“The Good Girl’s Guide To Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure,” by Rachel Friedman

“The Good Girl’s Guide To Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure,” by Rachel Friedman (New York: Bantam Books; 2011), 287 pages.

The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost is part travel memoir and part autobiography about the effect of international travel on a young, college-aged American woman from rural New York.

The story centers on three trips: the first to Ireland; the second to Australia; and third, a trip to South America. In Ireland, Friedman is an innocent abroad; she lacks confidence and the worldly experience of the perpetual backpackers with whom she associates. The experiences, customs, and attitudes of the acquaintances she makes in Ireland are all very new to the bookish, conscientious and timid Friedman. Integral to her budding maturity and confidence is her friendship with a gregarious and care-free Australian girl (Carly), an experience and confident perpetual traveler who takes Friedman under her wing. Carly convinces Friedman to visit Australia and once Friedman is newly arrived in Sydney, convinces her to stay with her family and use their house as a base for her travels during the duration of her stay. While in Australia, Friedman travels to various outback attractions on her own, and in a further example of her growing confidence, tours the east coast of Australia, breaking her journey every so often at places that strike her fancy. Once she returns to Sydney, and after a few other explorations through the south-east of Australia, she agrees to Carly’s suggestion to continue their travels together and to meet in South America. Friedman initially travels alone in South America, and alone and with Carly, meets new people from all over the world. She listens to the stories of their lives and their reasons for travelling, and, bit by bit, day by day, realizes that she too doesn’t want to stop travelling and that she has the confidence and ability to do it herself with or without her Australian friend.

This book is somewhat unusual because it is both a travel book and a memoir/story of personal growth. At the outset, Friedman is unsure of herself and hopelessly naïve in the ways of the world compared to the people she meets during her travels. By the end of the book, Friedman is more mature and experienced, and has the confidence to believe in her abilities. Her experience of other people’s motivations for travelling leads her to question her own life so far. She becomes close to Carly’s mother, an experienced traveler in her own right, whose life story has a lasting impact on Friedman. At the end of the book, we see how these people encountered through her travels have touched Friedman, who now has more confidence and courage to face life’s uncertainties, and the relentless parental and peer pressure for conformity. Friedman also reflects on the places she visits, the customs and practices of the local peoples, and the travelers she meets. She is critical and amusing without resorting to prejudice or knee-jerk reactions. Her powers of observations are acute, and her observations first rate and amusingly written with an eye for fairness and rationality peppered with the occasional criticism written in a wry and gentle manner. This ability adds spice to an enjoyable and thought-provoking book that should be considered for readers interested in travel experiences in Ireland, Australia, and South America, as wells as testaments to the belief that travel is just as much about the (physical and internal) journey as being about the destination.

"Automatic Millionaire," by David Bach

“Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich,” by David Bach, (New York: Broadway Books; 2004), 237 pages.

"Automatic Millionaire" has a simple message: anyone can follow a few simple steps and retire as a millionaire. The first tip is to live within your means, which can be restated as don’t spend more than you earn. This becomes easier than you think if you omit wasteful spending habits, such as the daily latte/cigarettes/purchased lunch. Bach shows how eliminating these types of spending, when continued throughout an entire working life can, with compounding and prudent investing of the savings, grow to over $1 million over a lifetime. The final amount accumulated will be large the more you save and the earlier you start saving.

Bach’s second tip is to save for retirement automatically in pre-tax dollars every time you get paid. Saving in pre-tax dollars (using one of the tax deferred saving plans such as 401K, 457 etc) can quickly multiply your savings when investing pre-tax dollars, particularly when you have an employer that matches your contribution. Bach emphasizes that pre-tax automatic saving is the key. By investing pre-tax money the amount you invest and accumulate over your working life is greater than if invested from taxed money.

