Jerold Zimmerman and Daniel P. Forrester. Relentless: The Forensics of Mobsters’ Business Practices. Willowcroft, 2020.

The subtitle of Relentless is slightly misleading. It is not so much forensics, as it is simply an economic analysis of four criminal gangs. However, what we can learn from it applies to all kinds of businesses and other organizations as well. I suppose we could call it forensic economics.

If you were to type in relentless.com on your web browser, you would get Amazon. That was one of the original names Jeff Bezos chose for his online book business. Relentless often uses Amazon as an example of a legitimate business that uses many of the same organizational techniques as the four groups it highlights: the Mafia, the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, the Hells Angels, and the Bloods and Crips (with more emphasis on the Crips). For readers not as interested in the ins and outs of these gangs, the last two chapters give some direction to businesses. Certainly anyone in any kind of management position would find this book helpful and even—dare I say—inspiring.

There are some distinct differences. The Mafia and the Sinaloa Cartel are mainly businesses. Yes, they deal in illegal things like gambling, prostitution, and drugs, but they are businesses at their core. In reality so are the street gangs like the Bloods and Crips as drug dealers. The Hells Angels (HAs) is an outlaw motorcycle club (OMC) that promotes violence but is not necessarily organized for the money. Again, except for its immorality, Relentless compares HAs to other kinds of voluntary organizations like other clubs, churches, and charities in terms of what we can learn from it.

Many lawful organizations possess similar cultural values as brotherhood, loyalty, and social engagement as the HAs [Hells Angels]…Like the Angels, the Masons required elaborate initiation rites. People form not for profit theater groups because they seek the fellowship and pleasure of associating with like-minded individuals wishing to promote the arts. Others seek out country clubs and churches with members who share the same values and enjoy the same activities. (130)

One example to illustrate that the Hells Angels club is not a business is that whenever a Mafioso or Sinaloa cartel member is arrested, the organizations provide bail money. They have plenty. When Sonny Barger, the founder of the Angels was arrested, he could not post bail.

The authors cite other sources for their basic approach to business success. First there are four pillars of any successful business or organization: its task, performance measurements, performance rewards and punishments, and its culture. Of all the organizations here, the authors recognize the Mafia as likely the most successful in mounting the four pillars.

In the 1930s the five crime families of New York City organized the Commission. This set certain rules for the families such as killing any “made” member of any family had to be approved by the commission. This insured that there would be few “gangland slayings” to call attention to their criminal activities

Similarly, the Hells Angels are organized through the Oakland, California, chapter with regional groups overseeing local clubs. They also have rules of behavior such as any drugs or guns that members might sell must be of good quality to maintain the reputation of the club.

The other two groups have overall been weaker in this aspect, causing many more conflicts and killings. In the case of the Mexican drug cartels, the numbers murdered are in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands.

The chapters on the Mafia and Hells Angels in this book tend to be stronger, too. That is partly because news accounts are available but also because leaders of each organization wrote autobiographies. Rudy Giuliani, who started out as a public prosecutor, credits Joe Bonnano’s autobiography with showing New York prosecutors how the Mafia was organized and giving them clues on how to best prosecute them.

Similarly, Sonny Barger, one of the founders of the Oakland Hells Angels describes many of the things that he did to promote his brand of outlaw bikers. Indeed, the authors frequently speak of the “brand” of each of the organizations. This includes how people both trust them (e.g., Mafia gambling operations are not rigged) and fear them (all have many members who are murderers). The book does note that the Hells Angels are slightly different because they emphasize motorcycling over money. They are not a criminal organization but an organization that includes criminals.

All four organizations have survived because they have been able to adapt to new circumstances and changes in law enforcement. Both the Mafia and the Hells Angels had problems with police informers. The Mafia then required that any made man would have had to have committed a murder. They figured that no undercover cop would murder someone. Similarly, the Hells Angels began to require a longer probationary period for new members partly to observe them better but also to do more thorough background checks.

The Sinaloa organization has done many different creative things to smuggle drugs. If one part of the American border becomes less penetrable, they go to a different location or maybe dig a tunnel or use submarines. They built meth factories and currently are doing more with manufacturing opioids. Such things reflect a changing illicit drug market. The African-American urban street gangs like the Bloods and the Crips began to flourish when the process for making crack cocaine was developed.

Court records and released communications have given the authors most of the information that they have about the Sinaloa cartel. El Chapo Guzman is currently in prison, but the work goes on.

The chapter on the Bloods and Crips is the vaguest of the chapters. Most of what the authors refer to are sociological studies, so names of the members and even the name of the gangs are not mentioned. One gets the impression that the two gangs are more rivals than enemies, but it is hard to tell. Still, we get an overall idea of how the gangs operate.

In addition to making innovations and adapting to change, there are few other things that any business or organization can learn from these groups. All of them promote great loyalty and identification with their group. For example, Hells Angels do not own their jacket patches. These belong to the organization. If for some reason a member leaves or is kicked out, he has to return the patch and even have any club tattoo removed.

By the way, the authors do note that all four organization are entirely male. One statistic suggests that one of the African-American gangs may have a female enrollment of seven percent of the total membership, but that is it.

