Simon Schama. Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations. 2023
Tim Cook. Fight to the Finish: Canadians in the Second World War 1944-1945. Vol 2. 2015
Simon Schama. Rembrandt’s Eyes. 1999
David Quammen. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next HumanPandemic. 2012
ElizabethStrout. The Things We Never Say. 2026
Adam Nicolson. The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters. 2014
Fiona McCarthy. Byron: Life and Legend. 2014
Douglas Stuart. John of John. 2026
Emily Wilson. Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: JourneysThrough Ancient Literature. 2026
Louise Penny. The Black Wolf. 2025
George Saunders. Vigil. 2026
Stephen Greenblatt. Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival. 2025
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. End Times Fascism: and the Fight for the Living World. 2026
Simon Schama. Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations. 2023
This appeared, at first, to be a Covid book, written, I suspect, in white-hot fury at the stupidity we humans displayed before, during and after the pandemic. It is about drinking bleach and taking Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. It is about not wearing masks as a statement of freedom (and often dying) and it is about the Republican war on science (although Schama never mentions political parties) and the relentless hatred for and pursuit of Anthony Fauci. And I would have passed on it because of a sincere desire to leave behind that era of stupidity and anger, except that it is by Simon Schama.
There are a lot of bad historians out there in the world of the written word. Some can get so bogged down in the details or the theories that you find yourself, as a reader, wondering what the book is actually about. Others are so fact and date oriented that you have to wonder at their private emotional lives. These are the ones that have truly given history a bad name. And then there are the greats – the ones who can give the facts clearly, elucidate the meanings and forces behind them and have endlessly fascinating stories to tell that never bore and always enrich. Usually they are women like Barbara Tuchman (still the best, in my estimation), Antonia Fraser and Mary Beard. And then there is Mr. Schama.
I encountered Simon Schama relatively late and so I still have a number of his books to look forward to. My first was his history of the French Revolution and it was a revelation. Finally, the whole chaotic jumble made sense and I was hooked. So, when I saw Foreign Bodies, I was hooked and read it – and although it deals with Covid it is much more about the history of inoculation and some great historical figures that I was not aware of and how they were treated.
I expected him to start with Jenner and cowpox but he only mentions Jenner on p. 401 and only to point out that he was not the first to use cowpox to inoculate against smallpox and it didn’t matter because no one took any notice any way. The real hero in the smallpox story – a disease that killed, disfigured and blinded multitudes with brutal efficiency – was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She, the great beauty of her time, had been disfigured by the disease and, while staying in Istanbul, discovered that the local people (particularly the Circassian people) vaccinated from active cases of smallpox with great effectiveness. She had the procedure performed on her young son and then went on to promote the procedure throughout England. Her ideas were not well received – too foreign, too Turkish, too barbarian, too Islamic. Schama points out that there is strong evidence that older cultures in Wales and Highland Scotland had been practicing the live inoculation procedure for centuries. But the English considered those people savages as well.
We have a tendency of thinking of the plague – The Black Death, the Bubonic Plague – as strictly late Medieval. It was, but that was not the end of it. In 1720-2 southern France, around Marseille had an outbreak that killed half the population – about 100,000 people. In the 1770’s there was a bad outbreak in Sweden and a few years later about a quarter of a million died of it in Russia. The European reaction was typically schizophrenic. They knew that the origins of the disease were in the east (particularly in India where it had never gone away) and that increased trade carried the disease – it was not known until the end of the 19th century that it moved in the fleas that lived on the blood of rats but were not particular about consuming human blood. But they opposed any restrictions on trade and even quarantines (they slowed down business profits). Besides, no one country could control any trade other than their own.
I was familiar with the works of Marcel Proust – marvelous– but I was unaware that his father Adrien was a doctor who had a keen interest in the particular problem of pandemics. Adrien Proust gave his career and his prestige (which was, apparently, enormous) to this problem and could be considered the godfather of the WHO (the same one that Trump is trying to destroy). It probably caused his death from exhaustion and stroke.
Finally, we come to the heart of the book. Here we find a man that I have never heard of and yet he probably saved more lives from epidemic disease (certainly from the plague) than any one else in history: Waldemar Mordechai Wolff Haffkine.
Haffkine discovered the bacteria (yersinia pestis) that caused the plague, developed a vaccine for it (which he tested first on himself), developed a way to create large amounts of the vaccine – in the field – and then went to India and began to save lives, despite opposition from the authorities (the Raj) and most other scientists. He vaccinated in person and trained other people to do it as well. Eventually there was an accident involving tetanus (he was not, himself, present) and he was fired and kicked out of India. There have always been and will always be the idiotic ant-vaxxers.
As Schama says in his conclusion:
Something about inoculators, vaccinators, epidemiologists gets under the skin of public tribunes for whom nothing, certainly not epidemiology, is politics-free. Their fury swells into maddened vehemence to the point where it becomes commonplace to wish inoculators banished, imprisoned or dead.
