Not authentic but a delicious and easy-to-make dish.
INGREDIENTS:
Haddock or another meaty white fish, in large chunks – 1 ½ pounds
Oil – enough for lightly sautéing fish
Garlic – at least two cloves
Onions – one large, finely chopped
Chicken stock – 4 cups – if you do not make rice (below) with Chicken Stock, you need only 2 Cups for Fish
Olives – large green with pits – at least a cup
Lemons – two sliced very thinly, keeping rinds on
Rice for serving on – 1 Cup dry to 2 Cups Chicken Stock (or water)
SPICE MIX:
Black Pepper - ¼ teaspoon
Powdered Ginger - ¼ teaspoon
Cumin - 1 teaspoon
Turmeric – 1 teaspoon
Coriander – 1 teaspoon
Saffron (I use the cheap stuff) – pinch or two
METHOD:
Rub Spice Mix on Fish pieces and let stand for an hour.
Heat oil and sauté Fish pieces. Note they need very little cooking. Remove fish from pan and set aside.
Sauté Onion and Garlic in pan drippings.
Add Chicken Stock, add Olives and Lemon Slices,
and leave on high heat to reduce by a third of its volume.
Place Fish on a bed of rice and pour over the reduced sauce.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF DOUGLAS HURD'S ROBERT PEEL
Here is a fine biography of a politician written by another politician.
Robert Peel, while a figure of considerable importance to British history, led what many would regard as an unexciting life, and Peel was the kind of aristocratic figure many people today might find relatively unsympathetic. So it is a good measure of Hurd's success with the book that he makes it interesting, and it is very well written.
I use the adjective "aristocratic," because Peel was actually one of the "new men," a rich merchant's talented son, but his political alliances were necessarily frequently with the landed aristocrats who played a large role in the Conservative Party of that time, and his own views were not the stirring stuff of democratic principles and modern conceptions of human rights. Of course, he was given a title for his service, a practice which itself reflects the evolution of British government with the growth of the middle class.
What Douglas Hurd does exceptionally well is to show us the decent and sympathetic man Peel was. Peel was ready when his keen mind perceived that the world was changing in ways that warranted change by government to advocate the needed change, often finding himself opposed by the kind of conservatives who believes little should ever change. We get a nice feel for the stresses and difficulties involved in Peel's various efforts at reform, given his political world and party.
I admired Hurd's effort to give the modern reader some appreciation of the changing nature of Parliament and its rules, often giving comparisons with how things worked then to how they work now. The nineteenth century was a dynamic era of political change in Britain - driven by the forces of the industrial revolution and exploding world trade - as the country developed into a modern democratic state, and the book reflects that.
This is a fine book for students of British or European history or social change or the evolution of modern democratic government.
Robert Peel, while a figure of considerable importance to British history, led what many would regard as an unexciting life, and Peel was the kind of aristocratic figure many people today might find relatively unsympathetic. So it is a good measure of Hurd's success with the book that he makes it interesting, and it is very well written.
I use the adjective "aristocratic," because Peel was actually one of the "new men," a rich merchant's talented son, but his political alliances were necessarily frequently with the landed aristocrats who played a large role in the Conservative Party of that time, and his own views were not the stirring stuff of democratic principles and modern conceptions of human rights. Of course, he was given a title for his service, a practice which itself reflects the evolution of British government with the growth of the middle class.
What Douglas Hurd does exceptionally well is to show us the decent and sympathetic man Peel was. Peel was ready when his keen mind perceived that the world was changing in ways that warranted change by government to advocate the needed change, often finding himself opposed by the kind of conservatives who believes little should ever change. We get a nice feel for the stresses and difficulties involved in Peel's various efforts at reform, given his political world and party.
I admired Hurd's effort to give the modern reader some appreciation of the changing nature of Parliament and its rules, often giving comparisons with how things worked then to how they work now. The nineteenth century was a dynamic era of political change in Britain - driven by the forces of the industrial revolution and exploding world trade - as the country developed into a modern democratic state, and the book reflects that.
This is a fine book for students of British or European history or social change or the evolution of modern democratic government.
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF FRANK MCLYNN'S NAPOLEON
Another biography of Napoleon you might ask?
You could fill a small library with biographies of this remarkable and notorious man, quite a number of them significant works.
Yet Frank McLynn has managed the considerable task of adding something new and quite interesting to the literature.
Here is a gripping version of the life of one of history's great soldier-conquerors. It is well written, roars right along much as a good novel, is packed with interesting anecdotes, but it does come with some controversial interpretations of its subject. So you have every reason to read it.
McLynn spends some time on Napoleon's love life and especially on his immensely complicated and messy relationship with Josephine, surely one of history's stormiest and most perverse love stories. He also gives readers a terrific appreciation for Napoleon's genuinely grotesque family. This immensely talented man dragged his family through his career, almost like a great actor with a wagon full of noisy, grasping, bickering relatives always parked just outside the entrance to the theater. For me, at least, McLynn broke new ground on both of these subjects.
There is a good deal of analysis here of some of Napoleon's battles, but the book is never a mere military history. One of McLynn's controversial views is about the decline of Napoleon's once razor-sharp military abilities.
McLynn does an excellent job in giving readers an appreciation of how utterly ruthless and deceptive Napoleon could be, in personal relationships - his twists and turns with Désirée Clary - and in politics - his dealings with Barras - and in campaigning - his murder of prisoners in the Middle East and the abandonment of the army he brought needlessly to Egypt.
McLynn stresses what he calls Napoleon's "Oriental complex," reminding me of Mark Anthony, and I think he is right in that.
I think, too, in the matter of Napoleon's mysterious death on St Helena, McLynn gets the story right, pointing the finger at one of his retinue, Montholon, who likely acted as an agent for the Bourbons in administering periodic doses of arsenic.
All readers of good biography and history will enjoy this book, and each will likely find something new or interesting in it, and that's a pretty high recommendation.
You could fill a small library with biographies of this remarkable and notorious man, quite a number of them significant works.
Yet Frank McLynn has managed the considerable task of adding something new and quite interesting to the literature.
Here is a gripping version of the life of one of history's great soldier-conquerors. It is well written, roars right along much as a good novel, is packed with interesting anecdotes, but it does come with some controversial interpretations of its subject. So you have every reason to read it.
McLynn spends some time on Napoleon's love life and especially on his immensely complicated and messy relationship with Josephine, surely one of history's stormiest and most perverse love stories. He also gives readers a terrific appreciation for Napoleon's genuinely grotesque family. This immensely talented man dragged his family through his career, almost like a great actor with a wagon full of noisy, grasping, bickering relatives always parked just outside the entrance to the theater. For me, at least, McLynn broke new ground on both of these subjects.
There is a good deal of analysis here of some of Napoleon's battles, but the book is never a mere military history. One of McLynn's controversial views is about the decline of Napoleon's once razor-sharp military abilities.
McLynn does an excellent job in giving readers an appreciation of how utterly ruthless and deceptive Napoleon could be, in personal relationships - his twists and turns with Désirée Clary - and in politics - his dealings with Barras - and in campaigning - his murder of prisoners in the Middle East and the abandonment of the army he brought needlessly to Egypt.
McLynn stresses what he calls Napoleon's "Oriental complex," reminding me of Mark Anthony, and I think he is right in that.
I think, too, in the matter of Napoleon's mysterious death on St Helena, McLynn gets the story right, pointing the finger at one of his retinue, Montholon, who likely acted as an agent for the Bourbons in administering periodic doses of arsenic.
All readers of good biography and history will enjoy this book, and each will likely find something new or interesting in it, and that's a pretty high recommendation.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF KATHY GANNON'S I IS FOR INFIDEL
Ms Gannon writes at the beginning of her book’s Acknowledgments, “This book is the culmination of eighteen years covering Afghanistan and Pakistan as a reporter.”
Well, I’m sorry, but you would never know it just from reading the main part of the book.
Here is a book by a seasoned journalist, although I’ve never read Ms Gannon’s reportage, and it is poorly written, repetitive, but most importantly, it just fails to give the reader the much-desired understanding of a complex situation.
Even more, her credentials would lead us to expect some genuine enlightenment concerning the desperate matters in Afghanistan, a sparkling narrative history of events so incompletely understood. We do learn some things here, but the quantity, quality, and the consistency are meagre at best.
Moreover, I was quite troubled to read passages of the book, which seemed to me, could well have been written by a CIA operative: their tone and the direction in which they take the reader simply do not ring true for the observations of a genuinely independent journalist, at least not a first-rate one.
Some while back, I heard Ms Gannon on CBC Radio as part of a panel of people commenting on the conflict in Afghanistan. It was because I heard her say a few striking things that I so looked forward so much to this book, her first.
But what a disappointment it proved. Ms. Gannon’s writing is so poor, something one does not expect from a seasoned journalist. She repeats herself many times in so brief a book, and there is a fair amount of padding which seems ridiculous in a book of about 160 pages.
But what I found most disappointing was the incompleteness and anecdotal nature of the story she tells. As just one example, she introduces al Qaeda well into the book with no explanation of its origins. Or for a time she is writing about the Mujahedeen, then the Northern Alliance shows up. There is an explanation of the rise of the Taleban, but in bringing in the role of Pakistan’s intelligence service (ISI), there is confusion and statements made which are never expanded upon.
She attributes motives to Osama bin Laden for which she has no basis, at least she offers readers none. One should remember that to this day, we have never been given any genuine proof of bin Laden’s role in 9/11, and requests for his extradition by the Taleban government of day were rejected because the U. S. offered no evidence, a normal part of extradition requests by any country.
She brings Pakistan’s Musharraf onto the stage briefly and gives a highly slanted view of him.
No good newspaper editor would run with a story which contained the same kind of flaws this book does.
Because there are a few passages worth reading, I do not give the book the lowest possible rating, but neither can I possibly recommend it.
Well, I’m sorry, but you would never know it just from reading the main part of the book.
Here is a book by a seasoned journalist, although I’ve never read Ms Gannon’s reportage, and it is poorly written, repetitive, but most importantly, it just fails to give the reader the much-desired understanding of a complex situation.
Even more, her credentials would lead us to expect some genuine enlightenment concerning the desperate matters in Afghanistan, a sparkling narrative history of events so incompletely understood. We do learn some things here, but the quantity, quality, and the consistency are meagre at best.
Moreover, I was quite troubled to read passages of the book, which seemed to me, could well have been written by a CIA operative: their tone and the direction in which they take the reader simply do not ring true for the observations of a genuinely independent journalist, at least not a first-rate one.
Some while back, I heard Ms Gannon on CBC Radio as part of a panel of people commenting on the conflict in Afghanistan. It was because I heard her say a few striking things that I so looked forward so much to this book, her first.
But what a disappointment it proved. Ms. Gannon’s writing is so poor, something one does not expect from a seasoned journalist. She repeats herself many times in so brief a book, and there is a fair amount of padding which seems ridiculous in a book of about 160 pages.
But what I found most disappointing was the incompleteness and anecdotal nature of the story she tells. As just one example, she introduces al Qaeda well into the book with no explanation of its origins. Or for a time she is writing about the Mujahedeen, then the Northern Alliance shows up. There is an explanation of the rise of the Taleban, but in bringing in the role of Pakistan’s intelligence service (ISI), there is confusion and statements made which are never expanded upon.
She attributes motives to Osama bin Laden for which she has no basis, at least she offers readers none. One should remember that to this day, we have never been given any genuine proof of bin Laden’s role in 9/11, and requests for his extradition by the Taleban government of day were rejected because the U. S. offered no evidence, a normal part of extradition requests by any country.
She brings Pakistan’s Musharraf onto the stage briefly and gives a highly slanted view of him.
No good newspaper editor would run with a story which contained the same kind of flaws this book does.
Because there are a few passages worth reading, I do not give the book the lowest possible rating, but neither can I possibly recommend it.
Monday, August 31, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF ROBERT HUTCHINSON'S ELIZABETH'S SPY MASTER
Much of this book reads with the pace of a well-written novel.
But it suffers from Hutchinson’s excessive use of quoted passages, a practice I regard as pernicious, one often used to pad the size of books.
Hutchinson’s book suffers, too, from his own motives in writing it.
“By right, he should rank with Horatio Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, and even Sir Winston Churchill as one of the great patriotic defenders, against all-comers, of this island state, its monarchs, governments, beliefs and creeds.”
I cannot agree. Here we have a man who said more than once that he could not be effective without torture, one who used the worst forms of torture extensively. He was also a man who plotted the downfall of great figures, including Mary Queen of Scots, with elaborate and devious schemes much in the style of what we would today term “entrapment.”
I am more in agreement when Hutchinson writes of “the numbing fear of that sudden Gestapo-like knock at the door from Walsingham’s questing pursuivants.”
Walsingham was an extraordinarily intelligent man and very talented at what he did. Those who are familiar with Elizabeth I know she did not suffer fools gladly and had a group of advisors and servants of extraordinary ability, so Walsingham’s skills are as we would expect.
But Walsingham was, like so many Puritans, a true fanatic, relentless in his pursuits, reminding the modern reader in many respects of dark figures in the Cold War or of the immortal and horrible, Inspector Javert.
Hutchinson’s greatest fault is overstating the importance of Walsingham’s contribution, crediting him, among other things, with England’s success against Spain’s Great Armada. This, it seems to me, is both a misreading of history and a dangerous error for people’s understanding of parallel situations in today’s world, the War on Terror having many similarities with the Elizabethan crusade against a re-establishment of Catholicism.
Elizabeth’s period has been a favourite of mine for years, and I believe strongly that it is a serious misreading of history to say that Walsingham’s intelligence was crucial to victory over the Great Armada. The Armada project was doomed from the start for the simple reason that Philip II of Spain did not have the resources to carry it off.
Philip was spending his treasure in every direction – fighting Turks in the Mediterranean, fighting a war in the Netherlands, running his inquisitions, and many other vast expenses - a treasure that was under constant attack by magnificent rascals like Sir Francis Drake, and he simply never had enough resources to succeed with the Armada. The Pope failed to deliver any significant resources, offering only talk and a fairly modest reward – modest in relation to the size of the project – payable upon the actual invasion of England.
