Light, summer reading

One of my goals for the summer is to read at least a half dozen 'real' books - not comics, not graphic novels, actual non-fiction books. First up will be Rising Tide which I started last week and which counts because I was in summer mode once exams started.

Let's catch up with the reading done before and fading into summer mode...

Pandora's Keepers - I've had this book sitting around for a couple of years. I'd been looking for a decent history of the Manhattan Project, and this one showed up on the copier in the office across from my room around that time. I put it by the mailboxes with a note and took it home after nobody claimed in an three or four days.


Finally got around to actually reading it...

The books is a biography of the core group of scientists who were instrumental in developing the atomic bombs at Los Alamos: Hans Bethe, Niels Bohr, Arthur Compton, Enrico Fermi, Ernest Lawrence, Robert Oppenheimer, II Rabi, Leo Szilard, and Edward Teller. From their lives before the war (many were European expatriates) to their pursual of the US government's development of the bomb and onward to their post-war lives.

The book breaks down nicely into three areas: pre-, during, and post-war. The pre-war information is necessary background, needed to explain the motivation of the nine scientists during the war, and VanDemark does a good job keeping each scientist on equal footing, not spending more time with one than any other, and providing enough background of each to flesh out their  motivations and specialties as the story presses forward.

It is, however, during the war years that the tale truly becomes a fascinating one. The book travels from Lawrence's Berkley super collider to the squash courts below Chicago University's disused football field, from the halls of Washington to the lecture halls of Princeton. In each location we find an integral part of the story, one without whom or which the bomb would never have come together.

Following the war years, then, VanDemark turns to the repercussions of the Manhattan Project on these scientists and our world. Each of these men had turned to physics in search of the great, pure truths of the universe. They cherished their scientific endeavors because those pursuits were pure, unsullied by politics or practical concerns. Many of them left Europe because the political world had begun to encroach on their pure, scientific worlds. Because of the atomic bomb, however, they found themselves as involved in politics - the lobbying for or against the (fusion) superbomb, the pursuit of security clearance in the face of increased anti-communist fears, their attempts to put the atomic genie back in the bottle - as they had once hoped never to be.

The book is an outstanding survey of the entirety of those three facets, most interesting to me in the central war years and much sadder to me in the post-war times. I was fascinated to learn the scope of the efforts, particular at Oak Ridge and Hanford, Washington to separate and purify the plutonium and uranium ores. In describing K-25, just one of the buildings at Oak Ridge where U-235 was being extracted from the U-238 isotopes...

K-25 was the largest building ever constructed up to that time. It was a sight to behold. Spread over 2 million square feet, the U-shaped structure was half a mile long and four hundred feet wide on each side. It was so vast that foremen rode bikes from one part of the building to another. Twelve thousand people, working in three shifts, kept K-25 running day and night, seven days a week...The electricity for these mammoth facilities came from the nearby TVA and an onside powerhouse that was the largest power installation ever built. By war's end, Oak Ridge would be consuming the equivalent of the total power output on the American side of Niagara Falls - or one-seventh of all electricity generated in the United States.

I can't even conceive of an operation on that scale, and it's one of the things that makes me feel that the development of the atomic bomb was one of the greatest - if possibly most awful (in every sense of the word) - accomplishments of modern science.

The post-war years help put the entirety of the operation into context for me. The scientists were nothing more than men, and as such held differing opinions about their accomplishments. Each saw the totality of the efforts - the triumphs, the regrets, the celebrations, the deaths caused - in their own balance and dealt with their thoughts as individuals and collectively. Some chose to become part of the military-industrial complex, hoping to exert their new-found influence from within. Others chose to abandon what they had come to see as the hopelessness of physics for the life-affirming discipline of biology. Others chose to see out personal rivalries in testifying against each other, making for some of the most heart-breaking pages of the book in Oppenheimer's trial and eventual removal of his security privileges.

The book is an excellent and engaging read, and I learned a great deal from it - mostly about the men involved in the making of the bomb but also about the science behind the bomb - particularly about the 'superbomb' and just what the distinctions are between a thermonuclear (aka the hydrogen or superbomb) and the original atomic bomb.

Interestingly, I found out after reading the book that there were significant accusations toward VanDemark of plagiarism from authors of books on the same subject. Whether VanDemark intentionally plagiarized or innocently didn't give proper credit, the book is an outstanding read and a great exploration of the men involved in the Manhattan Project.

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Hush Money -This one takes a bit of background info to understand what's happening here. You have to know about the 'disappearance' of  Bruce Wayne (from Final Crisis), the destruction of Hush's fortune (from Heart of Hush), and the Dick Grayson-Batman and Damian-Robin all are going to throw off non-regular Batman readers.

