Book Recommendations
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
The Pillars of the Earth follows the construction of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England during the twelfth century. Although Follett’s novel is fiction, it is very well researched and provides a fantastic overview of the time period, and an insight into the worlds of people from all walks of medieval life, from nobles and knights, to masons and monks. Taking place over the course of forty years, during the Civil War following the death of Henry I, the story follows a community and its leader who struggle to build the cathedral that will revive their town amidst the political and social instability of the nation. I would strongly recommend this book to future students, simply because of its entertainment value. Follett is a fantastic writer, and this is one of his best efforts. Despite the vast time difference, Follett makes it easy to relate to his characters, and tells an amazing and vivid tale of life in Medieval England.
World Without End by Ken Follett
The sequel to Pillars of the Earth, World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge 200 years after Pillars and follows the descendants of the characters from the first book. The remarkable thing about this book is that, like its prequel it is over 1000 pages, but yet the action never slows down and the reader is always engaged in the story. In this book, the politics of religious and civil power clash in medieval England as the townspeople try to wrestle their political destiny out of the hands of the stubborn, proud and inefficient Prior of Kingsbridge. Although at times similar to Pillars of the Earth, the book is as good, if not better than its predecessor, and is one that I would again recommend. An amazing story, and very well researched, it is a major asset for background knowledge in any Early British Literature class.
The Economist
Since my freshman year, I have had a subscription to The Economist because of my participation on the Speech and Debate Team. Although dry or complex at times, The Economist is a great asset. In an era of cable talking heads and thirty second sound bites, American news networks often lamentably follow the “if it bleeds, it leads” philosophy of journalism, with a few exceptions. A British magazine, The Economist provides an interesting, outsider point of view, especially in its analysis of the United States. At the same time, it is comprehensive and all encompassing, carrying news from all over the world, in detail. In less than an hour, one becomes well informed about all of the major stories, all around the world. The Economist has definitely provided me with an insight on world affairs that I would not have otherwise had. When one first begins reading the magazine, its almost akin to starting to watch a T.V. show half way through the season, however, after a few issues, one knows all the characters and their relationships.
The Appeal by John Grisham
In his novel The Appeal John Grisham draws attention to the ability of well financed groups to have tremendous influence over elected office, including, in some states, the court system. In The Appeal, a chemical company, that spent years dumping toxic byproducts into a small Mississippi town’s water supply loses a multimillion dollar wrongful death lawsuit after one of the many cancer cases in town dies as a result of the polluted water. To protect itself from further financial harm, the company’s CEO covertly funds a candidate in the Mississippi Supreme Court election in order to overturn the verdict on appeal. The very conservative candidate wins the race, and overturns the decision on appeal. Unfortunately for the judicial system, Grisham’s inspiration for this novel was a similar, real life case, Capperton v. Massey in West Virginia.
Americans often extol the virtues of our government, and truth be told, there is much good in our system, but as the saying goes, money talks, often quite loudly. As long as elections continue to cost, even on the local level, well into the hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions of dollars, our politics will in some sense always be tainted by those interests, whether individual or corporate, with more money than others. This is a problem however, that can be solved.
The Richard Sharpe Series by Bernard Cornwell
The Sharpe series, spanning 21 novels, follows the military service of Richard Sharpe, of the British Army, during the Napoleonic Wars, starting with Seringapatem in 1799 and culminating with Waterloo in 1815. Sharpe is one of the few men who served in the ranks to win promotion to the officer’s mess, in an era where officer’s commissions were bought and sold. The books focus on his extraordinary skills, and his fight for acceptance by the aristocratic and class conscious officers serving with the Duke of Wellington in Spain and Portugal. Sharpe, the bastard son of a London prostitute, who joined the army to escape a murder charge, has no family but the army, and no skills except ruthlessness in combat, and thus sees the army as the only place in which he is comfortable or where he thrives. Unfortunately, he knows that a peacetime force would get rid of him in an instant, despite his wartime heroics. Cornwell is a very skilled author with fantastic character development. (which I suppose is not hard to do over the course of 21 books featuring the same character) He also takes the time to create very intricate relationships between characters that become very well developed. Cornwell is a fantastic author who makes his stories come to life through his detailed, but never dry or excessive descriptions.