The key to the invasion was landing the forces of the ferocious Duke of Alva from the Netherlands on the coast of England. Philip never had the beginning of enough ships for the secure passage of 30,000 heavily armed troops. The Armada’s main naval force, launched from Spain, was to meet up with Alva’s men on small boats launched from the coast of the Netherlands, an impossible task, especially given England’s naval forces, daring tactics, and superior naval technology, both in fast and manoeuvrable ships and in more accurate cannon.
Indeed, first class intelligence – intelligence of the purely information-gathering and analysis kind, as opposed to the intelligence of dark operations – would have concluded that.
It is creepily interesting to read of Walsingham’s career and exploits – interesting, that is, removed as we are by centuries of progress in human freedoms.
You will see here, in the events of more than four centuries ago, the kind of thinking and fear and paranoia we have experienced again in recent years under Bush’s War on Terror, although I think it safe to say that the intensity of fear and hatred was greater in Walsingham’s day.
Definitely worth reading, so long as readers are aware of its limits.
But it suffers from Hutchinson’s excessive use of quoted passages, a practice I regard as pernicious, one often used to pad the size of books.
Hutchinson’s book suffers, too, from his own motives in writing it.
“By right, he should rank with Horatio Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, and even Sir Winston Churchill as one of the great patriotic defenders, against all-comers, of this island state, its monarchs, governments, beliefs and creeds.”
I cannot agree. Here we have a man who said more than once that he could not be effective without torture, one who used the worst forms of torture extensively. He was also a man who plotted the downfall of great figures, including Mary Queen of Scots, with elaborate and devious schemes much in the style of what we would today term “entrapment.”
I am more in agreement when Hutchinson writes of “the numbing fear of that sudden Gestapo-like knock at the door from Walsingham’s questing pursuivants.”
Walsingham was an extraordinarily intelligent man and very talented at what he did. Those who are familiar with Elizabeth I know she did not suffer fools gladly and had a group of advisors and servants of extraordinary ability, so Walsingham’s skills are as we would expect.
But Walsingham was, like so many Puritans, a true fanatic, relentless in his pursuits, reminding the modern reader in many respects of dark figures in the Cold War or of the immortal and horrible, Inspector Javert.
Hutchinson’s greatest fault is overstating the importance of Walsingham’s contribution, crediting him, among other things, with England’s success against Spain’s Great Armada. This, it seems to me, is both a misreading of history and a dangerous error for people’s understanding of parallel situations in today’s world, the War on Terror having many similarities with the Elizabethan crusade against a re-establishment of Catholicism.
Elizabeth’s period has been a favourite of mine for years, and I believe strongly that it is a serious misreading of history to say that Walsingham’s intelligence was crucial to victory over the Great Armada. The Armada project was doomed from the start for the simple reason that Philip II of Spain did not have the resources to carry it off.
Philip was spending his treasure in every direction – fighting Turks in the Mediterranean, fighting a war in the Netherlands, running his inquisitions, and many other vast expenses - a treasure that was under constant attack by magnificent rascals like Sir Francis Drake, and he simply never had enough resources to succeed with the Armada. The Pope failed to deliver any significant resources, offering only talk and a fairly modest reward – modest in relation to the size of the project – payable upon the actual invasion of England.
The key to the invasion was landing the forces of the ferocious Duke of Alva from the Netherlands on the coast of England. Philip never had the beginning of enough ships for the secure passage of 30,000 heavily armed troops. The Armada’s main naval force, launched from Spain, was to meet up with Alva’s men on small boats launched from the coast of the Netherlands, an impossible task, especially given England’s naval forces, daring tactics, and superior naval technology, both in fast and manoeuvrable ships and in more accurate cannon.
Indeed, first class intelligence – intelligence of the purely information-gathering and analysis kind, as opposed to the intelligence of dark operations – would have concluded that.
It is creepily interesting to read of Walsingham’s career and exploits – interesting, that is, removed as we are by centuries of progress in human freedoms.
You will see here, in the events of more than four centuries ago, the kind of thinking and fear and paranoia we have experienced again in recent years under Bush’s War on Terror, although I think it safe to say that the intensity of fear and hatred was greater in Walsingham’s day.
Definitely worth reading, so long as readers are aware of its limits.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: THAI CURRY SHRIMP & CHUCKMAN'S THAI-INFLUENCED SPINACH SALAD
CHUCKMAN’S THAI CURRY SHRIMP
I love Thai food, but is there any Asian cuisine I don’t love? This dish is not authentic, but it will please lovers of Thai food, and it will please lovers of shrimp, especially those who love shrimp done with hot sauces – it is one of the tastiest shrimp dishes I know.
INGREDIENTS:
Shrimp – About 20 Large - never use pre-cooked which heat to rubberiness – use uncooked, fresh or frozen
Red Curry Paste – 1 Tablespoon - either store-bought or make your own – found in most Asian grocery stores and many supermarkets
Red Pepper Flakes – A generous sprinkling depending on how hot you want the dish
Pad Thai Concentrate – 1 Tablespoon - available at most Asian grocery stores
Thai Fish Sauce – 2 Teaspoons – available at most Asian grocery stores and many supermarkets
Lemon Juice – Juice of ½ a lemon – the equivalent in lime may also be used
Coarse Black Pepper – 2 Teaspoons
Coarse Sea Salt – 1 rounded Teaspoon
Oil – A few Tablespoons – enough to make a thick marinade - Canola is ideal
NOTE: Ingredient proportions are approximate because I cook this dish without measuring. Adjust to your taste.
METHOD:
Thaw Shrimp if frozen, leaving a short while in cold water, then peel.
Mix all other ingredients – except for Salt and half of Pepper – and stir into shrimp as a marinade. Let marinade at least an hour.
Oil sauté pan and heat to high, sprinkling with reserved Salt and Pepper. Quickly sauté shrimp, tossing as you cook. Remove from pan when shrimp are nice and pink.
These may be eaten over rice noodles or as is.
___________________________
The following Spinach Salad is excellent with the shrimp.
CHUCKMAN’S THAI-INFLUENCED SPINACH SALAD
INGREDIENTS:
Dressing:
Thai Hot Chilli Sauce – 3 Tablespoons - this is the sweet/hot bottled sauce Thai people use as a condiment
Rice Vinegar – 2 Tablesppons
Pepper Flakes – light sprinkling
Oil – Canola is excellent – enough to make a dressing
Fresh Ginger – about a thumb-end - finely chopped
Salad Greens:
Fresh Shredded Spinach or Baby Spinach - always wash spinach well
Sweet Red Pepper - sliced thinly or into matchsticks
Red Onion – sliced thinly
NOTE: some fresh bean sprouts would also be nice.
METHOD:
Shake dressing ingredients in a capped bottle. Toss greens together in a bowl. Dress when serving.
I love Thai food, but is there any Asian cuisine I don’t love? This dish is not authentic, but it will please lovers of Thai food, and it will please lovers of shrimp, especially those who love shrimp done with hot sauces – it is one of the tastiest shrimp dishes I know.
INGREDIENTS:
Shrimp – About 20 Large - never use pre-cooked which heat to rubberiness – use uncooked, fresh or frozen
Red Curry Paste – 1 Tablespoon - either store-bought or make your own – found in most Asian grocery stores and many supermarkets
Red Pepper Flakes – A generous sprinkling depending on how hot you want the dish
Pad Thai Concentrate – 1 Tablespoon - available at most Asian grocery stores
Thai Fish Sauce – 2 Teaspoons – available at most Asian grocery stores and many supermarkets
Lemon Juice – Juice of ½ a lemon – the equivalent in lime may also be used
Coarse Black Pepper – 2 Teaspoons
Coarse Sea Salt – 1 rounded Teaspoon
Oil – A few Tablespoons – enough to make a thick marinade - Canola is ideal
NOTE: Ingredient proportions are approximate because I cook this dish without measuring. Adjust to your taste.
METHOD:
Thaw Shrimp if frozen, leaving a short while in cold water, then peel.
Mix all other ingredients – except for Salt and half of Pepper – and stir into shrimp as a marinade. Let marinade at least an hour.
Oil sauté pan and heat to high, sprinkling with reserved Salt and Pepper. Quickly sauté shrimp, tossing as you cook. Remove from pan when shrimp are nice and pink.
These may be eaten over rice noodles or as is.
___________________________
The following Spinach Salad is excellent with the shrimp.
CHUCKMAN’S THAI-INFLUENCED SPINACH SALAD
INGREDIENTS:
Dressing:
Thai Hot Chilli Sauce – 3 Tablespoons - this is the sweet/hot bottled sauce Thai people use as a condiment
Rice Vinegar – 2 Tablesppons
Pepper Flakes – light sprinkling
Oil – Canola is excellent – enough to make a dressing
Fresh Ginger – about a thumb-end - finely chopped
Salad Greens:
Fresh Shredded Spinach or Baby Spinach - always wash spinach well
Sweet Red Pepper - sliced thinly or into matchsticks
Red Onion – sliced thinly
NOTE: some fresh bean sprouts would also be nice.
METHOD:
Shake dressing ingredients in a capped bottle. Toss greens together in a bowl. Dress when serving.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF JAMES DOUGLASS'S JFK AND THE UNSPEAKABLE
Let me make my perspective clear in reviewing this book: I am a complete sceptic of the official story of Kennedy’s assassination . As well, I have been a fierce critic of the Warren Commission whose work was riddled with flaws and whose only investigation was wholly adopted from J. Edgar Hoover, a man who loathed the Kennedys and had several motives for hiding the truth, including Oswald’s (almost certain) embarrassing work as a paid FBI informant right up to the end.
It always amazes me when I confront the reality of a whole new generation of readers who appear, from their embrace of books like this, to be so completely unfamiliar with what has gone before. But of course that perspective is true in so many things: the Vietnam War, a pointless bloodbath which determined much of the course of my life and that of millions of others, is almost unknown to young people today if polls are to be believed.
That said, James Douglass’s book was a great disappointment. I had expected from some reviews, including one by Oliver Stone, as well as from the fact that Douglass is an experienced author, albeit of religious books, a significant contribution to the assassination literature.
But no critical mind familiar with the assassination literature could possibly regard this book as a contribution.
Every witness ignored by the Warren Commission or those whose testimony was twisted by Hoover’s FBI (and there were many) has been heard from in nearly forty-six years of books and articles. I accept the validity of a number of these witnesses, and, very importantly, I embrace Bertrand Russell’s profound question on the assassination: "If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security?"
Douglass, in his most successful passages in terms of suspense (undoubtedly, part of his appeal) presents once again a relatively small selection of these, letting readers assume they are getting these stories as new revelations. What is most regrettable is that Douglass includes and emphasizes a couple of the least credible witnesses, while leaving out other interesting, far more credible ones.
Douglass takes the idea of an Oswald double to new heights, quoting the more far-fetched witnesses, as seeing a man who was virtually his double. For those who’ve read the assassination literature, there is no doubt that there was at least one individual vaguely fitting Oswald’s description who was used by the conspirators as a means of spreading legends about Oswald’s activities, but we know from several pieces of evidence that he was no actual double.
Douglass offers nothing new on any of the most critical events around the assassination, including the remarkable activities of George de Mohrenschildt, former-FBI Agent Guy Banister’s operations in New Orleans, and Oswald’s supposed trip to Mexico City, absolute keys to understanding. He sorts out nothing new on these or other vital topics.
Why on earth does Douglass in the early part of his book spend time on an obscure a monk named Thomas Merton? It seems Merton inspired Douglass’s thoughts, but if you read between the lines of Douglass on Merton you find something close to ridiculous, a monk whose hobby was writing long letters to very famous public figures and who published a collection of these.
Douglass carefully avoids dealing with the fact of whether any of these people read Merton’s letters, or even opened them, or ever responded. The picture that emerges is one of a highly eccentric man one would not want to quote in the beginning of a book on a serious subject.
Again, of all the past books on the assassination, Douglass quotes some of the least interesting and credible, including the ponderous and, for me, seemingly delusional, The Man Who Knew Too Much, the supposed experiences of one Richard Case Nagell. Douglass never mentions the most important investigative book ever written on the topic, Anthony Summers’ Conspiracy, a work of immense credibility.
I have often written, when criticizing the many dishonest anti-conspiracy books which have appeared over the years (many of them undoubtedly financed or at least juiced-up by the CIA and its American media allies), that until we have new evidence, we are unable to make the kind of pat conclusions such books make.
We know only to a near certainty that Oswald did not shoot at Kennedy, that Oswald found himself (as an FBI informer) caught up in a series of elaborate plots with which he was not familiar, that no assassination of this nature takes place without considerable resources and planning, that Kennedy’s key wound was inflicted from the front, and that the official agencies, for whatever reason, have hidden what truth they know and certainly some key files.
This book is simply unsatisfying on many levels: read it only if you enjoy carnival side-shows.
Readers interested in my analysis of the assassination may find it in the published pieces, Forty Years of Lies and Lincoln Was Wrong. You’ll find both of them on any of several sites, including Chuckman’s Words On Wordpress.
It always amazes me when I confront the reality of a whole new generation of readers who appear, from their embrace of books like this, to be so completely unfamiliar with what has gone before. But of course that perspective is true in so many things: the Vietnam War, a pointless bloodbath which determined much of the course of my life and that of millions of others, is almost unknown to young people today if polls are to be believed.
That said, James Douglass’s book was a great disappointment. I had expected from some reviews, including one by Oliver Stone, as well as from the fact that Douglass is an experienced author, albeit of religious books, a significant contribution to the assassination literature.
But no critical mind familiar with the assassination literature could possibly regard this book as a contribution.
Every witness ignored by the Warren Commission or those whose testimony was twisted by Hoover’s FBI (and there were many) has been heard from in nearly forty-six years of books and articles. I accept the validity of a number of these witnesses, and, very importantly, I embrace Bertrand Russell’s profound question on the assassination: "If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security?"
Douglass, in his most successful passages in terms of suspense (undoubtedly, part of his appeal) presents once again a relatively small selection of these, letting readers assume they are getting these stories as new revelations. What is most regrettable is that Douglass includes and emphasizes a couple of the least credible witnesses, while leaving out other interesting, far more credible ones.
