October 7-13, 2004

cover story

BQ Nonfiction Shorts

The Fall of Baghdad

By Jon Lee Anderson
Penguin, 380 pp., $24.95

Forget WMDs, forget yellowcake. Forget chicken hawks, surrender monkeys and the movie by the pudgester in the baseball hat. Just don't forget the Iraqi people. That's the thrust of Jon Lee Anderson's account of life in pre- and post-"Mission Accomplished" Iraq. Anderson, who covers all things war-torn for The New Yorker, has written a unique book that, unlike so many titles on the war in Iraq, is actually about the war in Iraq.

At no small risk to his safety, Anderson paints complex portraits of a host of Iraqis and in the process turns victims and "evildoers" into human beings. The Fall reads, in part, like a string of profiles and a day-to-day narrative on the perils of reporting from a dictatorship wheezing its final breath.

What Anderson paints most convincingly is the pervasive culture of fear still lingering from Saddam's reign. In a conversation with Ala Bashir, a plastic surgeon and sculptor who unintentionally became Saddam's darling, this point is made more explicit.

Anderson told Ala Bashir, "The obvious thing for them to do if they wanted to avert war … was to demonstrate in public and say, 'Mr. President, we love you very much but please resign your office for the sake of the nation.' Ala Bashir nodded and answered, "That's true. And it's the one thing they cannot do, because they know they would be killed."

Anderson pokes a subtle argument as to why the liberation rhetoric offers little comfort to a people accustomed to being acted upon politically, rather than acting themselves. Fortunately the book doesn't play down the fascistic realities of Saddam's Iraq, but instead illustrates its implications. Even post-Saddam, Anderson notes how so many Iraqis reflexively chant slogans in the presence of journalists and soldiers. Their lives are pledged to Saddam one day, while George Bush is giving the thumbs up to U.S. troops the next. It all depends on who's holding the gun.
— John Dicker

Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters

By Farai Chideya
Soft Skull Press, 254 pp., $13.95

"American democracy is highly overrated, not necessarily in its concept, but in its execution." As Farai Chideya sees it, the 2000 presidential election had profound effects, not only revealing but also exacerbating divisions in the U.S. Such rupture extends beyond popular media's version (red vs. blue, right vs. left, Fox News vs. CNN), as it's built into a political process increasingly premised on fear, repression and the consolidation of power.

In her new essay collection, Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters, Chideya begins with the fact that 100 million possible voters did not participate in 2000's election. While their reasons surely vary (harassment, registration, frustration, distraction), Chideya submits that this "lockout of half the population" indicates a troubling and pervasive lack of trust in U.S. democracy. As we are now living in what she calls an "Age of Uncertainty" — since 9/11, the war in Iraq, the deteriorating economy and any number of environmental, education and health crises — voter anxiety and doubt have only intensified. The first section of her book could not be more timely, as it examines multiple ways that people identify themselves — by generation, creed, culture, race, ethnicity, gender and class — none of which locks them into a political party. In other words, party organizations and representatives must stop circling their own wagons and do more — much more — to inspire confidence.

Other essays, drawn from Chideya's online and other publications over the past five years, consider the many causes for doubt and cynicism. Organized by theme (for example, war and terror; sex, drugs and hip-hop; media and technology; beyond our borders), these concise essays (2 to 5 pages each) forward nuanced arguments concerning the effects of everything from reality TV and e-mail to the Patriot Act and "domestic terrorists" like Timothy McVeigh and John Muhammad.

All this astute analysis is framed by potential solutions, as Chideya finds them in diverse community and international movements, including hip-hop, environmental organizations, anti-corporate activist groups and emerging third parties. Hope is alive, she submits. We only need to take hold.
— Cindy Fuchs

Lads: A Memoir of Manhood

By Dave Itzkoff
Villard, 277 pp., $23.95

At a time when the literary marketplace is constipated by a succession of cheesy, solipsistic memoirs, it's truly refreshing to read a personal narrative that's as engaging and poignant as Lads. Dave Itzkoff, currently an editor at Spin, eloquently chronicles his trials, tribulations and titillations within the new breed of men's mags (quaintly dubbed "lads" by the British publishers who introduced them here in the States), first as an editor's assistant at Details and then as a staffer who's suspended in a constant state of bemusement at Maxim. Filtering the anxiety-prone pessimism of Richard Lewis through a Jay McInerney lens of starkly lyrical impressionism, Itzkoff's Bright Lights, Big City trajectory is propelled by his plentiful gifts for scene description, illustrating a torrent of frenetic misadventures with wit, depth and compassion.