The Anthony Faucis of this world.
p.390
In the end, there are some very clear lessons to be learned – which we will not learn, apparently. The old diseases are never totally be extinguished. They will always live on in some dark corner of the world: smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, plague. As we lose our vigilance (often through either religious mania or parasitic influencers who sell our health for gain) these diseases will triumphantly return and kill. The new diseases, constantly mutating, will be transmitted to us zoonotically(from wild and semi-domesticated animals) as we persistently force ourselves into their world in search of profits. These diseases – like the various forms of SARS – will be upon us before we are prepared and will, like Covid, take a terrible toll. We can only prevent them by research and the discipline of herd inoculation. Unfortunately, we cannot vaccinate against stupidity and greed.
Tim Cook. Fight to the Finish: Canadians in the Second World War 1944-1945. Vol 2. 2015
I am going to do a quick review of Tim Cook’s Fight to the Finish: Canadians in the Second World War 1944-1945. Vol 2. which I have just finished. I am preparing a trip in the early spring to see some of the World War I battlefields, and then on to Belgium and Amsterdam to see some Van Eyck, Vermeer and Rembrandt. Since I will (coincidentally) be in Holland for May 5,Liberation Day, and that liberation was accomplished by the Canadian Army, I thought it would be a good idea to refresh my memory of the events. Not to mention that my father flew a Lancaster for the RCAF in the same war. So, some close associations.
I also wanted to pay tribute to the work of our premier war historian who, very sadly, died on October 25, 2025 at the young age of 53 of Hodgkin’s disease. This was an irreparable loss to the world of Canadian War History. I can unequivocally recommend his two-volume history of Canada in the Great War: At the Sharp End and Shock Troops. Combined, it is the best history of the First World War from the Canadian perspective ever written.
As far as Fight to the Finish: Canadians in the Second World War 1944-1945 is concerned, it is equally as enthralling as the other three books listed below. Cook is not afraid to criticize or praise where he sees fit. Some rather forgotten generals come in for approbation and some well-known ones – particularly American ones – get properly taken down; particularly Mark Clarke who semi-botched Anzio and then rushed to seize Rome (and the headlines)while allowing a German army to escape encirclement. Montgomery, as well, takes a few hits from Cook. Sometimes generals prefer the front page to the front line.
The book’s strongest asset is it’s focus on D-Day in the first half. Using Hollywood as its cudgel, the USA has beaten it into the head of the Western World that D-Day was American and it simply was not; notwithstanding Private Ryan and The Longest Day. The Americans were, at the most, one third of the force landing on the beaches and almost none of the delivering and supporting navy. The men from Canada on Juno beach went through all the hell portrayed on film and penetrated the farthest inland of any force on day one, and that deserves to be remembered.
There are two other things that the book is important for dealing with. One is the (I hope) final settlement of the troubling question of whether the mass bombing of German cities significantly contributed to war effort or was merely a revenge slaughter. Cook spends (in both volumes) a considerable time on the air war and his final conclusion is that the bombing was a major contributor, if only in the way it drew weapons and personnel away from the front (particularly the eastern front) to protect the German cities. In away, the bombing raids constituted the “Second Front” that Stalin demanded so stridently.
The other matter was the afore-mentioned liberation of the Netherlands. Holland was the last country to be liberated from the Nazis (I don’t count Austria) and the people there were – literally – starving. Technically, they were surviving on 500 calories a day, but in fact (unless they could access the Black Market – and few could) they were getting even less than 500 calories. The Canadian army freed them and then fed them – often with their own rations. And they are remembered for it to this day. Happy May 5!
Also:
Tim Cook. The Necessary War: Canadians Fighting the Second World War 1939-1943 Vol. 1. 2014
Tim Cook. At the Sharp End: Canadians Fighting the Great War 1914-1916. Vol 1. 2007
Tim Cook. Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War1917-1918. Vol. 2. 2008
This section of short reviews has been interrupted recently by a trip to Europe. I have been visiting the WW1 battlefields where Canadians fought: Ypres, Mount Sorrel, the Somme (the September offensive at Courcelette),Vimy, Ypres again and Passchendaele. The hundred days was much more mobile so there is less to see. I also visited Beaumont-Hamel although that is, strictly speaking, a Newfoundland battlefield and monument. We attended the last post ceremony at the Meiningen gate in Ypres and then moved on the city of Ghent in Belgium. There we saw the Van Eyck altarpiece, the second most famous painting in the world – and the most stolen. Ghent itself is an amazing city that was at it’s height (in the 15th century) the second largest city in Europe after Paris. After that we moved on to Amsterdam which we managed to visit on it’s liberation day – that liberation from the Nazis being achieved by theCanadian army. Five minutes walk from each other are the Rijksmuseum (home to Rembrandt and some Vermeer) and the Van Gogh museum.