Douglass takes the idea of an Oswald double to new heights, quoting the more far-fetched witnesses, as seeing a man who was virtually his double. For those who’ve read the assassination literature, there is no doubt that there was at least one individual vaguely fitting Oswald’s description who was used by the conspirators as a means of spreading legends about Oswald’s activities, but we know from several pieces of evidence that he was no actual double.
Douglass offers nothing new on any of the most critical events around the assassination, including the remarkable activities of George de Mohrenschildt, former-FBI Agent Guy Banister’s operations in New Orleans, and Oswald’s supposed trip to Mexico City, absolute keys to understanding. He sorts out nothing new on these or other vital topics.
Why on earth does Douglass in the early part of his book spend time on an obscure a monk named Thomas Merton? It seems Merton inspired Douglass’s thoughts, but if you read between the lines of Douglass on Merton you find something close to ridiculous, a monk whose hobby was writing long letters to very famous public figures and who published a collection of these.
Douglass carefully avoids dealing with the fact of whether any of these people read Merton’s letters, or even opened them, or ever responded. The picture that emerges is one of a highly eccentric man one would not want to quote in the beginning of a book on a serious subject.
Again, of all the past books on the assassination, Douglass quotes some of the least interesting and credible, including the ponderous and, for me, seemingly delusional, The Man Who Knew Too Much, the supposed experiences of one Richard Case Nagell. Douglass never mentions the most important investigative book ever written on the topic, Anthony Summers’ Conspiracy, a work of immense credibility.
I have often written, when criticizing the many dishonest anti-conspiracy books which have appeared over the years (many of them undoubtedly financed or at least juiced-up by the CIA and its American media allies), that until we have new evidence, we are unable to make the kind of pat conclusions such books make.
We know only to a near certainty that Oswald did not shoot at Kennedy, that Oswald found himself (as an FBI informer) caught up in a series of elaborate plots with which he was not familiar, that no assassination of this nature takes place without considerable resources and planning, that Kennedy’s key wound was inflicted from the front, and that the official agencies, for whatever reason, have hidden what truth they know and certainly some key files.
This book is simply unsatisfying on many levels: read it only if you enjoy carnival side-shows.
Readers interested in my analysis of the assassination may find it in the published pieces, Forty Years of Lies and Lincoln Was Wrong. You’ll find both of them on any of several sites, including Chuckman’s Words On Wordpress.
Monday, June 15, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: SUKIYAKI
CHUCKMAN’S SUKIYAKI
I love Japanese food in general, but this dish is one of my favourite meals from any cuisine. It offers a complete, delicious meal from one pot. It’s all preparation and little cooking.
INGREDIENTS:
1 ½ pounds of Beef – decent steak like top sirloin is good – sliced into very thin strips – Tip: slice steak when partially frozen to get best results, or use a good long scissor
Shirataki Mushrooms – about 6 to 8, depending on size – caps sliced thinly, stems not used - fresh or dried – if you use dry, soak in warm water for half an hour before cutting
Bok Choi – 1 large stalk or equivalent Baby Bok Choi – Greens sliced thinly, leave white bottom for a future recipe
1 pound soft Tofu – break up with fingers until little chunks like cottage cheese
Scallions – 4 large – sliced very thinly
Onion – 1 large – sliced very thinly
½ cup Soy Sauce – Kikkoman’s distinctive flavour is best for this
½ cup Sake
1 Tbsp sugar or sugar substitute
Togarashi – Japanese Red Pepper powder – available in any decent Asian grocery and even some supermarkets
Soba (Japanese buckwheat) Noodles – 3 or 4 of the little bundles as they typically come packaged
Oil sufficient for cooking a stir fry
METHOD:
Prepare sauce, combining Soy Sauce, Sake, and Sugar and set aside.
Place Noodles – remove little plastic ties first - into a medium pot of boiling water. Cook just a couple of minutes – they are very thin - and drain. Oil very lightly to keep from clumping and set aside.
Lightly oil large frying pan and cook Onion slices until translucent. Add Beef slices and Mushroom slices, cooking an additional minute or two stirring as you fry. Add Bok Choy and cook briefly until reduced by water loss. Add Tofu and Scallions and Sauce. Simmer briefly.
Add Noodles, stirring into mixture.
This ready to serve as soon as well mixed except for the Togarashi powder. I consider it essential, but some do not use it. By leaving it until last, you can customize plates.
NOTES:
Traditional Japanese people eat Sukiyaki with a raw egg on top.
Soba Noodles are not the noodles traditionally used, but I like them very much, and they are much easier to find than the more exotic noodles made from sweet potato which even many Asian grocers do not carry.
Togarashi is zesty but not hot.
Japanese Ginger (Sushi) Pickles, for me, go with Sukiyaki the way a big dill pickle goes with a corned-beef sandwich. Serve them cold on the side.
You may also make Sukiyaki with chicken.
I love Japanese food in general, but this dish is one of my favourite meals from any cuisine. It offers a complete, delicious meal from one pot. It’s all preparation and little cooking.
INGREDIENTS:
1 ½ pounds of Beef – decent steak like top sirloin is good – sliced into very thin strips – Tip: slice steak when partially frozen to get best results, or use a good long scissor
Shirataki Mushrooms – about 6 to 8, depending on size – caps sliced thinly, stems not used - fresh or dried – if you use dry, soak in warm water for half an hour before cutting
Bok Choi – 1 large stalk or equivalent Baby Bok Choi – Greens sliced thinly, leave white bottom for a future recipe
1 pound soft Tofu – break up with fingers until little chunks like cottage cheese
Scallions – 4 large – sliced very thinly
Onion – 1 large – sliced very thinly
½ cup Soy Sauce – Kikkoman’s distinctive flavour is best for this
½ cup Sake
1 Tbsp sugar or sugar substitute
Togarashi – Japanese Red Pepper powder – available in any decent Asian grocery and even some supermarkets
Soba (Japanese buckwheat) Noodles – 3 or 4 of the little bundles as they typically come packaged
Oil sufficient for cooking a stir fry
METHOD:
Prepare sauce, combining Soy Sauce, Sake, and Sugar and set aside.
Place Noodles – remove little plastic ties first - into a medium pot of boiling water. Cook just a couple of minutes – they are very thin - and drain. Oil very lightly to keep from clumping and set aside.
Lightly oil large frying pan and cook Onion slices until translucent. Add Beef slices and Mushroom slices, cooking an additional minute or two stirring as you fry. Add Bok Choy and cook briefly until reduced by water loss. Add Tofu and Scallions and Sauce. Simmer briefly.
Add Noodles, stirring into mixture.
This ready to serve as soon as well mixed except for the Togarashi powder. I consider it essential, but some do not use it. By leaving it until last, you can customize plates.
NOTES:
Traditional Japanese people eat Sukiyaki with a raw egg on top.
Soba Noodles are not the noodles traditionally used, but I like them very much, and they are much easier to find than the more exotic noodles made from sweet potato which even many Asian grocers do not carry.
Togarashi is zesty but not hot.
Japanese Ginger (Sushi) Pickles, for me, go with Sukiyaki the way a big dill pickle goes with a corned-beef sandwich. Serve them cold on the side.
You may also make Sukiyaki with chicken.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: FRESH CORN SALAD WITH MEXICAN FLAVORS
CHUCKMAN’S FRESH CORN SALAD
A delicious way to use fresh corn
SALAD:
4 Cobs of fresh Corn
1 medium Zucchini quartered lengthwise and sliced thinly
1 small Red Sweet Pepper diced finely
1 medium Red Onion finely chopped
2 Stalks Celery finely sliced
DRESSING:
1 Lime – zest and juice – use two limes if you want a strong Lime flavor
2 Tbls Rice Vinegar
1 Tbls Chilli Powder
Tabasco sauce – several shakes or to taste
Fresh Cilantro – several sprigs finely chopped
Oil sufficient for a dressing - at least 2:1 to acids
Sea Salt coarse
METHOD:
Cut corn off cleaned cobs. Combine with other chopped vegetables and set aside.
Mix dressing but leave until ready to serve salad so that Lime does not dehydrate vegetables. Sprinkle coarse Salt when serving.
NOTE: I use old glass spice bottles with screw tops to mix dressings, putting in ingredients, closing top, and shaking vigorously. Works nicely, and you can store any leftover.
A delicious way to use fresh corn
SALAD:
4 Cobs of fresh Corn
1 medium Zucchini quartered lengthwise and sliced thinly
1 small Red Sweet Pepper diced finely
1 medium Red Onion finely chopped
2 Stalks Celery finely sliced
DRESSING:
1 Lime – zest and juice – use two limes if you want a strong Lime flavor
2 Tbls Rice Vinegar
1 Tbls Chilli Powder
Tabasco sauce – several shakes or to taste
Fresh Cilantro – several sprigs finely chopped
Oil sufficient for a dressing - at least 2:1 to acids
Sea Salt coarse
METHOD:
Cut corn off cleaned cobs. Combine with other chopped vegetables and set aside.
Mix dressing but leave until ready to serve salad so that Lime does not dehydrate vegetables. Sprinkle coarse Salt when serving.
NOTE: I use old glass spice bottles with screw tops to mix dressings, putting in ingredients, closing top, and shaking vigorously. Works nicely, and you can store any leftover.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF PETER GREEN'S ALEXANDER TO ACTIUM
Here indeed is a difficult book to review: it is so obviously a work of impressive scholarship, yet it has a number of notable shortcomings.
The comment has been made in other reviews that Green is an elegant writer, but I believe that only superficial readers or the author's friends and associates would say that. Green's writing has important and obvious flaws that prevent the book from being what it might have been.
While he sometimes offers elegant sentences, he too often offers convoluted sentences or sentences stuffed like long, fat sausages, sometimes even diverging from the subject in the course of setting down his words. He also maintains a rather superior gesturing in his prose. I know the effect Green likely hoped he was achieving - the majesty of Edward Gibbon or Thomas Macaulay - but he just does not succeed.
He is often an extremely pedantic writer, generously sprinkling his text with words and phrases not just from Greek and Latin but German and French, and always selecting obscure words or Latinisms where solid Anglo-Saxon words would serve better.
There are indeed times when a foreign expression captures the special sense of a concept that a translation may loose, and I have no objection to their use where that is true, but that is not the case here.
I very much object to the gratuitous use of foreign words and phrases to display an author's learning, something which makes the work less accessible to many while simply annoying others with a gimmick related to the use of "as the eminent, such-and-such prize-winner once said..." to bolster a quoted source's authority (something Green spares us). The effects are poisonous in a work of this nature.
Yet Green knows a great deal about his subject, and I certainly learned from him despite the faults. His interpretation of the Hellenistic world after Alexander as representing a decay and gradual departure from (reaching almost a bastardization of) Greece's true classical period is interesting, and he mounts some strong supporting evidence for the view.
The book is not properly understood as a history, because large portions of it are arguments of positions on historical or philosophical or esthetic or moral issues. There's nothing wrong with that, but potential readers should be aware of the fact.
There is such a huge cast of characters involved in the three great divisions of Alexander's conquests over a couple of centuries that one loses track of some of them in the narrative, many of course being minor or simply having left few records, but one might have hoped for a clearer, more sustained narrative of the truly important figures. There is a sense of fragmentation here which may be just the fault of a fragmentary record.
There is a considerable difference in Green's success in explaining some events. He sometimes leaves you mentally saying, "Yes, indeed," while other times he leaves you saying, "What?"
Despite the flaws, this is a significant book and one worth reading by anyone interested in the Hellenistic era and in the successors to the dead Alexander and in the rise of imperial Rome.
The comment has been made in other reviews that Green is an elegant writer, but I believe that only superficial readers or the author's friends and associates would say that. Green's writing has important and obvious flaws that prevent the book from being what it might have been.
While he sometimes offers elegant sentences, he too often offers convoluted sentences or sentences stuffed like long, fat sausages, sometimes even diverging from the subject in the course of setting down his words. He also maintains a rather superior gesturing in his prose. I know the effect Green likely hoped he was achieving - the majesty of Edward Gibbon or Thomas Macaulay - but he just does not succeed.
He is often an extremely pedantic writer, generously sprinkling his text with words and phrases not just from Greek and Latin but German and French, and always selecting obscure words or Latinisms where solid Anglo-Saxon words would serve better.
There are indeed times when a foreign expression captures the special sense of a concept that a translation may loose, and I have no objection to their use where that is true, but that is not the case here.
I very much object to the gratuitous use of foreign words and phrases to display an author's learning, something which makes the work less accessible to many while simply annoying others with a gimmick related to the use of "as the eminent, such-and-such prize-winner once said..." to bolster a quoted source's authority (something Green spares us). The effects are poisonous in a work of this nature.
Yet Green knows a great deal about his subject, and I certainly learned from him despite the faults. His interpretation of the Hellenistic world after Alexander as representing a decay and gradual departure from (reaching almost a bastardization of) Greece's true classical period is interesting, and he mounts some strong supporting evidence for the view.
The book is not properly understood as a history, because large portions of it are arguments of positions on historical or philosophical or esthetic or moral issues. There's nothing wrong with that, but potential readers should be aware of the fact.
There is such a huge cast of characters involved in the three great divisions of Alexander's conquests over a couple of centuries that one loses track of some of them in the narrative, many of course being minor or simply having left few records, but one might have hoped for a clearer, more sustained narrative of the truly important figures. There is a sense of fragmentation here which may be just the fault of a fragmentary record.
There is a considerable difference in Green's success in explaining some events. He sometimes leaves you mentally saying, "Yes, indeed," while other times he leaves you saying, "What?"
Despite the flaws, this is a significant book and one worth reading by anyone interested in the Hellenistic era and in the successors to the dead Alexander and in the rise of imperial Rome.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF ARNALDUR INDRIDASON'S ARCTIC CHILL
I am not a traditionally a reader of mysteries, but since my wife introduced me to selected writers, there are a few to whose new books I quite look forward.