"There are only two things in this life that frighten me," says Itzkoff. "One is the unfamiliar. The other is the familiar." He ain't kiddin'. Whether he's vomiting up collard greens at a restaurant, waking up to a case of stress-induced shingles, tripping on ecstasy at a wedding party or reeling through the morning after a botched suicide attempt, Itzkoff's confessions consistently move and amuse. It's an accomplishment reflected in page after page of extraordinary imagery: At one point, while making love, he detects something that smells like "stale iced tea," and later notes "the phalanxes of bottle-blond yentas" who arrange magazine launch parties.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, who blatantly sensationalize their own private reality shows for as much media exposure possible, Itzkoff's sincerity and palpable passion for the written word are in immediate evidence from Chapter 1. With Lads, he's made an astounding debut, and has established himself as an immensely talented catcher in the wry.
— Frank Halperin

Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South

By Mark Kemp
Free Press, 320 pp., $26

A little bit country memoir, a little bit rock 'n' roll ethnomusicology, Dixie Lullaby explores Southern rock as a safe space for white, working-class music lovers to work through conflicting racial messages, Yankee condescension and internalized shame. Former Rolling Stone music editor Mark Kemp takes a literal and mental trip back to the Southern rock of his Asheboro, N.C., youth; along the way, he talks to musicians, managers, fans and friends about what the music means to them. For context, he throws in plenty of politics. Jimmy Carter is as vital a figure as Gregg Allman; Bill Clinton gets more ink than Molly Hatchet and Kid Rock combined.

Kemp's at his best when exposing the messy intersections of rebellion and loyalty, politeness and hardheaded honesty. Charlie Daniels may sing nutty right-wing anthems about ragheads and queers, but he has nothing but respect for Carter. One moment, an old friend of Kemp's admits she doesn't often interact with blacks; the next, she says, "I feel much closer to a black Southerner than a white Northerner." Most insightful are Kemp's musings on Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ronnie VanZant. "Those of us who have characterized the singer as a misunderstood liberal have done so only to placate our own irrational feelings of shame for responding to the passion in his music. … Rather than accepting the art for what it is, allowing ourselves to feel it without letting it threaten our sense of self, we're dishonest in our examination of it." Even when confronted with ugly facts, Kemp strives for emotional honesty.

He writes candidly of his alcoholism and drug abuse, and his timeline of Southern rock is informed by the language of therapy. By his reckoning, the Allman Brothers' melancholy set the stage for Lynyrd Skynyrd's rage, which presaged Jason and the Scorchers' self-deprecating rowdiness, which paved the way for the healing powers of R.E.M.'s intellectual detachment, which led to the comfortable integration of Hootie & the Blowfish. As a chronological healing process, it makes sense. But is it a musical evolution? Dixie Lullaby reserves judgment.
— M.J. Fine

Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London

By Seth Koven
Princeton University Press, 368 pp., $29.95

Pinpointing the birth of white liberal guilt may be as easy as reading Seth Koven's dense and compelling book, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Slumming is not about corsets and dangerous liaisons, but the practice of upper-class citizens taking midnight tours of poverty-stricken slums, giving birth to the term that Koven takes as a title. Of course, many of these upper-crusty types were no strangers to the slums; they tended to be a good place to score drugs and pick up prostitutes. But these above-ground tours helped serve another kind of personal liberation in the form of escape. This was just as self-serving but with a higher moral ground. Those who learned firsthand about substandard conditions helped to shape the idea that it mattered to go there; to define social problems and work on their solutions. Koven, an associate professor of history at Villanova University, has written a fascinating account of the 1880s trend, the ripples of which still echo in contemporary society. He shows the shaky marriage between social activists, media and government, and how limited access between them can cause a breakdown if not outright rebellion.

Slumming raises the question: Have we, since the Victorian era, become colder to the social injustices that help create and maintain the lower classes? Or are we just growing more used to them? Many of the social and journalistic techniques detailed in Koven's book still thrive today. In 1670 the Queen and Duchess of Richmond disguised themselves at a fair to try and fit in, overdid their disguises, and were found out. They were pursued by an angry mob. Today, Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie don't care enough even to assume the costume of the people they pop in and out on, and they are celebrated, never run out of town. Maybe our biggest societal problem is not the lack of social interest, but the lack of angry mobs.
— Alex Richmond

Eat What You Kill: The Fall of a Wall Street Lawyer

By Milton C. Regan Jr.
University of Michigan Press, 416 pp., $29.95

The fall of lawyer John Gellene, a Wall Street bankruptcy partner who was disbarred because of his failure to disclose conflicts of interest, shocked white-shoe firms up and down Wall Street in the 1990s. Milton C. Regan, a Georgetown law professor, attempts to use Gellene's case to illustrate the detrimental effects of both internal pressures and external entanglements in corporate law. Regan's subject matter is, in this age of ever-interlocking conglomeration and "friendly" business relationships, vital—not to mention that, in the case of corporate bankruptcies, the end results are often of interest to both the potential jurist and the retirement-account-owning layperson. But it's that importance that makes the pacing of Eat What You Kill so frustrating; for the first three-quarters of the book the prose is legal-brief dry, and it's never a good sign, even in a nonfiction story, for characters to be so vaguely discernable that the reader needs a cast list handy at all times. (While the latter may serve to, unwittingly, prove Regan's point about the bloblike nature of corporate interests, it results in a little too much page-flipping and note-taking.) It's almost enough to wish that he'd brought along Randy Cohen—author of The New York Times' "The Ethicist" column—as a co-author, or at least someone who could give Regan's prose a little bit of panache while still maintaining his thesis' moral weight.
— Maura Johnston

Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece

By Michael Streissguth
Da Capo Press, 192 pp., $24

When Johnny Cash, his wife, June, and their band nervously ambled into California's Folsom Prison on Jan. 13, 1968, they knew they were about to make some waves. What they didn't likely realize was that the two concerts they'd play in felon-filled cafeterias would be held up more than three decades later as a defining rock 'n' roll moment.

