She undoubtedly has a deep faith which informs her life and perspectives.  As a mother of child living with Down syndrome, her views on privilege have certainly expanded.  Like any parent of a child living with a disability, she quickly recognized the ways which society's structures work against the child's success.

As much as I admire and respect Becker's desire to live faithfully and to use her position and, yes, privilege to serve others, her views on race and privilege don't relate to most of the rest of the world.  I am grateful and blessed by the time and place of my birth, by the love and stability of my family, by the experiences I have had in my education, career, community, and church.  I don't feel guilty that other people have not had the same experiences.  I don't think I have to apologize for any of it.  I do believe that the point of life is to live for Christ and live for others, no matter where you started from.  I recognize that life is hard and unfair for some people all the time and for some people all the time.

I don't know Becker at all.  I suspect I would like her a lot.  But I really didn't like the premise of her book.  I tired of the apologetic, self-condemning tone of it.  She writes, for example, "Our affluence . . . fences us off from other people.  We can afford to pay for the 'best' of everything . . . and in so doing, we don't interact much with people who can't afford those opportunities.  Unless we consciously choose for it not to, affluence cordons us into relationships with other people with wealth."  She writes about their idyllic little New England town, where her husband is headmaster at an elite boarding school.  I want to tell her, don't feel bad!  You don't have to purge yourself and apologize for the path your life has taken!

At one point, I thought she sounded rather ungrateful.  While she and her husband celebrated all the seemingly providential ways it worked out for him to get his current job, the exact sort of position he had hoped for, she began to doubt herself.  It wasn't providence, she thought, it was privilege.  His getting the job was just a matter of the privileged education he had, the privileged circles he ran in, and the privilege of his birth. 

I guess I'm simply not comfortable taking God out of the equation of my life's circumstances.  I don't need to feel guilty or ashamed of my background, things over which I have not control.  I can't choose my parents or the place of my birth.  I can't choose my race.  I can't choose my physical abilities.  All of that is directed and orchestrated by God in his providence.  I can choose how I live my life, how I serve others, and how I trust God every day.  That, ultimately, is where Becker gets, too.  I just didn't like the guilt-laden path she took to get there.


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

Rare, Medium, or Done Well, by Mike Huckabee

I like Mike Huckabee.  I'd support him if he were running for something again.  There are probably not many people in the political world with whom I would align more closely ideologically and politically.  So I was looking forward to reading Rare, Medium, or Done Well: Make the Most of Your Life. 

This book is full of the good sense and home-spun wisdom Huckabee is known for.  As a pastor, he has walked with and led people through life's challenges.  As governor of Arkansas and a candidate for president, he knows the bare knuckle, back-room reality of life in the political arena.  As a commentator and media figure, he can now comment on life and politics from a more detached perspective.

Huckabee's view is to keep the end in mind and build a lasting legacy.  Some people end up rare, putting their hope in short-term, earthly priorities, unprepared for eternity.  Others are medium, mediocre, living without conviction or impact.  We should aim to be "done well," living for the next lifetime. 

There's plenty of wisdom here, and I don't want to diminish that, but I had a hard time getting past Huckabee's style.  He reminded me of a pastor I once had whose sermons were less scriptural exposition and more strung together sermon illustrations.  This book sometimes felt like that.  Huckabee may still use his Sermon Illustrations Omnibus--Pulpit Edition book from his pastoring days.  As much as I appreciated Huckabee's viewpoints and hard-won wisdom, it was diminished by the corny illustrations and anecdotes that only marginally added to his points.


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

Ship of Fools, by Tucker Carlson

I really enjoy Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News.  He's entertaining, thoughtful, and unafraid to confront liberals and call out liberal stupidity.  If you, too, are a Tucker Carlson fan, you must read his new book, Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution.  It has all the attitude of his show (Sometimes I could hear him in my head.  It's uncanny how the printed page can capture his style of speaking so well.) applied to a wide range of timely, important topics.

Like many commentators, Carlson recognizes Donald Trump's ascension to the presidency as a populist rejection of elitism, "a throbbing middle finger in the face of America's ruling class."  Part of the problem is that the anti-establishment liberalism that shaped Democratic leaders from the Clinton generation is now the establishment.  The American people were ready for someone who wasn't cut from the liberal establishment mold.

On a few points, Carlson took stances that surprised me a bit.  His populism comes through.  He's concerned about wage inequality and bloated CEO salaries.  He's also concerned about the environment.  The problem with today's environmentalist movement, he writes, is that they are more concerned with government control and the religion of global warming than they are about the actual condition of our river and lakes and forests.  He has a point.

On some issue, like free speech on campus, in the workplace, and on social media, he's as righteously indignant and bombastic as you would expect.  How dare liberal politicians and academics say they are in favor of free speech, and then act to stifle speech with which they disagree.  Carlson himself has become a target, with Antifa demonstrating as his home and terrorizing his family, attempting to shut Carlson up. 

Ship of Fools is like a collection of Carlson's nightly monologues, only extended with more examples and context.  Disagree with him if you like, but you won't find loosely held or poorly thought out opinions here.  Carlson speaks and writes from conviction and evidence, with a willingness to hear from the other side.