Scandinavian writers of this genre appeal a great deal. After all, part of what we get from any novel is being taken into a world we do not know, and the place and people names of Scandinavia are exotic and fascinating. Also, there is a great touch of humanity in the stories coming from Scandinavian writers, quite in distinction to some well-known, hard-boiled American writers whose fiction I find almost unreadable.
Norway's Karin Fossum is chief among the Scandinavians, being a writer and storyteller of top quality, but I enjoy Iceland's Arnaldur Indridason too. His first books were not in the same class with Fossum's, but with Arctic Chill, he rises to a new level of quality. This is fine and gripping book, an interesting tale with many twists and turns.
Indridason weaves several plots together here and manages them with great skill. The two criminal cases - a murder and a separate missing person - actually nicely reinforce each other and are used to introduce some interesting complexities.
Indridason is always a clear writer, but this book introduces a new level of sophistication in his storytelling. We still have his intelligent, very human, and sympathic detective, Erlendur, a man with whom we feel it might be nice to spend some time discussing the human condition. We still have the wonderfully forbidding weather and brooding landscape of Iceland as major characters.
This is a book you will not want to put down. Highly recommended.
Scandinavian writers of this genre appeal a great deal. After all, part of what we get from any novel is being taken into a world we do not know, and the place and people names of Scandinavia are exotic and fascinating. Also, there is a great touch of humanity in the stories coming from Scandinavian writers, quite in distinction to some well-known, hard-boiled American writers whose fiction I find almost unreadable.
Norway's Karin Fossum is chief among the Scandinavians, being a writer and storyteller of top quality, but I enjoy Iceland's Arnaldur Indridason too. His first books were not in the same class with Fossum's, but with Arctic Chill, he rises to a new level of quality. This is fine and gripping book, an interesting tale with many twists and turns.
Indridason weaves several plots together here and manages them with great skill. The two criminal cases - a murder and a separate missing person - actually nicely reinforce each other and are used to introduce some interesting complexities.
Indridason is always a clear writer, but this book introduces a new level of sophistication in his storytelling. We still have his intelligent, very human, and sympathic detective, Erlendur, a man with whom we feel it might be nice to spend some time discussing the human condition. We still have the wonderfully forbidding weather and brooding landscape of Iceland as major characters.
This is a book you will not want to put down. Highly recommended.
Monday, May 04, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: MY ZESTIEST LENTIL SOUP
MY ZESTIEST LENTL SOUP
1 Pound dry Red Lentils
2 Boxes Beef Stock
1 pound of Spanish Chorizo Sausage – Sweet – sliced thinly
1 large Onion - diced
1 large Green Pepper - diced
2 medium Carrots – sliced thinly
2 stalks of Celery – sliced thinly
Hungarian Sweet Paprika – at least two tablespoons, more if you like
Salt – to taste
Pepper – coarsely ground – at least 1 teaspoon
Bring a medium pot of water to boil and add Lentils. Boil for 5 minutes. Drain with a strainer and add to the Beef Stock in a large soup pan.
Saute Onions and Carrots until softened. Add Green Pepper and Celery to cook a briefer time. Add Paprika to vegetables and continue cooking a brief time to work in all the Paprika with oil and cook through.
Add Onions, Carrots, Green Pepper, Celery to pot of Beef Stock.
Add Chorizo slices to frying pan and briefly sauté. Then add to Stock. Add pepper.
Simmer for at least fifteen minutes, longer if you like something closer to a porridge consistency with much softened vegetables.
Great with yogourt.
1 Pound dry Red Lentils
2 Boxes Beef Stock
1 pound of Spanish Chorizo Sausage – Sweet – sliced thinly
1 large Onion - diced
1 large Green Pepper - diced
2 medium Carrots – sliced thinly
2 stalks of Celery – sliced thinly
Hungarian Sweet Paprika – at least two tablespoons, more if you like
Salt – to taste
Pepper – coarsely ground – at least 1 teaspoon
Bring a medium pot of water to boil and add Lentils. Boil for 5 minutes. Drain with a strainer and add to the Beef Stock in a large soup pan.
Saute Onions and Carrots until softened. Add Green Pepper and Celery to cook a briefer time. Add Paprika to vegetables and continue cooking a brief time to work in all the Paprika with oil and cook through.
Add Onions, Carrots, Green Pepper, Celery to pot of Beef Stock.
Add Chorizo slices to frying pan and briefly sauté. Then add to Stock. Add pepper.
Simmer for at least fifteen minutes, longer if you like something closer to a porridge consistency with much softened vegetables.
Great with yogourt.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF SEBASTIAN FAULKS' BIRDSONG
This is a difficult book to review, the reason being is that it has so many contradictory qualities. It has some good writing combined with material that is sentimental and even purplish.
It has some strong images, and it has a series of preposterous incidents. It is packed with improbabilities.
The author starts with a mini-version of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," oddly hybridized with Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover." While there is some nice writing here, it strikes me as self-consciously so, and the story lacks any freshness.
There are ridiculous improbabilities in this part of the book. Why would an English firm considering a business venture with a French firm send this young man, the protagonist, Stephen, to size up the opportunity? He isn't even educated in business. He is very young. And he proves emotionally unstable.
And why would the French proprietor - M. Azaire, husband of the beautiful woman, Isabelle, who becomes Stephen's lover - have Stephen spending time at lunches and other business of the floor workers in his plant? It's a genuinely silly idea.
The sentimentality begins shortly after Stephen and Isabelle become lovers, and, in cheap romantic fashion, Isabelle suddenly disappears with their young child, returning to her family.
When you get into the Great War, supposedly the real stuff of the book, you will wonder why you've had about ninety pages of rehashed Madame Bovary. You will find out towards the end, but it is a very unsatisfying idea of neatness and completeness that drives things.
Here and there in the war business, there are a few strong images and interesting stuff about the tunnel systems that were extensively used in the Great War.
But the author even manages to make the front sentimental and clichéd. Egad, there's even the proverbial friend who has never been with a woman and who is given the surprise present of a prostitute one night.
There's lots of hard drinking and calculatedly gruesome incidents - pure Hollywood. And the author has nothing fresh to say about the war we haven't all seen in movies or read in other books.
The end-of-war portion was clearly written with the hope of selling the book for movie rights. The idea of two men trapped in a huge tunnel far underground is gruesomely interesting, but the author draws it out to impossibly long time with an impossibly heroic series of efforts. People typically die after 3 or 4 days without water, but Stephen hangs in there for God knows how long.
Yes, he licks a bit of brackish water in a corner in his Herculean labors, but that just wouldn't do it.
His rescue would have been a good surprise - he is rescued by Germans digging in their own lines - had it been handled well. But we get an awkward effort by a couple of Germans, one of whom, we have explained at some length and repetition, happens to be Jewish. Why? Why is the author suddenly focusing on a man's religion? An intended irony about a good Jewish soldier in the German army? Whatever the intention, it simply does not work.
The ending is silly, the author bringing us what he regards as full circle.
I really do believe Faulks thought he was writing a racier, more action-filled "Gone with the Wind" for World War I in hope of a big movie contract.
I read this book wanting to like it, thinking from things I read that it might be another of those memorable books about people caught in the gears of war, but I found it impossibly flawed.
It has some strong images, and it has a series of preposterous incidents. It is packed with improbabilities.
The author starts with a mini-version of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," oddly hybridized with Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover." While there is some nice writing here, it strikes me as self-consciously so, and the story lacks any freshness.
There are ridiculous improbabilities in this part of the book. Why would an English firm considering a business venture with a French firm send this young man, the protagonist, Stephen, to size up the opportunity? He isn't even educated in business. He is very young. And he proves emotionally unstable.
And why would the French proprietor - M. Azaire, husband of the beautiful woman, Isabelle, who becomes Stephen's lover - have Stephen spending time at lunches and other business of the floor workers in his plant? It's a genuinely silly idea.
The sentimentality begins shortly after Stephen and Isabelle become lovers, and, in cheap romantic fashion, Isabelle suddenly disappears with their young child, returning to her family.
When you get into the Great War, supposedly the real stuff of the book, you will wonder why you've had about ninety pages of rehashed Madame Bovary. You will find out towards the end, but it is a very unsatisfying idea of neatness and completeness that drives things.
Here and there in the war business, there are a few strong images and interesting stuff about the tunnel systems that were extensively used in the Great War.
But the author even manages to make the front sentimental and clichéd. Egad, there's even the proverbial friend who has never been with a woman and who is given the surprise present of a prostitute one night.
There's lots of hard drinking and calculatedly gruesome incidents - pure Hollywood. And the author has nothing fresh to say about the war we haven't all seen in movies or read in other books.
The end-of-war portion was clearly written with the hope of selling the book for movie rights. The idea of two men trapped in a huge tunnel far underground is gruesomely interesting, but the author draws it out to impossibly long time with an impossibly heroic series of efforts. People typically die after 3 or 4 days without water, but Stephen hangs in there for God knows how long.
Yes, he licks a bit of brackish water in a corner in his Herculean labors, but that just wouldn't do it.
His rescue would have been a good surprise - he is rescued by Germans digging in their own lines - had it been handled well. But we get an awkward effort by a couple of Germans, one of whom, we have explained at some length and repetition, happens to be Jewish. Why? Why is the author suddenly focusing on a man's religion? An intended irony about a good Jewish soldier in the German army? Whatever the intention, it simply does not work.
The ending is silly, the author bringing us what he regards as full circle.
I really do believe Faulks thought he was writing a racier, more action-filled "Gone with the Wind" for World War I in hope of a big movie contract.
I read this book wanting to like it, thinking from things I read that it might be another of those memorable books about people caught in the gears of war, but I found it impossibly flawed.
Monday, April 06, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF DAVID HACKETT FISCHER'S CHAMPLAIN'S DREAM
Not every historical character is so lucky in his biographer as Samuel de Champlain is in David Hackett Fischer. Fischer has tremendous good will and sympathy towards his subject, and that always makes a biography more pleasurable to read.
Champlain was an explorer, a mapmaker, an artist, a writer, a capable captain of people in difficult circumstances, an idealist, a seasoned soldier, and person of extraordinarily good temperament. In short, he was a French version of the fabled Elizabethan man, and with qualities of character superior to many Elizabethan men.
This is a very good book: it has a genuinely heroic subject in Champlain, and it tells a great story in vigorous language.
Fischer follows in part the example of Samuel Eliot Morison's "Admiral of the Ocean Sea," a venerable though somewhat dated biography of Columbus, by using his personal knowledge of sailing and the contemporary geography of Champlain’s New France to bring vivid life to his story and explain matters like the naming of certain places. Since I too know and have lived in some of these areas, I found this fascinating.
His treatment of the Indians of New France is refreshingly honest yet sympathetic, much in the spirit of Champlain himself, and by honest I’m including the very brutal aspects of aboriginal society sometimes overlooked today in sentimental history.
The book’s shortcomings are relatively small. Fischer is repetitive in small quantities at times, repeating some fact or observation offered not many pages before. This surely is the fault of a somewhat slack editor.
Another fault is in the somewhat poor reproduction of many illustrations, including a number of Champlain’s own drawings.
Fischer also does not tell us enough about certain matters such as Champlain’s marriage, a fascinating subject involving as it does a woman from a fairly distinguished French family who comes and spends time in New France. He briefly tells us how the marriage goes through ups and downs, but any reader will want a few more details filled in, if indeed such material exists in the records.
A significant book for Canadian history, the history of North American settlement and exploration, the history of North American aboriginal people, and all lovers of good biography and good yarns.
Champlain was an explorer, a mapmaker, an artist, a writer, a capable captain of people in difficult circumstances, an idealist, a seasoned soldier, and person of extraordinarily good temperament. In short, he was a French version of the fabled Elizabethan man, and with qualities of character superior to many Elizabethan men.
This is a very good book: it has a genuinely heroic subject in Champlain, and it tells a great story in vigorous language.
Fischer follows in part the example of Samuel Eliot Morison's "Admiral of the Ocean Sea," a venerable though somewhat dated biography of Columbus, by using his personal knowledge of sailing and the contemporary geography of Champlain’s New France to bring vivid life to his story and explain matters like the naming of certain places. Since I too know and have lived in some of these areas, I found this fascinating.
His treatment of the Indians of New France is refreshingly honest yet sympathetic, much in the spirit of Champlain himself, and by honest I’m including the very brutal aspects of aboriginal society sometimes overlooked today in sentimental history.
The book’s shortcomings are relatively small. Fischer is repetitive in small quantities at times, repeating some fact or observation offered not many pages before. This surely is the fault of a somewhat slack editor.
Another fault is in the somewhat poor reproduction of many illustrations, including a number of Champlain’s own drawings.
Fischer also does not tell us enough about certain matters such as Champlain’s marriage, a fascinating subject involving as it does a woman from a fairly distinguished French family who comes and spends time in New France. He briefly tells us how the marriage goes through ups and downs, but any reader will want a few more details filled in, if indeed such material exists in the records.
A significant book for Canadian history, the history of North American settlement and exploration, the history of North American aboriginal people, and all lovers of good biography and good yarns.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF RUSS BAKER'S FAMILY OF SECRETS
This is one of those books which, while not being great, is nevertheless of some value.
Baker takes the point of view that it is impossible to write a book about George W. Bush without writing also about his father. I agree: George Junior would not ever have amounted to more than a small-time failure at business in Texas without his father's friends and influence.
The dual approach has certainly been taken before, a favorite father-and-son biography of mine being Anthony Cave Brown's Treason in the Blood about master-spy Kim Philby and his remarkable father, Harry St. John Philby.
But the parallels do not continue. George Junior is not a figure of personal achievement or significant talent; Kim Philby very much was, whatever you think of his treasonous work. Harry St. John was almost a character from Shakespeare; Bush pere is a fairly uninteresting, but intelligent, government-service lifer from a wealthy family. Brown's book is masterly; Baker's only interesting and competent.
I think Baker failed to investigate some of these matters adequately. For example, I, along with many others, do not believe Bush Junior either bright or hard-working enough to have earned a place in the prestigious universities he attended, much less graduate. He was certainly what is called a "legacy" student: someone who does not make the grade but is given a pass in the hope his wealthy family will contribute generously to the endowment fund. This is a common practice at "ivy league" universities, one of whose constant aims is their own perpetuation as institutions.
