The Circle by Dave Eggers

John Lennon once wrote, "Imagine . . ."

And so many cheesy movie trailers began with, "In a world where . . . "

So try to imagine a world where Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Yahoo, AOL, electronic health records, Ancestry.com, SnapChat, every election board, Etsy, Pinterest, Microsoft, Apple, WeChat, MeerCat, Tinder, Reddit, yadda, yadda, yadda were all a single company.

The Circle.

Imagine every aspect of social media and mobile computing under one umbrella. Gobbling up startups almost daily. Making everything transparent. As Eggers puts it, "a gateway to the world's information."

Everything.

Mae Holland spent her first couple years after college as a utility company drone in her small town California home. Ann, her college roomie, works for The Circle and responds to Mae's request for help getting a job with The Circle. Ann deals with regulatory stuff here and abroad while serving as a member of the Gang of 40, the drivers of much of the decision-making.

But the real drivers are the 3 Wise Men - the software engineer, the CEO, and the CFO. They have created The Circle as a way for individuals to connect and open up full transparency for the greater good. The campus, near San Francisco, is a massive monument to The Circle, employing thousands.

All Circle users are connected and all data is kept, forever. Therefore, all data is available for anyone. Everyone is invited to join interest groups, fill in surveys, connect with customers, respond to any and all queries, post thoughts and respond to other's comments (and woe to those who don't respond quickly. All those connections will wonder what's wrong). The more connections the better and each employee is ranked according to the number of connections, how their work is scored by their customers, everything.

A modern day Utopia.

One night, Mae drives home from seeing her parents when, in a spur of the moment impulse, pulls into a kayak rental place she frequents. It's closed, but a late returning customer left a kayak at the gate, so Mae takes off for a night paddle . . . and one of video feeds that a Circler placed picks up her midnight excursion.

Worse, Mae failed to post any thoughts about her adventure; it was a private moment for her. But one of the 3 Wise Men, Eamon Bailey, sees this as a selfish act denying other kayakers around the world the benefit of her experience and convinces Mae to start wearing a small camera that transmits her every act. It's a roaring success. Mae's rankings skyrocket. A Congresswoman pledges to go fully transparent and wears a camera. No back room deals now. Don't want your meeting with her recorded? Must not need the meeting.

And it mushrooms. Before long, thousands of local, state, and national politicians go fully transparent. Those that don't? Obviously hiding something, so forget reelection. And for a fully transparent nation to function efficiently, everyone has to vote. And to vote, you have to have The Circle software, make that required. Election results in seconds.

Eggers presents this cautionary tale of social media taken to the extreme. Individuals connect only via a digital interface - "one account, one identity, one password, one payment system, per person." Circlers are more interested in a comment or a smiley face from Cape Town or Delhi than to hold the hand of a real flesh and blood human. The employees of The Circle are its best representatives having fully drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid and convinced themselves that they are living a fascinating life.  The mantra of The Circle becomes:

SECRETS ARE LIES

SHARING IS CARING

PRIVACY IS THEFT

Be careful what you wish for. Everyone will know. And that's a good thing, right?

ECD

I am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World

I am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World is the story of Malala Yousafzai, an autobiography written with Patricia McCormick. You probably saw this story in the news when on 10/9/12, this 15-year-old girl was shot in the head by the Taliban in her home town in Pakistan. Then, she survived, recovered, and became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner. She wrote this book a year after the shooting.

Recommended to me by my daughter, this is definitely a book worth reading. Not only is it a story of courage of a teenager girl standing up for the right to education in the face of the Taliban’s siege of the culture of Afghanistan, but it also gives a clue to what life is like in this country and the challenges that lie ahead for the country. This was a short and quick read. The writing is a bit simplistic, perhaps what she should expect from a teenager who is not a native English speaker. Nonetheless, the story is compelling and the idealism is infective.

The Boys of the Dixie Pig

This is Stacy Childs’ second novel, and the first one I tried to read, but I only got 20% of the way through this book before I chose to abandon it, right before the start of chapter 15. The story started out with a reunion of men who had known each other in college, but had mostly not kept in touch. One of the fellows was a physician who had developed a company that did cryogenics – fast freezing people with terminal diseases so they could be awakened when cures for the conditions were finally developed. But, there was a hint that reincarnation would become a part of the story, which also included loan sharking and murder.

Basically, I was not impressed with the character development, the plot, or the quality of the writing. I decided it was not worth spending any more time with it.