Which could be a shame because these are some great stories. The main storyline is that of Thomas Elliot (Hush) as he continues with his attempt to impersonate the 'disappeared' Bruce Wayne and finds himself as Gotham's philanthropist, giving away as much of Wayne's money as he can manage with his surgically-altered Bruce Wayne face. The responses of Damian, Dick, and the second-tier Justice League is well played here, showing how well they team takes care of their fallen mentor/teammate's legacy.

Along the way, the series turns to a few other side tales - Mr Zsasz's new identity and scheme, Firefly's firebombing of Gotham citizens, most interestingly the story of The Broker who sells/rents hideouts to many of Gotham's most flamboyant criminals - but sticks with the over-arching Hush story throughout.

The concept of Batman stories told from non-Batman points of view is interesting and the series well done, but in the end this is just another Batman series, if a very well told one thanks to the writing of Paul Dini and the artwork by Dustin Nguyen.

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Starman: Vol 6 - Grand Guginol - This one wraps up the full Starman run from James Robinson, one of the most heralded comic series of the 1990s and easily one of the greatest single-creator visions of a character in the history of the big two comic publishers (probably there with Sandman). Thanks, by the way, to PLCH for purchasing all of these omnibuses (omnibi?) and for making them available.

First off, the cohesive nature of the Starman series is stunning. It's clear as the last volume comes together that much - if not all - of these storylines were intended from the first issue of the series, so many threads coming together at once thankfully doesn't lead to chaos but rather to a satisfying conclusion to a fabulous series.

I appreciated the return to Opal City after the cosmic drifting of the previous volume but saw that the tale of this volume required Robinson's Starman to leave the city for an extended period of time so that things could reach a bad enough state for the fights of the Grand Guginol to have the necessary emotional weight.

I will admit to being a bit surprised when the Grand Guginol didn't occupy the entirety of this final volume. That storyline wrapped up with a half dozen issues still to go, leaving Robinson enough time to wrap up the numerous emotional storylines that deserved their finality, and Robinson wrapped them all up masterfully, allowing each enough space, enough time, enough pages for each to reach a satisfactory conclusion, a challenge in a world with such a rich supporting cast.

There is no other way that I would want to read this issues as the omnibus versions contained every lick of Starman's story - that told in the eighty-issue main series as well as all of the various mini-series and cross over issues (other than Batman/Hellboy/Starman, a very weird teaming). Even Robinson's commentary at the end of each volume lent a richer history to the creative process.

I don't think this is the equal of Sandman, but it's a heck of an achievement and one I'm happy to have read.

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The male mystique : men's magazine ads of the 1960s and '70s is just odd and stylish enough to be fascinating. It's a collection of magazine advertisements promising a sexier, cooler, hipper world if you'll only buy these new slacks, wear this new comfort spray, smoke these cigarillos, and drink this vodka.

The ads are grouped into vague themes, but the overall theme is much more important as the totality of the ads presents a world where macho was still acceptable, where men were turning both toward and away from a more sensitive lifestyle, where jeans were edging their way into the world but where the coolest men didn't want to wear them.

The book is spectacular.

Take a few looks...

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Spider-Man: The Grim Hunt came about as a direct follow-up to and result of the acclaimed Gauntlet storyline (which I haven't been able to find at PLCH yet). Here we get the Kraven family (who I think might've been retconned into existence just for this storyline) trying to resurrect papa who died in the outstanding Kraven's Last Hunt. In order to do this, they have to sacrifice the head Spyder on the grave of Kraven himself.

The storyline opens with Spider-Man tuckered out after the events of the Gauntlet, something that was apparently organized by the Kravinoff matriarch and that leaves Peter Parker exhausted and suffering from the swine flu (at least he is at the beginning of the storyline, but it mysteriously goes away as a storytelling device pretty quickly). Along comes some kind of mythology of the Spyder clan having always been at battle with the Hunter clan (Kraven being the current incarnation of the perfect hunter, apparently).

It's a good read and a fun addition to the mythology of the spiders (Madame Web, Ezekiel, etc). I did wonder, as have others, why Spider Woman wasn't a part of this arc.

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Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman is a sequel of sorts to American Gods but one which requires no reading of the former book before stepping in and enjoying this tale. This is the story of the twin sons of Anansi, a god who played a somewhat minor part in American Gods and who opens this book by simply passing away.

From there, the two sons find each other and live entire sibling lives (sadness, joy, betrayal, competition, fighting) in a short but entertaining time. Through the course of the tale, Gaiman tells a typically enjoyable Gaiman-esque tale complete with humor, rich characters, and ties to already extant mythologies, leading us to a somewhat predictable resolution but not costing us any of the enjoyment along the way. While the end situations for the characters might be visible from a long way off, the ways that they reach their eventual dispensation weren't predictable in the least for me.