In all four instances, the organizations attract boys or men who are looking for respect and have lower moral standards. Identifying with a gang gives them not only identity but respect and a purpose. Even good legitimate businesses and organizations must have people who believe in what the business or organization is doing. Successful organizations have ways of recognizing achievement that goes beyond financial remuneration. Such things as employee of the month or teacher of the year can help them find motivated people and retain them.

Each organization has had problems with people who are not effectively loyal. In most cases such people do something against the rules to get more money, e.g., diluting a drug or skimming money taken in. Legitimate businesses have similar problems. Now, legitimate businesses cannot resort to violence, but they need to come up with ways to insure worker loyalty and respect and to deal with what the book calls “vampire” employees.

There are many more specifics in this book. Although the subtitle suggests this book was about the investigation or prosecution of criminals, it is really about how businesses and organizations survive. The authors note that other books have analyzed different companies to show how successful companies operate, only to have those companies falter and even fail within a decade after the book came out.

As suggested by the title and the book’s introduction (and our second paragraph above), one of the more adaptable companies has been Amazon. Like the effective gangs, they have competed successfully, adapted to new technologies, and put some rivals out of business while buying out others. Relentless contrasts the adaptability of Netflix with the inability of Blockbuster to adapt as a good example we can learn from.

Relentless notes that any organization has to persevere and adapt, be relentless in that sense, the way Amazon has. It notes that the Mafia is not what it used to be because Italian-Americans are not socially marginalized the way they were a hundred years ago. Like Rudy Giuliani, for example, they have earned respect in a moral and socially acceptable way. Will that eventually happen to the successors of the Crips? Will turf wars kill off the best Mexican drug runners? Will the rising price of Harley-Davidson motorcycles keep rebellious youth from even trying to emulate OMCs? Who knows? In the meantime, legitimate businesses and organizations can learn some things from these organizations. Even Jesus in Luke 16:8ff. noted that we can learn from those who earn money unjustly.

One current observation this reviewer could not help make. Mr. Giuliani was fairly successful in combating organized crime in New York. When he tried using the courts to go after the so-called Deep State, he was foiled. Governments are legal or lawful, but corruption of various forms or fear of getting involved can be a temptation for those working in all branches of the government, too.

Lisa Klaussmann. Tigers in Red Weather. Little Brown, 2012.

Poet Wallace Stevens wrote:

        Only here and there, an old sailor
        Drunk and asleep in his boots,
        Catches tigers
        In red weather.

It is a well-known poem called “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock,” which the poet describes disappointment with those who are well off and could be doing so much more with their lives. That seems to be a theme of this novel as well.

I was drawn to this book only because of its title. With such a quotation, it must have had some literary quality and perhaps even a little connection with the poem. I am happy to say that it did.

I wrote recently that it seems a lot of American novels could be seen as postscripts to The Great Gatsby. That is true of this story.

This focuses on two female cousins who grew up very close and together inherited some wealth. Nick (apparently short for Nicole) lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her family had a large summer home on the offshore island of Martha’s Vineyard. Thanks to Senator Teddy Kennedy and Presidents Clinton and Obama, most readers know something of the Vineyard as a summer spot for well-to-do liberals. Such is this family.

Nick and her cousin Helena marry in the early 1940s and their new husbands both go off to war. Helena’s is killed in battle, but Nick’s Navy officer husband Hughes returns. Helena will marry again, this time to an aspiring Hollywood type named Avery. They move to Los Angeles, but each summer Helena returns to Martha’s Vineyard where most of the story takes place.

Like Gatsby, most of the characters are unwittingly trying to distinguish the difference between desire and love. Hughes is very attractive to women. Even when she is not sure she loves him any more, Nick still has a strong physical attraction to him. Nick herself, while not a classic beauty, has a certain style that also makes her attractive to men. She knows it, too, and can flaunt that knowledge.

Helena is a poorer cousin and seems to lack the confidence of Nick. Still, at least two male characters in the book compare her to actress Jane Russell. She also, then, is attractive though, unlike her cousin, does not seem to either know or care how to exploit it. She comes across as emotionally needy in the sense that she loves Avery because he does frequently tell her how beautiful she is.

The question about attraction comes through, though, in the next generation. Much of the story takes place in 1959 in Martha’s Vineyard. Each cousin has an only child both about twelve years old at the time. Nick’s Daisy is fresh and still on the young side. She is beginning to notice boys and has a crush on Ty, another Vineyard summer visitor whom a lot of the girls find good looking. He is about two years older and has begun to have girlfriends.

Ed, son of Helena, is more socially awkward. If he were a boy of twelve today, we would probably label him “on the spectrum.” He is trying to figure out how to relate to people by observing how other people relate to each other. Now that he is almost thirteen, he is especially interested about male-female relationships. However, his guileless staring and stealthy eavesdropping make people nervous.

For most of the story—except for the beginning chapters which are set in the forties—he is the one person who is asking the question in so many words, “What is the difference between love and desire?” He and Daisy are close. He asks her what she sees in Ty. She cannot really explain it other than good looks and confidence. When Ed tells her in so many words that Ty is a self-absorbed jerk, she acknowledges it, but says she likes him anyway. Indeed, the two younger cousins appear to be the most direct all the way through.

