Crooked River Country: Wranglers, Rogues, and Barons

Crooked River Country: Wranglers, Rogues, and Barons

I grew up in western Oregon, which seems to have mostly been settled by pious, industrious folks who built schools and churches and otherwise set about contributing to their communities.  This is all well and good, but it's also pretty boring.  The history of central and eastern Oregon is much more "interesting" in both good and bad ways.  It was much more "the west" than the more densely inhabited Willamette valley.

This book is one of the better histories of the region, and covers both a lot of time and a fairly large portion of Oregon.

Some of that 'interesting' history is ugly and shameful - the book talks about orders, at a certain point, to kill all native Americans, with entire families being wiped out.

Other bits that are memorable include Prineville's "Vigilantes", a group of masked men who committed several murders in the name of "keeping order", who were subsequently faced down by another armed group, the "Moonshiners", whose leader was then elected sheriff in order to keep the peace in a more legitimate and lawful way.

A chapter on range wars is also reminiscent of many a western, with cattle ranchers pitted against sheep men.

There are a number of interesting tidbits, like the fact that Prineville didn't get a church until several years after its founding.  Or the location, in an 'island' in a lava field, of a popular place for rustlers to hide cattle before selling them on.

At times the book feels like it could have been edited and or organized a little bit better, but it's still a great, and very comprehensive look at the history of central Oregon.

The book ends with the death - in the early 1950ies - of the 'Moonshiner' who became sheriff in the late 1800s, bookending an era of local history.

Endurance

Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

I love the idea of exploring space. Perhaps it doesn't have a lot of practical here and now benefits, but the idea of 'going beyond' feels right to me; something we ought to do as a species to push the boundaries of what's known, and to explore and inspire. This is the story of one astronaut.

The book is structured as alternating chapters describing Scott Kelly's 11 months in space, as well as the long road to that point in his life, from a kid who didn't do well in school, to fighter pilot, and finally, astronaut.

I found the story of his rise interesting, perhaps a bit more so because he wasn't a 'model student', but not terribly different from many other stories of success. He found something that motivated him to pursue a dream and stuck with it.

Scott's time on the space station, on the other hand, including the launch from the earth from the Kazakhstan launch site, really held my interest. I sort of had this idea of 'space stuff' as this gleaming, hi-tech world where everything is wonderfully built and engineered; the best that humanity can build. It seems that the reality doesn't always live up to this ideal, though, and there are a lot of stories of various pieces of equipment that need regular, difficult maintenance. And then the stories of "ordinary", day to day living in a zero-gravity environment make you realize what an amazing feat it all is - people able to survive in a tiny shell so far away from the rest of humanity. Utilizing tortillas to eat a lot of food with because it's easy to wrap stuff up and keep it floating away! The contrast of the big with the small makes it all the more something we can relate to.

I mentioned the launch earlier - it's one of the funnier bits, with some of the odd superstitions that the Russians have prior to getting in the rocket that takes them to the space station. Getting out of the vehicle take them there and peeing on the rear tire, for instance.

Lots of other interesting tidbits about what it's like to be there in person make the book worthwhile for anyone interested in the challenges of 'boldly going where noone has gone before'.

Draft Animals

Draft Animals: Living the Pro Cycling Dream (Once in a While)

Many "sports books" tend to be a bit formulaic: the hero starts out, faces some adversity, and then wins something big.

Phil Gaimon's book about climbing to the top ranks of professional cyclists is more interesting than that.  He's funny, adds a lot of detail, and perhaps because he's "only" really, really good at cycling, but one of the top guys, the ups and downs of his career feel a bit more real.

This book takes over where his last book, Pro Cycling on $10 a Day: From Fat Kid to Euro Pro
leaves off.  Phil has secured a spot to ride with the Garmin team, a part of the World Tour.

The book follows the ups (race win!) and downs: not having his contract renewed at the end of that season, dropping down a level for a year, then another season in the World Tour.

There is no Big Win, and when he winds up without a contract at the end of 2016, and decides to call time on his professional career.

He had what it took to be in the World Tour, but wasn't one of the best guys there, and his struggles related to that are what provide a lot of the tension in the book.

There's also a lot of (sometimes raunchy if that's a thing that bothers you) humor too, though, so the book bounces around nicely between thoughtful, funny, happy and sad.

If you like cycling, this book and the preceding one are well worth it.