The main fact about Bush pere Baker attempts to establish is that he has a lifelong association with the Central Intelligence Agency. He does not prove this, but I think he offers strong circumstantial grounds for a reasonable assumption.
Bush pere's C.I.A. connection was not news for me: being in the past a serious student of the Kennedy assassination, I knew Bush pere's name came up in the long and costly secret war against Castro's Cuba. Also, the C.I.A.'s headquarters at Langley, Virginia, is named after Bush pere, and that kind of honor isn't granted for serving one quite short stint as Director.
I found the first half of the book a bit slow-moving. The pace picks up in the second half, and while Baker never achieves a consistent level of fascinating story-telling, some events are beautifully summed up. He does a handsome job, for example, with the story behind the story that cost Dan Rather his job at CBS News over documents purporting to prove Bush's shabby record with the National Guard in Texas.
There is a mistake or two here, but they are minor. Baker says Lewis "Scooter" Libby was pardoned, but, in fact, Bush only granted clemency on Libby's sentence. His conviction stands, despite the efforts behind the scenes of Dick Cheney, whose dirty work he did, to get him a pardon.
But then Bush never was one much for pardons, or compassion for that matter.
Baker takes the point of view that it is impossible to write a book about George W. Bush without writing also about his father. I agree: George Junior would not ever have amounted to more than a small-time failure at business in Texas without his father's friends and influence.
The dual approach has certainly been taken before, a favorite father-and-son biography of mine being Anthony Cave Brown's Treason in the Blood about master-spy Kim Philby and his remarkable father, Harry St. John Philby.
But the parallels do not continue. George Junior is not a figure of personal achievement or significant talent; Kim Philby very much was, whatever you think of his treasonous work. Harry St. John was almost a character from Shakespeare; Bush pere is a fairly uninteresting, but intelligent, government-service lifer from a wealthy family. Brown's book is masterly; Baker's only interesting and competent.
I think Baker failed to investigate some of these matters adequately. For example, I, along with many others, do not believe Bush Junior either bright or hard-working enough to have earned a place in the prestigious universities he attended, much less graduate. He was certainly what is called a "legacy" student: someone who does not make the grade but is given a pass in the hope his wealthy family will contribute generously to the endowment fund. This is a common practice at "ivy league" universities, one of whose constant aims is their own perpetuation as institutions.
The main fact about Bush pere Baker attempts to establish is that he has a lifelong association with the Central Intelligence Agency. He does not prove this, but I think he offers strong circumstantial grounds for a reasonable assumption.
Bush pere's C.I.A. connection was not news for me: being in the past a serious student of the Kennedy assassination, I knew Bush pere's name came up in the long and costly secret war against Castro's Cuba. Also, the C.I.A.'s headquarters at Langley, Virginia, is named after Bush pere, and that kind of honor isn't granted for serving one quite short stint as Director.
I found the first half of the book a bit slow-moving. The pace picks up in the second half, and while Baker never achieves a consistent level of fascinating story-telling, some events are beautifully summed up. He does a handsome job, for example, with the story behind the story that cost Dan Rather his job at CBS News over documents purporting to prove Bush's shabby record with the National Guard in Texas.
There is a mistake or two here, but they are minor. Baker says Lewis "Scooter" Libby was pardoned, but, in fact, Bush only granted clemency on Libby's sentence. His conviction stands, despite the efforts behind the scenes of Dick Cheney, whose dirty work he did, to get him a pardon.
But then Bush never was one much for pardons, or compassion for that matter.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF NICHOLSON BAKER'S HUMAN SMOKE
This is an odd book: its format is less like a book than a research folder or elaborate clipping file for the writing of a more conventional history. Its subject is undoubtedly controversial for some because it makes strong statements about the nature of modern war and it questions the clarity with which we traditionally define the heroes and villains in that vast human enterprise in destruction called World War II.
The book consists of a long series of quotes from all kinds of documents and publications and from famous people. The quotes go in time sequence leading up to and during World War II, and they are selected and orchestrated to make important points about modern war.
The points made here are so difficult for some to accept that I believe the author wanted to use a method that excluded his own voice, offering only the actual words of those who lived the history. In the end, the book has a powerful impact and its title nicely captures what it is about.
As a student of history, I did not find eyebrow-raising facts here, although particular quotes were startling, but I know many will not have been exposed to the disgusting facts of modern warfare. I have long believed, and I wrote an essay on the subject a few years ago, that the methods of modern warfare render the term terrorism meaningless. America or Israel today routinely kills far more civilians than soldiers. You simply cannot use horrible weapons and methods like napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, or carpet-bombing without doing this.
The author makes the point strongly - and I do think it an important one - that it was not Hitler who started the indiscriminate bombing of civilians but the British. He shows Churchill's history of advocating gruesome destruction for enemies of the British Empire. This part of Churchill was less than valiant and less than honourable and had little to do with the values of democracy.
More generally, the conclusion emerges inexorably that there are no heroes in the gruesome business of turning war into something that targets civilians more than armies.
The book consists of a long series of quotes from all kinds of documents and publications and from famous people. The quotes go in time sequence leading up to and during World War II, and they are selected and orchestrated to make important points about modern war.
The points made here are so difficult for some to accept that I believe the author wanted to use a method that excluded his own voice, offering only the actual words of those who lived the history. In the end, the book has a powerful impact and its title nicely captures what it is about.
As a student of history, I did not find eyebrow-raising facts here, although particular quotes were startling, but I know many will not have been exposed to the disgusting facts of modern warfare. I have long believed, and I wrote an essay on the subject a few years ago, that the methods of modern warfare render the term terrorism meaningless. America or Israel today routinely kills far more civilians than soldiers. You simply cannot use horrible weapons and methods like napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, or carpet-bombing without doing this.
The author makes the point strongly - and I do think it an important one - that it was not Hitler who started the indiscriminate bombing of civilians but the British. He shows Churchill's history of advocating gruesome destruction for enemies of the British Empire. This part of Churchill was less than valiant and less than honourable and had little to do with the values of democracy.
More generally, the conclusion emerges inexorably that there are no heroes in the gruesome business of turning war into something that targets civilians more than armies.
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF ALEKSANDR FURSENKO'S AND TIMOTHY NAFTALI'S KHRUSCHEV'S COLD WAR
This book is a gripping read, and it contains new insights into the Cold War, and the authors add some interesting brushstrokes to our historical portrait of Krushchev.
Khrushchev has always been a minor hero of mine. I call him a minor hero because one cannot talk about heroism in an unqualified way with a major figure of an absolute government. Beethoven angrily re-titled the dedication of the Eroica symphony, and I agree with his sentiments in doing it, yet it remains possible to admire some aspects of Napoleon's career.
All individuals must be judged with an appreciation for the constraints under which they operated, and Khrushchev did some very important things and maintained a kind of idealism, despite its rough peasant expression. Khrushchev did want his people to achieve a better life; he cared a great deal about improving agriculture; he was a sincere believer in the ultimate benefits of socialism; he did not want war; and he did want peaceful coexistence with the West before that phrase became commonplace. Above all, Khrushchev was and remains a very human figure, something that cannot be said of a great many absolute leaders.
Khrushchev's role in changing the operations of the Soviet government after decades of Stalin - perhaps the most terrifying dictator of the modern era - was heroic, something I believe he has never been adequately recognized for in the West.
But the same man was ready to crush revolt in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
The title of the book is absolutely accurate: this is Khrushchev's Cold War. Other actors enter and leave the stage, but Khrushchev shapes the story. In that sense, it is necessarily incomplete as a history of the Cold War.
The new insights in the book come from Soviet archives not opened until well into the 21st century. They include who knew what when; the impact of certain events on the Soviet leadership; the real reasons for certain Soviet positions in international affairs; and some of the misunderstandings of American analysts and leaders at the time.
In a few cases, the authors indicate that materials are missing yet, so the book cannot be taken as definitive.
But the book is indispensable to understanding the Cold War, aspects of how the Soviet Union worked, and the Cuban Missile crisis. It is recommended to all with interest in these subjects and to anyone just wanting a good historical read.
Khrushchev has always been a minor hero of mine. I call him a minor hero because one cannot talk about heroism in an unqualified way with a major figure of an absolute government. Beethoven angrily re-titled the dedication of the Eroica symphony, and I agree with his sentiments in doing it, yet it remains possible to admire some aspects of Napoleon's career.
All individuals must be judged with an appreciation for the constraints under which they operated, and Khrushchev did some very important things and maintained a kind of idealism, despite its rough peasant expression. Khrushchev did want his people to achieve a better life; he cared a great deal about improving agriculture; he was a sincere believer in the ultimate benefits of socialism; he did not want war; and he did want peaceful coexistence with the West before that phrase became commonplace. Above all, Khrushchev was and remains a very human figure, something that cannot be said of a great many absolute leaders.
Khrushchev's role in changing the operations of the Soviet government after decades of Stalin - perhaps the most terrifying dictator of the modern era - was heroic, something I believe he has never been adequately recognized for in the West.
But the same man was ready to crush revolt in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
The title of the book is absolutely accurate: this is Khrushchev's Cold War. Other actors enter and leave the stage, but Khrushchev shapes the story. In that sense, it is necessarily incomplete as a history of the Cold War.
The new insights in the book come from Soviet archives not opened until well into the 21st century. They include who knew what when; the impact of certain events on the Soviet leadership; the real reasons for certain Soviet positions in international affairs; and some of the misunderstandings of American analysts and leaders at the time.
In a few cases, the authors indicate that materials are missing yet, so the book cannot be taken as definitive.
But the book is indispensable to understanding the Cold War, aspects of how the Soviet Union worked, and the Cuban Missile crisis. It is recommended to all with interest in these subjects and to anyone just wanting a good historical read.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: SAVORY MIDDLE-EAST STYLE STUFFED PEPPERS
CHUCKMAN’S SAVORY MIDDLE-EAST STYLE STUFFED PEPPERS
INGREDIENTS:
2 Cups Dry Couscous (Whole wheat or regular)
2 Cups Chicken Broth for Couscous (You will obtain this from the Chicken you cook)
1 Cup or more Chicken Stock for Sauce (You will obtain this from the Chicken you cook)
2 medium Onions
1 or 2 Carrots
4 Legs and Thighs of Chicken
Chatta – Pepper Paste from the Mideast (This is not hot, it is savory - available at any Middle East grocer)
4 Large Green (or Red) Sweet Peppers
Oil – for frying
1 Tablespoon Corn Starch (dissolved in a small quantity of water – for moderately thickening Sauce)
Tomato - a handful diced
METHOD:
Simmer Chicken pieces in a large saucepan of water until flesh easily pulled off.
Take out Chicken and let cool a bit. Set aside liquid (your Stock).
To prepare Couscous, boil 2 Cups of Stock (liquid from cooking Chicken), add dry Coucous, stir together, cover, and remove from burner. Couscous is ready in 5 minutes.
When cool enough to work with, shred Chicken meat, removing skin.
Finely slice or dice Onions and grate Carrot. Saute in a frying pan. Add several Tablespoons of Pepper Paste. When Onion is soft, add shredded Chicken and just warm through.
Stir together Chicken, Onion, and Carrot mix into prepared Couscous.
Halve and seed Green Peppers. Place on small baking sheet (covered with parchment paper, or oiled), or use Pyrex casserole dish, oiled. Pile up with Couscous mix. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for about an hour.
Prepare Sauce on stovetop. Use desired quantity of Chicken Stock, adding several Tablespoons of Chatta paste, a quantity of chopped Tomato, and a generous sprinkling of dry parsley. Add Corn Starch and water mix. Simmer covered for half an hour.
Pepper filling will be lightly browned. Serve as is with Sauce on the side.
NOTES:
Also serve Yogurt on the side, if desired (very nice).
The Coucous/Chicken filling mixture is delicious on its own – a kind of West Asian fried rice.
OTHER INTERESTING INGREDIENTS:
For the Couscous/chicken filling include: pieces of thinly sliced lemons that have been quickly sautéed, sliced (canned) artichoke hearts, olives, or pistachios.
INGREDIENTS:
2 Cups Dry Couscous (Whole wheat or regular)
2 Cups Chicken Broth for Couscous (You will obtain this from the Chicken you cook)
1 Cup or more Chicken Stock for Sauce (You will obtain this from the Chicken you cook)
2 medium Onions
1 or 2 Carrots
4 Legs and Thighs of Chicken
Chatta – Pepper Paste from the Mideast (This is not hot, it is savory - available at any Middle East grocer)
4 Large Green (or Red) Sweet Peppers
Oil – for frying
1 Tablespoon Corn Starch (dissolved in a small quantity of water – for moderately thickening Sauce)
Tomato - a handful diced
METHOD:
Simmer Chicken pieces in a large saucepan of water until flesh easily pulled off.
Take out Chicken and let cool a bit. Set aside liquid (your Stock).
To prepare Couscous, boil 2 Cups of Stock (liquid from cooking Chicken), add dry Coucous, stir together, cover, and remove from burner. Couscous is ready in 5 minutes.
When cool enough to work with, shred Chicken meat, removing skin.
Finely slice or dice Onions and grate Carrot. Saute in a frying pan. Add several Tablespoons of Pepper Paste. When Onion is soft, add shredded Chicken and just warm through.
Stir together Chicken, Onion, and Carrot mix into prepared Couscous.
Halve and seed Green Peppers. Place on small baking sheet (covered with parchment paper, or oiled), or use Pyrex casserole dish, oiled. Pile up with Couscous mix. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for about an hour.
Prepare Sauce on stovetop. Use desired quantity of Chicken Stock, adding several Tablespoons of Chatta paste, a quantity of chopped Tomato, and a generous sprinkling of dry parsley. Add Corn Starch and water mix. Simmer covered for half an hour.
Pepper filling will be lightly browned. Serve as is with Sauce on the side.
NOTES:
Also serve Yogurt on the side, if desired (very nice).
The Coucous/Chicken filling mixture is delicious on its own – a kind of West Asian fried rice.
OTHER INTERESTING INGREDIENTS:
For the Couscous/chicken filling include: pieces of thinly sliced lemons that have been quickly sautéed, sliced (canned) artichoke hearts, olives, or pistachios.
