Best & Worst Books Read in 2012

This year Groggy looks at his best and worst 2012 reads. Usually I post these lists on Facebook, since this is after all a film blog. But glitches in Facebook's Note system deleted at least one of my previous lists, so this seemed a safer alternative.

Despite having a full-time job (and hence next to nil free time) I still managed over 100 books this year. Sure, many of them were re-reads, which is why you won't see any Flashman books on this list. And yeah, a handful of Goosebumps books pad out the list. So it's not like I'm reading Crime & Punishment 100 times. Still it's enough for a list.

Anyway, without further adieu:

Best Ten Books Read in 2012:

Groggy reads 99% percent history and other nonfiction these days. Back in college of course there was more time and hence more variety of subjects; now I have to be pickier. Nonetheless, even within this narrow confine I found a lot of worthwhile books this year, a few classics and a few recent volumes.

10. Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations - Georgina Howell

Gertrude Bell is a truly remarkable woman: Alpine adventurer, explorer, archaeologist, Arabist, intelligence operative, Middle East Kingmaker. Howell's sprawling biography does her justice. The book explores Bell's myriad talents, unique, vivacious personality, her personal frustrations and public achievements. Its main success, perhaps, comes in illumniating an incredible personage shamefully overlooked.

9. Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century - Mark Mazower

 

Mazower's provocative book eschews traditional 20th Century narratives for barbed analysis of European politics. His sociopolitical dissection points up uncomfortable facts: the differences between Nazism and "old right" Fascism, appeal of totalitarian movements to interwar Europeans, Stalin's remarkable economic achievements coupled with political oppression, Thatcherism's inherent unworkability, the USSR as Europe's last traditional empire. Mazower's chapters on Nazi imperialism and internationalist idealism presage more recent volumes. The European Union has proven more successful than Mazower suggests, but the book remains a remarkable volume.

8. Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Vols. 1-2 - Berke Breathed

Berkeley Breathed's brilliant '80s satirical comic strip, part Doonesbury and part Calvin & Hobbes, now comes in beautifully-packaged compilations, complete with Breathed's commentary. True, many jokes are very dated: who remembers James Watt or Joan Jett? But Breathed's playful art, lovable characters and colorful sense of humor remain timeless.

7. The White Nile - Alan Moorehead

Aussie author Moorehead was a brilliant narrative historian, mixing colorful prose with a warm human touch. Moorehead chronicles European exploration and exploitation of the Nile, the 19th Century's greatest frontier. His subjects are a diverse lot: the contentious Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke, the glamorous adventure couple Stanley and Florence Baker, Henry Stanley and Dr. Livingstone, the messianic Mahdi, the enigmatic Gordon of Khartoum. Moorehead ties them splendidly together, crafting a vivid, compulsively readable epic. His complementary volume The Blue Nile is a bit sloppier but also highly recommended.

6. A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914-1948 - James Barr

Much has been written about Britain and France's conniving to divide the post-WWI Middle East. Less often told is the resultant imperial rivalry. In this fascinating chronicle, Barr analyzes the fissures in the Anglo-French alliance, as the two powers jealously jockeyed for power, influence and oil. Both powers used regional nationalism, be they post-war Arab movements or the rising tide of Zionism, to undermine each other, with disastrous results. Barr's account is lucid, eye-opening and compellingly written.

5. The October Country - Ray Bradbury

The literary world lost a giant with the passing of Ray Bradbury. This story collection is one of his best, here leaning towards overt horror. Some of Bradbury's scariest stories are here: the killer baby of "The Small Assassin," the pitiless fate of "The Scythe," the shocking image which concludes "Skeleton." For Bradbury fans whose tastes skew darker, this is invaluable.

4. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner

Foner delivers an invaluable account of Abraham Lincoln's views on race. In Foner's view, Lincoln underwent a painful personal evolution, from a "moderate" Whig accepting white supremacy while restricting slavery's spread, to an abolitionist advocating resettlement of freed blacks, to a full-throated advocate for equality. Honest Abe comes off as extremely flawed but admirable, seeking to sublimate his prejudices to the greater good. Foner treats Lincoln with admirable delicacy, avoiding modern value judgments to show a statesman both very much of his time, yet undeniably revolutionary.