Armageddon Leon Uris
In Armageddon, Leon Uris shows the deterioration of Western-Soviet relations after the end of WWII, with Berlin as the epicenter. The book follows one Lt. Col. Sean O’Sullivan, an officer working with the Military Government in postwar Germany as the administrator of a region of Germany, and then, an attache in Berlin. Uris deals with the conflicts between the Soviets and the West, as well as the internal conflict Sean experiences. The death of his two younger brothers, both soldiers, while fighting the Germans has caused Sean to hate everything German. However, as he lives in Berlin, fighting for the people of Berlin as they are threatened by the Soviet Union, his mixed emotions, including the fact that he falls in love with a German girl, torment him. As the story progresses O’Sullivan tries to reconcile his views. On the political front, the United States, which would like nothing more than to send their troops home and retreat into isolationism, but stands with the Berliners against increasing Soviet manipulation and arm twisting. The story culminates in the Berlin Airlift. The Soviet Union cut off all rail, road and water links to West Berlin, in an attempt to force the Western nations out of the city. However, the United States, in conjunction with the United Kingdom and France began the greatest air supply operation in history, flying over 7,000 tons of cargo a day, with over 1,200 flights a day, and a plane landing once every 30 seconds. The Russians are forced to relent, and lift the blockade. Uris is a very interesting author. He presents the interesting emotional conflict of a man who spent years fighting the Germans, and losing both of his brothers to German bullets, but is now fighting to save the people of Berlin.
The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth
One of his first novels, The Odessa File, by Frederick Forsyth was written over the course of a trip to West Germany in 1971. The book, which draws on the authors experience as a reporter for Thomson Reuters, features a freelance, West German journalist, Peter Miller. The story begins on the night of Nov. 23, 1963 with Miller hearing about the assassination of John F. Kennedy on the radio. That same night, he follows an ambulance to the home of an old Jewish man, a holocaust survivor who committed suicide, leaving behind a journal recording his life, especially the time spent a Concentration Camp in Riga, Latvia during the Second World War. The journal describes many of the atrocities committed by SS Captain Eduard Roschmann. At one point Miller reads that Roschmann shot a German Army Captain, who was decorated with a Knights Cross for valor, in cold blood. The date and location of the shooting, as well as the Knights Cross, which was awarded to very few soldiers, reveals to Miller that the Captain was actually his father, who died in the same place, on the same date. Miller sets off on a mission of revenge to bring Roschmann to justice. In the process, he clashes with ODESSA, a dangerous organization of former SS members, and barely escapes with his life.
ODESSA (“Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen” or in English “Organization of Former Members of the SS,”) was a real life clandestine organization formed by SS officers in the final months of WWII to provide for the escape of members of the SS charged with war crimes, generally to the friendly Peron government in Argentina. Many infamous members of the SS used the resources of ODESSA to escape to Latin America and Egypt after being faced with the possibility of being charged. Towards the end of the 20th century, most likely following the death of many of its members, the activities of ODESSA came to light, and several books were published documenting the organization. Forsyth was one of the first writers to discuss ODESSA, in the early 1970’s.
The ODESSA File is a fantastic book. It takes many turns that deviate from the usually expected thriller plot line, and manages to engage the reader very well. The unlikely hero, that of a journalist rather than the typical thriller hero mold of spy or soldier, made the book quite unique and presented a very interesting, and refreshingly different point of view. This was the first book by Forsyth that I had read, and because of it, I developed a strong liking for his novels, and made him one of my favorite writers.