A Cold War by Alan Russell

An Alaskan cruise or an impromptu vacation in Alaska may not have been the brightest of ideas.

Greg Martin and his wife Elese are honeymooning on an Alaskan cruise. She goes off the ship to get a better look at the northern lights and never returns.

Fast forward about 3 or 4 years. Nina Granville has joined a friend for a spontaneous trip to Alaska to escape NYC and the coming media crush of her future nuptials to Terrance Donnelly, a New York congressman said to be on the fast track for the White House in the not too distant future. At some forgotten hotel in Seward, Nina takes a short walk in the evening to counter her jet lag. What appears to be a homeless person suddenly clamps a chloroform rag over her face and whisks her away leaving not a clue.

The homeless man isn't what he seems. Baer is a trapper/survivalist who lives so far off the grid that the grid hasn't even mapped his home. Via a stolen car, a manipulated bush pilot, and his own skills, Baer takes Nina to his home way, way, way the hell into the interior of Alaska and imprisons her in a large animal kennel. She is to be his third (that we know of) wife.

Baer wants to break her down and make her totally dependent on him. Caged, beaten, raped, abandoned for days at a time while hunting, raped again and again, Baer forces his considerable will on her.

Nina is sure Donnelly has marshalled a massive search, but who will find her this far out in the bush and with the full Alaskan winter fast approaching?

Donnelly has even offered a cool million dollar reward for whomever finds her, but Greg Martin also continues to pester the police about his wife's disappearance, forming an uneasy alliance with Seward Sgt. Evan Hamilton who just happens to think Greg had something to do with his wife's disappearance.

Nina, too, tries to find a way to escape. When digging at the floor planks around her kennel, she pries a floorboard out to find a hidden diary of sorts rolled up in an empty caulk tube.

It's from Elese.

And it's this diary that gives Nina both hope and encouragement for a way out.

For months, Nina studies, learns, and plots her escape. On the outside, Greg and the Sgt. creep ever close to Baer's identity and rough location.

Russell's book is, essentially, a story about the motivations of four people. Baer's desire for a wife and family that would repopulate the wild after the SHTF. Nina's pursuit of survival. Greg's attempt to resolve his guilt for letting Elese out of his sight on their honeymoon. And Hamilton's obsession with finding both Elese and Nina; cases he failed to solve. All played out in the Alaskan wilderness and its inherent dangers. A riveting tale expertly told. Looks like Nina is a continuing character for Russell. Have to check back in with her . . . and soon.

East Coast Don

The Krakow Klub by Philip C. Elrod

Let's see. Erik Stoeller, a megabillionaire from Eastern Europe, envisions a new unified world living in peace under a common language, currency, and leadership . . .

His leadership. Erik is no benevolent grandfather-type, he is one part sociopath and one part megalomaniac. He has assembled a group of a dozen like-minded nutcases who have infiltrated the highest levels of government, military, and business in all the major nations. From their initial meeting, they call themselves the Krakow Klub.

Blackmail, bribery, and extortion are their tools. And it's time to pay the piper. Think SMERSH, not the United Nations.

And then there is James Scott. Think of him as Spock. Part human, part Mylean. We never learn how Scott came to be, just that the Mylean's, a mere couple thousand lights years distant, seem to have taken Earth under their wing. Their technology is also light years ahead of Earth. Two almost human 'computers' named Maxx and Maxxine, see all and predict all and do all. Whenever John Scott needs a question answered or an aircraft carrier battle group neutralized (without casualties, of course), Maxxine and 'her' cadre of drones based on an orbiting star cruiser are there to do the impossible.

Like thwart Stoeller and the Klub at every turn resulting in Stoeller becoming a candidate for a rubber room.

Reading a novel usually involves a level of suspension of reality. Elrod tries to unite a thriller with science fiction. Successful? For some, maybe so. For me? Not so much. I finished it, that's about the best I can say. Looks like this is part of a series about the Myleans. Enjoy it if you wish. Tell me what happens because I'm not coming back. Not my cup of tea.

East Coast Don

The Nature of the Beast

This is the 8^th Louise Penny book reviewed in the blog, and The Nature of the Beast is the first one that leaves me disappointed. I am a big fan of her writing and her cast of characters from Three Pines, a fictitious village near Montreal. The quality of her writing and the continued evolution of her main characters remained superior. My only problem was the plot – just too improbable to swallow. In this genre, we have to be willing to suspend reality to a certain degree. In my opinion, Penny stepped well over the line in this novel. In her story, a 9-year-old boy was murdered soon after he claimed to have discovered an immense gun hidden in the forest with a monster drawn on it. The boy was already known to have a wild fantasy life. He was one that often made wild claims, so he was seen as The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Then he was dead. Eventually, the massive gun was found with a hideous monster etched into it, “The Whore of Babylon.” It was supposed to be a specially designed missile launcher which had been commissioned by Sadam Hussein. Really? I finished the book, but even the resolution of this fantastical tale was less than satisfying – this effort was so unlike Penny. No one can hit it out of the park every time.

