Twilight of the Elites

How did our meritocracy get us into the mess we're in?  Chris Hayes explains it by saying that we're not as much of a meritocracy as we claim to be, and for the most part I agree with him. He starts out with a profile of his selective public high school, which chooses students entirely on a single high-pressure test.  Not completely fair, but one can argue that a test (like the SAT) evens out some of the societal inequities and at the very least cuts out nepotism and outright racial and ethnic discrimination. Unfortunately, there's a closer tie to economic status than to intelligence in standardized test scores, and that's gotten worse with the advent of test prep (required now if you want to get into an Ivy League school, but when I graduated from high school in 1986 only about a third of my private college-prep classmates bothered with the class offered after school, and at least some of them because they'd underperformed, often through nerves, on their first try).

Hayes is on weaker ground when he blames "elites" for systematic failures such as the 2007-08 housing market collapse and corporate corruption such as at Enron. Yes, the "best and the brightest" were in charge, and the conventional wisdom they spread and the standard sources amplified was absolutely, dangerously wrong. I disagree, though, that it was because they were the elite. Those catastrophes weren't created by smart, credentialed people so much as by smart, credentialed crooks. There, and in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, smart people fudged data or outright lied - nothing to do with being elite and everything to do with forcing their view on a system. I have trouble considering these examples of the elite screwing things up when their lies and manipulation, in my opinion, knock them off that tower.

There's another risk to denigrating those we consider elite. If taken too far, we begin to disregard education, experience, and intellectual analysis. We get the President we "want to have a beer with" (or the one who panders to our worst selves) rather than the one who understands that the world is complex and has the education, experience, and wisdom to work through to the best solution. I'd like to discuss Twilight of the Elites with Hayes, particularly in light of what's happened in the six years since it was published, and perhaps also after re-reading Simplexity.

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius who Solved ht Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

Navigation is so easy today (well, except for the directionally challenged, like me, who have an unfailing ability to make the wrong turn). 400 years ago, as commercial fleets began their exploratory voyages, sailors had to depend on the stars and luck, and the further south you were, the more a miscalculation in latitude would send you from your destination.  Dava Sobol's slim but engrossing book tells how a clockmaker (his previous major project - still working four centuries later - was a wooden clock) not only developed a way to determine longitude but also a clock that neither gained nor lost time and was not disturbed by harsh weather or the swells of the sea.  His invention was a success, but full recognition (and the full cash prize from the Longitude Committee) eluded him, thanks to one of the pettier scientific disputes of history.

Look Alive Twenty-Five

Stephanie Plum is perpetually 32, one missed FTA away from not paying rent on her outdated apartment, and has dinner with her entire family on the calendar. If that weren't enough, her cousin/boss Vinnie Plum has made her the manager of the deli his father-in-law and bankroller, Harry the Hammer, now owns.  Normally, "deli manager" is a safer job than "bounty hunter," but as we learn in the first chapter of Look Alive Twenty-Five, the last three manager mysteriously disappeared, leaving only a shoe by the dumpster.

That's really all you need to know.  Janet Evanovich hasn't been concerned with her plots since the early double-digit installments of the series.  The last dozen or so have just been an excuse to string together comic destruction of cars and/or buildings, slapstick incompetence by Steph and her sidekick Lula, the cupcake-or-babe question of whether she should be with Joe or Ranger, and general weirdness.  The books have become routine, but they're still funny enough that reading them in public  puts you on the receiving end of serious side-eye, and Twenty-Five's plot is a bit tighter than the last few. It's a good beach read or antidote to crappy winter weather.

Henrietta Marie: Charles I's Indomitable Queen

Maybe it's time for me to admit that the Stuarts and the English Civil War don't interest me as much as the periods which precede and follow them.  I've enjoyed Alison Plowmen's biography of Queen Victoria and (so far) 3/4 of her quartet on Elizabeth I, but Women All on Fire wasn't particularly memorable, and neither were Antonia Fraser's books on the era. Perhaps I should free up some shelf space for Plantagenets or Hanoverians.

Henrietta Marie should have been interesting.  Her political match with Charles I started badly due to her advisors, but it soon blossomed into a love match in which she was a trusted advisor. Unfortunately, Charles I was politically tone deaf and Henrietta's advisors wanted her to return Catholicism to a country which thought that Elizabeth's Anglican compromise wasn't pure enough. I admire Henrietta's will and wiles during her exile, but I just wasn't compelled by her story.  It's not Plowden's fault - I'd rather read about the artistic and social changes of the era than the political lives of the 17th Century royal family.