Monday, January 05, 2009
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF LAURA THOMPSON'S AGATHA CHRISTIE: AN ENGLISH MYSTERY
I enjoyed an interview with Laura Thompson on CBC Radio, and I thought her biography of Agatha Christie might well be good reading, even though I am not a fan of its subject.
I enjoy any first-rate biography, and the times Ms. Christie lived through are loaded with interesting events and people. She was moreover a remarkable literary phenomenon, becoming a house-hold name, setting record runs for plays, and creating two unforgettable characters - Miss Marple and M. Poirot.
Reading the first few pages of this book, I was sure that I had been right: this was going to be a fine book. In these pages, Ms Thompson creates almost a prose-poem around the idyllic time in Ms. Christie's childhood.
But my illusion gradually faded: the book is a weak one, having a number of faults.
First, Ms. Thompson uses a huge number of quotes from Ms. Christie, to such an extent I regard them as padding. I don't object to using quotes in the fashion Ms. Thompson does, I just object to the sheer volume of them.
Second, Ms. Thompson, time and again, refers to this or that old photograph, making some special observations about them, but virtually none of these photographs is included in the book's selection of photos.
Third, Ms. Thompson appears to have done a weak job of research on some topics, as for example the crucial one around Ms. Christie's first husband leaving her. I think the questions readers have around that event, and there are many, are left not answered.
Fourth, the sense and drama of history is largely missing from a book covering a remarkable era.
The book is a real disappointment.
I enjoy any first-rate biography, and the times Ms. Christie lived through are loaded with interesting events and people. She was moreover a remarkable literary phenomenon, becoming a house-hold name, setting record runs for plays, and creating two unforgettable characters - Miss Marple and M. Poirot.
Reading the first few pages of this book, I was sure that I had been right: this was going to be a fine book. In these pages, Ms Thompson creates almost a prose-poem around the idyllic time in Ms. Christie's childhood.
But my illusion gradually faded: the book is a weak one, having a number of faults.
First, Ms. Thompson uses a huge number of quotes from Ms. Christie, to such an extent I regard them as padding. I don't object to using quotes in the fashion Ms. Thompson does, I just object to the sheer volume of them.
Second, Ms. Thompson, time and again, refers to this or that old photograph, making some special observations about them, but virtually none of these photographs is included in the book's selection of photos.
Third, Ms. Thompson appears to have done a weak job of research on some topics, as for example the crucial one around Ms. Christie's first husband leaving her. I think the questions readers have around that event, and there are many, are left not answered.
Fourth, the sense and drama of history is largely missing from a book covering a remarkable era.
The book is a real disappointment.
Friday, December 26, 2008
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF JAMES AND BEN LONG'S THE PLOT AGAINST PEPYS
This book is very good narrative history; in parts, it is truly excellent.
The period of English history from the Restoration of the Stuarts in the person of Charles II, 1660, to the Glorious Revolution, the overthrow of James II, younger brother of Charles in 1688, is a fascinating one, and the events of this book take place during a portion of that period.
The immediate background to these events includes the English Civil War and the rise and fall of the Cromwells. It is a time marked by an extreme turmoil over religion, Protestant versus Catholic, in the affairs of state. Ironically, the period covered was also one of considerable and fairly open decadence in English society, showing once again how little religion has to do with morals.
This book has as chief characters Samuel Pepys and one of the lesser-known nasty pieces of work in modern history, John Scott. With a cast like that, you almost cannot miss.
Pepys, famous for a diary, which is a fact-filled look at part of the period's society and a somewhat salacious record of its morals, was an able and conscientious (at least after the Restoration) civil servant who rose to high rank. The important part of his career was associated with the Royal navy, going from Clerk of the Acts to the Navy to Secretary to the Admiralty Board and finally to Secretary for the Affairs of the Admiralty.
Scott was a lifelong fraudster, murderer, and opportunist who rose up and fell down several times in several countries. With "the gift of the gab," a talent for forgery, and great energy in his schemes, Scott was almost certainly a psychopathic personality. He crossed paths - and as it happens, swords - with Pepys virtually by accident. His unquenchable hatred of Pepys apparently was sparked by a random event in which Pepys, just doing his official duty, thwarted one of Scott's high-flown schemes for gaining fame and fortune. His intense hatred was then harnessed by those interested in the overthrow of Charles II, especially Lord Shaftsbury, himself a considerably larger-than-life and rather grotesque figure.
Pepys was charged with being a secret Catholic and being part of a plot to kill the King and see a Catholic Monarchy installed. The main accuser was the psychopathic John Scott. A modern reader might think that this seems such a simple matter to clear up - especially the part about being a Catholic, which Pepys was not - but there was an atmosphere thickly charged with paranoia and suspicion in England at the time, and it was being actively added to by people like Shaftsbury, himself interested in turning over the existing monarchy.
Because this period was also one of a rapidly changing balance of power between Parliament and the Crown, the King and his brother - the future James II - were not in a position to simply lift a loyal public servant from extreme danger. Pepys spent a long and exhausting period fighting charges that already had seen notable prisoners hung, cut down alive, castrated, disemboweled, and drawn-and-quartered - the contemporary penalty for treason, a penalty which itself tells us something of the frenzied paranoia of the time. He was in and out of prison, had many court dates, and spent a small fortune collecting evidence and trying to understand the precise nature of the plot against him, although he had understood immediately that it was part of some unknown larger effort to get at the Stuarts.
Ultimately he was victorious, but only because he was smart, had considerable resources to employ, and enjoyed a few lucky brakes with past associate or victims of Scott's coming forward from various countries, and, most importantly, the King finally felt comfortable enough reaching down with limited but indispensable help.
The first part of this book reads like a rip-roaring crime novel, but it may be enjoyed on several levels. The English paranoia of the time and the dark operations of the courts in matters of treason remind one very much of the insane swirl of events in America following 9/11. Pepys could almost be an American secret prisoner under the deliberately misnamed Patriot Act. The almost unbelievable career of John Scott reminds one of the way career killers and abusers are so rarely caught even today before they have done immense damage to others. The meek definitely do not inherit the earth still.
The period of English history from the Restoration of the Stuarts in the person of Charles II, 1660, to the Glorious Revolution, the overthrow of James II, younger brother of Charles in 1688, is a fascinating one, and the events of this book take place during a portion of that period.
The immediate background to these events includes the English Civil War and the rise and fall of the Cromwells. It is a time marked by an extreme turmoil over religion, Protestant versus Catholic, in the affairs of state. Ironically, the period covered was also one of considerable and fairly open decadence in English society, showing once again how little religion has to do with morals.
This book has as chief characters Samuel Pepys and one of the lesser-known nasty pieces of work in modern history, John Scott. With a cast like that, you almost cannot miss.
Pepys, famous for a diary, which is a fact-filled look at part of the period's society and a somewhat salacious record of its morals, was an able and conscientious (at least after the Restoration) civil servant who rose to high rank. The important part of his career was associated with the Royal navy, going from Clerk of the Acts to the Navy to Secretary to the Admiralty Board and finally to Secretary for the Affairs of the Admiralty.
Scott was a lifelong fraudster, murderer, and opportunist who rose up and fell down several times in several countries. With "the gift of the gab," a talent for forgery, and great energy in his schemes, Scott was almost certainly a psychopathic personality. He crossed paths - and as it happens, swords - with Pepys virtually by accident. His unquenchable hatred of Pepys apparently was sparked by a random event in which Pepys, just doing his official duty, thwarted one of Scott's high-flown schemes for gaining fame and fortune. His intense hatred was then harnessed by those interested in the overthrow of Charles II, especially Lord Shaftsbury, himself a considerably larger-than-life and rather grotesque figure.
Pepys was charged with being a secret Catholic and being part of a plot to kill the King and see a Catholic Monarchy installed. The main accuser was the psychopathic John Scott. A modern reader might think that this seems such a simple matter to clear up - especially the part about being a Catholic, which Pepys was not - but there was an atmosphere thickly charged with paranoia and suspicion in England at the time, and it was being actively added to by people like Shaftsbury, himself interested in turning over the existing monarchy.
Because this period was also one of a rapidly changing balance of power between Parliament and the Crown, the King and his brother - the future James II - were not in a position to simply lift a loyal public servant from extreme danger. Pepys spent a long and exhausting period fighting charges that already had seen notable prisoners hung, cut down alive, castrated, disemboweled, and drawn-and-quartered - the contemporary penalty for treason, a penalty which itself tells us something of the frenzied paranoia of the time. He was in and out of prison, had many court dates, and spent a small fortune collecting evidence and trying to understand the precise nature of the plot against him, although he had understood immediately that it was part of some unknown larger effort to get at the Stuarts.
Ultimately he was victorious, but only because he was smart, had considerable resources to employ, and enjoyed a few lucky brakes with past associate or victims of Scott's coming forward from various countries, and, most importantly, the King finally felt comfortable enough reaching down with limited but indispensable help.
The first part of this book reads like a rip-roaring crime novel, but it may be enjoyed on several levels. The English paranoia of the time and the dark operations of the courts in matters of treason remind one very much of the insane swirl of events in America following 9/11. Pepys could almost be an American secret prisoner under the deliberately misnamed Patriot Act. The almost unbelievable career of John Scott reminds one of the way career killers and abusers are so rarely caught even today before they have done immense damage to others. The meek definitely do not inherit the earth still.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
JOHN CHUCKMAN STORY: AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT - A CONTEMPORARY CHRISTMAS TALE
AND TO ALL, A GOOD NIGHT
A Contemporary Christmas Tale
John Chuckman
It was only a matter of time before Santa Claus himself came under the Neanderthal-eyed scrutiny of American intelligence. After all, Santa’s citizenship is unknown, and he crosses borders with no passport or other form of identification. No one knows whether he even has a valid pilot’s license.
Although his image is well known, there is no official photograph on file with American border control, and he has never been fingerprinted or body-searched. Most disconcerting of all, he delivers parcels to children all over the world, including the children living in the Axis of Evil. His intentions with this activity are not understood beyond some fuzzy generalization about kindness and generosity to all. Clearly, here was the world’s largest unplugged pipeline to potential terrorists.
It was only after receiving no response to several urgent letters from the State Department requesting an immediate meeting in Washington that a decision was made to approach Santa’s North Pole solitude. As usual in such matters with the people now running America, a wing of America’s most lethal killing machines was employed for the purpose. You never know what you might encounter in such a forbidding place.
As the planes first zoomed over the icy silence of the North Pole workshop, one of the pilots decided to swoop down for a closer look. He was one of those daring fly-boys, and his tail struck the only wire for thousands of miles around, the North Pole Telegraph, sending his plane hurling into the workshop in a ball of flames with tons of ammunition and missiles exploding.
Santa and Mrs. Claus rushed out of their snow-blanketed gingerbread house to see what was happening, trying to calm the terrified reindeer running from their stable at one end of the house. The elves, too, scurried towards the stable, trying to stop the reindeer from running or flying off.
Above, in the dark vault of sky, the other pilots observed the explosion and saw missile trails smoking into the air. They also saw the frantic activity below and quickly concluded their comrade had come under anti-aircraft attack. So they swooped down in attack formation, rapid-fire canon tearing into everything ahead of them.
Most of the reindeer fell in the snow, spurting warm blood across the bluish-white surface. Most of the elves, too, fell gasping for life. Mrs. Claus received a wound in the head and instantly fell limp. Santa tried heroically to reach his wife but realized the situation was hopeless and turned, running into the darkness accompanied by Prancer, the only surviving reindeer.
The only witness to the massacre is one surviving elf now living somewhere in Canada under an assumed identity, fearful for his life. It is only from his testimony that we know anything about Santa’s fate.
Realizing the horrific mistake they had made, the pilots dropped white phosphorus bombs with the intention of incinerating all evidence. The entire North Pole lit up and Santa and Prancer could be seen in the distance on a huge block of ice drifting off into the dark sea, the ice everywhere cracked and weakened by the combined effects of white phosphorus and years of global warming.
Within in a few hours, the beating sound of a black helicopter approached Santa and Prancer. The elf, from his hiding place in a snowdrift, could only make out intermittent sounds across the howling coldness, but it seems armed men emerged from the helicopter, shot Prancer and shackled Santa, shoving him into the dark, beating machine. The elf heard a word that sounded like Guantanamo and Santa has not been heard from since. Reports of his fate reached the International Red Cross and organizations like Amnesty International, leading to inquiries, but these have been met only with silence from American authorities.
A Contemporary Christmas Tale
John Chuckman
It was only a matter of time before Santa Claus himself came under the Neanderthal-eyed scrutiny of American intelligence. After all, Santa’s citizenship is unknown, and he crosses borders with no passport or other form of identification. No one knows whether he even has a valid pilot’s license.
Although his image is well known, there is no official photograph on file with American border control, and he has never been fingerprinted or body-searched. Most disconcerting of all, he delivers parcels to children all over the world, including the children living in the Axis of Evil. His intentions with this activity are not understood beyond some fuzzy generalization about kindness and generosity to all. Clearly, here was the world’s largest unplugged pipeline to potential terrorists.
It was only after receiving no response to several urgent letters from the State Department requesting an immediate meeting in Washington that a decision was made to approach Santa’s North Pole solitude. As usual in such matters with the people now running America, a wing of America’s most lethal killing machines was employed for the purpose. You never know what you might encounter in such a forbidding place.
As the planes first zoomed over the icy silence of the North Pole workshop, one of the pilots decided to swoop down for a closer look. He was one of those daring fly-boys, and his tail struck the only wire for thousands of miles around, the North Pole Telegraph, sending his plane hurling into the workshop in a ball of flames with tons of ammunition and missiles exploding.
Santa and Mrs. Claus rushed out of their snow-blanketed gingerbread house to see what was happening, trying to calm the terrified reindeer running from their stable at one end of the house. The elves, too, scurried towards the stable, trying to stop the reindeer from running or flying off.
Above, in the dark vault of sky, the other pilots observed the explosion and saw missile trails smoking into the air. They also saw the frantic activity below and quickly concluded their comrade had come under anti-aircraft attack. So they swooped down in attack formation, rapid-fire canon tearing into everything ahead of them.