Child of Steens Mountain

Child of Steens Mountain

I love to read about life in wild places in the past, and this book didn't disappoint.  Indeed, I enjoyed the perspective of a girl growing up as a different one than many of the books about eastern Oregon written by men.

Steens Mountain, if you've never heard of it, is one of the most remote areas in the United States, outside of Alaska.  Even in this day and age, it's a 2 hour drive from the area where the author's parents homesteaded to Burns, a small town of less than 3000 people.

Despite many modern innovations becoming available during her childhood in the 30ies and 40ies  - cars, airplanes, radios, and so on, the life Ms O'Keefe lived on the southern flank of Steens mountain in the 30ies was probably closer to that of Laura Ingalls Wilder of "Little House on the Prairie" than that we enjoy today, in many ways.  Stories of animals both wild and domestic abound, as well as the ever present sense of being very isolated and independent, as it wasn't likely for help to come quickly if you got in trouble.  On the other hand, she also talks about a deep sense of neighbors helping one another out, and the pleasure of other people's company when they were around.

This is not a lengthy book; it's simple and interesting, with a number of anecdotes woven in.    Rabid coyotes, rattlesnakes, freezing winters and hot summers, wandering sheepherders and an automobile more or less held together with bailing wire all make their appearances.

Highly recommended.

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

The latest from Neal Stephenson, this feels like an apple that hasn't fallen far from the tree. Somehow familiar in that it mixes bits in the past with present day science fiction, it reminds me a bit of Cryptonimicon, one of my favorite books ever.  I wouldn't quite put Rise and Fall in that category, but it was certainly entertaining.  The central concept of the book is unique and interesting, even if perhaps it tugs a bit too much at the limits of the plausible, even for science fiction.

As is often the case with his books, the ending is not 100% satisfying, although it's not actually bad or depressing.

The fact that an eclipse plays a central role in the book made reading this book over the summer, around the time the big eclipse crossed central Oregon, that much more entertaining.

I'd give it a read - it's fun - if you like Stephenson's writing, but wouldn't put it among his best works.

Kit Carson: The Life of an American Border Man

Kit Carson: The Life of an American Border Man

First a hero in dime novels, and subsequently reviled as a killer of Native Americans, this book tries to look beyond both and describe Kit Carson as he actually was; a product of his time.

Going back in time, his family is described as Scots-Irish, a people used to rough justice carried out in person, and often retributive in nature, rather than carried out by the authorities.

Life on the frontier, where Carson grew up as his family migrated west, was similar.  The law was a somewhat distant concept.

This is a central theme of the book - how many of Carson's actions should be viewed in the light of the times he lived in.  Some are brutal from a modern viewpoint, but perhaps he should not be judged so harshly, the author states.

I wish the book had dealt more with Carson's travels throughout the west, and given more of a sense of place to his journeys, as that was my own interest in reading it.  In any age without automobiles, Carson traveled through a vast area of the country in a time when relatively few people of European extraction had been there.

An interesting look, in any event, at a figure who grew to be 'larger than life' despite being fairly modest and unassuming.  The leader of the mapping expedition Carson joined, John Fremont, was far more of a self-promoter.

The author's task is not made easier by the lack of much in the way of a written record from Carson himself.

A solid effort, but I'm not sure I'd recommend the book.

Miles from Nowhere: Tales from America's Contemporary Frontier

Miles from Nowhere: Tales from America's Contemporary Frontier

"The Frontier", once described as those places with less than 2 people per square mile, lives on in a large swath of the western United States.

This book follows the author as he travels to meet the inhabitants of the numerous counties in the western US that meet this definition.

Having spent most of the past 15 years in Europe, there's something I find fascinating about these places.  Indeed, most of the south-eastern quarter of my home state of Oregon is extremely sparsely populated, and earns a few mentions in the book.

The book talks about how the west was, and how it is now, and how it's changed, and how it may continue to change.

Most importantly, the author introduces us to a number of people who live in this part of the world, and gives us an idea of what makes them tick, who they are, and what they're doing "out there".

The book is nearly 20 years old at this point, but interestingly, many of the counties in question have continued to decline in population.

Recommended reading if you're curious about the kinds of places where the "road less traveled" leads.