Although we were following our own agenda – the battlefields of the first world war and the then some great architecture and art including the altarpiece and the Night Watch – we were, in fact following the history of the wool trade. In France we stayed in Arras, where medieval tapestry reached its pinnacle. Tapestries from there became synonymous with the city’s name; and so Hamlet stabs Polonius when he is hiding behind the “arras”. From there the trade centre moved to Ghent in the 16th century creating great wealth and then, with the liberation of the low countries from the yoke of Spain, it moved to Amsterdam. These are all beautiful cities that have seen much destruction and oppression during two world wars. Our last day was spent on themagnificent canals of Amsterdam and in the hiding place of Anne Frank. I am not a travel writer – and believe me there are some great ones to read from Rebecca West to Ryszard Kapuscinski to Paul Theroux to Bruce Chatwin – but I would urge you to see, at least, Vimy, Ghent and Amsterdam.
Simon Schama. Rembrandt’s Eyes. 1999
Although this book was published in 1999 and I’ve owned a copy since 2018, I waited until this year to read it even though I am a great fan of Simon Schama’s work. I could partially lie and say that I have been waiting for the appropriate moment to tackle the book but, undeniably the sheer immensity of it has alwaysbeen a bit frightening. But this winter, looking forward to an April trip to Europe that would include a visit to the Rijksmuseum with “The Night Watch” and lots more Rembrandt, I could no longer find any excuse to delay. The book is an immense journey but worth every minute. I will not try to summarize except tosay that everything is covered that could possibly be considered concerning Rembrandt, his life, his milieu and his work.
In a sense,it is a companion piece to Schama’s Embarrassment of Riches (reviewed last year) although the focus is temporally narrower. In order to set Rembrandt’s work within the context of his contemporaries, there is what would be considered elsewhere as a full-length study of Peter Paul Rubens that would be a treat on its own. But Schama is more than just a great historian – he has some real insights to offer into Rembrandt’s style, thinking and innovation. And behind it all is a true affection for the often spiky and idiosyncratic painter.
But Schama’s real ability is as a story-teller. Rather than describe a cultural phenomenon or movement he choses a story about an individual that graphically illustrates what he is trying to say and fascinates the reader at the same time. Books about artists can be extremely didactic and tedious. This one is unbelievably full of life. Read it.
David Quammen. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. 2012
Please note the date of publication, because in addition to other things Mr. Quammen predicted the NBO (the Next Big One) to be a zoonotic infection and his money was on an influenza like Covid-Sars. And seven years later we got exactly that.
This is one of those classics of science writing (like Paul de Kruif’s The Microbe Hunters) that absolutely every one should read. Vax deniers should be forced to read these books even under duress. Quammen clarifies how pandemics work and what zoonotic spillovers are – and that’s important because that’s where our future health issues lie. For example, our current raging Ebola outbreak in the Congo. He says:
A zoonosis is an animal infection transmissible to humans. There are more such diseases than you might expect. AIDS is one. Influenza is a whole category of others. Pondering them as a group tends to reaffirm the old Darwinian truth (the darkest of his truths, well known and persistently forgotten) that humanity is a kind of animal, inextricably connected withother animals: in origin and in descent, in sickness and in health. p. 14 (my emphasis)
Other zoonotic diseases are rabies, Hanta virus (remember the cruise ship?), Hendra and the Bubonic plague – the list goes on. Aside from the plague, and possibly rabies, most of these are relatively recent. The live in animal hosts, without killing them until they find a way (often by mutation) to make the jump to humans – sometimes through another animal type. And then they start killing. Quammen again:
Ebola is a zoonosis. So is bubonic plague. So was the so-called Spanish influenza of 1918-1919, which had its ultimate source in a wild aquatic bird and, after passing through some combination of domesticated animals (a duck in southern China, a sow in Iowa?) emerged to kill as many as 50 million people before receding into obscurity. All of the human influenzas are zoonoses. So are monkeypox, bovine tuberculosis, Lyme disease, West Nilefever, Marburg virus disease, rabies, hanta virus pulmonary syndrome, anthrax, Lassa fever, Rift Valley fever, ocular larva migrans, scrub typhus, Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, Kyasanur forest disease, and a strange new affliction called Nipah encephalitis, which has killed pigs and pig farmers in Malaysia. Each ofthem reflects the action of a pathogen that can cross into people from other animals. P.21
Please don’t make the mistake in thinking that these are all old diseases that we are only figuring out right now. They are (with a few exceptions like the Bubonic Plague) new diseases for us humans that have lived long in animals that we have avoided because we have avoided the animals. But now we are pressing on the animal world everywhere and with unrelenting force.As Quammen says: “If you shake the trees, something will fall out.”
To put the matter in its starkest form: Human-caused ecological pressures and disruptions are bringing animal pathogens ever more into contact with human populations, while human technology and behavior are spreading those pathogens ever more widely and quickly. There are three elements to the situation.