This is a fun read (or, in my case, listen) for Gaiman fans and a blast of a summer read. It's not Gaiman's best work (that's either Sandman or Coraline for my money).

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X-Men: First Class suffers from one of the major problem that plagues the Marvel 616 X-Men: lack of interconnectedness.

With The Avengers coming next summer and Captain America yet to come this summer, the Marvel movie universe is among the most richly populated out there. Each film leads brilliantly into the next (particularly with the post-credits teaser scenes) but each stands on its own to feet. This film, however, has no real connection to those films.

This echos the X-world of Marvel comics in which the mutant school finds itself uninvolved in most of Marvel's major crossovers (Civil War, Dark Reign, Hulk No More, World War Hulk), instead being embroiled in its own sub-cross overs (House of M, Messiah Complex). These mutants while existing in the Marvel world are rarely - other than Wolverine - a part of that world, and they are less rich for it.

Here we find ourselves looking back at the creation of the first X-team thanks to the a-little-too-friendly pairing of Charles Xavier (hirsute and fully ambulatory) and Erik Lehnsherr (aka Magneto). The two bond a little too quickly and turn together (for a while, at least) to gathering and rescuing mutants (conveniently all in the USofA) for the CIA to fight the growing threat of Sebastian Shaw, leader of the Hellfire Club (without the black/white/king/queen hierarchy here).

The pairing - after a few 'not that there's anything wrong with that' moments and a quick cameo from Hugh Jackman - finds their goals at odds even when both are saving the world from the Cuban missile crisis (conveniently engineered by Shaw to force the quick destruction of the non-mutant peoples of the world).

The movie is - as the trailers show - highly stylish, an effective period piece set in the swinging sixties, existing in the swinging London of Austin Powers as well as the ring-a-ding-ding Las Vegas of the Rat Pack while populating the world with ascots, mini-skirts, and traditional black-suited CIA agents. Many of the set pieces are almost too stylish, distracting from the story by placing the action in a set just a bit too hip and happening for its own good (the nuclear reactor and lounge on the submarine and the overdone war room being the most problematic).

Most of the actors take to their parts well, particularly Kevin Bacon and the two X-leads. Some of the other new X-Men can't quite seem to fit themselves into the era, playing their teenage characters a bit too modern for the period piece that the movie it. January Jones was particularly odious, seeming to choose disinterested and bitchy for Emma Frost rather than the too-good-for-this, monied, East Coaster with a witty, kinky streak that her comic character is.

The actual weakest part of the movie is the CGI which slips a bit particularly in the final confrontation on the beach. The sight of a flying submarine (shown in the trailers) which is then crashed on the beach would have been stunningly realists had it been shown even three or four years ago but looked fakey and hokey in the current day theater.

It's a fun movie and easily the best in the X-franchise since X2. Hopefully the characters can see their way through the 1960's and 1970's, because there are certainly more stories to tell without ever having to mention the Shi'ar.

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Quick ones from here...

• Manhunter - Read the first volume...waiting on the second from PLCH...good start...flawed main character...could be fun...
• Batgirl: The Flood - second volume of the Stephanie Brown Batgirl (not long for this world, sadly)...still fun but lacking the foil of Damian Wayne to play off of...strong Birds of Prey vibe with Oracle doing the behind the scenes heavy lifting and this volume seeing the wrap up (for now, at least) of the Oracle-Calculator storyline...great single issue with Supergirl to close this volume...I'll be sad to see this character go away in September...
• Hulk: Scorched Earth -  More fun stuff...continuing to follow Red Hulk (Thunderbolt Ross) as he tries to redeem himself and join the white hats...this isn't a cohesive story arc as many ideas are introduced but not wrapped up in these issues...the standard throw down of Red Hulk and whichever hero he's supposed to be helping got a bi formulaic by the end, but it's still fun...
• Flash: Rebirth - yet another return of the Silver Age version of a hero...getting tired of this crap...lots of pseudo-science babble about running creating the speed force and the anti-speed force, batteries, positive and negative...dumb stuff...one I'm hoping will be retconned out in September...let Hal Jordan and Barry Allen die, folks...it's not 1980 no matter how much you want it to be...
• Red, White, and Rock -  great collection of white people oldies (no Motown here, folks)...odd conception as I read further (put out post 9/11 to let people feel good about Amerika)...
• Randy Newman Songbook, Vol 2 - To quote - "The Randy Newman Songbook, Vol. 2 feels a bit like the second Greatest Hits album drawn from a career artist's catalog; so many great songs were pulled for Vol. 1 that the sophomore effort seems slightly weak in comparison"...excellent stuff but songs I don't love nearly as much...more for fans that for neophytes...
• The Fall by Gorillaz - lesser album than Plastic Beach but still fun...
• Hulked Out Heroes - dumb, dumb, dumb...not fun