Gold and Cattle Country

http://amzn.to/1OxqmQ5

Reading "Gold and Cattle Country" is like sitting down and listening to a lifetime of tales about how things were in the real "old west".  And what a lifetime it was!

Herman Oliver's father came to the US from the Azores as a stowaway, and ended up settling in Oregon's Grant County.  Herman Oliver was born in John Day Oregon in 1885, when horses were the main means of transportation, and died in 1970, after a man had walked on the moon for the first time.  He was a successful cattle rancher and banker, and later became involved in local and Oregon politics as a member of various committees.

The sense of listening to an "old timer's" stories is strong, as the book rambles a bit at times, but in a pleasant way.

The author dedicates some space to evidencing the differences between the real west he lived in, and "the west" of movies and TV, like most of eastern Oregon. Nonetheless, the book carries a sense of "west" that is not present in the mossy green valleys and slate gray skies of western Oregon; a west of ranches and gold mines and of raw, remote country.

This is reflected in the names, too:

Western Oregon, perhaps due to the mild and friendly climate that attracted home loving people, abounds in gentle names such as Amity, Glad Tidings, Freedom, Forest Grove, Goshen, Fernhill, Fairview, Enchanted Prairie, and the like.

Indeed, Western Oregon was mostly settled by people looking to farm, build churches and schools and communities, and otherwise create a peaceful, and somewhat dull existence compared to the "gold and cattle country" of eastern Oregon.  While it's hard to disagree with the motives of the former, it does not make for much in the way of stories.

At times the book rambles a bit too much, and goes into more detail than many might find interesting about actually running a cattle ranch, but those parts are brief and bearable.

A few anecdotes that jumped out:

Sheep had a reputation for being driven through areas and laying waste to the graze. An Irish sheepherder is allowed to graze his sheep in some wheat that otherwise would have gone to waste:

I said to the herder, "Pat, did you ever have your sheep in feed as good as this?" He answered, "Ounly in the moonlight."  A whole story of an era is wrapped up there.

Interestingly, the wild horses of Oregon were in high demand when they were still used by various military forces:

The U.S. cavalry and light artillery looked to Oregon for their choicest mounts. In the Boer War, the British bought many thousands of horses, and in the first World War, British, French and American officers could be seen inspecting horses at every eastern Oregon shipping station.

Some border on the "not very politically correct", but I guess that goes with the times:

Once, while judging the riding events at the Pendleton Roundup, I was sitting on my horse waiting for the next event, while the Indian women, in their finery, happened to be lined up in front of me. They were back to me and another judge was appraising them and their costumes for the title of "Indian Queen". An old Indian saw me, noticed the judge sign, hurried up and told me confidentially but emphatically, "You no judge squaw's behind! You judge 'em in front." 

The book is full of stories like these, and they give a real sense of what life was like, and how much things changed over the years.

Lastly, this quote struck me as something that makes as much sense now as it did then:

If asked for a single sentence of advice to anyone starting a ranch or any other business, I'd say, "Be constructive." Time spent in fighting neighbors, fighting the business people, fighting other organizations, is wasted. We improved the meadow, improved the breed, made our association stronger, built harmonious relations, made friends everywhere. The policy has made our lives smoother and has made it fun to live.

Heirs of Empire

Heirs of Empire

This book is not one with mind-bending new science fiction concepts - it's more of a "space opera" with a lot of cliches.  But it's a good, fun story, and the cliches are kind of mixed and matched with original bits and pieces into something that's new and - I thought - very entertaining.  There's some Star Wars there, some of the pirate movies I used to watch as a kid, some Dune, and it all works well because they are tried and true story elements that people have always liked.  Throw in some cool, futuristic tech, and a plot with lots of action, and it's a great book to read for enjoyment.

If you want hard science fiction, this isn't it, but if you want a very colorful, interesting world with action and adventure, it's a good book.  Indeed, the author leaves a lot of things unexplained, so I'm eagerly awaiting future installments set in the same world.

I enjoyed some of Evan Currie's earlier books too, but to me it felt like this one kicked it up a notch.  Given my tastes, I'd give it five stars.

Seveneves

http://www.amazon.com/Seveneves-Novel-Neal-Stephenson-ebook/dp/B00LZWV8JO/?tag=dedasys-20

Neal Stephenson is one of my favorite authors: I'd buy pretty much anything he writes.

This book was just not one I loved, though.