Bach’s third tip is to have a rainy day fund or emergency fund. Sometimes life brings large unexpected events, such as unemployment or large medical expenses. Bach states that the best way to manage such events is to have an emergency fund or cash reserve equivalent to at least 3 to 6 months of expenses. To his credit, Bach also provides readers with tips for finding secure places in which to keep an emergency fund, such as at-call high interest bank accounts, high interest deposits, and certain U.S. Treasury instruments.

The forth tip Bach gives is for readers to make their monthly mortgage payment obligation in two two-weekly payments. By paying the same monthly total in two installments two weeks apart, a homeowner can pay off their home a lot earlier (by almost 7 to 10 years) and reduce the total amount of interest paid to their bank over the life of the (now reduced term) loan. This simple task enables a homeowner to retire their debt much earlier, lower their total interest payments, and enable the homeowner to invest the money previously allocated to repaying the mortgage.

Bach’s fifth tip is to tithe or donate money to charitable or religious causes. Not only does the donation benefit the receiving organization, but it also is, in many instances, tax deductible.

Bach’s book is targeted to people interested in improving their financial position. His advice is sensible, and the implementation strategy (establishing once-off automatic savings, investment and mortgage repayment plans) easy to implement. The book is a good introduction for people interested in securing their financial security. Bach nicely shows how his strategy works for all income levels. He gives a real-life example of how using this strategy, a couple earning $40,000 per year, owns two paid off houses, and has investments approaching $1 million. To some readers, Bach’s message maybe familiar, or may have been made by other writers or personal finance advisers. This is probably good news as it endorses the strategy. It is a powerful message told in an accessible and non-technical style. It is a fine guide to convince and help regular workers on any income to live within their means, and to set up automatic plans that will ensure that anyone can become a millionaire at retirement.

"One For The Road: Hitchhiking Through The Australian Outback," by Tony Horwitz

"One For The Road: Hitchhiking Through The Australian Outback," by Tony Horwitz, (New York: Random House, First Vintage Departures Edition, 1988), 222 pages.

Travelling through outback Australia by car is no easy feat, but Tony Horwitz has gone one further in hitchhiking through it, alone. One For the Road is the story of Horwitz’s mid-1980's hitchhiking journey that started from Sydney and went anti-clockwise through the outback parts of the states of New South Wales and Queensland until he reached the Three Ways in the Northern Territory. Horwitz then changed direction and travelled south through Central Australia until he reached the southern coast, where he changed directions again travelling clockwise, first west, then north and later east until he reached Darwin. Hitchhiking anywhere isn't easy. Divers are reluctant of offer rides. The conditions in outback Australia make hitchhiking difficult. There is the oppressive heat, the flies, the long distances between tiny towns, the rough and unsealed roads, and perhaps alarmingly, the alcohol-fueled drivers (who regularly drink beer while driving) that take a life in their hands when they offer a ride to the hitchhiker. Horwitz endures these difficulties, survives the harsh conditions, and runs out of ways to describe the monotonous and featureless landscapes to tell us of his experiences of living on the road. The generous souls that offer him a ride are a varied lot. They include a family from Tasmania (where the mine closed) looking for work in the Western Australian mines, an angry and aggressive youth going for a drive for something to do, truck drivers who regret not being able to see their families and are strangers in their own home, a retired naval officer who hit the road when the in-laws were about to visit who still has the sailor's habit of keeping a detailed log book, a young physician out for a drive in the countryside, and a car load of young aboriginal men that drive a car that barely runs. Horwitz also visits places with strange names that the tourist rarely see, goes to small "one pub" towns where drivers only stop to re-fuel and eat before embarking on the next leg of their journey into the "ghastly blank." He also ventures into larger towns and cities like the mining town of Mount Isa, Alice Springs, Perth, exotic Broome, and his ultimate destination of Darwin. He also chronicles his unusual adventures, such as when he was lucky to avoid meeting his maker in a car accident while driving from Ayers Rock / Uluru to Alice Springs. Or there's the account of his day on a crayfish trawler off Geraldton where he spends most of the day seasick, much to the delight of the rest of the crew, and his hitching a ride with a wheat train where he spent time up front in the engine driver's cab. Much of the book has an absence of any awareness of time or deadlines, but at the end of his journey, they become a major pre-occupation because he has to be in Darwin on a certain day at a certain time to catch a place. Time is against him in the end, and he has to use his wits to avoid being beaten by it.

