Ode to Reading - Non Fiction: 2024 (January-March)

Consistent with my New Year’s Resolution, I devoted the vast majority of my reading time in the first quarter of 2024 to high quality fiction. I have shared my commentaries with you. I did not abandon non fiction entirely and finished three books January- March. Two were serious works by distinguished historians and journalists and one was a comfort food sports biography. None are in the “must read" category, but they all have qualities to recommend them.

1) Foreign Bodies (Simon Schama).

Mr Schama is a renowned historian with eclectic taste. He has previously authored comprehensive works on French and Jewish history. His side specialty is art history. He embraces big topics, engages in systematic research and offers provocative opinions and conclusions. The depth of his analysis is remarkable and he also honors the reader with sparse and user friendly prose. He makes the complex simple! I am a fan.

Foreign Bodies is probably his most “out of the box” work to date. He attacks natural history, dives deep into biology and traces the development of the discipline we label public health. He was inspired to address these issues while witnessing the enormous global impact of the Covid pandemic. He chose to investigate the history of plagues, pandemics, inoculations and vaccines. He concludes that nature itself is the biggest threat to human existence and stresses the importance of sound science and policy in protecting us from medical disaster.

The story is potentially dry, but he brings the history into focus by identifying key historical figures and bringing them to life in vivid colour. We meet Elie Metchisuholf and Vladimir Halfkine, Russian Jewish emigres operating in England, France, India and Switzerland. They developed the first inoculations as treatment for smallpox and the successful vaccines for cholera and bubonic plague. The vaccines saved millions of people worldwide. They are true public health heroes and Mr Schama’s admiration for their groundbreaking discoveries is manifest. I share his opinion.

The book is more than a magnificent story of courageous independent scientists changing the course of history. It also describes the painful, if predictable obstacles the crusading scientists had to overcome before receiving widespread acceptance and recognition. The British government, including the all powerful Colonial Office and its Medical Bureau, was aggressively unhelpful. Well- more than that- stupid and retrograde. When the cholera vaccine was originally introduced in India- ground zero for the disease, officials were haughty, racist and anti semitic. The Catholic Church opposed the scientists every step of the way- relying on mystical and bogus theories about the sanctity of the human body. As an aside, the number of times the Vatican has been on the wrong side of an important issue is truly alarming for a born and bred Catholic. International exchange of public health information was awful because of nationalistic jealousies and passions. Mainstream scientists instinctively were dismissive of the data because their own august positions could be threatened. Conventional wisdom is always an enemy of progress and the institutional resistance to scientific enlightenment is depressing.

Schama expands his analysis of this dynamic by applying it to the Covid pandemic. Frankly, this section of the book had a hurried feel to it- had a “we need to get this draft to the publisher" vibe. He equates the development of the Covid vaccines to the earlier efforts on cholera and the bubonic plague. Fauci is analogous to Halfkine. Today’s anti vaccine activists are compared to the opponents to the initial vaccines hundred years ago. He is not shy about targeting the Republican right wing in the United States. His brush is pretty broad and the passage of time may give us a healthier perspective, but he is probably on the money. I believe there is a difference in the nature of the opposition. It was the medical establishment that opposed the cholera and bubonic plague vaccines and the uninformed political leadership followed their lead. In 2020-2021, the mainstream scientific community was totally on board with the mandatory vaccine recommendations as a public health imperative. The MAGA cult took a conspiratorial attitude and their reasoning was not based on science or medicine- it was political and cultural. To that extent, we have gone backward. The vaccines did work and the Covid death toll, while bad, was prevented from being much worse. We survived the challenge.

Ultimately, the book is not a particularly fun read, but its educational tone makes it equivalent to a public service announcement.

2 ) Homelands (Timothy Garton Ash).

Mr Ash is student of modern Europe. He is scholar and journalist- a dual threat. He is an Englishman of a certain class, an affluent family, a privileged upbringing and an Oxford trained historian. His father was a full member of the British “Age of Empire” generation. This is an insightful and timely book because the ultimate success of the current European project is uncertain. Ash is not neutral- he is passionately pro European Union and he makes the case with erudite and elegant prose.

Mr Ash does not write from an ivory tower perspective. He has been on the ground in Europe since 1955. He married a Polish woman and is multi lingual. He lived in East Germany, observed the birth of the Solidarity movement in Poland, witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, applauded NATO and EU expansion into Eastern and Central Europe, supported German reunification and reported on the fall of autocracy in Spain, Portugal and Greece. He has written extensively on the Balkan Wars, the rise of illiberal movements in Hungary and Poland and the ultimate act of narcissistic self destruction- BREXIT.

