Welcome to the Tyranny section of my bookshelves.
First up:
Collapse of Communism by the correspondents of The New York Times. A really interesting in-real-time book about the various gigantic events which signaled the crackup of the Soviet Union, as reported on the ground by correspondents of The New York Times. Borders opening up, the wall coming down, Chernobyl … if I recall correctly, it ends with the swelling of protests in China ending with the tragedy of Tieneman Square. Excerpt here. I bought this book out of a bin on the sidewalk outside a second-hand bookstore in Key West, when I was there visiting my boyfriend, who was living in a crack house and consorting with unsavory (understatement) characters. He was busy bussing tables at Hooters (and a bevy of Hooters waitresses took me under their wing, because I had basically come down to visit him only to find that … he was nowhere to be found, generally). I sat at the bar at The Green Parrot, having spicy Bloody Marys, and reading The Collapse of Communism. I also sat in the crack house, being abused by a mouthy white parrot, and read The Collapse of Communism, as people wandered around holding crack pipes. It sounds like I’m making this up. I am not. And so when I look at this book, I think of Key West, when I devoured the thing, at The Green Parrot, at Sloppy Joe’s, in the crack house, lying on the beach, sitting at Hooters being taken care of by the friendliest boob-aliscous-est women in the world.
Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey, by Fouad Ajami. This book really doesn’t belong in this section, come to think of it. It’s a beautiful and elegiac book about the intellectual, literary, philosophical underpinnings in the Arab communities in Syria, Iraq, other troubled countries: their poets, their intellectuals, their literary elites. Excerpt here. How does poetry express the soul of a country, a people? How does poetry reflect politics? I highly recommend this beautiful book. It also introduced me to the world of Arabic poetry, a rich subject.
Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, by Nobel-prize winner Svetlana Alexievich. A pretty slim volume, in terms of page numbers, but so harrowing I had to force myself to finish it. One of the most haunting books I’ve ever read. Excerpt here. The story told entirely by those who were there, and the forgotten people who remain.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt. I’ve read this one multiple times. I never get tired of her prose, which is quite rigorous and sometimes hard to keep up with. A controversial book, in particular her criticism of the Jewish “passivity” in the face of the Nazi persecution. Not to mention her criticism of the entire proceedings of that trial. But it’s on the ground reporting and a gigantic philosophical/political/legal treatise. You have to know her perspective in order to come to your own conclusions.
The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt. Essential. You can’t fully understand the 20th century without this book.
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, by Mark Bowden. After the debacle in Somalia, Mark Bowden – a reporter in Philadelphia – said that he looked forward to the book that would eventually be written about what happened. But no book came. So he decided to write it himself. It’s a remarkable book for many reasons. Excerpt here. He does not get into the politics of Somalia, since the soldiers on the ground there were barely aware of the complexities involved. This is their story. It’s an extremely upsetting read. My brother said he was reading it on the subway, and it stressed him out so much he got a kind of tunnel vision, the beginnings of a panic attack. A terrible and extremely complex event, with a swirling dovetail of errors – each one compounding the one before – to create the clusterfuck that was that event.
Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis, by Mark Bowden. Black Hawk Down was such an extraordinary bestseller that Bowden found himself launched into a new kind of career as a writer. A war writer. There are times when Bowden stretches himself, and it is clear that he admires Ryszard Kapuściński – but when he tries to imitate Kapuściński his work is not as effective. Kapuściński’s free-floating sensorial writing about what politics FEELS like on the ground, its collage effect, the poetic license he took … came from his position as a Polish writer behind the Iron Curtain, sent to far-flung wartorn corners of the world, where he could write about tyranny without being punished. But his work can all be seen as a critique of the situation in Poland, and the other countries roped under the umbrella of the Soviet Imperium. Kapuściński was a melancholy intellectual, a curious man who experienced the world (and wrote about the world) through his senses, whose earliest memory is Russian tanks rolling into his town, grown up in a hermetically sealed trauma-ridden world. All of this colors his prose. This is not Bowden’s thing, nor CAN it be his thing. He’s an American dude sports-writer. Which is fine. Be what you are, it’s what only you can bring to the table. I suppose, though, if you’re GOING to imitate anyone when writing books about tyranny/war/chaos, you might as well imitate the best (Kapuscinski is is one of my favorite writers of all time) … but those sections shows Bowden’s inadequacies as a political analyst. However, when he sticks to on-the-ground reporting, quote-gathering, scene-setting, he’s wonderful, in his zone.
Road Work: Among Tyrants, Beasts, Heroes, and Rogues, by Mark Bowden. A compilation of essays and reports. I’ve only cherry-picked from this book thus far. I’ve had it for years and eventually I’ll get to it. This is why I maintain a library.
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, by Iris Chang. Such a harrowing book. Similar to Voices From Chernobyl, I had to force myself to finish it. I read it when it first came out. Her suicide was devastating. In contemplating the horrors she had written about, in spending years in tremendously upsetting research, her brain filled with evil/cruelty/mans-inhumanity-to-man to such a complete degree she felt she couldn’t go on. But while she was here, she did us all a great service through writing this searingly painful but important book.
The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban, by Sarah Chayes. Chayes was an NPR reporter who gave up that gig to go to Kandahar, post-Taliban, and work with an aids organization based there, working alongside Hamid Karzai. Chayes was no tourist. She lived in Afghanistan for years, staying with Afghan families, up close and personal. It’s an on-the-ground report of the various fighting factions, and warlords, and power vacuums, and struggles to rebuild in the worst conditions possible. Highly recommended. Great history book as well.
Voices from Chernobyl is like a long drawn out scream of agony. I think I got 3/4 of the way through before having to put it down for good.
It really is brutal.
I want to read Collapse of Communism…I’ve always been interested in the subject but couldn’t find a good book. Thank you. I also have to share because your story in Key West reminds me of my ex-husband in NY’s Lower East Side. I was very young and very naïve. I waited for him in a hallway while people were shooting/snorting around me in the dimness. A woman named Betty propositioned me (for sex, not drugs) and when she realized how dumb I was, she (not my husband) escorted me out of the building, found a cab and sent me on my way. I will always be grateful to her for that.
Oh my gosh, I love Betty!!