The great strength of this book is that it captures a part of Australia that few people, let alone the majority of coast-hugging Australians, have ever experienced. Horowitz also sees it with ordinary people. He shares with us the joys and travails of the hitchhiker who doesn't know what his next driver will be like, friendly, surly, vibrant conversationalist or it opposite. He shares with us the experience of his front-seat confessional, his driver's thoughts, aspirations, fears and regrets, all while driving through the vast landscapes slip past. It is these features that make One For The Road more than just a travel book; its an inner journey of discovery for the author, and for him, the end of his time hitchhiking. His brush with mortality keeps replaying in the videotape of his mind, reminding him of how lucky he was that the car rolled one way, and not the other. A conversation with one female driver makes him long to be at home his wife in the safety of the suburbs in Sydney. His celebration of Passover in Broome is truly moving, and perhaps the best chapter of the book: it is a reminder of how our past and the religion that we may (or in the author's case may no longer) practice is part of our identity. It is something that makes us what we are, for a brief moment or evening, unites us in a common bond with complete strangers when a long way from home and scattered throughout the world far from our loved ones.

One For The Road is an outsider's view of Australia, a view that is accurate without being condescending, sentimental or evangelical. Perhaps this is because the author is a journalist, someone who sets it all out for us to see with our own eyes with brutal honesty, compassion and affection. He shows here the skills of a fine writer, someone who unsurprisingly went on to write other fine works of non-fiction. For these reasons, it should appeal to a wide audience of lovers of good writing and interesting stories, lovers of travel stories, and readers interested in the "real Australia" that isn't seen in the travel brochures.

“Teacher Man,” by Frank McCourt

“Teacher Man,” by Frank McCourt, (New York: Scribner; 2005), 258 pages.

  

In Frank McCourt’s third book, “Teacher Man,” he again writes about his favorite subject, himself; however, in this book McCourt expands upon his earlier recollections of his vocation as a teacher in the New York City public school system. This subject was covered quite nicely in the second volume of his autobiography “’Tis,” where he wrote of his experiences as a teacher as part of the journey of his life from an impoverished immigrant to an accomplished and revered high school teacher. His time as a teacher was an important component of the story of his life in that book. “Teacher Man” is different in that it puts Frank McCourt, the respected teacher, as the subject of the book, and relegates other aspects of his life into the background.

“Teacher Man,” while predominantly autobiographical, is also a commentary on the teaching profession in the public school system. McCourt notes that success is determined by the speed at which teachers abandon the classroom and seek shelter in the administrative bureaucracy. Successful teaching is admired for its own sake, but it is not rewarded like successful teacher administration. McCourt also demonstrates what teachers like him had to do to “break through” with dis-interested students. As the teacher of very ordinary students, he sometimes had to be innovative and use methods that some might think of as radical or inappropriate. For example, to get the attention of the vocational school English class, he drew upon their extensive experience of forging parental excuse notes to teach a class on writing excuse notes. With a fully attentive and engaged class, he challenged them to write an excuse note from Adam of God. Success in the classroom was not always mirrored in McCourt’s private life. He failed to fulfill his own (or his wife’s) ambitions of becoming successful: he did not become a teaching administrator, and spent two years in Ireland studying for a Ph. D without success.

