Books on Napoleon

Matt recommended the following books or resources on Napoleon:

• Napoleon by Emil Ludwig (first recommendation)
• The Napoleon Bonaparte Podcast (looks like a great introduction to Napoleon)
• Napoleon Profiles in Power - Geoffrey James Ellis
• History of Warfar: The Napoleonic Wards - Gunther E. Rothenberg

Russia summits

Good article on U.S. / Russia summits. Diplomacy remains close to my heart:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/world/europe/summits-kremlin-us-presidents.html

"Men without Women" Murakami

I recently finished Men Without Women, a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami. I'm such a fan of his, and (as a Times review said) this provides all the Murakami trademarks a reader wants - a mysterious cat, rock n roll vinyl, late nights in Tokyo bars.

My favorite short story was called "Kino." The protagonist was a man named Kino who sort of stumbles through life. He was injured as an athlete and began selling shoes because his coach recommended it. His wife left him, and with minimal objections he uprooted his life and opened a bar in a space that a family member encouraged him to take. He floated through life, but in the end he's forced to live the emotions he has been suppressing. It ends:

"Don't look away, look right at it," someone whispered in his ear. "This is what your heart looks like."

The willow branches swayed in the early summer breeze. In a small dark room, somewhere inside Kino, a warm hand was reaching out to him. Eyes shut, he felt that hand on his, soft and substantial. He'd forgotten this, had been apart from it for far too long. Yes, I am hurt. Very, very deeply. He said this to himself. And he wept. In that dark, still room.

All the while the rain did not let up, drenching the world in a cold chill.

I think too often I am like Kino, removed from my emotions because dealing with them would be too much work and too messy.

In another favorite short story called "An Independent Organ," a doctor who is floating quite successfully through life falls in love for the first time. It forces him to question the entire foundation of himself as a person.

"Who in the world am I? I've really been wondering about this..."

"Who am I?" he went on. "Up until now I've worked as a cosmetic plastic surgeon and never had any doubts about it. Graduated from the plastic surgery department of med school, worked first with my father as his assistant, then took over the clinic when his eyes started to go and he retired. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'm a pretty skilled surgeon. The world of plastic surgery can be pretty seedy, and there are some clinics that put out splashy advertising but do mediocre work. I've always been conscientious about my work, and I've never had any major problems with my clients. I'm proud of this as a professional. I'm happy with my private life, too. I have a lot of friends, and have stayed healthy up till now. I'm enjoying life. But still these days I've often wondered Who in the world am I? And very seriously at that. If you took away my career as a plastic surgeon, and the happy environment I'm living in, and throw me out into the world, with no explanation, and with everything stripped away--what in the world would I be?"

Tokai looked me right in the eye, as if seeking some sort of response.

"Why have you suddenly started to think that way?" I asked.

"I think it's because of a book I read a while ago about the Nazi concentration camps."  

He goes on to discuss how nothing in his life that he relies on - his experience, his career, his relationships - would prepare him to survive in Auschwitz.

I identify with Tokai, but I do think that I'm being hard on myself in this case. I've certainly survived in tough situations, and those experiences can help me understand "Who am I?"

In addition to these stand outs, there was an interesting story that drew on the story of Scheherazade (one of my favorite myths / tales). 

I love Murakami and should review his full bibliography to ensure I've read everything. 

A final note. One of the reasons I enjoy Murakami so much is that he changed his life quickly over night. After running a bar with his wife, he decided to become an author, and he must be one of the world's most renowned and successful authors today. His characters' ability to appreciate detail and become drawn into music, food, and other aspects of culture always inspire me as well.

Days, life, and New York

This quote was included in the article I discussed in my last post, by Kevin Baker. I think it took on a different meaning for me than perhaps the author, or La Guardia himself, intended, because of where I am in my life and what I contemplate on a day to day basis.

"Too often, life in New York is merely a squalid succession of days, whereas in fact it can be a great, living, thrilling adventure." Fiorello La Guardia, 1933

A city of workers and eccentrics...

Shortly after I wrote my last post, I found the cover article of July's Harpers Magazine, called "Death of a Great American City." Kevin Baker wrote this article, and while I think he very nicely articulates the concerns I have about the city losing its character by economically unsustainable for artists and creatives, I think he also gives way to the nostalgia and impracticality that tarnishes the arguments I would like to make.

Baker tries to strike a balance, but often ends up damning development on the whole, and draws on no data and loads of undocumented nostalgia.

In one quote, he does perfectly articulate my concerns and desire for the city.

But New York should be a city of workers and eccentrics as well as visionaries and billionaires; a place of school-teachers and garbage men and janitors, or people who wear buttons reading IS IT FASCISM YET? -- as one woman in my neighborhood has for decades, even as she grows steadily grayer and more stooped. A city of people who sell books on the street-- and in their own shops. A city of street photographers, and immigrant vendors, and bus drivers with attitudes, and even driven businessmen and hedge fund operators. All helped to get along a little better, out of gratitude for all that they do to keep everything running, and to keep New York remarkable.

And earlier in his story he articulated it slightly differently, focusing on the experience in the street.

It is through all these interactions, multiplied a million times, that a truly great city is made. The street life--the warrens of little shops and businesses that once sustained our neighborhood in the sort of 'exhuberant diversity' that Jane Jacobs considered a prerequisite for a successful city--is being eradicated as well: the botanica on 96th Stree that Susan, my sister-in-law, always visisted to buy her healing herbs when she was in town; the Indians spice shop next to it, with the protective elephant-headed idol of Ganesh mounted outside. ...

... These stores, like so many others in my neighborhood, ahve not been replaced. They are simply... gone.

He also provided an interesting history of the city in the 60's and 70's that I was previously unfamiliar with. Basically, the decline in the port system (as container shipping began), and a decline in manufacturing in the Northeast US, meant a decline in industrial jobs just as a large number of African Americans and Hispanics arrived in the city.

The great threat to the New York of the Sixties and Seventies--and many other cities in the Northeast and Miwest--was considered to be the flood of largely unskilled, uneducated African Americans from the South and Hispanics from the islands. (He goes on to address the racism in this.)... 

But the 'peasants' pour in just as the hopeful and the desperate had always come, though they encountered, for the first time in New York's history, a city that no longer had many entry-level industrial jobs to offer them. The result was perverse, a New York that was home to more than a million welfare recipients and featured almost full employment for everyone else; a city where 7 milion to 14 million square feet of office space--the size of the entire downtown of a metropolis such as Kansas City or Pittsburgh--was built in New York every year from 1967 to 1970, as Ric Burns and James Sandeers notes in their history of the city.