The Alienist by Caleb Carr
The Alienist is a novel that I picked up recently in the Stuyvesant library, almost by accident. While looking for another author, this book caught my eye, and as it turns out, was one of the best books I’ve read recently. The book is set in New York City in 1896, and paints a vivid portrait of a city rife with poverty, gang violence, slums, filth, corruption and greed, where humanity exists only as a thin veneer. Carr, a historian who generally writes non fiction work provides a very accurate, and almost depressing portrait of the city at the turn of the century. Following the conclusions of the Lexow Commission in 1894, Theodore Roosevelt is appointed president of the Board of Police Commissioners, and attempts to reform the “most corrupt municipal organization in America” (according to the Lexow Commission). However, he is met with hostility from the entire NYPD, and faces a hard battle. In this setting, a young boy is found murdered and mutilated on the not yet finished Williamsburg Bridge. Considering that the boy was merely a street urchin, the NYPD would not bother investigating the crime. However, Roosevelt engages a strange team, consisting of a New York Times reporter, two reformist NYPD detectives who are shunned by the department because of their adherence to new investigative methods, like fingerprinting, and rudimentary forensic analysis, Roosevelt’s private secretary, and an Alienist (the 1896 term for a behavioral psychologist). They attempt to discover the identity of, what is becoming to be, a serial killer.
Caleb Carr does an amazing job on creating the setting of his story. Making good use of his background as a historian, he describes the City in rich and vivid detail, while avoiding the pitfall of boring the reader by doing so excessively. This is, perhaps the best thing about his book. At the risk of sounding cliche, Carr really does make the hectic, turn of the century New York come alive for the reader. His two main characters, John Moore (the journalist) and Lazlo Kreizler (the Alienist) are described in great detail, as are their lives. Both characters are deeply flawed, and portrayed on a deeply human level. For any author, but especially for one who doesn’t write fiction, this is an amazing novel.
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Gone With the Wind is a book that, on picking up off the shelf, I would never decide to read. A thousand pages of what I perceived as the story of a whining, selfish, southern girl never seemed that interesting. My sister rented that movie, however, and since I had nothing better to do, I watched it. I was so impressed by the movie, that I decided to read the book. My preconceived notions were immediately banished. Contrary to what I thought, Gone With the Wind is a vivid description of the old, antebellum South, the carnage and horror of the Civil War, and the pain and ultimate failure of Reconstruction. More than that, however, it is an incredibly engaging story, and probably one of my favorite books. The book presents a romanticized view of the old south that even the staunchest northerner can feel a nostalgia for. (albeit, without slavery) and presents in vivid detail the collective horror at the butchery of the Civil War and the frustration of reuniting the nation after the conflict. The plot and the characters, which were written in great detail and depth, were simply fantastic, and engaged my interest, despite the fact that a romance novel is certainly not my type of book. This is simply an amazing work of literature that I would recommend to anyone who has the time to read it.
All’s Well that Ends Well by William Shakespeare
All’s Well that Ends Well is one of my favorite Shakespearian plays, and is one that I am intimately familiar with. In eighth grade, my grade read, saw, and performed the play, but over time, as my scope of Shakespeare grew, I developed a deeper appreciation for it. This is, in my opinion the funniest of Shakespeare’s comedies. Helena, after years of longing for him, marries Bertram by order of the King of France. Bertram, who hates the idea of marrying Helena runs away to Italy to fight as a mercenary with his friend Parolles. He tells Helena that “if thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which never shall come off, and show me a child, begotten of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband. But in such a ‘then’ I write a ‘never.’” Helena follows him to Italy and enlists the help of two local women in trapping the unwitting Bertram, accompanied at all times by Shakespeare’s witty remarks and double entendres. This is one of Shakespeare’s funnier comedies, but one must have some background knowledge to glean all the jokes from the script.
Book recommendations by Stuyvesant students for Stuyvesant students and readers around the world. Also known as Stuy Bookshelf/Book Box. Submissions are open—click on register below!