This book succeeds on many levels. It is a fine memoir of the career of a teacher. It is also a critique and commentary on the successes and failures of the American public school system. It also gives us an insight into how good teachers can make a difference in the lives of students, and occasionally fail to “get through” to certain troubled students. It also goes over  McCourt’s well trodden ground of the difficulties faced by new immigrants in escaping their impoverished childhoods. For all these reasons, this is a highly commendable book. Despite such accolades, it is not without flaws. At times McCourt lapses into the habit of giving us too much detail of certain aspects of his personal life. His disclosures may offend some readers or be considered in poor taste, particular those that detail his infidelities. Nonetheless, it is honest; perhaps to a fault, but it is a very rewarding read. And now that this revered literature teacher has passed away, we can be thankful for what he has written, while speculating on what he may have written had he not passed away. One can’t help but think that there may have been another book or two in Frank McCourt on a subject other than his autobiography. Unfortunately that was not to be, and we are all the poorer for it. 

"Buying In," by Robert Walker

"Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are," by Robert Walker (New York: Random House; 2008), 291 pages.

Buying In is a refutation of the professional marketers' arguments that "brands are dead" and that "advertising no longer works." Author Rob Walker argues that people are embracing brands more than ever, that brands are fracturing, and people are able to access these brands through combinations of technology, viral marketing, and the use of key people or word-of-mouth agents and promoters marketing products on behalf of corporations, acquaintances, and friends. Marketing is now entwined with cultural and social connections. Walker also explores a practice he calls murketing (a combination of murky and marketing) and how people buy products not just for their use, utility or function, but also as expressions of their identity. It’s as though you are what you buy.

Buying In appears to be like Malcolm Gladwell's books (the covers seem to be somewhat similar), but it has none of Gladwell's diverse subject matter or arguments on a range of subjects. Buying In is about marketing and how innovative marketing programs have been successful in a technological age. The narrow focus of this book is its greatest strength, and makes this book mostly of interest to marketers and merchandisers. Non-marketers, like me, might find this book repetitive and a long-winded explanation for what should be a simple story. It may also be of little value to the novice reader of marketing books, unless it is a steeply discounted remainder copy at a discount store.

"9 Dragons," by Michael Connelly

9 Dragons, by Michael Connelly (New York: Hachette Book Group; 2009), 469 pages.

In 9 Dragons, Michael Connelly gives the reader another Los Angeles-based fictional crime story, centered on Connelly’s always intriguing character, Vietnam veteran and formerly retired Los Angeles Police Department Detective Harry Bosch. In 9 Dragons, Bosch is once again confronted with murder and death, and once again shows rare fortitude in the face of a rising tide of indifference among his fellow detectives who seem too willing to accept easy solutions and an easy way out. Not Bosch.

In 9 Dragons, the story unfolds in three parts. In the first part, Bosch and his distracted partner investigate the murder of an ethnic Chinese male store owner. Bosch follows some leads, interviews witnesses and the surviving family members at their other place of business, and follows up on some leads with other units of the Los Angeles Police Department. At the same time, Bosch explores the possibility that the murder is related to Chinese organized crime.

Bosch’s ex-wife and daughter live in Hong Kong. When his daughter goes missing and is later conformed to have been kidnapped, Bosch thinks her disappearance is related to his murder investigation and immediately flies to Hong Kong to find her. In Hong Kong he joins with his ex-wife and her boyfriend to commence the search. This search forms the second part of the story, and is made notable for two notable events: the death of Bosch’s ex-wife, and Bosch’s righteous killing rampage pursued in his successful quest to find his daughter and return her to Los Angeles with him. The third part of the story is Bosch’s solving of the murder. He realizes that his daughter’s disappearance and kidnapping is unrelated to the murder investigation, and, that the murderer had been leading him astray all along with a series of lies that started at the start of his investigation.

Connelly’s 9 Dragons is another fine addition to the growing collection of Harry Bosch murder novels. The story has Connelly’s regular account of the difficulties faced by police officers that are married to their job: they often loose their families, and wives to the demands of being a police officer. Harry Bosch is such a police officer: he is married to the job; he never gives up, and is often the last and only person who cares about finding justice for the dead victim.