The element of wealth contributes a lot to the story. It seems like the wealthy can get away with things. The Great Gatsby notes, about the rich couple in that novel:

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…

So it seems the same here. During the summer of 1959 a young, pretty Portuguese housemaid is brutally murdered. It becomes pretty clear who did it, but he gets away with it. (As an interesting aside, the latest chapters take place in 1969, and the story of Senator Kennedy leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown is a backdrop made without commentary, but here we see from real life the kind of thing Fitzgerald had written about.)

Ed has observed the wealthy employer and the maid carry on their affair, trying to figure out what they found attractive in each other. Later, he will be the one to discover her mutilated body. People in the family and others will attribute some of Ed’s strange behavior to this event, something that would disturb anyone. For the rich employer, murder is the easy way to get rid of someone who has become a problem.

While money might make some people get away with murder or other crimes and infidelities, it also can corrupt those who desire it. Avery, Helena’s husband, hopes he can get some of the family’s money to help bankroll his movie plans (which never bear fruit in over twenty years). He even exploits Helena’s natural beauty to get backing. At that point, though, teenaged Ed sees what is going on, and this makes his questions about love and desire even more complicated. What about people who are unattractive or no longer attractive or who demand too much? What will happen to the next generation?

Yes, many of the characters are tigers—they are predatory. Some are killers. Even those who act defensively use more strength than is necessary. It seems like everyone has wounds and, as is often said, hurt people hurt people. But sometimes the painful experience can give us insight or wisdom we otherwise would not have.

I am happy to note that the author’s indirect observations connected to the Stevens poem quoted are similar to what I teach my students when I teach the poem. I am not sure I would necessarily recommend the novel to high schoolers because of a couple of R-rated scenes, but it does have a literary quality. This is more than just a soap opera.

One other note on this book. I was happy to read the Kindle edition because the cover on the print version makes the story look like chick lit. It is not. Yes, the story is told from the points of view of the five main characters and three are women: Nick, Helena, and Daisy. But this story is for everyone. It is hard, it is real, and it perhaps is also a reminder that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man or woman enter the kingdom of God (see Mark 10:25). In most cases it is simply because they do not want to.

Robert McCaw. Death of a Messenger. Oceanview, 2015.

Chronologically, this is apparently the first of the Koa Kāne Hawaiian Mysteries. We have reviewed a couple of the sequels to this one. As with the other two stories, McCaw takes us into the island culture by telling a gripping tale.

In the first chapter, an anonymous caller to the police describes a dead body in a volcanic cave in the middle of the Big Island of Hawaii. The cave itself is in the middle of an Army firing range. The body has been disfigured as if it were some kind of ritual murder. The first chapter is grim, but it does not foreshadow the rest of the story. This is a mystery, not a horror story.

It turns out that this cave was used in the distant past by native Hawaiians and contains some artifacts and shards of historical interest. Around the same time as this discovery, the son of an old friend of Detective Koa Kāne was picked up unconscious on the island of Kaho’olawe. That smaller island has been uninhabited since World War II when the Navy began using it for target practice. However, it is known to have had some sites of archaeological interest to people.

The Army firing range is near the Saddle Road which runs across the middle of the island between the two main cities of Kona and Hilo. It is about six thousand feet above sea level, a little less than halfway to the highest peak in the islands, Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea is known for its astronomical observatory. When the body is finally identified, it turns out to be that of a young astronomer from the observatory.

There are numerous interesting characters. Some show us something of the social and ethnic makeup of Hawaii. Some are suspects. Some are both.

We meet “Hook” Hao, father of the young man rescued from Kaho’olawe, a fisherman and seafood broker who has his ear to the pier. There is Prince Kamehameha, wealthy descendant of his namesake king. He is interested in preserving the Hawaiian culture, but not necessarily at the expense of what makes money. There is Akiu ‘Ōpua, a native activist promoting Hawaiian independence. He is a friend of the Prince and was also apparently on Kaho’olawe when Hook’s son Reggie was injured there.

There are the various astronomers: Thurston Masters, head of the Mauna Kea Observatory; Gunter Nelson, who may or may not have had a grudge against the young victim; Julie Benson, Masters’ assistant and paramour; Charlie Harper, another observatory worker; and the victim’s girlfriend, an astronomer currently working in Chile. For some reason, though, the astronomer had a plane ticket to California for the day he died.

There are also a few other possible criminal types who could have been involved such as Skeeter Slade, helicopter pilot whose ‘copter was mapping the area where the cave was; Garvie Jenkins, a convicted criminal connected with both missing antiquities and equipment from the observatory; and Starfish Shipping, whose shipping container had an extra compartment.

There are lots of trails to follow, but they all seem to be leading to a single place. There are also some interesting side notes. Masters has been hailed for making a discovery about the red shift that will change the way people interpret distant astronomical events. And even though Kāne himself is a native Hawaiian, we learn much more about the indigenous Hawaiians through characters like Reggie, ‘Ōpua, and their friend Prince Kamehameha. The prince is true Hawaiian nobility, but even he might be a suspect when it comes to stealing archaeological artifacts.