First of all, the first two thirds of the book is pretty depressing.  The entire population of the earth, outside of a few survivors in space, is wiped out in a massive fiery apocalypse when innumerable pieces of the moon come crashing down.  There is some interesting, and fairly detailed and realistic space science fiction regarding the survivors and how they cling to life in space , but the overall gloominess is aptly described by Cory Doctorow:

Stephenson builds up a sense of brutal inevitability, of humanity's insignificance in the cosmos that had me putting the book down for hours at a time, unable to read on (but my curiosity always overcame my sorrow). From: http://boingboing.net/2015/06/03/neal-stephensons-seveneves.html 

The final portion of the book, when humanity is rebuilding, is more positive in its outlook, and much more speculative science fiction.  It seemed too brief though, and leaves a lot of threads hanging.  Perhaps because the first part of the book didn't put me in a particularly positive frame of mind, I found myself more skeptical of some elements of the world Stephenson creates, and the events that lead to it and within it.

If you're already a Stephenson fan: you'll probably want to read it.

If not: read one of his other books like Cryptonimicon.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

My biggest problem with business books is too much fluff around a simple core idea.  This book did well from that point of view: it didn't feel padded.  It was relatively short and to the point, and was interesting throughout.

I'm not sure I agree with everything he has to say, but that's vastly preferable to a bland book that you sort of nod along with because it's not bold enough to say anything people might disagree with.

The biggest, most important thing he asks is “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”, as a way of discerning who has contrarian ideas that may actually be meaningful.  An interesting question.

One of the principle contrarian ideas in the book is that good businesses are something of a monopoly.  Sure, they don't want to come out and say it and get busted, but if you look at Microsoft, Google, and now Facebook... it's not like someone has come along and competed with them in what they do best.  New companies form around new things, and that generally happens only once per thing.

A less controversial point of view that's been promoted in other books like Crossing the Chasm, Thiel recommends starting out by dominating a niche.  Don't aim for "1% of a billion people", because that's going to have too much competition, be too hard to reach, and generally not be a good way to get started for a startup.

Every startup is small at the start. Every monopoly dominates a large share of its market. Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market. Always err on the side of starting too small. The reason is simple: it’s easier to dominate a small market than a large one. If you think your initial market might be too big, it almost certainly is

...

The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Any big market is a bad choice, and a big market already served by competing companies is even worse.

 This is what he really means by "zero to one".  Incremental evolution of a product is not his idea of what really changes the world.  What really changes things are creating something where previously there was nothing.

There were also a number of things I wish I could ask about in more detail, because they seem partially right, but also dubious in other ways.

He talks about how there used to be more... "central planning", for lack of a better term, in the United States.  Big projects like dams, interstate freeways, and going to the moon, that don't seem possible these days.  I agree with him on things like the Apollo program; I wish we did more of that.  On the other hand, some of the big planned projects have had pretty serious unintended consequences.  Dams in the Pacific Northwest have had serious impacts on salmon populations, just as one example.  Even in terms of government projects, the internet, which was not nearly as well funded or visible as the space program, has probably had far more of an impact on our daily lives.  And I don't think anyone could have planned that out at the time.  Still, I do agree that it's kind of sad not to see more big ambitious projects.

About company founders:

Founders should share a prehistory before they start a company together—otherwise they’re just rolling dice.

I wrote about this same topic here: http://journal.dedasys.com/2015/03/20/the-cargo-cult-cofounder/

Thiel comes out against remote work:

Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day.

Cryptonomicon was required reading, and we preferred the capitalist Star Wars to the communist Star Trek

Say what?!  I don't really get why either one fits into 20th century economic schemes.

He talks about globalization, which might have some negatives for, say, factory workers, versus automation with computers, which he makes out in a very positive light:

Americans fear technology in the near future because they see it as a replay of the globalization of the near past. But the situations are very different: people compete for jobs and for resources; computers compete for neither.

Clearly, computers don't compete for jobs or resources, but the people running them sure do!

And in the middle of the book, he succinctly lays out his principles for what makes for a good company:

1. The Engineering Question Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
2. The Timing Question Is now the right time to start your particular business?
3. The Monopoly Question Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
4. The People Question Do you have the right team?
5. The Distribution Question Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?
6. The Durability Question Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?
7. The Secret Question Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?

Which seem like good questions for creating world-changing companies.