This book is not great literature – it would be hard to claim that it was. Rather, it is exceptional crime fiction, or murder mystery fiction ideal for consumption on a long plane flight, or in front of a fire on a cold, wet afternoon, while waiting in the dentist’s office, or any other moment you have a spare bit of time for a fast-paced and gripping story that’s both authentic and well told. Read it and you won’t be disappointed.

“’Tis,” by Frank McCourt

“’Tis,” by Frank McCourt, (New York: Scribner; 1999), 367 pages.

’Tis is a fine book; a frank and fascinating life story full of spirit, suffering, drama. ’Tis is the second autobiographical book by Frank McCourt where he tells the story of his adult life after his return to the United States from Limerick, Ireland. He leaves behind his life of childhood poverty and returns to the city if his birth, New York, as an impoverished, Irish-accented immigrant. At the age of nineteen McCourt returned to New York. With the help of a priest he gets a job at a hotel for the wealthy (the Biltmore), where he encountered the great disparity between the wealth of the American establishment and the people who serve them at The Biltmore, namely immigrants. McCourt was then drafted into the United States Army, has his bad, poverty-ruined teeth seen by a dentist. The United States Army didn’t send him to the war in Korea, but instead sent him to Germany where he displayed his talent for training dogs and typing reports. After his discharge from the United States Army, he returned to New York City and worked a number of jobs, but mostly he worked on the docks. McCourt learned the importance of education and in satisfying his desire to learn (like the college kids he saw each day on the subway), used the G.I. Bill, a bit of initiative to start to overcome his childhood poverty, and lack of a high school education to overcome his chromic lack of self-confidence, to enroll in New York University. At New York University he studied to be an English teacher, and while he wasn’t studying or working, ignored the advice of others to stick to his own (Irish Catholics) and fell in love with a Yankee protestant girl. McCourt completed his degree and through a stroke of good fortune commenced his vocation as a teacher in a technical school. Life as an inexperienced teacher in a technical school was challenging: he struggled to retain the class’s interest in English where the classes were filled with vocationally-oriented students who saw the class as essentially killing time until they went off to become mechanics and hairdressers. McCourt eventually married his Yankee protestant girlfriend and eventually established himself as a respected teacher within the New York City public school system.

McCourt’s “’Tis” is a fine stand-alone book: the reader need not have read his earlier book “Angela’s Ashes” to understand his upbringing as a child in a very poor family in Ireland. A theme of this book is how his upbringing scarred him and held him back through a chronic lack of confidence, shame, and embarrassment. The book also shows how difficult life can be for a poor immigrant in the United States; however, it also offers others hope because McCourt showed how with hard work, a bit of luck, and help from kindly souls, he eventually succeeded in his chosen profession as a teacher in one of New York’s finest public high schools, a school that had its graduates regularly attend the best colleges in the United States. As McCourt’s life became incrementally more successful, we also see him move further away from his Irish Catholicism, something that in his youthful poverty defined him. The transformation in this book of Frank McCourt through his adult life proved to be quite remarkable.

"Spy Catcher," by Peter Wright

Spy Catcher by Peter Wright, (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), 392 pages.

As the title suggests, Spy Catcher is a book written by someone who used to catch spies. This particular spy catcher was Peter Wright, the former MI5 operative who spent nearly all of his working life in the intelligence and counter espionage business from the 1930’s through to the 1970s. Wright was a self-taught acoustics engineer who, like his father, worked for the English electronics company Marconi M.D. Wright was a particularly gifted self-taught engineer whose expertise was used in many World War II projects, post-war naval communications research, and eventually as MI5’s first scientist. While working in MI5, Wright put his skills to great effect in development and implementing MI5’s communications interception system that included the detection and deciphering of clandestine Soviet spying transmissions and conversations. He explains his role in MI5’s communications interception or signals intelligence counter-espionage activities, MI5’s collaboration with other intelligence agencies in the United States, and how signals intelligence and new technologies along with old fashioned human surveillance methods were used to detect both Soviet agents and British traitors.