Without giving too much away, some of the action takes place in a blizzard. Yes, Hawaii may be a true tropical paradise, but there is a reason Mauna Kea got its name. It means “White Mountain” in Hawaiian. Winter at over 13,000 feet above sea level can be brutal even in the tropics.

Death of a Messenger is another Koa Kāne thriller. It has a wild, yet believable plot, with the backdrop of the exotic island culture, and a distinctive professional subculture of astronomers. McCaw has done it again! Enjoy!

Meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald. Created and performed by Larry Vanderveer, R and E Arts, 2005.

Meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald is a DVD of a one-man show not unlike Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain Tonight. In this case, we are imagining author F. Scott Fitzgerald on stage in 1940 telling us something of his life and works. There are many revelations and interpretations that may help us get an appreciation of this reformed alcoholic who has become recognized as an author of genius.

From the beginning he confesses three things: He lived the life recorded in his novels, he has not had a drink in two years, and he is trying again to make it as a screenwriter in Hollywood.

First he throws in a little about his Hollywood experiences. His first time there he was involved in the writing of one screenplay, Three Comrades. Joseph Mankewicz told him he could not write dialogue, which is somewhat ironic. But, then, film perhaps is a different medium from the written story. His short story “Crazy Sunday” is based on a tea at Irving Thalberg’s. Long after Zelda was unfaithful to him, he had an affair with a young actress Lois Moran. Needless to say, some of that worked its way into Tender is the Night. His short story “Babylon Revisited” tells us something of his relationship with his only daughter, Scottie, of whom he is very proud.

He speaks a little of his experience at Princeton, which, of course, is the setting for his first novel, This Side of Paradise. He says Harvard men are all brain, Yale men are all brawn, and Princeton men the laziest. Though Anthony Patch in The Beautiful and Damned is also based on Fitzgerald, that Harvard grad is more of a thinker than the shallow and “hulking” Yalie Tom Buchanan of The Great Gatsby. Those stereotypes do come through in his works.

He describes quite a bit of his relationship with Hemingway. The incident described in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” with “Julian” envying the rich, was originally published using Fitzgerald’s name, but he claims Hemingway delivered the reply to someone else. Still, he confesses that, “I have forgiven the rich for being rich.”

Hemingway’s approval was important to him. Four years after he asked him about Tender is the Night, Hemingway wrote him in some detail about how much he liked it. Even four years later, that encouraged him. Edmund Wilson, a college classmate, he says, was his critical conscience. Hemingway was his literary conscience. And his European friend Gerald Murphy was his social conscience. (Murphy appears as Dick Diver in Tender is the Night.)

He claims that Hemingway “stole” the ending of The Sun Also Rises from chapter 5 of The Great Gatsby. When I checked this out, I think he may have meant A Farewell to Arms, though they are hardly identical. The two writers do have a similar style.

He wraps up his talk with a humorous story. He heard that a theater in Los Angeles was putting on a stage version of his short story “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.” He and his date, Sheila Graham, were dressed to the nines. When they arrived at the theater, it was closed. They found a black box type theater with about fifteen benches on the second floor. It was a student production. When he introduced himself, one of the interns said, “I though he was dead.”

There are many other clever, humorous, and confessional observations. Vanderveer keeps his Fitzgerald going. It is interesting to hear him talk about Zelda. In spite of his various affairs and even the inspiration that Sheila Graham was to his recovery from alcoholism, Zelda was his one true and “fated” love. His college classmate quoted in Boats Against the Current, said that Zelda is “the role model for all the female characters in his novels.” This Fitzgerald would not disagree.

Michael Chabon. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Morrow, 1988.

Hemingway once wrote words to the effect that all American literature since 1880 derives from Huckleberry Finn. I might qualify that by saying much of it nowadays derives from F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I confess to being disappointed with The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. As a native of that city, I thought there might be some distinctive things about this book. Other than a certain hollow near Schenley Park, this story could have happened just about anywhere in the modern civilized world. Having noted that, the author writes well. Well placed metaphors and allusions entertain us and keep us thinking.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh spins off from This Side of Paradise, a Fitzgerald story about a recent college graduate (still hanging around the school) with girlfriend problems. Because this came out in 1988, narrator Art Bechstein also has boyfriend problems. There are some echoes of The Great Gatsby, too, because Art’s father is a mob accountant. Art’s acquaintance named Cleveland, a former resident of wealthy Fox Chapel, has blown through his substantial inheritance. He is looking for easy work, and thinks Mr. Bechstein will help. Think Meyer Wolfsheim and Jay Gatsby.

That secondary plotline following Cleveland is somewhat interesting if derivative. The main plotline following Art is, sadly, pornographic and not something I can recommend. The Art of Fielding has a similar story line and is much more effective. Like The Great Gatsby, the book’s end tells of a funeral. But unlike that novel, no one in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is paddling against the current. They are all adrift, going with whatever flow they detect. Youth should be made of sterner stuff.

John Hagee. The Power of the Prophetic Blessing. Worthy, 2012.