To that end, Michael Streissguth chronicles the Man in Black's journey toward that day and how, with the release of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, he became a bona fide musical storyteller and the nation's preeminent prisoners' rights advocate.

Much has been written about Cash since his Sept. 12, 2003 death. When he passed away months after his wife, in the midst of an unlikely revival spurred in part by Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin, who steered him toward remaking Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt," he landed on the cover of Time, among many eulogizing publications. Rather than trying to encapsulate an entire career, Streissguth wisely hones in on that one January day that Cash went from an unpredictable outsider to a force.

Words alone can't do the scene justice, which makes the slew of previously unreleased photographs of that day essential. Though he wasn't there that day, substantial research enabled Streissguth—a Cash scholar of sorts—to paint a good picture of a scene that essentially brought country music to the forefront, for better or worse. It's just a shame he broke the news that the prisoner's unforgettable hoot after Cash rumbles through the "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die" line in the classic "Folsom Prison Blues" was added in the studio.
— Brian Hickey

Illegal Tender: Gold, Greed, and the Mystery of the Lost 1933 Double Eagle

By David Tripp
Free Press, 384 pp., $26

The U.S. Mint in Philadelphia began producing 1933 double eagles—$20 gold coins—on Thursday, March 2. Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office that Saturday; 36 hours later, the new president took the United States off the gold standard. With the nation's banks bleeding money, citizens were suddenly forced to trade their gold coins, bullion and certificates for paper money.

Had it not been for the slow grind of bureaucracy, that quirk of timing might not have amounted to much. But, as David Tripp writes in Illegal Tender, "As the political firestorm in Washington raged and gold lost its place as a medium of exchange, the Mint in Philadelphia, seemingly oblivious to the real world, lethargically cranked out its golden product" for two months. None was ever issued. Twenty-nine were destroyed in purity tests. Two went to the Smithsonian. The other 445,469 were locked in mint vaults for three years, then shipped to Fort Knox and melted into ingots like the rest of America's gold currency. Yet somehow a few made their way into collectors' troves via a corrupt mint employee and a shady Jeweler's Row dealer.

Tripp obsessively documents the double eagle's history, from 1904, when Theodore Roosevelt decided to ask sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to redesign the $20 coin, to 2002, when an anonymous bidder bought a 1933 from Sotheby's for $7,590,020.

Give Tripp credit for doing a decent job with characterization—not an easy task when you've got more than 30 major players—but he's not much of a writer. His prose is bloated with mythological allusions, true-crime cliches and fits of numismatic rapture, and for every tantalizing tangent, he gives 10 superfluous details. He's so enthralled by his subject, he can't bear to leave anything out. And no wonder. As special consultant on the Sotheby's auction, he waded through tens of thousands of pages of documentation before and after the sale. It's a compelling story, and with most of the principals long dead, Tripp's the person most qualified to tell it.
— M.J. Fine

Planet Simpson

By Chris Turner
Da Capo Press, 464 pp., $26

At the start of Planet Simpson, author Chris Turner sips stale beer at a packed pub while watching The Simpsons on a big screen as if it were the Super Bowl. Primary colors saturate the screen, laughs mount, and the credits roll. Turner comments on the scene like a seasoned sports broadcaster. "The feeling was much like that moment when the house lights come up after a brilliant musical performance and the audience members blink incredulously at each other, all of them united in the certainty that they have just witnessed something huge."

There are those who simply appreciate The Simpsons as animated satire, and those who value it as an irreplaceable institution. Turner's hefty tome is a leader among the latter, disseminating mounds of meticulous research into clear, concise prose about television's longest-running sitcom. I-never-thought-of-it-that-way passages include Mr. Burns as an allegory for big business, Christian fundamentalism and Ned Flanders; and Bart Simpson's "rage against the machine" tendencies. The footnotes alone could be assembled into a pocket book about pop culture, from the "full lexicon of grunge" to asides about comedian Bill Hicks, South Park and the shameless editing of syndication.

Some may argue that Turner is being overanalytical. The Simpsons is just a cartoon, right? In a literal sense, yes. But the banana-flavored, four-fingered family is regarded as one of the smartest programs ever. Matt Groening explains, "It always amazes me how few cartoonists in print or animation go after the bigger issues, the kind of things that keep you awake in the middle of the night." The creator's comment resonates throughout the book, as humanity's struggle with spirituality is filtered through the eyes of Lisa Simpson, and roller-coaster relationships are reflected in the domestic struggles of Homer and Marge.

Part pop philosophy for dummies, part fanboy bible, Planet Simpson is truly "exccccelent."
— Andrew Parks