Abraham Lincoln's World: How Riverboats, Railroads, and Republicans Transformed America / Thomas Crump -- London: Continuum, 2009.

Thomas Crump distinguishes himself from the myriad other historians writing about Lincoln in the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth by noting he is probably the only such author who interviewed an eye witness to the Gettysburg Address. At the age of 80, Crump has given us a brief introduction to some of the most important currents of the first half of 19th century America.

Unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln's World is uneven. At times Crump tells us the trivial, e.g., each state has two Senators. At other times, he makes quite interesting and insightful observations about the conditions in America during Lincoln's time. True to his subtitle, his treatment of steamships and railroads are quite valuable. He also provides valuable descriptions of the changing demographics of the country and internal migrations. However, his treatment of the better known aspects of the political history of the time is unremarkable. On the other hand, the chapters on the development of Illinois and California are detailed and well worth reading.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter deals with the settlement and rebellion of Texas. Contemporary interpretations of these events tend to vilify the Anglo Texas settlers. Crump treats them more sympathetically by portraying them not as pro-slavery ideologues seeking to expand slave territory, but as people seeking a better life -- not all of them sympathetic to slavery. He does a good job describing the internal chaos in Mexico that made the loss of Texas to Anglo immigration all but inevitable. The only myopia here is his cursory treatment of the Native American population.

Crump also does a good job conveying the boundaries of debate of the time regarding the issue of slavery. Today, many people view the period as a conflict between two actors: Abolitionists and the Slave Power, with a large uncommitted mass between them. Instead, Crump's political landscape is populated mostly by politicians residing between the extremes, struggling with the impossibility of a house divided against itself. This less ideological treatment of the slavery issue doesn't preclude 21st century moral judgements, but it does give real depth and texture to the description of the struggle over slavery.

Sadly, the work is also marred by numerous copy editing errors that sometimes complete reverse the meaning of Crump's statements.

What is the What / Dave Eggers -- NY: Vintage Books, 2007.

What is the What is the most extraordinary book I have read in quite a while. Dave Eggers novelizes the astonishing experiences of Valentino Achak Deng. Achak, born in a small village in southern Sudan, was made a refugee at the age of six. Torn from his family when genocidal horsemen descended on his village, he fled alone until meeting up with a group of boys led by Dut Majok, a young teacher from his village. Apparently, Dut is leading the boys to safety in Ethiopia, but in time it is revealed that he may be delivering them to the Sudan People's Liberation Army to become child soldiers.

The structure of the novel provides further interest to the story and insight into Achak's psyche. Achak narrates the story by imagining himself recounting his events to Americans he encounters once he has emigrated to Atlanta. Achak has a desperate need to tell his story, but without a venue for doing so, he recounts it to himself. We, the readers, are the beneficiaries of his reflections.

Among the most striking features of the book is the role that sheer luck played in Achak's survival. He is often placed in a situation where he must choose between two or more courses of action without any basis for knowing what is best. One path leads to survival, the other to disaster or even death. On his journey, many of his fellow travelers die of malnutrition, disease, and exhaustion. Some are attacked and eaten by lions and hyenas. At one point, Achak is running through the forest with another boy and a lion "takes" the boy. The lion comes so close to Achak that he can smell it. It's clear to the reader that survival is entirely a matter of chance.

While the novel recounts horrors and hardships, it also recounts Achak's adolescent urges, his friendships, his school-day triumphs, and romantic passions, allowing the reader to not merely feel sympathy for him, but to empathize with him. Other characters are also well constructed. His friends are multidimensional and his fellow Sudanese refugees are engagingly diverse, leaving the reader to understand that the horror of the civil war beset real people and not merely generic African victims.

More than anything, What is the What provides a clearer understanding of war and the personal cost of war than any political or military history that could be written.

The Art of Buddhism: An Introduction to Its History and Meaning / Denise Patry Leidy -- Boston: Shambhala, 2008.

The Art of Buddhism is a beautiful and informative stroll through the history of Buddhist sculpture, architecture, and painting. The narrative follows a rough chronological order, but by the 6th to 8th century, the spread of Buddhism followed too many different paths to permit a single story. Consequently, Leidy begins describing the art of particular geographic regions chapter by chapter.

Leidy explains many of the subtle features in Buddhist art that help the reader (or viewer) to understand what personalities are represented in the art. She notes that continuity in the art forms across different regions roughly matches the continuity of Buddhist doctrine. For example the sinuous forms of early Indian sculpture appear in Southeast Asian sculpture just as the Theravada doctrine spread from early India to Southeast Asia. Along the way, she explains some of the difference between various schools of Buddhism.