The Power of the Prophetic Blessing reminds us of some biblical principles that we often overlook or forget. All have to do with the concept of blessing, i.e., speaking authoritative, God-directed words over others.

About the first half of the book is a review of blessings in the Scripture, especially the Old Testament. We read about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We read of the blessings of Melchizedek on Abram and Jacob on his sons.

Hagee details some of the ways that Jacob’s blessings came to pass. He notes in several different ways that historically Jews have kept up the concept of blessing, especially blessing their children, more than gentile Christians. Hagee makes a claim that the success of Jewish people in spite of persecution (think of Nobel prizes, for example) is not only because of God’s blessing, but through their practices, that they bless one another. He quotes a rabbi who notes that not a week in his life has gone by where either a parent or grandparent blessed him or he blessed his children or grandchildren on the Sabbath.

Hagee also notes the first eight of the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:2-10 and explains them in some detail. As with Jacob’s blessings, he gives some personal and historical examples of how these have been fulfilled.

About the last third of The Power of Prophetic Blessing tells us how to do it. Again, using Bible teaching and some word analysis, he notes that a true blessing is spoken from someone with biblical authority: a father over his family, a parent over his or her children, a priest over his people, and so on.

When I began reading a subchapter titled “Six Requirements for Releasing and Receiving the Prophetic Blessing,” the Holy Spirit moved. This was something I was to pay attention to. This was affirming what God says in His Word. Here are the six, more as reminders. Read the book for the explanations:

1. The prophetic blessing is to be imparted by a person in spiritual authority.
2. The prophetic blessing shall be given while standing.
3. When the delegated spiritual authority is speaking the prophetic blessing over someone, he or she does so with lifted hands. (He does also talk about laying on of hands, so there is, one supposes, a corollary.)
4. The prophetic blessing must be done in the name of the Lord.
5. The prophetic blessing is to be bestowed face to face.
6. The prophetic blessing is to be given with a voice of authority so that all can hear.

While in this portion he speaks of lifting up the hands, he also speaks of the laying on of hands. We know from Genesis 48:15-20 that Jacob laid his hands on his grandsons to bless them.

Hagee goes into some detail describing health benefits of human touch. He notes that there the University of Miami has a research branch called the Touch Research Institute. They have statistics about how touch helps in healing. The statistics in neonatal care survival are especially impressive. One sad note is that the Institute has a nursery school, but teachers are limited on how much actual touch they can use because of fears of lawsuits and accusations these day. So many things God means for good, people find a way to twist them.

The last chapter has some prayers or proclamations that readers may use to bless others, or perhaps simply to pray. Yes, people often limit God; “Where there is no vision the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18). But also we just do not do it. Let us take action and bless those we can. And then, perhaps God will bless us…

Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol and Other Short Stories. Black, n.d.

This volume contains five shorter stories by Dickens. He called them short stories, but today we would call them novellas. Each is a little over a hundred pages.

A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas [1843]. I am reluctant to even mention this since it is a tale nearly everyone is somewhat familiar with. I had not actually read this since I was a teenager. It was a pleasure to re-read. It is extremely well composed. I really felt while reading it that there was hardly a word out of place. Our family has a tradition of some thirty years or so of watching The Muppets’ Christmas Carol, which actually follows Dickens’ script fairly closely. I think it might be worth it to read this one more frequently just to be reminded of what a good storyteller Dickens is. It follows in the tradition of Robinson Crusoe which Defoe called an allusive allegorical history. It is a story with allusions and symbols; and what a story it is!

The Chimes [1844] is subtitled A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In. A Christmas Carol is divided into five chapters the author calls staves, suggesting the five staves in an octave of music. So The Chimes is divided into four quarters, each suggesting a clock that chimes every quarter hour.

This is a very clever story that may be a bit hard to follow. If it were written today, it would be called magical realism. Indeed, it would be easy to imagine Gabriel Marquez or Jorge Luis Borges writing something like this. Toby (a.k.a. Trotty) has a daughter Meg who is planning to get married on New Year’s Day.

Trotty is visited by two distinguished gentlemen, Alderman Mr. Cute and Attorney Mr. Filer. Both not only look down on him for serving tripe but also predict that Meg’s marriage will be a trap for both spouses. Echoing Jaggers in Great Expectations, they announce that Meg will grow fat and ugly, her husband will be poor, and they will have too many children—lots of boys, and everyone knows boys are trouble.

They all make their way to Sir Joseph Bowley’s who has an annual feast where he treats the poor to a nice meal and some gifts. While there is an element of charity in this, we get more of a sense of condescending noblesse oblige. Meg and her husband clearly will be unable to improve their lot at all. Today we would call Bowley, Cute, and Filer elitists. Trotty is humbled to the point of embarrassment.

From then on, it is best to say that the magic takes over. Trotty hears the chimes of a nearby church and believes they are speaking to him. He climbs the bell tower and sees things. He flies off the bell tower. Nine years after he dies, we are told he committed suicide by jumping from the tower. Or did he?

Let us just say that in spite of the condescension of “those in the know,” it seems the chimes may know more and better. The Chimes is very much a life and love affirming story in its own distinctive way.