One: Mankind’s activities are causing the disintegration (a word chosen carefully) of natural ecosystems at a cataclysmic rate. …
Two: Those millions of unknown creatures include viruses, bacteria, fungi, protists, andother organisms, many of which are parasitic. …
Three: But now the disruption of natural ecosystems seems more and more to be unloosing such microbes into a wider world. P.40-1
And we provide excellent transmission routes with airlines, cruise ships, trains and cars. Diseases don’t have to walk in us any farther than the nearest airport. And then they are loose in the world.
These are the bare bones of the book. For the story in detail, you have to read it yourself and Quammen is an excellent sleuth and a brilliant story-teller. Just his account of the origins of AIDS (he traces it back to 1908) is extraordinary. At the risk of sounding excessive, this may be the most important book of our time – especially after living through Covid and hearing all the non-scientific bullshit that is still being bandied about by “influencers”; some of whom are in high political office.
Elizabeth Strout. The Things We Never Say. 2026
The main character (what used to be called the hero) is Artie Dam. To clear some ground first, Artie is a teacher of history. Artie teaches American history in a High School on the coast of New England. Artie is a wonderful character in a wonderful book and he is our contemporary in so many ways, particularly in that he is a truly decent human being who is nearly overwhelmed by this world, that swirls all around him and us. He has a great deal of trouble dealing with his transforming friends, his changing marriage, his relationship with his brilliantand troubled son and in dealing with the political turmoil created by his new (and idiotic) orange president.
That’s abou tall I can say about Artie without revealing all the surprises that he encounters and I don't want to do that. But I will also say that he (somehow) retains his decency through it all, that he loves sailing and that he helps his students as his teachers had helped him in the past. And that you will not regret reading this lovely little novel.
Adam Nicolson. The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters. 2014
I have two ingrained summer habits: swimming laps and reading Homer. I alternate epics each year, so, as luck would have it, I am reading Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey this summer – the year of the movie. If you want to prepare yourself for the experience, this is the translation that I would start with and also – at least – one other book as follows.
If you were to read only one recent book on Homer and his works it would unquestionably be The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson (5th Baron Carnock). Although he can stray occasionally into unnecessary personal tales (do we really need to know about his being raped while in Crete?) he is absolutely on the money about the importance of Homer as he peels back the layers of time that reveal the deep roots not only of the Mycenean Greeks (Achilles, Odysseus, Helen) but also of their distant and dimly seen ancestors.
He starts with the troubled question of Homer’s identity. One Homer, many Homer’s, no Homer? (And, by the way, it’s actually Homeeros which, in the dialect on the island of Lesbos, where legend has him being born, means blind). If there were multiple Homers then what is the nature of the twogreat epics – are they masterpieces put together by editors? Not very likely, but then that’s what the King James Bible is.
Enter Milman Parry (1902-1935) and his assistant Albert Lord. Parry did his Masters on Homer at Berkeley and then went to the Sorbonne to do his doctorate (again, on Homer). His thesis went like this: there was a Homer but he probably never wrote anything down, he memorized it all. He could do this because
1. He was working within an oral tradition of poetry that went way back and
2. He used many oft-repeated phrases (like “the wine-dark sea” or “the much-suffering, godlike Odysseus”).
Nicolson’s image is Homer standing on top of a pyramid of all the bards that preceded him and perfecting these tales that he had inherited from long before. Parry, of course, had to prove his theory was even possible. Could anyone hold that much in their memory? He travelled to the Balkans because he had heard that there were people there who, while playing the one-stringed gusle, could sing a story that could last for days, sixteen thousand lines of verse. When they were asked to repeat the story, it was identical to the first version. He found the same talent on Crete. Others found it all over the world.
In 1953 on the island of Lewis in Scotland, Duncan Macdonald, the hereditary bardof Clan Macdonald, told an audience a seven-thousand-word long story. He had told it 3 years earlier and it had been transcribed. The stories were identical. Duncan had learned it from his father and the family tradition went back until at least 1817. They also learned about the bard Angus MacMillan whocould do numerous stories some running to 58,00 words. That’s the length of the Odyssey.
So, if Homer existed, and the case was much stronger after Parry’s work, then the two epics were orally composed and only written down later, and the oral composition was based on material the went way back before Homer. In fact, some of the Greek grammatical structures that Homer uses pre-date the Linear B tablets – 1400 B.C.E.