3. The Siege: The Full Horrifying Account of the Kut Disaster - Russell Braddon

Braddon's account of the Siege of Kut bests even Woodham-Smith's The Reason Why as a study in military failure. Braddon seethes with anger at this masterpiece of mismanagement, when arrogant British generals sent 6th Division to do an army's job, underestimating logistics and numerically-superior Turkish opponents. At book's center is Charles Townshend, a self-proclaimed genius who launched a disastrous campaign against impossible odds, trapped his division in a disease-ridden village, panicked his superiors into ill-advised rescue attempts and enjoyed a cushy captivity while his men endured forced labor. True, it's not objective: Braddon makes his contempt for Townshend plain, and his own POW experiences color his empathy for the soldiers' plight. Faced with a craven villain like Townshend though, who could blame him?

2. The Destruction of Lord Raglan: A Tragedy of the Crimean War, 1854-1855 - Christopher Hibbert

For readers unwilling to slog through Kinglake's nine-volume history, this is the best popular account of the Crimean War. Hibbert gives a brilliant grunt's-eye view of the conflict, mixing blow-by-blow battle accounts with the terrifying monotony of life in the trenches. His main point, that Lord Raglan's been unfairly smeared from 1855 onwards, is highly debatable; Raglan still comes off as a decent man with no business leading an army. Contextualizing his performance amidst bureaucratic muddle, poor weather and a military completely unprepared for a major war makes it more understandable, and Raglan himself sympathetic.

1. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 - Gordon S. Wood

Wood's entry in the Oxford History of the United States never fails to impress. It's a truly remarkable tome, overwhelming the reader in its sheer breadth and depth. Wood touches on every conceivable topic - the rise of evangelical religion, women and minority roles, attitudes on slavery, the contrast between America's high ideas and low culture - with skill and sensitivity. He couples these microhistories with shrewd analyses of the Federalist-Republican split, Hamilton's financial system, the Revolution's international impact and the Republic's hesitant early foreign policy. A masterpiece.

Honorable mentions: Glory Road (Catton), The Arab Awakening (Antonius), Quartered Safe out Here (Fraser), (Kabaservice), The Great Anglo-Boer War (Farwell), Founding Brothers (Ellis), The Fierce Pawns (Macrory), Rule & Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party (Kabaservice)

Worst Ten Books Read in 2012:

I also found time for some truly wretched works. Their sins range from sublimating history to a political agenda, to tackling an impossible subject, to intellectual laziness and sloppy construction, to just plain bad writing. And yes, there's an R.L. Stine book included.


10. Chitral Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Major General Charles Townshend - N.S. Nash

This biography sets about the thankless task of rehabilitating Townshend, the antagonist of Kut. Soldier-turned-journalist Nash tries his hardest to be fair, approaching his subject with brusque humor and inside knowledge of armed forces social climbing. For all Nash's pleading, Townshend still comes off as an arrogant twit who needlessly sacrificed his men in pursuit of selfish glory. Not a bad book, just a fatally misguided one.

9. The Crimean War: A Reappraisal - Philip Warner 

After reading some really great Crimean War histories this year - not only Hibbert but Orlando Figes' The Crimean War - it was inevitable I'd find a bad one. Warner presents interesting arguments that our understanding of the Crimea is flawed, and that it was really a success and credit to the Anglo-French-Turkish alliance. Unfortunately they're couched in a dull, dry, meandering book that becomes too saturated in details to see the big picture. When a 200 page book takes four months to read, it probably hasn't succeeded.

8. Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869-1899 - Dominic Green

One of the pitfalls of narrative history is it forsakes analysis for storytelling. Woe then to the historian who can't tell a story. Green ties together several related topics - the collapse of Khedivist Egypt, Urabi Pasha's nationalist coup d'etat, the Mahdist Wars. Unfortunately he presents each story in spectacularly superficial and uninteresting fashion, providing zero insight into this epochal clash of imperialism, Islamism and nationalism. Attempts to equate the Mahdists with al-Qaeda do its author no credit, either. With so much ink spilled over the Mahdi already you're well-advised skipping this one.