Most of the reindeer fell in the snow, spurting warm blood across the bluish-white surface. Most of the elves, too, fell gasping for life. Mrs. Claus received a wound in the head and instantly fell limp. Santa tried heroically to reach his wife but realized the situation was hopeless and turned, running into the darkness accompanied by Prancer, the only surviving reindeer.
The only witness to the massacre is one surviving elf now living somewhere in Canada under an assumed identity, fearful for his life. It is only from his testimony that we know anything about Santa’s fate.
Realizing the horrific mistake they had made, the pilots dropped white phosphorus bombs with the intention of incinerating all evidence. The entire North Pole lit up and Santa and Prancer could be seen in the distance on a huge block of ice drifting off into the dark sea, the ice everywhere cracked and weakened by the combined effects of white phosphorus and years of global warming.
Within in a few hours, the beating sound of a black helicopter approached Santa and Prancer. The elf, from his hiding place in a snowdrift, could only make out intermittent sounds across the howling coldness, but it seems armed men emerged from the helicopter, shot Prancer and shackled Santa, shoving him into the dark, beating machine. The elf heard a word that sounded like Guantanamo and Santa has not been heard from since. Reports of his fate reached the International Red Cross and organizations like Amnesty International, leading to inquiries, but these have been met only with silence from American authorities.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
JOHN CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: MEXICAN SHEPHERD'S PIE
CHUCKMAN’S MEXICAN SHEPHERD'S PIE
Just tasty, easy fun food.
2 pounds of Ground Beef
1 Large Sweet Red Pepper – diced
2 Cans Re-fried Beans – Herdez from Mexico is my favorite
A Couple of Handfuls of Frozen Corn
A Couple of Handfuls of Grated Cheddar Cheese
1 Can La Victoria Mexican Enchilada Sauce (Hot variety)
A Couple of Tablespoons of Chipotle Concentrate – available in many supermarkets
1 Package Knorr Au Jus – Prepared according to package
DIRECTIONS
Lightly sauté Beef along with Chipotle concentrate. Place in the bottom of a medium-sized, buttered casserole pan.
Pour half of La Victoria Sauce over, and pour all of prepared Knorr Au Jus over.
Let cool a bit. Spread Corn and Red Pepper over evenly. Salt lightly.
Using a table knife or spatula, spread Refried Beans evenly over top, just as you would mashed potatoes with traditional Sheppards' Pie.
Spread Grated Cheese evenly over top.
Dribble second half of La Victoria Sauce on top.
Bake about half an hour at 350º.
Serve with plain yogurt. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro if you like.
Just tasty, easy fun food.
2 pounds of Ground Beef
1 Large Sweet Red Pepper – diced
2 Cans Re-fried Beans – Herdez from Mexico is my favorite
A Couple of Handfuls of Frozen Corn
A Couple of Handfuls of Grated Cheddar Cheese
1 Can La Victoria Mexican Enchilada Sauce (Hot variety)
A Couple of Tablespoons of Chipotle Concentrate – available in many supermarkets
1 Package Knorr Au Jus – Prepared according to package
DIRECTIONS
Lightly sauté Beef along with Chipotle concentrate. Place in the bottom of a medium-sized, buttered casserole pan.
Pour half of La Victoria Sauce over, and pour all of prepared Knorr Au Jus over.
Let cool a bit. Spread Corn and Red Pepper over evenly. Salt lightly.
Using a table knife or spatula, spread Refried Beans evenly over top, just as you would mashed potatoes with traditional Sheppards' Pie.
Spread Grated Cheese evenly over top.
Dribble second half of La Victoria Sauce on top.
Bake about half an hour at 350º.
Serve with plain yogurt. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro if you like.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF CURT GENTRY'S J. EDGAR HOOVER
This biography is a study in quiet, creepy state terror, terror as it took hold in a modern democratic state. No black shirts, no armbands, no drums, just quiet, behind-the-scenes abuse of power, blackmail, fraud, spying without warrants, illegal arrests and deportations.
Naive Americans are sometimes heard to ask how could people in other lands allow evil people to take power? Well, this book will show you how it is done and how it was done in their own country.
As someone else has said, it is a book every American should read. Little that the war criminal, George Bush, has inflicted on the American people wasn’t practiced much earlier under Mr. Hoover.
Gentry’s book reads like a good novel with a strong narrative, and it is loaded with interesting anecdotes.
There have been several interesting biographies of Hoover, but this one is the one I most strongly recommend. This focuses on his career and use of power, and it is there that the truly important story is to be found.
Gentry several times hints around Hoover's homosexuality but doesn't dwell on it. We know from Anthony Summers' book that Hoover had a rather bizarre private life as a flamboyant cross-dresser. This wouldn't be of any great significance except that Hoover had no tolerance for homosexuals in government, having been responsible for destroying the careers of a number of them.
Gentry also makes clear that the insane Joseph McCarthy was largely the creature of Hoover. Hooveer fed him tidbits or sometimes worked backward to supply some printed support after McCarthy had gone off half-cocked bragging about things in public he had not one shred of evidence to support. McCarthy was a drunk looking to spark a lackluster career. He was also thought to be a pedophile, but none of these things mattered to Hoover so long as he could use McCarthy to his purpose. Only when McCarthy stopped being useful did Hoover drop him.
Presidents like Johnson and Kennedy and even Roosevelt eagerly ate the political filth he fed them by hand, casting shame on their legacies. Hoover compromised many people who should have been his strongest critics, including, for example, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union.
For all his years of abuse and excess, it is not clear that he ever achieved anything in the way of making America a safer, more secure place from external and internal enemies.
An important chapter of Hoover’s time in power remains inadequately scrutinized: his full role in the investigation of Kennedy’s assassination. As Gentry documents and as others have documented, the FBI was well aware before the assassination of serious threats against Kennedy and yet seems to have taken inadequate action to thwart them.
Hoover’s role in “solving” the crime remains one of the great mysteries of 20th century American history. The Warren Commission had no independent investigative ability. All it did was take Hoover’s rushed, inadequate, and pre-judged investigation and re-package it. And we know now that the so-called Warren Report was riddled with errors and misjudgment and the selective use of facts. It was a piece of Soviet-era state rubbish posing as detailed investigation.
If, as many who have studied the assassination believe, it was the work of the American Mafia, we have an automatic explanation for Hoover’s shoddy work. Hoover claimed he never believed the Mafia existed until he was almost forced to accept it. He chased pathetic “reds” rather than the real criminals who were eating away at the substance of American society. Many have theorized that the Mafia held evidence, perhaps photographs, of Hoover’s homosexuality and cross-dressing, keeping him neutralized for decades in exactly the way Hoover neutralized so many politicians and potential critics.
I like very much the way Gentry briefly followers through the successors of Hoover at the FBI, summarizing their changes and contributions, and it is not an uplifting story.
The very fact that the FBI building in Washington still has Hoover’s name on it in big metal letters tells us a great deal about the nature of power in America.
Naive Americans are sometimes heard to ask how could people in other lands allow evil people to take power? Well, this book will show you how it is done and how it was done in their own country.
As someone else has said, it is a book every American should read. Little that the war criminal, George Bush, has inflicted on the American people wasn’t practiced much earlier under Mr. Hoover.
Gentry’s book reads like a good novel with a strong narrative, and it is loaded with interesting anecdotes.
There have been several interesting biographies of Hoover, but this one is the one I most strongly recommend. This focuses on his career and use of power, and it is there that the truly important story is to be found.
Gentry several times hints around Hoover's homosexuality but doesn't dwell on it. We know from Anthony Summers' book that Hoover had a rather bizarre private life as a flamboyant cross-dresser. This wouldn't be of any great significance except that Hoover had no tolerance for homosexuals in government, having been responsible for destroying the careers of a number of them.
Gentry also makes clear that the insane Joseph McCarthy was largely the creature of Hoover. Hooveer fed him tidbits or sometimes worked backward to supply some printed support after McCarthy had gone off half-cocked bragging about things in public he had not one shred of evidence to support. McCarthy was a drunk looking to spark a lackluster career. He was also thought to be a pedophile, but none of these things mattered to Hoover so long as he could use McCarthy to his purpose. Only when McCarthy stopped being useful did Hoover drop him.
Presidents like Johnson and Kennedy and even Roosevelt eagerly ate the political filth he fed them by hand, casting shame on their legacies. Hoover compromised many people who should have been his strongest critics, including, for example, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union.
For all his years of abuse and excess, it is not clear that he ever achieved anything in the way of making America a safer, more secure place from external and internal enemies.
An important chapter of Hoover’s time in power remains inadequately scrutinized: his full role in the investigation of Kennedy’s assassination. As Gentry documents and as others have documented, the FBI was well aware before the assassination of serious threats against Kennedy and yet seems to have taken inadequate action to thwart them.
Hoover’s role in “solving” the crime remains one of the great mysteries of 20th century American history. The Warren Commission had no independent investigative ability. All it did was take Hoover’s rushed, inadequate, and pre-judged investigation and re-package it. And we know now that the so-called Warren Report was riddled with errors and misjudgment and the selective use of facts. It was a piece of Soviet-era state rubbish posing as detailed investigation.
If, as many who have studied the assassination believe, it was the work of the American Mafia, we have an automatic explanation for Hoover’s shoddy work. Hoover claimed he never believed the Mafia existed until he was almost forced to accept it. He chased pathetic “reds” rather than the real criminals who were eating away at the substance of American society. Many have theorized that the Mafia held evidence, perhaps photographs, of Hoover’s homosexuality and cross-dressing, keeping him neutralized for decades in exactly the way Hoover neutralized so many politicians and potential critics.
I like very much the way Gentry briefly followers through the successors of Hoover at the FBI, summarizing their changes and contributions, and it is not an uplifting story.
The very fact that the FBI building in Washington still has Hoover’s name on it in big metal letters tells us a great deal about the nature of power in America.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
JOHN CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: MY VERSION OF ALEPPO SOUP (LENTIL SOUP FROM SYRIA)
A simple and tasty soup.
1 Cup of Red Lentils
6 Cups of Chicken Stock (or Water may be used for vegetarian version)
1/4 Cup Chick-Pea Flour (aka, Gram Flour - available in any Indian or Mideast grocery store)
1/2 Cup Lemon Juice
3 or 4 Garlic Cloves, crushed
1 Teaspoon Cumin
1/4 Teaspoon Cayenne
1/2 Teaspoon Coriander
Salt to taste
Simmer Lentils in bulk of Stock for about 5 minutes, reserving a small portion of Stock.
Mix Chick Pea Flour in reserved Stock, making a thickening agent. Add to Lentils.
Add Lemon Juice, Cumin, Coriander, Cayenne, and Salt to Lentils.
Saute crushed Garlic briefly until golden. Add to Lentils.
Simmer for about 20 minutes.
This soup is delicious as made above, but it provides a base for many variations. Bits of roasted Lamb and/or fresh Cilantro are nice additions.
1 Cup of Red Lentils
6 Cups of Chicken Stock (or Water may be used for vegetarian version)
1/4 Cup Chick-Pea Flour (aka, Gram Flour - available in any Indian or Mideast grocery store)
1/2 Cup Lemon Juice
3 or 4 Garlic Cloves, crushed
1 Teaspoon Cumin
1/4 Teaspoon Cayenne
1/2 Teaspoon Coriander
Salt to taste
Simmer Lentils in bulk of Stock for about 5 minutes, reserving a small portion of Stock.
Mix Chick Pea Flour in reserved Stock, making a thickening agent. Add to Lentils.
Add Lemon Juice, Cumin, Coriander, Cayenne, and Salt to Lentils.
Saute crushed Garlic briefly until golden. Add to Lentils.
Simmer for about 20 minutes.
This soup is delicious as made above, but it provides a base for many variations. Bits of roasted Lamb and/or fresh Cilantro are nice additions.
Monday, August 11, 2008
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW OF SIMON WINCHESTER'S THE MAN WHO LOVED CHINA
REVIEW OF SIMON WINCHESTER'S THE MAN WHO LOVED CHINA BY JOHN CHUCKMAN
This is a good read. Simon Winchester provides a tight and fairly vigorous story of the remarkable man, Joseph Needham.
Needham was a brilliant man, gifted in science and languages. He was also a genuine non-conformist, both in his personal life and in political affairs, and he had the fabled abilities of a great scholar to sit for all hours of the day, day after day, analyzing ancient texts and writing world-recognized works about what he discovered.
Needham had the good fortune of being appointed by the British government, as a scientist of world reputation, on a mission to unoccupied China during World War II. His task was to contact as many Chinese academics as possible and help them obtain the resources, provided by the British government, they needed to carry on their work. This was both war-time assistance and an investment in future relations.
As in any effort he undertook, Needham quickly went to work with great vigor. He made a couple of epic journeys across large stretches of China and a number of smaller ones. He contacted many people of note, helping scientists and scholars obtain equipment and supplies to keep their efforts going under the great privations of war.
But, at the same time, he also did something else very important. He collected, wherever he found them and could purchase them, ancient Chinese texts which went back to England with him. Very early the idea struck him of writing a scholarly work on the ancient contributions of China to technology and science.
Needham was such an impressive intellect and so clearly in love with China - he typically wore gowns styled after the gowns worn by Chinese scholars and spoke fluent Mandarin and was bursting with enthusiasm about the things he saw and discovered - that a number of Chinese who only met him briefly were motivated to collect, long after he went home to England, and send him great quantities more of truly precious historical materials.
Needham's great project, a virtual encyclopedia of the history of Chinese science and technology, was never finished by him, but the volumes he did write were immediately embraced by the academic world as important new contributions to knowledge, and the work remains a classic.
Needham discovered - then unknown outside China - that the Chinese had invented a remarkable number of things before they were discovered in Europe. Moveable type - first in the ninth century as wood, later as bronze - was perhaps the most remarkable of these, but there were literally hundreds of others including an early compass and some very early sophisticated mathematics.
Needham's volumes became an important East Asian collection in the libraries of Cambridge University.