Longmire Mysteries

http://www.amazon.com/Cold-Dish-Longmire-Mystery-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0023SDPS6/?tag=dedasys-20

I haven't read the whole series, and have only linked the first book.  They are interconnected, so worth reading in order.

These aren't westerns in the sense of a story set in the 1800's, but they are very, very much about The West.

The succinct description: county sheriff Walt Longmire, his best friend Henry Standing Bear, and an engaging supporting cast fight crime in a small town in Wyoming.

The descriptions of the plains and mountains of Wyoming are worth it alone, and the stories are pretty entertaining as well.  The author manages to capture modern life in a fairly remote part of the US.  At the same time, these are not formulaic books and have plenty of humor sprinkled throughout.

These might be a good read even for those who normally are not fans of classic westerns.

There's also a TV series, although I think the books are better - they are richer and more nuanced.

Burnt Creek

Burnt Creek

I like to read westerns for entertainment, but have always thought it'd be cool to read a few more about the bits of Oregon that are "the west".  There seem to be very few set there, so this book was a pleasant surprise.  It's set near Bend, Oregon, and is a collection of short stories about  local character who runs a local general store.

I'm generally not a short story fan, as they seem to be kind of short and blunt compared to the long reads I like, but these were enjoyable.  If you're not into westerns or Oregon though, this book probably isn't for you.

Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future

Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future

Neal Stephenson is one of those authors who could write pretty much anything, and I'd buy it, which is what made me buy this anthology.

This collection of short stories was supposed to "reignite the iconic and optimistic visions of the golden age of science fiction".  That sounded pretty cool to me; there is too much "doom and gloom" these days.  If you want to read something depressing, open up a newspaper and think about all the ruined lives and all that will never be for the various victims of misfortune and disaster.  I want to read something uplifting in my spare time.

Unfortunately, this book does not really deliver, outside of a few stories that were good, like Neal Stephenson's.  Some of them were kind of trite, and many felt a bit preachy about current "doom & gloom" topics like global warming.  I'm not one to deny what scientists are telling us, but I read these stories hoping for an optimistic view of people solving problems.

I suppose part of the problem is that I'm just not a fan of short stories; they don't give the author much time to really create much depth, so they tend to bludgeon you over the head with a Message, or otherwise be very direct, compared to a novel length work, which can afford to have a richer plot and characters.  Combine that with some of the authors who had various axes to grind, and I felt like the Messages were taking a back seat to the stories.

I'd give this book a pass.  Luckily, Neal Stephenson is coming out with a new book sometime this year!

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

This book comes highly recommended by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, which is pretty good as recommendations go, is pretty good.

It's well written, with an easygoing, yet intelligent style that holds one's interest. The stories, while somewhat data, have a lot of human factors that are still very relevant today.

Having been written nearly 50 years ago, the book is somewhat dated, and it shows in places.  There's a bit about the stock ticker falling hours behind actual trading which sure seems quaint in this era of quants and high frequency trading.  The place of women and minorities in the world of yesteryear is also visible, although hardly the fault of the author.

There are several stories, about companies, the stock market, and about foreign exchange in a a day and age when currencies did not float freely, but were pegged to the dollar within set ranges.

There were some good quotes:

One of de la Vega’s observations about the Amsterdam traders was that they were “very clever in inventing reasons” for a sudden rise or fall in stock prices

This is still a great description of the financial press, isn't it?  Lots of after-the-fact descriptions of why things happened.

Large corporations are often accused of rigging markets, administering prices, and otherwise dictating to the consumer [it observed]. And yesterday Ford Motor Company announced its two-year experiment with the medium-priced Edsel has come to an end … for want of buyers. All this is quite a ways from auto makers being able to rig markets or force consumers to take what they want them to take.… And the reason, simply, is that there is no accounting for tastes.… When it comes to dictating, the consumer is the dictator without peer.

There's a chapter on Xerox, the copier company

The most common malfunction is a jamming of the supply of copy paper

That bit reminded me of how much computers have improved over the years - and how much printers and copiers and the like are still so often broken and frustrating.  Although... even with copiers' many faults, they are better these days!

A bad mispuff can occasionally put a piece of the paper in contact with hot parts, igniting it and causing an alarming cloud of white smoke to issue from the machine; in such a case the operator is urged to do nothing, or, at most, to use a small fire extinguisher that is attached to it, since the fire burns itself out comparatively harmlessly if left alone, whereas a bucket of water thrown over a 914 may convey potentially lethal voltages to its metal surface.