And Sometimes I Wonder about You by Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley has published about 50 books in his career but And Sometimes I Wonder about You is my first.  His protagonist, Leonid McGill is a private investigator in New York City with a flashback style.  He is the hard-boiled, tough guy detective type like a Ross MacDonald or Raymond Chandler character but set in modern times.

 

Leonid has had a rough life.  His father was a communist who abandoned him, his wife who he cares for but does not love is suicidal, his mistress has pulled away from him in guilt, and his stepson who is in business with him is taking unnecessary risks to prove himself.  Plus Leonid is involved in a passionate sexual relationship with a client.  Yet Leonid is a vehement defender of the underdog.  A former thug, he has a rocky relationship with the police but often finds himself settling scores for clients where police cannot intervene.  He is short in stature but as a former boxer can physically over power larger and younger foe and is willing to do whatever it takes to do so.  All this makes Leonid hard to like but impossible to ignore… his sense of morality seems complex and conflicting at times… makes me crave to know more.

As a fan of detective fiction, I don’t know how I’ve missed Walter Mosley.  In And Sometimes I Wonder about You (a quote in reference to Leonid’s depressed wife), Mosley’s characters are fascinating and his plot complex.  He reminds us that heroes aren’t squeaky clean but are human and heroes nonetheless.  I’m inspired to explore more of Walter Mosley’s work… there are many to choose from.  

The Martian

Much like the US sent a series of manned vehicles to the moon from 1969 to 1972, in this book, NASA was in the process of doing the same to Mars. The first two missions had gone well. The third mission consisted of six astronauts, but they had not been prepared for such a massive sand storm. When the MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle) was in danger of being permanently damaged and it looked like Mark Watney, who was in the midst of a Mars walk, was dead, Commander Lewis chose to take off. It was a good decision, but Mark wasn’t dead after all.

This is a fascinating story of ingenuity and survival in the most hostile of atmospheres, and of the rescue attempt by NASA to bring Mark back home. Essentially, this is the story of Apollo 13 under even more adverse circumstances. The characters were well-presented and believable. Watney is the most compelling of characters. Some of the technical details bogged the story down a little, but it was necessary information as well. After reading this book, you’ll know more about the geography of Mars than you’ve known before.

This was a fast read – got through it in the course of a day and a half. Surprisingly, this was recommended by my daughter, and it’s not a typical of the books she usually reads. This one gets my strong recommendation.

Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry

Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry will be of interest to you if you are a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, like I am, or if you’ve ever been in psychotherapy. The author, Jeffrey Lieberman, M.D., is the Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia, and he is a recent past president of the American Psychiatric Association. He was the president of the APA when it released its most recent “Bible” of psychiatric diagnoses, the DSM-5, and he is particularly known for his work with schizophrenics. Dr. Lieberman provided a cogent history of psychiatric diagnosis in the U.S. and Europe.

Lieberman concluded with a comment about the value of “pluralism” in psychiatry today, meaning that psychiatrists who operate at the respective poles of biology on the one hand and psychoanalysis on the other, both have something to offer those seeking clinical care today. However, much of his book was an assault on psychoanalysis being an unproven and unscientific theory. In my opinion, some of the attack on analysis was well deserved. Freud predicted that biologic causes and cures would eventually be found for mental illness, but at the time he published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, there were no treatments available for the more serious psychiatric diagnoses such as schizophrenia and manic-depressive (bipolar) illness. Such people were simply warehoused in massive state hospitals with no hope of recovery. Some psychiatrists attempted to treat such people with psychoanalysis, and others tried barbaric forms of therapy such as insulin shock, lobotomy, and electroconvulsive shock therapy. Only the later was proven to have some efficacy in some patients. It was not until the 1940s that serendipity led to the discovery of the first effective psychotropic medications, and the evolution of such medications led to the reduction in the huge inpatient populations during the 1950s and 1960s. Meanwhile, the DSM-I was finally published in 1950 as an attempt to have some reliability among the diagnostic language used by psychiatrists. By then, the analysts were in full control of the APA, and it seems most had forgotten Freud’s prediction about finding the biologic underpinnings of the serious illnesses they were trying to treat. It took some decades before the pendulum of power in the APA swung to the biologic side, where it stands at the moment.