This means that through Homer we have a limited access (through a glass, darkly) to the world of the south-east European steppes over 4,000 years ago. In Nicolson’s words:
The Iliad’s subject is not war or its wickedness but a crisis in how to be. Do you, like Agamemnon, attempt to dominate your world? Do you, like Odysseus, manipulate it? Do you,like Hector, think of your family above all and weaken your resolve by doing that? Or do you, like Achilles, believe in the dignity of love and the purity of honour, as the only things that matter in the face of death? These questions are urgent for Homer because the arrival of a steppe culture at the gates of a city make them urgent. There is more to the Achilles story than this: in the course of the poem he suffers, grows, loses himself in the violence of grief, and finally comes to a new and deeper understanding, but in this great speech of steppe-land consciousness, Homer has bequeathed to us the first unforgivingi dealist of our civilization. p. 152
On the northwest coast of the Black Sea, near Odessa, there is tumulus-style cemetery containing the remains of herders and horseback pastoralists from around 3000B.C.E. Like the Mycenaean’s, the dead were laid in their tombs wearing death-masks, in this case made of unfired clay, coloured with ochre or ash, but modeled to look like the dead face. These people, or certainly people like them, may have been the ancestors of the besiegers of Troy.
If you have been fortunate enough to have visited Mycenae itself, to have passed through the Lion Gate, seen the Grave Circles and entered “The Treasury of Atreus” – not a stone missing after 3,00 years – you will enjoy all of this even more. If you haven't -- go.
I’ll leave the rest to the reader, but if you are a “fan” of Homer, or looking fo rinsight into the world of the Mycenaeans, then this book is for you.
.jpg)
Fiona McCarthy. Byron: Life and Legend. 2014
This is the definitive Byron biography, complete, detailedand both sympathetic and critical (and long at 674 pages in paperback.) She is unafraid of dealing in depth with Byron’s complex sexual history and is a strong proponent of his political position (which was also complex, as he was both a radical and a fan of Napoleon). As an example, she quotes from his maiden speech as a member of the House of Lords:
We must not allow mankind to be sacrificed to improvements in Mechanism. The maintenance & and well doing of the industrious poor is an object of greater consequence to the community than the enrichment of a few monopolists. p. 156
He could have been speaking about AI today.
On a few topics she is weak but this may simply have been a choice to not make the book even longer than it is. She has little to say about some of the peripheral characters that made Byron’s legacy so powerful and, at times,so bizarre. She dismisses Trelawney, who may have been partly responsible for Shelley’s death and might have caused Byron’s death as well, had illness not taken him. Trelawney also published some appalling posthumous lies about Byron’s corpse, writing that both his legs were deformed and that he looked like a satyr. She has little to say about Shelley as well and does not even mention the poem “Julian and Maddalo” which was one of the most interesting descriptions of Byron (Maddalo) by a clever contemporary.
But these are small critiques and I have no hesitation in recommending this excellent biography of such an important poet.
Douglas Stuart. John of John. 2026
Each year I curse myself that I have been unable to find time to read any of the contenders for the Booker Prize before it has been awarded. This year I have somehow managed to read two books on the long list before the short list has been announced (which will happen later today). John of John is one of them and the previously reviewed The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout is the other. I am rooting for both of them.
John of John appealed immediately because it is set in the Hebrides of today and “my heart is in the Highlands” – always. The one secret of the book that I will reveal is that of the title: the story centres around two men, John and his son John (who is often referred to as Cal in the story}. In the islands, names are handed down through families like the McDonalds and the MacInness’. These people all seem to know everything about each other in their tiny, tightly-knitted communities and yet they actually know very little – even about their own fathers and sons. And that lies at the centre of this story.
Stuart has woven all the elements of Hebridean life into a long, tough, deeply satisfying book. The fingertip closeness of poverty, the grim Calvinist Presbyterianism which is the merciless religion of a hard-drinking people. They extraordinary hand-weaving art of Harris Tweed that they practice to augment the pitiful income from their crofts. But above all, the incredible secrets they live with and the great tenderness that they possess in multitudes.
So, though I may have a small issue with the slightly forced nature of the ending, I think that this is a truly wonderful book in a very traditional and satisfying form. Hope it’s on the short list.
Emily Wilson. Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature. 2026
Emily Wilson has been making quite a name for herself overthe last few years. She has been the first (professional) woman translator of The Iliad and The Odyssey – and they really are great translations. She has also written THE most read review of the film The Odyssey in which she is highly critical of the writing by Christopher Nolan and she is unafraid of going up against titans like Mary Beard. Altogether an impressive (if not perfect) performance.
Now it turns out that she is a pretty fine essayist as well. Her new book of same, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, is a very fine collection of essays on the classics and on the art of translating. Again,there are some small errors. In her essay on Aeschylus, she opines that Cassandra (who has the gift of Prophecy) knows more about the history of the Clan of Atreus than the natives there. This not exactly accurate as the first choric moment speaks gnomically about that history in some detail. The fact that they are not more open about it is not due to a lack of knowledge but rather to the fact that they live in a police state and they know what would happen to them if they were more open about the grisly past. Cassandra knows she is going to die anyway, so she can speak her mind.