Dreaming of the Bones

Warning - minor character spoiler

Deborah Crombie didn't tell us much about Duncan Kincaid's ex-wife in the first few installments of the series he shares with Gemma James, so we are as surprised as he is when Victoria calls him.  She's a Cambridge professor, working on a biography of local poet Lydia Brooke who died by suicide in the mid-80s. Victoria's research has led her to believe that Brooke was murdered, buy by whom and why? She's interviewed Brooke's friends but they fall into two categories - intentionally unhelpful (a local headmistress, Victoria's pretentious colleague) and honestly uninformed (Brooke's angry artist ex-husband, Victoria's neighbor). Duncan agrees to meet her, but thinks it's pointless to open a decades old suicide case.

Until Victoria's tween son finds her dead. Her death appears natural, except she was a healthy woman in her late 30s with no pre-existing conditions and no sign of trauma.  Was she killed because she was about to discover that Lydia Brook was murdered - and the reason why? Crombie, like Tasha Alexander, uses an interleaved parallel narrative to solve the mystery of Lydia Brook, and from there I found Victoria's murderer at about the same time as Duncan and Gemma.  Fleshed out with the growth of the police partners' personal relationship and a few complications regarding the familiar air around Victoria's son Kit, Dreaming of the Bones succeeds as both a novel and a puzzle.

The ABC Murders

I looked back at some of my earlier Agatha Christie reviews, and several mention books that have stayed on my shelf for 30 years. It's now closer to 40 for some of them, like The ABC Murders. It's got a stamp from The Book Swap, which closed before I graduated from high school, and above the stamp there's the name of the original owner and "November 1st, 1977." I wonder what I would have thought of it as a teenager? Although written only about 20 years into Hercule Poirot's 50 year career, he's showing his age, admitting to Hastings that he dyes his hair and being dismissed by the young policeman assigned to help him.

Someone killed Mrs. Asher in her Andover candy shop and left an ABC guide on the counter. Poirot got involved because someone sent him a letter announcing the murder. Soon, another announced murder happens, of Betty Bernard in Bexhill-on-Sea. Eventually Sir Carmichael Clarke's body is found in Churston, and the murder taunts Poirot with the threat of another death soon, in Dorchester. It's a classic Christie, with red herrings and obvious suspects, but there's also a slightly melancholy hint. Poirot was never a young character, but both he and Hastings are aging and there's a sense of the world changing. 35 years ago, I would have only seen the well crafted puzzle.  Now, I see the emotional shades.

Death in St. Petersburg

Ballet, murder, and revolution come together in Tasha Alexander's Death in St. Petersburg.  Shortly after Christmas, 1899, Colin Hargraves traveled to St. Petersburg on business, and a few days later Lady Emily and her friend Cecile du Lac followed to welcome in 1900 a second time (Russia still used he Julian calendar at the time). After a performance of Swan Lake, they discover why Nemesteva's understudy (and childhood friend) Katenka performed the final act; the star ballerina's body is lying in a pool of blood near the theater's back entrance.  Did Katenka kill her rival/friend? Or was it her brother, Nemesteva's former lover? Perhaps the killer is one of the revolutionaries Colin is tracking at the behest of Queen Victoria (grandmother of the Czarina). Once again, Alexander uses parallel narratives (here, the second narrative is Katenka's diary) to dole out clues and motivations, creating a well-supported solution that the reader solves at about the same time as Colin and Emily.

Quarrel with the King: The Story of an English Family on the High Road to Civil War

Quarrel with the King was both interesting and vaguely unsatisfying.  Covering both the changes to society and the nobility during the reigns of James I, Charles I, and the Republic and the history of the Earls of Pembroke, Adam Nicolson's book never seemed to fully connect the two threads.  This short book gives only surface treatment to two (perhaps not as intertwined as the author thought) tales which deserve deeper treatment.

Notes from the Underwire: Adventures from My Awkward and Lovely Life

Despite some highly publicized tragedies, I've never bought the Broken Child Star myth.  I've always thought that most of those who don't transition to an adult role (sometimes behind the scenes) in the entertainment industry live somewhat ordinary lives.  Quinn Cummings is one of those former stars now living as normal a life as anyone with a sense of humor and a job as a free lance writer can.  Tales from the Underwire, her first book, describes her life and how she got there.  Obtaining a cow's heart for her daughter to dissect, fighting off a catnip-addled cat while trying to sleep on the sofa, or fearing that she's about to walk into the cold open of Law & Order while posting fundraiser notices, she navigates modern life with an eye for everyday absurdities. It's the perfect commute book, segmented enough that you can put it down, but entertaining enough that you don't want to.