The book is beautifully illustrated, with a photograph or diagram on nearly every page. Unfortunately, they are often too small to really display the full beauty of the art. Indeed, the book's 10" x 7" format makes even the largest images small. Nevertheless, the selection of paintings and especially sculptures are sometimes breath taking.

Buddhist Sutras: Origin, Development, Transmission / Kogen Mizuno -- Tokyo: Kosei Publishing, 1982.

Buddha, like Socrates, left no writings of his own, but shortly after his death, his followers gathered to recite his sermons. The goal was to agree upon precisely what he said to preserve his teaching in an oral tradition. The language spoken by the monks of this First Buddhist Council was probably Old Magadhi. As the popularity of Buddhism grew, the desire to evangelize to speakers of other languages also grew. Consequently, the sermons of the Buddha were written down and translated into various languages of ancient India. These sermons are known as sutras. Along with the sutras, early Buddhists compiled monastic rules known as vinayas. Later, commentaries on the sutras developed, known as abhidharma. Collectively, these writings are known as the Tripitaka or the three baskets and are the canon of early Buddhism.

In centuries following the establishment of this canon, other important works were written in an effort to express the insights of Buddhism in various languages, importantly Chinese. With the addition of a number of original Chinese texts to the canon the "Pali canon" or the original canon written in Pali, was expanded into what is known as the Chinese canon. In Buddhist Sutras Kogen Mizuno recounts the origin, development, and transmission of the Pali canon through the Chinese canon. Along the way, he describes the transmission of Buddhist sutras into various other Asian languages, especially Japanese.

Mizuno's work is loaded with information about the texts, languages, and translators of the sutras and includes valuable explanation of some of the sectarian movements in the history of Buddhism and important cultural contexts. He notes that doctrinal divergences within Buddhism can often be traced to different interpretations of the teachings generated by translations into different languages. Unfortunately, the work is not well organized. While it follows a rough chronological sequence, there are many leaps forward and backward in time. Furthermore, it overlays this sequence with topical treatments of his subject that do not have a clear pattern of presentation. The effect is a rambling narrative. However, it is filled with illuminating facts and details in the history of the Buddhist canon.

Among its most valuable features is an appendix which alphabetically lists the titles of scriptures and catalogs of scriptures in Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, and other languages. Each work appears in the list using each language into which it has been translated. For example, The Heart Wisdom Sutra is also listed as the Prajnaparamita-hridaya-sutra (Sanskrit) and as Pan-jo po-lo-mi-to hsin-ching (Chinese). English details about the work are given in under the title listed in the original language.

Change We Can Believe In: Barak Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise / Forward by Barack Obama -- NY: Three Rivers Press, 2008.

Barak Obama's rhetoric in the 2008 presidential campaign was often inspiring, but it was never so intoxicating that it overcame my skepticism about the changes that his presidency would bring. Too often the specifics of his agenda included such oxymorons as "clean coal" and "safe nuclear energy." His promise to retool America's automobile industry to build clean, fuel efficient cars ignored the larger damage that automobile transportation does to our lives and land. His commitments to widen the war in Afghanistan and "rebuild a strong 21st century military" both seemed to me to acquiesce to the militarism that is paralyzing our social, economic, and moral progress. Obama seemed to me a smooth talking Democrat, good on many social issues, but unable or unwilling to challenge the fundamental assumptions that are leading us and the world to the brink of a dreadful dark age.

Since his inauguration, I have been cheered by a number of his executive decisions, the signs he has given about the direction of his policies, and what appears to be his genuine understanding of the importance of the rule of law. No doubt, a page has turned in American politics as well. We are lucky to have seen an eloquent spokesperson gain national prominence when lesser politicians might have failed to break from dismal engagement with neo-conservative blather.

The pleasant experience of Obama's first days led me to pick up the 280 page campaign book Change We Can Believe In just to better understand what he had committed to in writing. Sadly, there is little in Change that causes me to rethink my skepticism about his presidency. The fiscal demands of the recently passed stimulus package may create significant pressure to reduce the Pentagon's budget, but I have yet to hear Obama or anyone in his administration openly identify military spending as the wasteful disaster that it is.

More significantly, Obama has accepted the notion that our current fiscal crisis and recession must be addressed by making the economy grow again. This approach is simply "kicking the can down the road" writ large. Obama does not seem to realize or is not willing to admit that we are now confronting the physical limits of the world's resources and that "sustainability" must replace "growth" as the watchword for all economic decision making. Adopting policies that depend on growth are bound to fail. Instead, we must recognize that our focus must be on repairing and improving the quality of life for everyone and not merely increasing the Gross National Product.