On the other hand, Wilson gets full marks for her portrayal of Boris Jonson in her essay on teaching and learning the classics. In Britain, the acquisition of Latin and Greek, retains its status as a marker of class:
Its cultural capital remains high enough that Boris Johnson an incompetent drunkard whose social privilege had enabled him to attend Eton and my own undergraduate alma mater, Balliol College, Oxford – managed to hold the highest political office in the land for an astonishingly long period of time, and even maintain the illusion of being an intellectual partly on the basis of his ability to parrot a few garbled lines of Homeric Greek. No other party trick could have served him as well. P.182
The last, and best, essay in the collection describes her process in translating The Odyssey. It is hugely illuminating and worth the price of the book. I shall be watching The London Review of Books inthe future for her forthcoming essays.
Louise Penny. The Black Wolf. 2025
I am sorry to say it, but I think that Louise Penny has lost her way in her own genre and series. It has been particularly noticeable in the Grey Wolf and this sequel. I suspect the problem began when she co-wrote a book with Hilary Clinton (which I have not read) and became enamoured with high level politics of the American ilk. In any case the books have lost the flavour of the Three Pines novels and taken on a complexity that,quite often, becomes tedious and long-winded. There were places in Grey Wolf where I became confused and instead of looking back to clarify I just sighed and pushed ahead. In the end, it didn’t really seem to matter.
Now this is disturbing as I have read every one of the twenty Gamache books and have been a big fan.
In Black Wolf the problem is that there is not really an abundance of story so Penny decides to chose the tactic of switching suspects. It’s a five-family mob job, it’s a corrupt police job, it’s a political job, it’s politician #1, no #2, no #3, no # 2, no #1 . . . and so on. In fact, at the end of the book she does one shift too many and the reader (well, this reader) sighs and says: “who really cares.”
The only amazing thing about the book – amazing even to Penney, herself – is the parallels between the central plot and reality as it is unfolding in the real world. Without giving away too much, there is posited an American plot to attack Canada and yesterday (Sept.23, 2026) over a year after the book was published) Prime Minister Carney told the New York Times that he felt that there was a possibility that there was a secret plan for the United States to attack Canada.
Still, it is my wish that Penny could get back to her roots and simplify her scope but complicate her story. Oh, and serve something better than roast chicken.
Perhaps she needs a Moriarty to spice things up. Or maybe a ghost.
George Saunders. Vigil. 2026
This book was most disappointing. The principal thrust of the book as a condemnation of the destruction of the planet by the greed of the CEOs of the fossil fuel industry, is laudable. The writing is, unfortunately, laughable. It is trite, is simplistic and its portrayal of the after life is an odd mix of Sunday School and Marvel comics. The principal figure, Jill Blaine, is a ghost (spirit?) sent (by god? – who is not a character) to comfort a man on his deathbed. The man, named Boone, was (apparently) in his lifetime the most important man in the fossil fuel industry. He had, with the use of paid (fake) scientists, convinced the world that global warming was a fake and fossil fuels were just great. Some kind of a Trump with intellect. He is driven throughout his career to brutally triumph over everyone else because he was very short and because his father bullied him.
Other spirits show up in order to force him to acknowledge and regret his guilt or punish him for mistreating them. Among them, are two of his former pet scientists, identified as Glen R. and Glen G. Jill suddenly turns out to have extraordinary powers to inflict pain on the other spirits despite her childlike character and she does so.
The issue of names comes up throughout the book. The Midwestern Americal oil man is called Boone (could have been Crocket), Jill Blaine sounds suspiciously like chilblain (which is hardly flattering – although possibly appropriate to the cold of the grave) and R, and G. are cleared intended – especially in the way they complete and repeat each other’s thoughts – to be mimics of Shakespeare’s (or maybe Stoppard’s) Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern. They are not a success. Their dialogue is insipid, dull and UN-funny. They are, in fact,a disaster – especially when they inexplicably shit and then reabsorb copies ofthemselves. This is intended, I assume, to metaphorically express something significant, but I am at a loss as to what.
Although I struggled at times with Lincoln in the Bardo, in the end I was reasonably satisfied with it. But this book just made me angry. If Saunders is (as he should be – as we should all be) really furious at the burning down of our planet and possible extinction of our (and many other) species by a bunch of fossil fuel criminals, who already have more money than they could ever spend, then there has got to be a lot better way to express it than this.
Stephen Greenblatt. DarkRenaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's GreatestRival. 2025
Professor Greenblatt is often very unpredictable. Sometimes in a good way and sometimes not so much. If you are reading this book for insights into Marlowe as a writer, here they are. Marlowe was a great poet. A disruptor and a risk taker. This is nothing new and quite disappointing. Even the relationship with Shakespeare is given relatively short shrift.
On the other hand, Greenblatt offers some terrific information about the people that affected Marlowe’s life – particularly as a spy and a counterfeiter. Here Greenblatt shines with his handling of the minute and fascinating details.
So, it depends on what you are looking for.
