Reading, Writing, and Sourdough

Malcolm Gladwell's shtick is to take timeworn beliefs and turn them upside down and inside out. It helps that he is an excellent story teller and begins this book with its title story. Only in Gladwell's version it should have been obvious that David was going to kill Goliath. Gladwell describes Goliath's overwhelming size and impressive armor and the unwillingness of the Israelites to face the monster.  But after Gladwell's closer examination it turns out that slingers in those days regularly took down hand-to-hand specialists like Goliath.  Moreover, Gladwell convincingly suggests Goliath probably had an eyesight deficiency making it hard for him to even find David on the battlefield. Thus begins a series of stories suggesting that adversity can lead to success and overwhelming odds are not necessarily the barrier they might appear to be.  Copying the technique of first leading one way -- everyone knows Goliath is supposed to slaughter the skimpy David -- he reve...

It was only chance that just as I was finishing this book, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were meeting alone in Helsinki.  Gessen's premise is that Putin is no-goodnik with advanced KGB training, running a kleptocracy for his own benefit.  Then she proves it by following the lives of half a dozen influential Russians from the 1980s when the Soviet Union collapsed to the present day as Russia was overtaken by a power-hungry, dictatorial regime. She tracks Boris Nemtsov, Russia's most prominent liberal, until he was gunned down in an un-solved murder in the center of Moscow. Boris Nemtsov Marina Arutyunyan was one of Russia's first psychologists to read western psychological studies. When she discovered what the west had learned about mental health during the 70 years the Soviet regime was behind an iron curtain she used her new knowledge to analyze the psychology of fellow Russians: sheltered, devoid of hope of a future ever any better than the present, accustomed...

Beartown is a rural Norwegian village, but its inhabitants, fully described by author Fredrik Backman, are exactly like your neighbors, wherever you live.  Beartown used to be more robust, but its failing economy has left a few wealthy businessmen thriving in the rich part of town and too many others struggling to make meaning of their lives outside of drink.  What they all have in common, even those not paying close attention, is the rise to national prominence of the town's youth hockey team.  Even if we are like excluded sisters, mothers, and insufficiently athletic boys, violated and chastised by A-teamers, we find ourselves as readers caught up in the challenge of competition and camaraderie of teenage boys training to become great players and young men.  A third of the way through the book, as the Beartown Bears head toward a championship showdown with a better team from the big city, Beartown takes a hook that will send you sprawling across the ice.  ...