The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home [1845] reads like a play. Dickens loved the theater and supported a local theater company. He tells us, for example, that Willkie Collins’ play The Frozen Deep inspired A Tale of Two Cities. His daughter described her father when writing that she could hear him speaking in different voices as he imagined and wrote conversations.

This “fairy tale” is nearly all dialogue. Perhaps I was tired, but I felt that a cast list at the beginning might have helped me keep the characters straight better.

Instead of three chapters, this story is divided into three chirps. The cricket is a symbol in the story. There are several subplots, but they really focus on what makes a home. We have a poor employee of a toymaker and his blind daughter. Because his daughter is blind, he tells her their house and their clothes are much finer than they really are. If anyone has seen Life is Beautiful, there is a similar effect, though only from poverty, not from imprisonment.

The toymaker is an older bachelor who actually hates children. He does not like crickets much, either. He is engaged to be married to a younger woman. It does not appear to be a love match at all, but the young lady and her father think it may be for the best.

There are two older married couples that also figure in the story. Together they help us focus on what is really important. Even blind Bertha, though she cannot see, can hear better than most people, so she can “see” things that others cannot.

To some people, the ending might seem a bit contrived. It is not for nothing that Dickens likens it to a fairy tale, but there is a sense of hope and redemption as with A Christmas Carol. This could be turned into a delightful light play or screenplay.

Dickens calls The Battle of Life [1846] a Christmas story. Like all the stories in this volume, it is set in the holiday season, though A Christmas Carol is probably the only one whose distinctiveness would be lost if set at another time of year. In The Battle of Life only the last chapter (“Part the Third”) takes place in winter near Christmas.

This has echoes of The Chimes in that a young man of poor means is planning on getting married. Our main characters, though, are two sisters Grace and Marion. They are well off daughters of a doctor. Grace is at least four years older than Marion and because their mother has died, Grace acts somewhat like Marion’s mother.

Marion is engaged to Alfred. Grace encourages the liaison, saying “there is no truer heart in all the world” than Alfred. It is clear that Grace has carried a torch for Alfred for a long time. Marion sees this, too, but Alfred is a wonderful person and a good catch for either young lady.

We learn that Marion has another suitor, one perhaps less suitable. He is more interested in her than she in him. It is complicated, yes, but over the span of six years, it all works out. It is in its own way a tender story of love.

The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain [1847] is subtitled A Fancy for Christmas Time. Of all the stories in this volume, this perhaps is the most “Dickensian.” There are upper class and lower class people, many of the same types we have in other stories. But here there is a poor student who is ill and may be dying. While the student is a college level student, in some ways his case is like Little Nell. As with some of the other stories, this could be written for any time of year, but the cold winter makes any illness a little more serious.

The question is whether the man, a teacher at the school, is truly haunted by a ghost, or simply figuratively haunted by his past. It seems that something is haunting the student as well. Things do come together for all in this story.

While A Christmas Carol really does stand out, all of these stories are affirmations of life and love, and most readers should enjoy them. Because of the nearly theatrical approach, it might be worth reading them aloud. After all, back in Dickens’ day, that is what many readers did, especially to entertain one another. Yes, maybe sometimes he can be a bit maudlin, but there is a reason that Dickens is called a romantic realist. He embraces the best of both movements and tells some stirring stories. He is still worth reading today.

Gordon Korman. Jingle. Scholastic, 2016.

Still another Swindle mystery to review! Jingle is seasonal, as can be guessed from the title. A few of the Swindle mysteries got to be a bit repetitive and flat, but with this one Korman is back in his game.

We meet the same six middle school characters as in the other Swindle books: Griffin, “the man with a plan”; his best friend Ben, with his service ferret; Savannah, with her “darling” Luthor the gigantic Doberman; Melissa, hacker and tech geek; Logan, the budding if self-conscious actor; and Pitch, outdoor sportswoman and rock climber.

Each of them got roped into “volunteering” as Santa’s elves for the annual Colchester Christmas Extravaganza, Cedarville’s big Christmas celebration. None are happy about this, especially when the see that Santa is being played by Crenshaw, a hulking biker of questionable personal hygiene and criminal background. None, that is, except maybe Savannah because Luthor immediately takes a liking to the outlaw Santa.

The extravaganza is put on by the Colchester family, a prominent “old money” family in town, The widowed Mr. Colchester sponsors it every year, and it is a big hit. The parents of all six kids see their roles as a special opportunity for service, and most of them have fond memories of it from when they were children. This program has been going on for over sixty years.

The primary visual focus of the Christmas display is the Star of Prague, a tenth-century stained glass globe from the Czech capital said to have been commissioned by St. Wenceslas himself. The first night there is a sudden power blackout on the Colchester property. When the lights go back on, the Star is missing.

Because of previous escapades involving things like exotic pets and rare baseball cards, Griffin and his five buddies are immediate suspects. Things get more complicated because, as always it seems, the bully Darren Vader makes life miserable for the sleuths. In this case, he is also one of the elves and manages to alienate Russell Colchester, Mr. Colchester’s grandson, against them.

Logan realizes that the daughter of the director of the regional theater company is another of the elves, but she has taken a shine to Darren as well. Logan makes a few awkward attempts to get her attention in case a part for him opens up. He gets the attention, all right, but it is all negative.