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. End Times Fascism: and the Fight for the Living World. 2026
The latest Naomi Klein book (this time with Astra Taylor) is a big improvement after Doppelganger – although it does have its faults. The premise – an intersection of end of time scenarios with a new simulacrum of fascism – is not only plausible but clearly happening all around us – there is no conspiracy theory here. The rise of Trumpism has not only allowed these things to flourish and grow in power but has astonishingly (in the face of habitual maga lying) permitted it to show its true face without any fear. We can truly see the west (particularly the U.S.) succumbing to oligarchs and fascist insanity. K. and T. view end time fascism as “an alliance of very different groups, each one racing toward a different but related apocalypticdream, sutured together in common cause.” 10 Not, as they say, a re-run of the 1940’s Naziism but rather as a sequel to it.
In the new Israel of Netanyahu’s hewing (particularly after Oct 7) Messianism is on the rise. Israel seems to have become more and more a theocracy. K. and T. write:
The supernatural claims underlying these kinds of beliefs are alien to nonbelievers, but as Avraham Burg, the former Speaker of the Knesset, made clear around this time, the highest ranks of the Israeli military are saturated with people “educated with this kind of messianic mission to use the army as a tool to accelerate redemption.” That this messianism is not a majority position hardly makes it less pernicious: “It is about the dedication and the readiness and the fanaticism of those who are ready to act,” he explained. And now a well-positioned minority, determined to re-create the ancient kingdom of Israel as they believe it existed in biblical times, feels the wind at its back. 85
This Messianism requires certain steps to be taken. Israel’s borders must return to what they were (as is assumed by them) in biblical times – which means of course increased settlements and the occupation of the west bank, adding Gaza and parts of southern Lebanon. All of which is currently under way. The Temple Mount must be taken. The Dome of the Rock – the most revered holy site in all of Islam — must be torn down and the third Temple must be built. Then the Messiah will come and redeem the Jewish people:
“I rub my eyes and thank God for the privilege of living in this wondrous time. The Bible is coming to life,” an influential Hardali rabbi proclaimed, “the people of Israel are standing tall, and the Messiah is at the doorstep.” What will it take for the Messiah to finally open the door and cross the threshold? More ethnic cleansing, more slaughter, more settlements. Control over Temple Mount. And, of course, an even wider war withI ran, waged until total regional dominance is achieved. 83
This “end of days” vision is part and parcel of the extreme right-wing views of many members of Netanyahu’s cabinet who often speak of Palestinians as subhuman, in ways that remind the listener of Nazi speak. They are strongly supported by American Christian Nationalists who see the same scenario playing out in their end time vision of the imminent Rapture. K. and T,:
Like when #RaptureTok went viral on TikTok with many thousands of people apparently convinced that on September 23, 2025, God was going to hoover them up to the sky, just like in Left Behind. Sorne were so confident that they sold their belongings and quit their jobs. Others cashed in, offering to take care of pets when their owners vanished, for a steep prepaid price. September came and went, with no mass vanishings, but the betting site Polymarket collected almost $3.3 million in wagers on “Will Jesus Christ Return in 2025?” And as we write, the pot is growing for whether he will arrive “before 2027”; at one point, 36 percent of gamblers bet on “Yes”. 71
For those of you who find this a little bizarre, let me point out that “The End of the World” or “The Rapture” has been a part of American religious culture since Plymouth Rock. In the last half of the 19th century there was one cult or another proclaiming the end of the world every several months, and it has never really stopped – despite the fact that they are always wrong. Deep religious belief and a pathological need to be conned are both ingrained into much of American culture. Remember, this is the country where Mormonism was born (read the details about its foundation and try to believe it) and where a popular religion can be started by a science-fiction writer (ask Tom Cruise). The only difference today is the access to multitudes offered by the various media increases the volume exponentially. Oh, and one other thing – the real climate catastrophe is providing an increasing series of real disasters which these people read as signs but which will eventually take multiple species, possibly us, out.
All those global disasters? As in Columbus’s day, they are signs. Signs that the end is here. But only for the nonbelievers -for those who believe, who are part of the chosen who will escape and be protected, the end is really the glorious beginning. This is what Pastor John Hagee bellows from his pulpit. “The end of time - when is that?” he demands. But his congregation already knows answer: “That’s right now.” And they’re hardly alone: roughly four in ten US adults reportedly believe that the endtimes are upon us, including nearly half of Christians. 73
So, these two “end-time” forces are in alliance. That is of course until the Messiah shows up. At which time, say the Christian Nationalists, the Jews will be trundled off to hell; but until then they are needed to make the necessary moves, like building the third temple. Just like Trump (as Cyrus) is need to drive the Apocalypse ahead. You can make this stuff up, but you don’t need to. Done and dusted.
Charlie Kirk is a feature player in the book as he tries to pull together and then capitalize on all the “end time” and otherwise bizarre groupings in American culture.