7. Military Blunders: The How and Why of Military Failure - Saul David

There are some things you don't expect from a book written in 1997 and reprinted in 2012. For instance, the author referring to Russians as "Asiatics of low intelligence." Or repeating the canard that Singapore fell to Japanese troops because all its guns faced the sea. Or confusing Matthew Ridgeway with Maxwell Taylor. Even the accurate bits are just regurgitation of Geoffrey Regan's work - pretty damning in and of itself, considering Regan's been recycling himself for years. A shame as I enjoyed David's biography of Lord Cardigan.

6. Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East - Karl E. Meyer & Shareen Blair Brysac

Ostensibly a look at how British and American policymakers shaped the last 150 years of Middle Eastern politics. In reality it's a scatter-shot, meandering collection of biographical essays, some scarcely connected to the topic. Fiona Shaw and Lord Lugard are interesting figures but how on Earth do they relate? Last time I checked South Africa wasn't part of the Middle East. A longish chapter on the CIA in Beirut rambles without divulging any points-of-interest. Chapters on T.E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell and Paul Wolfowitz border on superficial. The book's only interesting in the margins, and the margins aren't worth it when most of these figures have biographies of their own.

5. Planet of the Lawn Gnomes - R.L. Stine

Picking on Goosebumps books, especially the new Horrorland series, is like shooting fish in a barrel. But childhood nostalgia compels me to read them, so here we are. Glance at the title and spend about 30 seconds shaping a story around it. You've given it more thought than R.L. Stine did.

4. The Meinertzhagen Mystery: The Life and Legend of a Colossal Fraud - Brian Garfield

Novelist Garfield vindictively destroys Richard Meinertzhagen, one of England's most eccentric heroes of the 20th Century. He's admittedly convincing in spots, deflating some of Meinerzhagen's more egregious anecdotes (the "Heil Meinertzhagen" silliness) and showing him an ornithological fraud (an argument made before). But Garfield goes beyond into extreme nuttiness, for instance hinting with Glenn Beck-ish "just asking questions" delicacy that Meinertzhagen murdered his wife. It's a tiresome screed, bloody-minded in its willingness to promote any nonsense that reflects negatively on its subject.

3. American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies and More Dirty Lies that the Government Tells Us - Jesse Ventura

This semi-literate rant, courtesy of America's favorite wrestler-turned-politician, is more funny than offensive. While reading, I couldn't help remembering Ventura's appearance as a Man in Black (with Alex Trebek!) on The X-Files. "Mr. Ventura, your scientific illiteracy makes me SHUDDER!"

2. The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire - H.W. Crocker III

The PIG Guides never cease to amaze with their vacuous demagoguery. Groggy readers know I'm an unrepentant Anglophile, but even I blanch at Crocker's high Victorian jingoism. Given the plethora of recent pro-empire books by Niall Ferguson, Lawrence James and Saul David its premise of an intellectual conspiracy to slander Britain is dubious to begin with. But Crocker's reactionary racial and political attitudes - calling the Irish "shiftless, ignorant, stubborn, contumacious and cruel," deeming the Maori genocides "fun with muskets," claiming the Opium Wars a "defense of free trade" - are shocking in a book published last year. All wrapped in a smug, self-satisfyingly contrarian attitude that reflexively deems dissenters part of a liberal-Marxist-Muslim conspiracy to hide the truth. Charming.

1. The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda and an Unnecessary War - Thomas DiLorenzo

This mendacious piece of garbage makes the PIG Guide look like Sir John Fortescue. Not only does it slander America's greatest President to promote an extremist neo-libertarian agenda; that would be obnoxious enough. But it's painfully obvious that DiLorenzo is a hack who can't even keep his propaganda straight. He arrogates states the right to secede and repudiate the Constitution, then chastises Lincoln for claiming seceded states outside Constitutional protection. He claims that Lincoln ignored chances for "peaceful abolition" when the South rejected precisely that. Or selective facts: He cites Andrew Jackson as a guru of small government, ignoring how Jackson overrode the Supreme Court re: expelling the Five Civilized Tribes, or his decidedly Unionist reaction to the Nullification Crisis. Or brazen lies, like saying the Emancipation Proclamation didn't free a single slave. Or paranoid rants about the "Marxist" Lincoln cult. The result? A book that commits every conceivable sin: it's poorly argued, ideologically slanted, inaccurate and painfully unreadable.

An equivalent film-related list will come in the next week. There are still some year-end theatrical releases to catch so stay tuned!