He is very proud of Europe’s recovery from WWII. Germany and Italy defeated, the French humiliated and embarrassed, the victorious English broke and the entire continent subject to the political, economic and military influence of the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Europe was in hard place and the immediate post war period created a clear split between Western Europe, capitalistic and aligned with the United States and NATO and Eastern Europe under the thumb of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. It was the tale of two civilisations from 1945 to 1989. Western Europe recovered economically, established a common market and embraced democratic governance and the rule of law. The East stalled, crippled by bad economic policy and tyrannical Communist governments. A cultural and spiritual wasteland. But the wall came down in 1989, the Soviet Union entered the dustbin of history and the mainline countries from the east lined up to join the party- applying for and achieving NATO and EU membership. It was a glorious - a mini window into “The End of History” theme. Modernisation, economic growth, limited border controls, investment tourism, a strong bureaucracy in Brussels-all created an aura of victorious liberal internationalism.

Unfortunately, the last third of the book vividly details how the “winners” of the Cold War are now on their back foot. The financial crisis challenged the consensus on the wisdom of capitalism and globalisation. Xenophobia reared its ugly head under the strains of migration pressures. Putin re-energized an aggressive Russia and started a war in Ukraine. Fears of Islamic terrorism created security driven states. The nationalistic right appears to be on the ascendance. Ash is somewhat pessimistic about the choices Europe will make in the near term. One if the reasons Ash is in a defensive crouch is that he is less confident the United States will do the right thing. I am more sanguine- perhaps naive. A strong Europe allied with the United Stats is in our interest- it is not a favor. Any US withdrawal from NATO would be a catastrophe. As Churchill once said- “The United States always does the right thing- but only after trying everything else!” Hopefully, the Ukraine crisis has refocused our energies and we will step up again.

3) Charlie Hustle (Keith O'Brien).

Mr. O'Brien is a Cincinnati native and he was naturally drawn to the story of Pete Rose- a Cincy hero or anti-hero (depending on your point of view). For baseball fans, Charlie Hustle is a good read. Rose is historic- he is controversial- he is loved- he is hated- and for 20 plus years he was the face and heart of America’s national pastime. Sports figures can frequently be vacuous and one dimensional and are therefore risky subjects for biographers. Great athletes may not be interesting people! Rose is different. He was big persona. He deserves a book. O'Brien delivers the goods.

The book was well researched- over 150 interviews and a detailed review of newspapers, magazines and tv coverage of the Rose era. Rose sat for 27 hours of interviews but eventually terminated the conversations when the inquiry got to the awkward parts. O'Brien is a fair biographer and the strengths and frailties of Mr. Rose are presented in excruciating detail. The verdict is mixed.

The enigma of Rose is the duality of his personality. He, by any measure, was a GREAT baseball player. He broke Ty Cobb’s record for total hits and it is unlikely any present player will approach Pete’s numbers. He had staying power with a 20 year playing career followed by 8 years as a manager. He won three World Series championships. Teammates and opponents described him as a "super smart” player who understood the rhythms and nuances of the game. He was enormously popular with the fans and the press. He was a great interview. He did play harder than everyone else. He was the undersized underdog- a man of the people- who achieved greatness by virtue of his passion for winning and a huge competitive fire. A blue collar guy who is a guaranteed first ballot Hall of Famer.

But, as every fan knows, Mr. Rose is not in the Hall of Fame and the chances of him getting there are very slim. Mr. O'Brien walks us through Pete’s downfall with great clarity and some sadness. Pete Rose was a mess. Brought up in a lower middle class industrial section of Cincinnati, he had a hard nosed father. Academics and education were not his thing and were not valued in his cultural milieu. He was attracted to “bad guys”- gangsters, low class toughs- individuals invariably operating outside the law. Pete was a compulsive gambler- a bad gambler- who lost large sums of money on a regular basis. He did, without question, bet on baseball, including his own team and that behaviour violated the game’s most sacred rule. It had been an enshrined rule that any betting on baseball would result in a lifetime ban from the game. No mystery and no basis not to apply the principle to Pete Rose. Mr. Rose violated the rules and then continuously lied about it to investigators. The Commissioner, Bart Giamatti, after providing Pete every opportunity to come clean, issued the lifetime ban. Any sympathy for Pete’s plight, is dulled by the other revelations in the book. Pete lacked character. He had sexual relations with underaged girls, cheated on his wives, fathered a child out of wedlock and then ignored her. He was a lousy friend although most of his associates were not obvious candidates for true friendship because they were sycophantic low lives themselves. Pete is not a classy guy. He had bad judgement, worse taste and could not control his appetites. He let down the fans who loved him. A Shakesperean tragedy in real time. He now spends his time earning income by signing sports paraphernalia at baseball card shows. He charges extra by adding one line- “Yes, I did bet on baseball.”

There are some cool characters in the book. Bart Giamatti is a classy guy- brilliant and funny. Fred Hutchinson, Pete’s first manager saw his potential and attempted to mentor him. Tony Perez, a teammate is a class act. I certainly don’t admire Pete but I am in the minority on his Hall of Fame status. I would vote for him based on his performance on the field. The gambling was awful, but there is no evidence he bet against his own team or that his wagers impacted his effort or decisions. I am a full disclosure fellow. His Hall of Fame plaque should detail his gambling and rules violations and people can make their own judgements. I feel the same way about Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens on the steroid issue.