There was a time when analysts and biologic psychiatrists could not communicate about their ideas. Analysts saw the others as being barbaric and biologic (or brain-focused) psychiatrists saw analysts as proponents of an unproven and scientifically ungrounded theory. It was not until the DSM-III in 1980 that the brain-focused ones finally expunged analytic theory from the diagnostic language. As a psychiatrist, I found Lieberman’s review of the evolution of our diagnostic language to be fascinating and well-presented.

At the present time, it is clear that psychoanalysis should never have been used to treat the most serious and psychotic illnesses. Certainly analysts brought on some of the eventual enmity they faced by overselling the value of this discipline. But it does remain a treatment of choice for patients with greater ego functioning (and I use the word “ego” in an analytic sense, not as it is used in common day language). Freud did not get everything wrong, and his contributions such as the unconscious mind and transference are critically important to understanding and treating less severely ill patients. However, even when I graduated from a psychoanalytic institute in 1990, some of the senior analysts still bragged that they had never prescribed a single medication to any of their patients. They believed that by prescribing medication, the analyst would be leaving unconscious resistances hidden and untreated. Clearly, those analysts caused harm by eschewing the use of medications that had been proven to have efficacy in depression, mania, and schizophrenia. It was my era of analysts that developed the idea that psychotropic medication and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy were synergistic when used in the right patients, not mutually incompatible. That was a battle that was not easily won.

Lieberman wrote, “The brain is an interface between the ethereal and the organic, where the feelings and memories composing the ineffable fabric of experience are transmuted into molecular biochemistry. Mental illness is a medical condition – but it’s also an existential condition. Within this peculiar duality lies all the historic tumult and future promise of my profession – as well as our species’ consuming fascination with human behavior and mental illness.” Lieberman concluded his book with a remark about an important remaining problem that is faced by psychiatrists and their patients: “Today the single greatest hindrance to treatment is not any gap in scientific knowledge or shortcoming in medical capability but the social stigma. This stigma, unfortunately, has been sustained by the legacy of psychiatry’s historic failures and it enduring reputation – long longer justified – as the unwanted stepchild of medicine.” Well said.

The Fourth Rule by Douglass Seaver

Brothers Mark and Matthew Grant come of age in the late 50s/early 60s. After high school, Mark joins the Army and becomes one of the first Green Berets, serving a couple tours in Vietnam. His most noteworthy assignment tasks him to the CIA to a Jack Straw (who later becomes the head of the CIAs spec ops division) and John Reardon (who becomes a Senator and potential presidential candidate). To help finance the war, the CIA aids the development and dispersion of heroin; many of the buyers are GIs who come home addicted.

After Vietnam, Mark comes home broken and addicted to eventually die of an overdose, but not before he gives Matthew his diaries of daily deeds while in country. Matthew never recovers from Mark’s death, stores the diaries in the family cabin in the Maine woods, goes off to college, becomes an engineer who builds desalination plants in the middle and far east, gets married, has a daughter, loses his wife to cancer, and now is left to raise a 16yo while still having to spend considerable time overseas. Thank heaven for a kind neighbor also with a 16yo daughter. Mid-1980s now.

On one trip to Jeddah, Matthew meets a network news reporter, Robin, who is looking into the CIAs actions in Afghanistan. At home, the CIA has contracted a Blackwater-type company to find Mark, to close up some old cases. Matthew comes to believe that these inquiries are connected to Mark’s activities in Vietnam but holds a secret about Mark’s demise that he never wishes to reveal. With Robin, Matthew has what’s necessary to expose the CIAs little drug ring to avenge his brother’s death and all those GIs who came home addicted. 

Maybe it’s just me, but with a title like The Fourth Rule, we might get some idea of rules #1-3. Maybe it was just over my head. I thought Matthew’s secret was a bit far fetched and while I finished the book, it was a bit of a struggle. A few too many leaps of faith (or bad guy stupidity) for my tastes. And there were enough factual errors in this 2014 copyright to distract me from the plot (e.g., I-395 beltway around DC? seriously? 30 seconds on Google will tell you it’s I-495. too many others to mention). And the big reveal was easily predicted.

I finished it. But it will soon get buried in the nearly 900 reviews here at MRB

East Coast Don