Wright’s account of his career is notable for it covers two distinct types of work. The first was his role as a scientist/engineer and his invention of new technologies used to intercept, transmit, and monitor communications across London and various embassies throughout the world. His experiences are at times astounding for they show the great lengths gone to by MI5 to monitor and detect and counter the large scale Soviet infiltration of English intelligence, political, and military institutions. The second part of Wright’s career focused less on his development of scientific and engineering devices, and centered on the signals intelligence material obtained by those devices to identify Soviet agents as well as the famous English traitors such as Burgess, Blunt, Maclean and Pilby.

The strength of this book is its portrayal of successful Soviet infiltration of Britain’s establishment by a generation of men (mostly) educated at Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the 1930s, and the great difficulties faced by The West in detecting it and countering it. Wright shows just how complete the Soviets compromised the British military, intelligence agencies (such as Wright’s own MI5) and even parliament. So successful was this infiltration that Wright believes that it included his boss, the head of MI5 itself, Sir Roger Hollis.

This book is a first-rate account of the life of a spy catcher. It is a serious and well written account of the actual life of an actual Cold War era intelligence industry insider. In Peter Wright’s world, spying is a deadly serious business where people were put in life or death situations as players in the very real struggle between the Soviets and The West during the Cold War. This book is a both a damning indictment of The West for the ease at which it was compromised, but it is also a fascinating exposé of the business of spying during the Cold War. It’s a very entertaining and worthwhile book.

“A Place Called Freedom,” by Ken Follett

“A Place Called Freedom,” by Ken Follett (New York: Ballentine Books; 1995), 450 pages.

This is a story set in 1773 Britain and Virginia, of the parallel lives of an impoverished Scottish coal miner and an aristocratic daughter of the landed nobility. The coal miner, Mack McAsh, has a life of servitude as a coalminer in Scotland. His major desire in life is to be free. He first seeks a legal remedy to his position in life, but is cheated from his freedom. His only ally is Lizzie Hamlin, a free spirited and individually minded woman in an age where most women were not free spirited or independently minded. Lizzie Hamlin despises coal mining, particularly the effect of underground mining on the health of miners. Both seek to escape their respective situation, Lizzie Hamlin by marriage to a greedy, grasping landholder intent on mining her estate, while McAsh flees to London. Lizzie Hamlin also relocates to London to prepare for her wedding, while McAsh seeks honest work, but his honesty and desire for fair pay for his labor place him in opposition and conflict with corrupt businessmen that are also pillars of London’s establishment. McAsh is eventually subjected to trial based on perjured evidence, found guilty, and transported to Virginia to again work in indentured servitude along with African slaves on a tobacco plantation in Virginia, ironically, on the plantation owned by Lizzie Hamlin’s tyrannical husband. Both desire freedom from their oppressors, and eventually find an opportunity to seek it together against the back-drop of pre-revolutionary Virginia.

Follett’s book is a compelling and fast-paced story. To some readers, it might seem implausible that these parallel lives of an impoverished laborer and an aristocratic woman could become intertwined, but they do, and it’s convincing and realistically written with neither contrivances nor coincidences. Follett’s use of plot twists and turn moves the story to its final and favorable conclusion. Follett also holds little back: the book has numerous scenes describing cruel violence and intimate relations. Follett may perhaps go too far in his descriptions of these scenes; does he have do be so explicit? No curtains are drawn, and nothing left to the imagination. Accordingly, this will appeal to a wide range of readers including those that like love stories, historical pieces set in pre-revolutionary colonial America and Britain. It should also appeal to lovers of fast paced inspirational stories where the protagonists rise above their seemingly insurmountable obstacle to attains something noble and precious as freedom. Perhaps this is why it is what made this book such a phenomenal best seller.

“The Shipping News,” by Annie Proulx

“The Shipping News” by Annie Proulx, (New York: Scribner; 1993), 337 pages.