The Xerox part of the book has a few interesting predictions:

Various magazine articles have predicted nothing less than the disappearance of the book as it now exists, and pictured the library of the future as a sort of monster computer capable of storing and retrieving the contents of books electronically and xerographically. The “books” in such a library would be tiny chips of computer film—“editions of one.”

I read the book on my Kindle!

On race and labor relations in Xerox, which was a fairly progressive place, for the time, as described in the book:

For example, we’ve tried, without much fanfare, to equip some Negro youths to take jobs beyond sweeping the floor and so on. The program required complete coöperation from our union, and we got it. But I’ve learned that, in subtle ways, the honeymoon is over. There’s an undercurrent of opposition. Here’s something started, then, that if it grows could confront us with a real business problem. If it becomes a few hundred objectors instead of a few dozen, things might even come to a strike, and in such a case I hope we and the union leadership would stand up and fight. But I don’t really know. You can’t honestly predict what you’d do in a case like that. I think I know what we’d do.”

The union's antipathy to black people taking better jobs is "interesting".

This is relevant to the crowd here in Italy hoping to return to the Lira and abandon the Euro:

Devaluation, as the most heroic and most dangerous of remedies for a sick currency, is rightly feared. By making the devaluing country’s goods cheaper to others, it boosts exports, and thus reduces or eliminates a deficit in international accounts, but at the same time it makes both imports and domestic goods more expensive at home

All in all, I really enjoyed the writing style, but - and it could just be me - I'm not sure I absorbed anything terribly profound or lasting from the book.  It's an entertaining read, and there are bits and pieces of wisdom throughout, so I'd recommend it if you like to read a lot, but if you're looking for a quick read with more tactical advice about the world of business, this isn't it.

Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies

Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies

I'm fascinated by odd bits of geography, and had high hopes for this book.  It did have a nice list of interesting places around the world, but on the whole fell a bit flat for a few reasons:

• Some of the verbiage was way over the top:

What brought the group together was an understanding of urban exploration as a kind of geographical version of surrealist automatic writing. Our real-world adventures were little more than pegs on which to hang our interpretative essays, which usually came with pendulous bibliographies featuring situationists and Magical Marxists.

...

Today the pain and humiliation of subject peoples has been fashioned into a series of sub-Hegelian clichés about respect for “others” and respect for “difference.”

•  I'd heard of most of the odd places, and while he did add some interesting details about a few, there was nothing in the book that added to my sense of discovering of something new.
• Some of the selected places were not things I would have thought about as particularly interesting, such as a traffic island near a freeway.  I suppose they're worth contemplating, but - and I apologize for the spoiler - there were no big revelations about traffic islands, and I read that bit as quickly as I could.

The concept was very promising, but the end result was a bit too philosophical for my tastes.  I'd pass on this one.

A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca

A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca

"Epic" gets thrown around a lot these days.  The journey in this book does the word justice.

A 400-strong Spanish expedition sets out to conquer and colonize what is now northern Mexico in 1527, but due to bad navigation and the strength of the eastbound stream in the Gulf of Mexico, land in northern Florida instead.  After 8 years of wandering and enslavement, on the pacific coast of Mexico, the four survivors of the expedition finally regained contact with the Spanish empire.

Separated from their ships, harassed by natives using guerrilla tactics and not having found a land of gold and plenty, the members of the expedition - already reduced in number - first escaped Florida on improvised rafts that took them to the barrier islands of Texas.  Without their guns or any other military advantage over the natives, desperately hungry and thirsty, the survivors were enslaved by local Indians.  Slowly their numbers dwindled until only 4 remained, who were held in slavery for many years.  After finally escaping, and making their way as medicine men, they returned to Spanish civilization and wrote two accounts of their journey.

This book is a modern retelling of their story, full of interesting details and historical context, as well as musings about what kind of mental strength it must have taken to survive for so long in a hostile, foreign land.  Beyond the psychological aspects of their journey, it's a fascinating story if you consider how much territory they covered, in an age where most of North and South America were very much still terra incognita. Columbus had only (re)discovered a few islands in the Caribbean less than 40 years earlier.   Cabeza de Vaca (the name means "cow head") and his companions must have witnessed much of native life that would soon vanish forever under the twin onslaught of disease and conquest.