My greatest hope for the Obama administration is that it will inspire people to learn the pleasures of civic engagement and that communities of mutual support will find local ways of adjusting to a new style of living that respect the Earth and its inhabitants and accommodates the limitations we now face.

The Precious Garland and The Song of the Four Mindfulnesses / Nagarjuna and Kaysang Gyatso -- NY: Harper & Row, 1975.

The Precious Garland, also known as Suhrllekha, is a classic poetic Buddhist text written by Nargarjuna. It is Nagarjuna's advice to a king, written some 400 years after the life of the Buddha. It should come as no surprise that it is a stark contrast to Machiavelli's advice in The Prince. In The Precious Garland, Nagarjuna provides a brief exposition of Emptiness, the central doctrine of the Madhyamika school of Buddhism. For Nagarjuna, the foremost obligation of the king is to gain an understanding of the Emptiness of all things, or that all things exist only conditionally in relation to all other things. By understanding this, one achieves enlightenment.

Knowing that the doctrine is not easily understood, Nagarjuna recommends that the king work toward this understanding by practicing giving, ethics, and patience. Nararjuna goes on to explain that these practices allow one to collect merit and wisdom, and these "collections" allow one to achieve the necessary detachment from the world -- its suffering and its pleasure (really one and the same) -- and to develop a disposition to understand the Emptiness of the world.

In the fourth chapter, Nagarjuna gives advice that seems more clearly relevant to a king. He recommends such concrete policies as supporting Buddhist education, foregoing capital punishment, and selecting virtuous ministers. The contrast with Machiavelli is profound. Instead of using any means necessary to amass power, Nagarjuna asserts that it is the responsibility of the king to foster virtue within himself and within those in his realm.

The final chapter provides further advice even to bodhisatvas seeking to attain enlightenment.

The Precious Garland is one of the truly great works in the Buddhist canon. It reads clearly and concisely and can provide insight for the relative Buddhist novice as well as for the relatively learned. It is a joy to read.

The second work in the volume, The Song of the Four Mindfulnesses is a mere 30 lines in four sections, written by Kaysan Gyatso, the Seventh Dalai Lama (1708-1757). It is an aid to mediation, stressing that one be constantly mindful of (1) the perfect wisdom of the teacher (the Buddha), (2) altruistic aspirations toward enlightenment, (3) the divine nature of one's own body, and (4) the emptiness of the world. Buddhists often memorize the 30 lines of The Four Mindfulnesses. A single reading will allow you to understand why.

Anacostia: The Death and Life of an American River / John R. Wennersten -- Baltimore: Chesapeake Book Co., 2008.

When people think of rivers and Washington D.C., they naturally think of the Potomac. However, when the city was first planned, its primary waterfront was to be on the Anacostia River, or what was once called the "East Branch." Unfortunately for the Anacostia, the wealthier and established citizens of Georgetown persuaded developers to direct the face of the city toward the Potomac, thus starting a long history of neglect and degradation of the Anacostia.

John Wennersten's Anacostia is both a natural and political history of the Anacostia River. It's natural history made its headwaters an ocean-going port until silt clogged the port at Bladensburg in 1850 and with the growth of Washington D.C. during. After the Civil War, poor water management resulted in extreme contamination and epidemics of small pox, cholera, and malaria which killed thousands. By 1873, it (and Rock Creek) had become little more than open sewers which it remained until the Clean Water Act was passed one hundred years later in 1972.

While the Clean Water Act brought some progress toward cleaning the river, one can still not safely swim or fish in the Anacostia (goals set by the Act.) It was not until 1988 that genuine progress began when the Anacostia Watershed Society was formed. The Society was (and is) a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring the watershed. Along with other environmental partners, the Society has forced the EPA to address the dreadful state of the river. While much remains to be done, the last third of Anacostia is an inspiring testament to the determination of environmentalists to take back our natural birthright from the self-interested developers and despoilers of the land.

Among the most interesting aspects of Anacostia is how Wennersten connects the lives of the people of Washington D.C. to the Anacostia. Time and again, the rich and powerful (wittingly or not) displaced the poor and vulnerable from prime real estate and forced them to move to what is known as "Anacostia" or the east side of the Anacostia River inside D.C. Wennersten's sympathetic account of the mistreatment of people would not be news to many people in D.C., but deserves much wider currency.

The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz / Carl Schurz -- NY: McClure Company, 1908.