The young right-wing firebrand Charlie Kirk was among those caught up in the fury. He released countless Covid-related videos and published a pamphlet entitled The Christian Response to the Great Reset, a reference to a then-popular conspiracy theory charging the World Economic Forum with a nefarious globalist plot to use the virus to subjugate the world. In these restrictive days and months, Kirk saw “Satan” and “demonic forces” at work, and was sure humanity had entered the “last days.” 77
And:
Today, many scholars of religion regard theJanuary 6 insurrection as a uniquely Christian uprising, and a symbol of just how dramatically Covid pushed conventional politics toward the apocalyptic brink.
…..
On January 6, many caught their first real glimpse of that coalition in the footage and video of that unforgettable, frozen Washington afternoon. Evangelical zealots rubbed shoulders with anti-vaxxers and Proud Boys; gun-toting anti-immigrant militia members waved “Appeal to Heaven” flags while Christian Zionists blew shofars and the QAnon Shaman led a prayer. Kirk’s Turning Point USA was there in force-thanks to a massive donation, Kirk boasted of sending more than eighty buses of “patriots”to protest the “stolen” election in Washington, D.C. He also claimed that in the run-up, he was “getting five hundred emails a minute calling for a civil war”. 78
I remember in High School we used to laugh at the late medieval reactions to the plague with antics so similar to the antivaxxers today. Now the laughter is stifled. Covid taught us that large segments of the population have never learned or grown up. What was it the ghost of Christmas Present said? “This boy is ignorance and this girl is want. Beware them both. But most of all beware this boy!”
The third element that enters the mix is the group of narcissists generally referred to as the “tech-bros” – the Musk’s, Karp’s,Thiel’s and Altman’s of the world. The term is largely a misnomer as most of them have no scientific or technical knowledge or skills. They are investment capitalists who have been hugely successful in investing in and manipulating the financing of companies that produce technically innovative products or devices created by others. Sam Altman has never created an AI. (In fact, no-one has, they are not created they are grown and no-one, not even their growers, actually knows how they work). That is one thing the tech-bros have in common.The other thing is that they despise normal humans as beneath their contempt and they are looking for an “end-times” exit of another kind than Heaven. Zuckerberg wants to escape to a well-stocked bunker in Hawaii, Thiel (or is it Karp?) wants to put his personality (mind?) into an eternal computer and Musk wants to live on Mars – now that the Earth has been ruined. Oh yes, the third thing they have in common is obscene wealth, and with it, political clout. Here’s how K. and T. put it:
And why harness the power of the galaxy? It’s all a bit hazy. The goal appears to be to funnel huge amounts of energy into a technology that, at least for now, is fundamentally inscrutable and untrustworthy and hope for the best. Even leading executives and engineers admit that they don’t understand what, exactly, they’ve created or how best to control it. “When a generative AI system does something, like summarize a financial document, we have no idea, at a specific or precise level, why itmakes the choices it does - why it chooses certain words over others, or why it occasionally makes a mistake despite usually being accurate, confesses Anthropic’s Amodei, whose company is known for its popular Claude chatbot and coding agent. “This lack of understanding,” he continued, “is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, echoed his observation: “There is an aspect of this which we call, all of us in the field call, a ‘black box’… You can’t quite tell why it said this, or why it got it wrong. 112
If you view chatbots as odd but amusing toys that will, on good days, talk to us, charm us, tell us they love us and, on bad days, advise us how to plan and undertake a mass shooting in a BC school, then why are they building all those massive power and water sucking data centres around the world? If you’ve ever placed a call to a bank or an insurance company then you know how much you truly hate those things. But for a clearer vision of the future, you need to listen to the words of Larry Ellison (oligarch billionaire, purchaser of half of the American media (like CBS) and fascist Trump supporter.
One of the end goals was articulated in February 2025 by Larry Ellison, the billionaire Oracle CEO and Trump loyalist: total integration of all personal data across government agencies. “We need to unify all of the national data, put it into a database where it’s easily consumable by the AI model, and then ask whatever question you like, he told the World Government Summit in Dubai. With this access, he explained, “We can provide high-quality services, save the government vast amounts of money, ourp opulations will be healthier, and the government will be spending less for better outcomes.” …
He was describing the Al-powered digital surveillance state that many have warned about for decades - a world in which our most intimate information, from health records to shopping history to social media engagements, makes us thoroughly transparent to our corporate-state overseers. But not to worry, Ellison said (echoing authoritarians through the ages): all that watching will mean “citizens will be on their best behavior.” 126
I'll just bet they will!
This is the proposed nightmare. So why are we doing it? Why are we turning our energy, water, stock market and planet over to these people so that they can control us while we are unemployed because of their products? “Because if we don’t, the Chinese will beat us to it”. Sounds like a bad joke, or maybe,a diabolical plan.
So, against the background of unchecked climate disaster that WILL, in fact, produce an irreversible end time, we have to watch these jokers do their stupid tricks – consuming thousands of lives, accelerating planetary heating, distracting us from the real problems facing humanity and consuming dwindling resources. The book doesn’t have to convince anyone – it just has to hold up the pictures of what is going on.
It will not cheer you but you should read it.
