Compulsively Aimless

At the west end of the diplomatic lobby of the Department of State, is a plaque that states: "in honor of diplomatic and consular officers of the United States who while on active duty lost their lives under heroic or tragic circumstances."  The first name is William Palfrey, commissioned by the Continental Congress as Consul General to France, who set sail in 1780 and was never heard from again.  The plaque continues with only the simplest of explanations noting the cause of death as yellow fever, shot by sniper, volcano, or exposure.    Diplomats may be a misunderstood group but this list includes stories of some greats who did their best to connect the world. 1.  A Diplomat Among Warriors: The Unique World of a Foreign Service Expert, Charles Murphy (1964).  Murphy had one of the most fascinating careers of any diplomat.  He served as the Deputy Chief of Mission to our Embassy in Paris during the German occupation and later moved to North Af...

This list is a surprise because it is unintentionally the longest.  I didn't intend to collect river books but I think rivers serve a special place for explorers, travelers and story tellers.  There's a defined purpose to start at the mouth of the river and move upstream to its source.    Rivers have served as the source of religion, mythology, cradles of civilization, and cultural inspiration.  For the Greeks, there was the River Styx, which divided the underworld from the world of the living.  Mark Twain used the flow of the Mississippi to tell the story of America in Huckleberry Finn .  Lewis and Clark followed rivers during much of the Voyage of Discovery.  Joseph Conrad used the river of the Congo for the path of Marlow to find Kurtz in Heart of Darkness .    Books about rivers have proved captivating for readers and publishers.  In making the list, I discovered at least two different series that had been published on ri...

The borders between east and west seems like tectonic plates.  Immense forces of culture, religion, language collide sometimes resulting in earthquakes that alter civilization at the margins.  Sometimes the collision requires us to remake our political maps .   Perhaps it was probably more imagined that real but the experience of taking a ferry crossing  Bosphorus leaving the European side of Istanbul to the Asian side, seemed like leaving one world and entering another.   Four books on what happens at the faults lines.   1.   Bloodlands : Between Hitler and Stalin, Timothy Snyder (2010).    A compelling read on the the frightening use of power by the 20th Century's two most ruthless dictators.  The people of Ukraine, Poland and other eastern Europe territories were first starved to death in the millions by Stalin's enforcement of collective farming.  When Hitler invaded these territories, he deported, starved and murdered ...

Updated from a March 2011 post.    Have you ever wanted to make something?  To contribute a useful object to the existing stock of reality?  My grandfather was a builder of bookcases, cabinets, tinkered with engines and machinery. I inherited his wooden workbench complete with a vice, and cubby holes. And with it was a collection of vintage tools.  The picture above are three of his measuring tools: a Starrett and a 4" precision ruler with a Stanley boxwood and brass folding ruler in the middle. Building a treehouse for my daughter was among the most satisfying things I've ever done. Find a site, draw the design, and buy the materials. Every day I was building it, I went to sleep thinking about the next task: hammering nails, shingling a roof, and painting the siding. The treehouse still stands unlike a lot of things where I've expended effort only to end with something abstract or amorphous.   
 This is a short list of authors who express the satis...

Walking is man's best medicine.   --Hippocrates     Walking is the the best way to see things. It may be be the best and oldest form of exercise and therapy. The philosopher Nietzsche said it is the best way to think and that it helps problem solving. If I'm ever in a city with several hours of free time, I'll want to walk it. I bought a bunch of my "walking" books from the Warrenton, Virginia Public Library, within 30 miles of the Appalachian Trail.       [Apologies for the some of the spacing--formatting gremlins got the better of me.] 1.  A Walk Across America, Peter Jenkins (1979).  A best-seller from the late 70s. Jenkins walks from Alfred, New York to New Orleans. He seems completely unprepared by our standards today. Fascinating because of the people he meets and you keep wondering if he's going to make it safe and sound. Bought used at Warrenton, Virginia Library.           2.  The Walk West: A Walk ...

I recently became obsessed about the end of wars.  It started, not intentionally, with the book, Bloody Crimes about the last days of the Civil War.   I can't imagine what the country went through to heal and come together.  Lincoln was assassinated and Jefferson Davis was trying to evade capture to keep the Confederate cause alive, even after General Lee surrender.  It’s unlikely the country will ever endure such a period of turbulence again.  I began to wonder how people behave at the end of wars, at the end of causes.  Why do some fight to the end, even when it's hopeless.  What’s left for the living?  How do the victors conduct themselves and how do the defeated return to society?  In putting together this list, I found my interest goes all the way back to my junior high years when I was fascinated by WWII.  The book Hitler: The Last Ten Days was my earliest purchase.  The rest came in the last several years--mostly World War ...

How do you decide what to read?  In more than any other factor, travel has changed what I read.  I was ignorant of Byzantine and Ottoman periods of history and their time in history seemed irrelevant.  For Thanksgiving one year, my family stayed in Istanbul, in the old section hear the Blue Mosque.  The hotel room had walls that were four feet thick and bars on the windows, formerly a Turkish prison, and the setting for the book and movie, Midnight Express.   Hearing the call to prayer for the first time echo through the great city called out a history that dwarfed even England's.  After that, I started buying books on Turkey.  Also, I got to say I ate Turkey in Turkey on Thanksgiving.  1.   A Byzantine Journey , John Ash (1995).  Purchased new. 2.   Turkish Reflections: A Biography of Place , Mary Lee Settle (1991).  State Department used book sale. 3.  J ourney to Kars, Phillip Glazebrook (1984).  State Dep...