The Shipping News is the story of a family’s difficulty in getting their lives back in order following the unexpected loss of a family member, and their decision to relocate from the American state of New York to the family ancestral home in Canada’s Newfoundland. The story centers on Quoyle, an ordinary (actually, very ordinary) newspaper journalist who’s serially adulterous wife is killed in a motor vehicle accident. With his two daughters and his aunt, and the proceeds of a life insurance policy, they relocate to a small fishing town Newfoundland Canada. The story chronicles their difficulties in starting this new phase of their life in a town strange to them, a town dominated by the maritime industry, fishing and their related support industries.

According to anecdotes on the cover of my copy of this book, it was the “winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the national book award.” The book cover also states that the author is “one of the most gifted and original writers in America today,” and the book is “packed with brilliantly original images. Another says the book is “stunning” and “big hearted.” All of these expert opinions are just that, expert opinions. Just as someone’s trash is another person’s treasure, someone’s treasure is another person’s trash. I’m not calling this book trash; rather I’m saying that I have a different opinion from the quoted experts. When it comes to the views of experts, I agree with another author who wrote “on the big issues, the experts are very rarely right.* Proulx’s book, in my opinion, is neither interesting, nor well written. There is not much of a story, and of little story there it, it seem devoid of structure or any specific or broader point. It would be a difficult task to argue that Proulx is an engaging story teller. I labored to finish chapters, and was easily distracted by more interesting diversions, such as passing clouds, and the neighbor’s dog. Proulx also has an annoying habit, or artistic affectation, of omitting verbs. The purpose of this stylistic devise is unclear, but its effect on the readers is to annoy them. Why do authors exempt themselves from the rules of grammar? This annoying habit does not help keep the reader’s attention while laboring under the heavy going of this non-story. This is the only book I’ve read in recent memory where I didn’t want to continue through to the last page. But that’s only my opinion. What would I know? I’m no “expert” on these matters.

* Peter Wright, Spy Catcher, (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), p.12.

"Without Warning,” by John Birmingham

“Without Warning” by John Birmingham, (New York: Del Rey Books; 2009), 533 pages.

The premise of Without Warning is the question “what would the world be like if one day the U.S.A. ceased to exist? Author John Birmingham plays out this alternative history on the eve of the commencement of the 2003 Gulf War and Invasion of Iraq, when a large energy field called “the wave” descends on most of Canada and the U.S.A. destroying all human life (but not property).Thereafter, the energy wave of unknown origin remains in place over the U.S.A. and Canada destroying all human life that comes into contact with it. After this event, all that remains untouched or unaffected of the remains of the U.S.A. are Alaska, Hawaii, and the Seattle area (plus Guantanamo Bay in Cuba).Birmingham develops this alternative history by deploying a shifting narrative based on people in those locations, as well as others in France and the United Kingdom, plus some professional smugglers in the Pacific Ocean, and the U.S.A.’s military command in the Middle East. In this alternative parallel universe without the U.S.A., the world turns very nasty very quickly. France erupts into civil war, Venezuela invades Guantanamo Bay, war breaks out in the Middle East, Israel takes drastic action to ensure its survival, the smugglers upgrade their craft and become pirates, and the survivors of what‘s left of the U.S.A. come to terms with the new circumstances and try to return to normal life with varying degrees of success. Birmingham’s point is that a world without the U.S.A. would be a much more dangerous, violent, and bleak place. On the whole, the world is a better place because of the part played by the U.S.A.

This is not an uplifting book, even though it is a bit of a thriller with a message that employs all of the techniques to keep the reader engaged and the pages turning. It’s a book that will be enjoyed by fans of alternative history, as well as speculative thrillers with a contemporary military involvement. Birmingham has stated that this is the first of another of his three book series, so we will have to wait for the remaining two books to see how the story works out, to see if this bleak story is followed by more uplifting or hopeful events in books two and three.