I had always thought of the Spanish Conquistadors as having all been rather brutal in their treatment of the inhabitants of the "new" world, but apparently this was not so, even if dissenters did not get their way:

Las Casas pressed ahead with his campaign. His solution to the Indian problem was both disarmingly simple and extremely radical: “The Indians need to be placed beyond the grasp of the Spaniards, because no remedy that leaves them in Spanish hands will stop their annihilation.”

...

Instead of bringing the Indians into the Christian fold through violence, the healers [Cabeza de Vaca and his companions] dreamed of accomplishing this grandiose project peacefully and humanely.

Indeed, later in life, Cabeza de Vaca returned to the Americas - this time near present-day Buenos Aires, but, in part because of his benevolent attitude towards the indigenous population, he was deposed as the local ruler and shipped back to Spain.

I found the book and its subject to be fascinating, and would certainly recommend it.

The 7 Day Startup: You Don't Learn Until You Launch

The 7 Day Startup: You Don't Learn Until You Launch

It's getting faster, cheaper and easier to start a bootstrapped business all the time.  This book pushes the concept even further with the idea of launching a business in a week.

To be blunt about it, I think Rob Walling's Start Small, Stay Small is the book to beat in this space, and I'm not sure this one does - Robs seems to have more specific, tactical advice.  However, 7 Day Startup does have a lot of useful suggestions, it's a quick read, and it's a bit more up to date than Rob's book, so overall I thought it was pretty good.  Another plus is that it really is meant for people interested in bootstrapping a company from nothing, rather than the VC-funded Silicon Valley types, who are operating on what seems like another planet, at times.  There are fewer books aimed at the bootstrapping crowd.

One thing I liked about this book is that it mentions a lot of Dan's failures. Actually, I don't like the fact that he failed, as he seems like a nice guy, but some people tend to only include the positive bits of their story, making it look like they moved from success to success.  You get to thinking that they're not normal and were destined for success, so maybe their advice is not that useful to a regular guy such as yourself.  A lot of the things he worked on that were not successful are very illustrative of things to avoid as a bootstrapper.

At $4, the book is worth it if it saves you even a few hours of hassle or problems.  I liked the bit about problem customers:

My team prides themselves in sniffing out potentially difficult customers prior to sign-up and scaring them off.

He doesn't, however, give specific advice on how to do this, or even how they do it in their particular business.

Additionally, he has a bunch of resources associated with the book here:

http://wpcurve.com/the-7-day-startup-resources/

American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880 - 1964

American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880 - 1964

A lengthly book that sometimes delves into minutiae more than I would have cared for, it was still a worthy portrait of an individual who played an important role in 20th century history.

The book traces MacCarthur's family's origins, his upbringing and early career, which were all distinguished in their own ways, and then traces his role the war in the Pacific, the occupation of Japan, and his final act as a general, in the Korean war.  The general outline is available on Wikipedia, but here are some details that I found interesting:

•  His mother was quite a meddler.  The picture of MacArthur in most books is of a strong, proud general.  It turns out that his mother, through much of his earlier career, regularly sent letters to various politicians and military higher-ups requesting his promotion.
• The liberal treatment of Japan and its reconstruction owe much to him.  It can't have been easy to turn a page so quickly on the more than 100,000 US casualties in the Pacific theater alone.  Yet the desire to inflict a punitive settlement on Japan as set aside, and the country rebuilt as a liberal democracy.
• Some Japanese forces were absolutely appalling in their behavior:

Nearly 100,000 Filipinos were murdered by the Japanese. Hospitals were set afire after their patients had been strapped to their beds. The corpses of males were mutilated, females of all ages were raped before they were slain, and babies’ eyeballs were gouged out and smeared on walls like jelly

MacArthur had seen enough of war to abhor it... yet it was also his calling.

Even more striking, we find in one journalist’s observations, set down after a meeting with MacArthur, that “the General believes the press, right now, ought to quit making heroes of generals and admirals, as the first step in doing its job. The press of the world, too, ought to quit glorifying war in general. He feels that the business of making heroes of generals and admirals and glorifying war has a lot to do with influencing public opinion to accept war.”

and

And in 1957, to the delight of liberal pacifists like Roger Baldwin, he lashed out at large Pentagon budgets. “Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear—kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor—with the cry of grave national emergency,” he said. “Always there has been some terrible evil… to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”

This, however, was after he "went off the rails" in his ideas for where to take the Korean conflict: some of his ideas involved the use of nuclear weapons or dropping "dirty" weapons on China, ideas his political masters would have none of.