And Ben’s parents, Jewish father and Gentile mother, are dueling over decorations. One half of his house is extravagantly lit up with Christmas decorations, the other half with Hanukkah decorations, and his parents are not talking to each other. When Ben complains that his house can be spotted from outer space, there is not much hyperbole. Wait till you see what happens to his father’s dreidel-dirigible…

Griffin has a plan, as always, to try to discover the whereabouts of the Star of Prague. They get picked up by the police—twice—they have trouble with a motorcycle gang in a biker bar, and are suspected of otherwise breaking in to the Colchester property. It gets complicated, but also very funny. There are plenty of suspects, and plenty of laughs. The wild conclusion, a feature of many Gordon Korman stories, is both clever and satisfying. Jingle is a good holiday read all around.

George Gilder. Life After Google. Regnery, 2018.

I have read a few articles by George Gilder and heard him speak, but I have never read any of his books. I was under the impression that Gilder was one of the brightest men of his generation. This book does nothing to dispel that idea. This book is profound.

I had a friend who used to highlight articles he read using a yellow highlighter. He would sometimes pass a copy of an article on to me, saying that the whole article ought to be dipped in yellow ink. That is the way I felt about a few of the chapters in Life After Google.

Gilder states his thesis pretty clearly near the beginning and then proceeds to tell a number of stories to demonstrate his main idea. One paragraph that sums it up says:

Cleaving all information is the great divide between creativity and determinism, between information entropy of surprise and thermodynamic entropy of predictable decline, between stories that capture a particular truth and statistics that reveal a sterile generality, between cryptographic hashes that preserve information and mathematical blends that dissolve it, between the butterfly effect and the law of averages, between genetics and the law of large numbers, between singularities and big data—in a word, the impassible gulf between consciousness and machines. (19)

Gilder wants us to think. And there is a big difference between mere number-crunching and thinking. Back in the nineties someone came out with a book called Machines Who Think. Notice the word who. Raymond Kurzweil, for example, anticipates a point in time which he calls singularity when machines will think the same way people do. Gilder says in so many words that it ain’t gonna happen.

While Gilder writes here mostly about the blockchain and how that can make many things personal and private, his overarching thrust is something more. He notes that with the coming of Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and others, people began using the scientific method to discover things. In Newton’s case, for example, this included discovering a mathematical model that fit his gravity observations. To Newton and many who followed, nature was something for mankind to observe and make discoveries about. (See Proverbs 25:2.)

For some like Einstein that was still true in the twentieth century, but things were changing. In the nineteenth century determinism began taking over. Nature was no longer something to be discovered but something to be explained. Hegel, Marx, and Darwin stand out but there were others. In England, Malthus claimed to “scientifically” show how England would shortly be overpopulated. In the 1960’s Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb claiming all kinds of human disasters by 1980 caused by overpopulation. Even though history has shown both Malthus and Ehrlich to have been mistaken, Gilder notes that Ehrlich still preaches his message of environmental disaster due to overpopulation in spite of the failure of many of his predictions.

There may be mathematical models, but as Gödel emphasized, mathematics is a human invention. It is a tool like language. Any mathematical model that tries to explain science has to be based on observations like Newton’s F=G(m₁m₂/r²). Hypotheses need to be supported by factual observations.

This, then, takes us to Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM). They all use algorithms for searches and recommendations. However, these algorithms do not really think. They simply make connections faster than our minds can make them. Not only are they limited but they have the potential for evil because they are deterministic. The user enters a search word and Google “determines” what you are looking for, even if it is a wacky conspiracy theory. If you complain that YouTube or Facebook is censoring you, they say, “The algorithm determined that the post did not meet the community standards.” With pornography that may be the case, but with many expressions, it is mere censorship.

I have not normally used Google for searches in about twelve years. Here is why. Towards the end of George W. Bush’s presidency in 2008 or so, I googled his name. I just wanted to get some quick information about him; I think it was just the year he was born, nothing special. Except for the Wikipedia article, all the links on the first page were weird conspiracy theories: “George W. Bush: War Criminal,” “George W. Bush and the Illuminati,” nonsense like that. That is hardly an impersonal algorithm!

As different web sites track you, they begin to make mathematical patterns. In many cases they are probably harmless, but they can be used to get personal information. The blockchain promotes privacy. One can keep records with it, not just monetary transactions as with Bitcoin but legal documents and other databases.

Gilder notes that Newton also successfully proposed the first gold-based money exchange. For the next three hundred years Western economies were relatively stable and people became confident in purchasing and investing. Since the 1970s, the world has depended on fiat money rather than a gold standard. Gilder sees Bitcoin and similar digital currencies as a correction to fiat money.

More than a correction to promote privacy and financial stability, Gilder sees a life after Google that is not deterministic. Why do so many Silicon Valley geeks support socialism? It is deterministic. Like an algorithm, history, they think, is headed in an inevitable direction. Recent polling data in American elections prove this is not the case, as much as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube would like us to think differently.