I knew Carl Schurz was among the most influential German-Americans in our political history, but I had no idea how engaging his writing was until I read his Reminiscence. After a long life at the heart of German and American politics, Schurz retired to write over a thousand pages describing his life from his childhood to 1869. His three volumes of reminiscences are remarkably engaging.

The first volume is an account of his life in Germany (1829-1852). The highlight of which was his involvement in the failed 1848 revolution. Schurz was trapped by Prussian soldiers in the siege of Rastatt. As a Prussian citizen, Schurz correctly expected to be executed when the the town surrendered. Consequently, he and two Prussian companions attempted to escape through a storm water pipe that led out of town past the Prussian troops. Finding the exit guarded, they returned to the town to hide in the loft of a shed. With the help of a sympathetic neighbor, they managed to escape later, through the storm water pipe, and then to France.

Not long after, he returned to Germany under a false passport to free one the leading revolutionists, Gotfried Kinkel, from Spandau Prison. The events Schurz recounts are vividly told and as exciting as any piece of good fiction.

The second volume recounts his life in America. Settling in Wisconsin, Schurz became the leading German language orator advocating the abolition of slavery. His efforts led him to participate in every presidential campaign, save one, from 1856 to nearly the end of his life in 1906. Upon Lincoln's election, Schurz became the US Ambassador to Spain, but quickly was allowed to resign from the post for a commission in the Union Army.

Brigadier General Schurz led troops in numerous important battles, including Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. At Chancellorsville, his troops bore the brunt of General T.J. Jackson's crushing attack, and he spent much of the subsequent months (even years) refuting scurrilous criticisms of his "Dutch" soldiers. His defense of the performance of the German troops in the Civil War raises interesting questions in light of the nativist criticism of them.

Following the War, Schurz became a Senator representing the State of Missouri and worked hard in defense of equal rights for freedmen. In volume three of his Reminiscences, Schurz describes the political battle surrounding the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. Schurz shows himself to be a staunch defender of what he thought would be Lincoln's reconstruction policy, steering a course between the Radical Republicans and Johnson's policies. He joined with the Liberal Republicans opposing Grant's nomination. He was also instrumental in defeating President Grant's efforts to annex the Dominican Republic.

Later, Schurz became Secretary of the Interior in the Hayes Administration. These later years (1869-1904) are described in a 140 page essay by Frederick Bancroft and William A. Dunning which concludes the third volume of his Reminiscences. By the end of his career, Schurz had essentially left the Republican Party to become an Independent. He worked particularly hard against the spoils system and in favor of good government. He also strongly resisted the imperialist policies of later Presidents.

Schurz's Reminiscences make for delightful reading and offer an interesting lens through which to view 19th century American politics.

Petals of Blood / Ngugi wa Thiong’o -- New York, NY: Penguin, 1977.

A couple of years ago I read another novel by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wizard of the Crow, which I found to be an extraordinarily gripping and brilliant political novel. So it was with high expectations that I picked up the celebrated Kenyan author’s earlier work, Petals of Blood. The novel opens as a murder mystery but does not function as one. Those who were murdered develop as characters very little and much later in the novel, and Ngugi does not build much suspense around solving the mystery of who murdered them. Petals of Blood is not as gripping as Wizard of the Crow and moves quite slowly for the first third. However, in the second two thirds of the books, a handful of very well developed characters from a remote village in Kenya engage in some interesting and revealing dilemmas. Although the novel may have been shocking in its time, political corruption in Africa is not news today. Petals of Blood remains an excellent novel, however, not only for its beautiful writing but also as a meditation on the dynamics of power and development.

The Ethics of Climate Change: Right and Wrong in a Warming World / James Garvey –- N.Y.: Continuum Books, 2008

Of all the books I read my first semester as a graduate student, The Ethics of Climate Change: Right and Wrong in a Warming World was my favorite. Although Garvey takes up perhaps too many words of his introduction assuring his readers that philosophy is not overly abstruse, in this short (158 page) volume, he successfully lays out background information and provides eloquent arguments on the ethics of climate change. The arguments are developed systematically, from a simple notion of causal responsibility, to more nuanced questions, for example, what obligations one has in the absence of action from others. The book ends evaluating the international response to climate change in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol and addressing the potential of individual actions. While not a rousing call, Garvey does offer more impetus to action than I had expected from a philosophy book on climate change.

Two areas that were not adequately addressed were the questions of, Does futility obviate moral imperative? and Are moral arguments politically persuasive? Nonetheless, The Ethics of Climate Change is an excellent introduction to the topic. Much attention is paid to the science and economics of climate change, but the need to make the ethics of climate change politically persuasive may be the key to addressing the enormous challenge ahead.