He also apparently had high political ambitions of his own, but they never bore fruit.  I hadn't realized that he'd been considered a candidate for the presidency in several elections.  Apparently he wasn't very good at playing the political game.

The book ends with his death and funeral with little mention of his family, which I found unfortunate.

I'm not sure I'd recommend the book unless you read quickly and find the subject matter interesting, due to the length, and abundance of details in certain portions.  I found it interesting though.

He was certainly a gifted orator; this passage from the end of the book stands out:

“The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint; they have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory, I always come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes in my ears—Duty, Honor, Country. Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps; and the Corps; and the Corps. I bid you farewell.”

Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival

Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival

The global business ambitions of John Jacob Astor collide with the reality of one of the corners of the earth farthest from European civilization.

Launched in 1810, the idea was to create the seed of a colony on the west coast of North American - which belonged to no country in that day and age - to take advantage of the fur trade, and, perhaps, to found a new country or further the reach of the nascent United States.  

The expedition was not the success Astor had envisioned, and it would be nearly another 30 years before the Oregon Trail came to see larger numbers of emigrants headed for the Oregon territory.

The book was especially interesting for me, having been born and raised in western Oregon.  As something of a failure, the expedition doesn't get mentioned nearly as much as the Lewis and Clark expedition, or the Oregon Trail of later years.  But it's a fascinating bit of Oregon history.  Part of what did not work out for the expedition was the horrible, gray, damp weather that dominates the northern Oregon coast during winter.

Indeed, the Spanish, who were already in California, apparently were not much interested in the area to the north:

Spaniards first had sailed northward from their colonies in Mexico as far as today’s Oregon in the 1600s. But the cool, wet, rugged Northwest Coast inhabited by Indian tribes living in wooden longhouses and traveling in large cedar canoes didn’t compel them like the benign climates and monumental, gold-encrusted civilizations of the Aztecs and Incas far to the south.

The expedition was a two-pronged approach, with a boat going around Cape Horn and an overland expedition.  It took the overland expedition more than a year to finally reach Astoria, after much wandering.  As was often the case with the earliest white explorers, they very likely would have all perished had it not been for the kindness and hospitality of local Indians at various points on their route.

Without spoiling the story, there was also a fair amount of conflict with other Indian groups.

When both groups had finally arrived at their destination, and settled in, their existence was a bleak one:

Then imagine the rude shock of arrival in the coastal winter or early spring: It’s cold, it’s raining—as it is nearly two hundred days a year at the mouth of the Columbia; the infinite gray coastline stretches away, backed by the thick, dark rain forest—soggy, choked with rotting cedar logs, prehistoric sword ferns, and the dark columns of towering fir and spruce whose outstretched limbs are draped with lichen in giant, ghostly cobwebs. This was a far cry from the euphoric expanses and brilliant starry skies of the high plains, or even the snowy sparkle of the Rockies.

and

...set the mood of life on the Northwest Coast—the anxious, paranoid, exposed life in the dripping rain forest, along the swashing tidal rivers and surf-pounded headlands. This was not a warm, friendly place. In this dank, dark setting, fringed by violent death, personalities like McDougall spied malevolence lurking behind every tree.

As a now former resident of western Oregon, I think these descriptions do the place justice: if you like the sun and aren't a fan of damp weather, it's not a good place to be!

What put the nail in the coffin of the attempted settlement was the war of 1812 and the arrival of a British/Canadian group who (peacefully) took control of the fort and oversaw it for the next 30 some odd years, when the US/Canadian border was settled at its present location.

A few of the French-Canadian members of the expedition, including Marie Dorion, settled in the upper Willamette valley, becoming some of the first non-natives in the area.

An interesting footnote is that ships going around the horn would, rather than crawl up the coast, go to Hawaii and then double back.  The seagoing expedition took on some Hawaiians as crewmen on their way to Oregon.  One can only imagine the shock of going from a tropical paradise to the cold rain of the Pacific Northwest.

I found the book to be a very interesting read and would recommend it, especially if you have any connections to the places involved.