We know that Marx asked Darwin to write an introduction to Das Capital. Darwin turned it down because he was apolitical and did not want to get into a political controversy. Marx understood that not only was evolution a challenge to religious belief, but that it was deterministic. A biologically superior mankind would continue to evolve and finally make the perfect communal society.

I am reminded of the two pills Neo had to choose between in The Matrix. With the blue pill, “the story ends.” That was deterministic, with “an end to history.” With the red pill, Neo’s choice, he is told: “Remember, all I’m offering is the truth— nothing more.” It was a risk. It was against both conformity and security in the authoritarian Matrix, but it is the truth that sets us free. (See John 8:32.)

Gilder notes that real advances in technology come from human creativity, not “from Darwinian trends in the Valley.” (115) He gives examples of other creative computer people, too. Behind many of them is Peter Thiel, who has been giving fellowships to promising teen-aged computer coders and hardware builders so that they skip college and go right into the field.

Life After Google came out in 2018, but the book also is raising one question that the current flu epidemic has been emphasizing, namely, is an expensive college education really worth it? We note also that Gilder’s web site supported the Great Barrington Declaration which questioned the heavy hand of the state in reaction to the coronavirus. (Not unsurprisingly, though supported by thousands of M.D.s, the Declaration was initially censored by Google.)

Many “politically correct” people claim to be anti-establishment, but in being p.c., they prove to be part of the establishment. Gilder here is really anti-establishment. He is not promoting conformity. He is promoting privacy and creativity. Isn’t that where mankind can really shine? More than with lockstep determinism any day!

Barry Eisenberg. Primal Calling. Vanguard, 2020.

Primal Calling is a different kind of novel. Nothing experimental—we’re not talking about James Joyce or William Conescu—this is a straightforward story that might appeal to both readers of Jane Eyre and readers of Tom Clancy. Quite a combination!

Primal Calling first and probably foremost is a story of family conflict and tension such as we find in the novels of the Brontë sisters or the plays of Tennessee Williams or Eugene O’Neill. Except even here the family conflict might be a tad milder.

Jack Davies is finishing his first year of college. He is attending a local community college though he could have gone elsewhere, but he feels he ought to remain home. He is the only child of his single mother who has a successful physical therapy practice. He and his mother have had a loving relationship.

Jack has been told that he did not really have a father. His mother, though a college student herself at the time, wanted a child and went to a sperm bank. Jack had no reason to doubt that story until he sees his original birth certificate a year ago. It names a Stewart Jacobson as his father. Jack then begins a year-long search to find this man who seems to have vanished from the face of the earth.

The only clue is that Mr. Jacobson’s address on the birth certificate is given as New England Institute of Technology, an obvious stand-in for Massachusetts Institute of Technology. M.I.T., er, N.E.I.T. has no record of a student by that name, but Jack keeps on looking.

The story begins in medias res, in the middle of the action, with college sophomore Jack being abducted for a few hours. It is a kind of kidnapping, except that he is returned to school unharmed. It really seems like he should not be looking for this man.

A young woman at N.E.I.T., actually a student herself working in the alumni office, keeps in touch with him. In her regular work, she came across a record of an unpaid dorm bill with Jacobson’s name on it. Even though there is no student or alumnus record of a person with that name, what was he then doing in a dorm?

Jack begins to wonder whether he can trust his mother or the people who abducted him and then let him go. He runs into some of them several times.

Without going into too much detail, the story then takes off in several directions. After a while, Cathy, the helpful N.E.I.T. student, becomes interested in Jack’s case. So do some agents working for an unnamed federal agency. The reader learns that it is the Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA, though it is unclear Jack ever realizes this.

What started out as an understandable story of a child trying to learn about his birth father, becomes a story of international intrigue. In contrast to Jack’s loving upbringing and his desire to understand his mother, another family has a fissure that seems irreparable. Rafiq from Lebanon has a son who has taken up with Islamist jihadis. The son does not trust his parents. His parents’ hearts are broken.

While most of the story does take place in New Jersey, there are episodes in Germany, Arabia, and a few other American states. As Jack’s search enlarges in scope, so does the intrigue.

There are several plots going on at once. But this is not a mashup, not Texts from Jane Eyre or Jane Eyre and Vampires. This is about a kid or young man trying to discover the truth about his family and running into strange obstacles.

Most readers understand that sometimes birth parents of adopted children do not want their identities shared. There might be a scandal involved, for example. But this is a little different from that. It seems all knowledge of Stewart Jacobson has somehow been expunged. In the language of 1984, he has become an unperson.

Primal Calling is well written and quite intense. At times I did not want to put it down. At other times I had to put it down just to absorb what had just happened in the story. One curious aspect of the story is that, except perhaps for the jihadi son who has a minor role in the story, none of the characters are really bad guys. There is a lot of misunderstanding and some rough treatment, but we understand why everyone does what they do, even the terrorist. So while the family intrigue might remind us of Emily or Charlotte Brontë, the characters are more like those of their Universalist sister, Anne.

However, that does not mean that there is not a lot of conflict—both external and internal. It just means that there is potential for even weird and deceitful situations to turn out all right. The reader should enjoy the ride, whether he or she is looking for Catherine Earnshaw or Jack Ryan. Primal Calling has something for both.