An interesting anecdote in the book, unrelated to the subject, concerns Needham's tours to lecture on his discoveries. One was to Chicago, and author Winchester discovered that Theodore Kaczynski, the gifted mathematician who later sank into deep schizophrenia and became the infamous Unabomber living in the wilderness, attended a lecture.
Winchester speculates whether that lecture, including a discussion of gunpowder as it did, might have influenced Kaczynski later. I did think this speculation a bit naïve and a bit of research would have eliminated it. Kaczynski grew up in Chicago, as I did, and as a teenager he made the newspapers with the sophisticated rockets he was building. His rockets were made of metal and used fuel more sophisticated than gunpowder, becoming a subject of interest because they climbed over a mile in altitude, possibly threatening civilian aviation. It seems pretty clear he did not need Needham's lecture on gunpowder.
My only regret about this book is that it was too brief. Needham and his adventures and work are a large subject.
This is a good read. Simon Winchester provides a tight and fairly vigorous story of the remarkable man, Joseph Needham.
Needham was a brilliant man, gifted in science and languages. He was also a genuine non-conformist, both in his personal life and in political affairs, and he had the fabled abilities of a great scholar to sit for all hours of the day, day after day, analyzing ancient texts and writing world-recognized works about what he discovered.
Needham had the good fortune of being appointed by the British government, as a scientist of world reputation, on a mission to unoccupied China during World War II. His task was to contact as many Chinese academics as possible and help them obtain the resources, provided by the British government, they needed to carry on their work. This was both war-time assistance and an investment in future relations.
As in any effort he undertook, Needham quickly went to work with great vigor. He made a couple of epic journeys across large stretches of China and a number of smaller ones. He contacted many people of note, helping scientists and scholars obtain equipment and supplies to keep their efforts going under the great privations of war.
But, at the same time, he also did something else very important. He collected, wherever he found them and could purchase them, ancient Chinese texts which went back to England with him. Very early the idea struck him of writing a scholarly work on the ancient contributions of China to technology and science.
Needham was such an impressive intellect and so clearly in love with China - he typically wore gowns styled after the gowns worn by Chinese scholars and spoke fluent Mandarin and was bursting with enthusiasm about the things he saw and discovered - that a number of Chinese who only met him briefly were motivated to collect, long after he went home to England, and send him great quantities more of truly precious historical materials.
Needham's great project, a virtual encyclopedia of the history of Chinese science and technology, was never finished by him, but the volumes he did write were immediately embraced by the academic world as important new contributions to knowledge, and the work remains a classic.
Needham discovered - then unknown outside China - that the Chinese had invented a remarkable number of things before they were discovered in Europe. Moveable type - first in the ninth century as wood, later as bronze - was perhaps the most remarkable of these, but there were literally hundreds of others including an early compass and some very early sophisticated mathematics.
Needham's volumes became an important East Asian collection in the libraries of Cambridge University.
An interesting anecdote in the book, unrelated to the subject, concerns Needham's tours to lecture on his discoveries. One was to Chicago, and author Winchester discovered that Theodore Kaczynski, the gifted mathematician who later sank into deep schizophrenia and became the infamous Unabomber living in the wilderness, attended a lecture.
Winchester speculates whether that lecture, including a discussion of gunpowder as it did, might have influenced Kaczynski later. I did think this speculation a bit naïve and a bit of research would have eliminated it. Kaczynski grew up in Chicago, as I did, and as a teenager he made the newspapers with the sophisticated rockets he was building. His rockets were made of metal and used fuel more sophisticated than gunpowder, becoming a subject of interest because they climbed over a mile in altitude, possibly threatening civilian aviation. It seems pretty clear he did not need Needham's lecture on gunpowder.
My only regret about this book is that it was too brief. Needham and his adventures and work are a large subject.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
JOHN CHUCKMAN MEMORIAL: FOR PRESTON UNEY AN OLD GOOD FRIEND - AS PRINTED IN A NEWSLETTER TO OLD SOUTH SHORE NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTS
WRITTEN FOR A NEWSLETTER ADDRESSING THE OLD CHICAGO NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTS
My old good friend, Preston E. Uney (Bradwell 1959/ South Shore 1963), died on July 7, 2008. He was an aeronautical engineer living with his wife and children in Colorado.
Preston's dad ran a small toy store on Stony Island in the 1960s until the changing neighborhood destroyed his business. The family lived for many years in a small house on Kingston Ave. just south of 79th.
His older sister, Marie, taught us both to dance, however awkward the results. His father, an immigrant from Russia, used to tell electrifying stories of the Russian Front in WWII.
Preston was an interesting independent-minded kid who must have been the only student carrying a Socialist Labor Party sign around South Shore High in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential campaign. He will be missed.
My old good friend, Preston E. Uney (Bradwell 1959/ South Shore 1963), died on July 7, 2008. He was an aeronautical engineer living with his wife and children in Colorado.
Preston's dad ran a small toy store on Stony Island in the 1960s until the changing neighborhood destroyed his business. The family lived for many years in a small house on Kingston Ave. just south of 79th.
His older sister, Marie, taught us both to dance, however awkward the results. His father, an immigrant from Russia, used to tell electrifying stories of the Russian Front in WWII.
Preston was an interesting independent-minded kid who must have been the only student carrying a Socialist Labor Party sign around South Shore High in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential campaign. He will be missed.
Monday, March 31, 2008
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW: RICHARD DAWKINS' THE GOD DELUSION
There has been a great deal of noise over this book. To my mind, it mostly amounts to the proverbial tempest in a teapot.
First, despite the right of religious liberty people in advanced countries supposedly enjoy, we are regularly immersed, willy-nilly, in religious muck. The last couple of decades in America, the nightly news has featured everything from endless demands for prayer in public institutions and the creation myth being taught in schools to attacks on doctors doing legal abortions and silly fights over displaying the ten commandments in public courts. What’s so terrible about the other side getting a little publicity for a change?
Richard Dawkins is a pleasant and clear writer. The first part of his book is genuinely funny, hilarious in places, as he pokes fun at the absurd stories and rules of the Bible. At his best, he reminds me of Mark Twain in Letters from the Earth.
I think he is much less successful in the middle part of the book in trying to establish a logical framework for thinking about religion. Religion simply is not logical, none of it, ever, and just as the scholastic fathers tried over and over to “prove” the existence of God – Dawkins entertainingly goes through some of this – this effort seems futile.
There is an aspect of religion that I believe Dawkins misses. It is the cultural dimension of much of religion. We know many Jews, as in Israel for example, are quite worldly and not believers, yet something binds them to the heritage of their religion. That something is what Dawkins misses.
Religion works very much like prejudice: there are simply attitudes and perspectives that groups of people share together as a cultural inheritance, and the attitudes are generally detrimental to, and disparaging of, others.
I share the belief that religion has been responsible for many of humanity’s miseries. The record of Christianity has likely been the bloodiest of any religion, despite all the blubbering today about Islam. Christianity has been at the root of crusades, inquisitions, religious wars, mass murders, civil wars, torture, destruction of aboriginal people, slavery, and countless other horrors and abuses.
But I do not believe for an instant that religion and its abuses will stop any time soon, and I certainly do not believe that any words I can say will change the views of the religiously-minded. But Dawkins does appear to believe this, which I think is a little naïve for a man of such exceptional talent.
I believe it quite likely that we inherit our tendency for religion, just as we likely do for our politics. If that is true, we will only see the superstition and prejudice of religion disappear as humans evolve.
Most people who do not take their religion too seriously will enjoy at least a good portion of this provocative book, but the seriously religious would best avoid it.
First, despite the right of religious liberty people in advanced countries supposedly enjoy, we are regularly immersed, willy-nilly, in religious muck. The last couple of decades in America, the nightly news has featured everything from endless demands for prayer in public institutions and the creation myth being taught in schools to attacks on doctors doing legal abortions and silly fights over displaying the ten commandments in public courts. What’s so terrible about the other side getting a little publicity for a change?
Richard Dawkins is a pleasant and clear writer. The first part of his book is genuinely funny, hilarious in places, as he pokes fun at the absurd stories and rules of the Bible. At his best, he reminds me of Mark Twain in Letters from the Earth.
I think he is much less successful in the middle part of the book in trying to establish a logical framework for thinking about religion. Religion simply is not logical, none of it, ever, and just as the scholastic fathers tried over and over to “prove” the existence of God – Dawkins entertainingly goes through some of this – this effort seems futile.
There is an aspect of religion that I believe Dawkins misses. It is the cultural dimension of much of religion. We know many Jews, as in Israel for example, are quite worldly and not believers, yet something binds them to the heritage of their religion. That something is what Dawkins misses.
Religion works very much like prejudice: there are simply attitudes and perspectives that groups of people share together as a cultural inheritance, and the attitudes are generally detrimental to, and disparaging of, others.
I share the belief that religion has been responsible for many of humanity’s miseries. The record of Christianity has likely been the bloodiest of any religion, despite all the blubbering today about Islam. Christianity has been at the root of crusades, inquisitions, religious wars, mass murders, civil wars, torture, destruction of aboriginal people, slavery, and countless other horrors and abuses.
But I do not believe for an instant that religion and its abuses will stop any time soon, and I certainly do not believe that any words I can say will change the views of the religiously-minded. But Dawkins does appear to believe this, which I think is a little naïve for a man of such exceptional talent.
I believe it quite likely that we inherit our tendency for religion, just as we likely do for our politics. If that is true, we will only see the superstition and prejudice of religion disappear as humans evolve.
Most people who do not take their religion too seriously will enjoy at least a good portion of this provocative book, but the seriously religious would best avoid it.
JOHN CHUCKMAN REVIEW: THOMAS DILORENZO'S THE REAL LINCOLN
Let me say, right off, that this is not a biography of Lincoln. It is not even a character study because most of Lincoln’s character is never touched here. This is a study – I think it fair to call it an attack - of one aspect of Lincoln, his ideological purpose in fighting the Civil War. However, it is a determined, fact-filled attack, worth reading.
I have always believed, on the basis of my own studies, that the American Civil War was unnecessary, but this is a view that arouses hostile feelings in Americans as it runs against the public-school civics course beliefs around that conflict.
There is definitely an American Civic Religion with a set of tenets and sacred writings and a cast of mythically-endowed characters comparable to the chief figures of the Old and New Testaments. Many well-known American historians, some quite eminent, are conscious or unconscious proponents of the Civic Religion, not such a difficult thing as you might first imagine because history, just like good police detective work, involves interpretation, judgment, and instincts. The raw facts, when they are even known, are always susceptible of emphasis and interpretation.
So it was refreshing to find a serious writer who also believes that the war was unnecessary.
However, Dilorenzo’s reason for saying the war was unnecessary is different to my own. The author believes that Lincoln consciously used the war to impose the so-called American System of the Whig Party and Henry Clay, destroying the powers of the individual states and centralizing government in the United States. I believe rather that this was one of the unavoidable effects, wars always and everywhere being far more revolutionary events than people generally recognize.
There can be no doubt that Dilorrenzo marshals a strong case, but I believe that he largely fails to prove his main thesis. Lincoln, although not the sentimental figure of American text books and the Lincoln Memorial, was not America’s Joseph Stalin.
Most of his fact-marshalling is impressive, but when he goes off on a tangent to give a background on the basic political split between Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians, he actually gets it rather wrong. Jefferson was anything but the kind of figure he is in the eyes of libertarian devotees like Dilorenzo. He was hungry for power, hungry for empire, and ruthless to those who opposed him. He bent or broke laws many times and never was bothered about rights of others where they stood in the way of his vision. Jefferson was, in short, everything the author claims Lincoln was.
The tone of this book becomes almost oppressive as the author hammers away with citations and anecdotes tending to support his view – in other words, the author is guilty of overkill.
The sense of oppressiveness is increased by the fact the author writes from an ideological viewpoint, not many pages convincing the reader of the author’s pronounced libertarian attitude. In general, I do not like histories or biographies written with an ideological perspective, but here the fault is compounded by the author’s narrow focus.
I don’t think anyone with a fairly open mind can study Lincoln and come away with a view like Dilorenzo’s. Lincoln himself was a victim of believing in the American Civic Religion of his day. He genuinely believed in The Union as a semi-mystical concept. Lincoln was a genuine skeptic with regard to conventional religion and the existence of God, and the feelings that might have had an outlet there attached themselves to “The Union.” He was tough and hard-headed in many respects, but he would have been, in this writer’s judgment, temperamentally incapable of launching and continuing a vast war for the purpose of installing Whig policy.
For those interested, the reviewer believes the Civil War was unnecessary because most great wars are unnecessary and rarely solve anything. For example, World War I only created the foundation for World War II. The American Civil War, which was not fought over slavery, solved little about the ugly institution of slavery. The South went on for about a century afterward with a new set of arrangements for its black citizens hardly better than the previous institution.
The Civil War did establish the anti-democratic principle that no state can separate from the United States, hardly an admirable or advanced attitude. The Civil War is also the tipping point in America becoming a world power with fervent imperialistic views (demonstrated earlier in a more provincial theater of operation in many policies such as the Mexican War), again hardly an admirable outcome.
I believe too that the angry, long-unforgiving South actually dragged the United States backward in social progress over the next century. The United States might have become a better, more decent place without the South and its superstitious religion and traditions of personal honor, much resembling the blood-feud attitudes of backward places like Armenia. And slavery itself would have naturally died out even in the South in a few decades as it did in so many places like Brazil.
I have always believed, on the basis of my own studies, that the American Civil War was unnecessary, but this is a view that arouses hostile feelings in Americans as it runs against the public-school civics course beliefs around that conflict.
There is definitely an American Civic Religion with a set of tenets and sacred writings and a cast of mythically-endowed characters comparable to the chief figures of the Old and New Testaments. Many well-known American historians, some quite eminent, are conscious or unconscious proponents of the Civic Religion, not such a difficult thing as you might first imagine because history, just like good police detective work, involves interpretation, judgment, and instincts. The raw facts, when they are even known, are always susceptible of emphasis and interpretation.
So it was refreshing to find a serious writer who also believes that the war was unnecessary.
However, Dilorenzo’s reason for saying the war was unnecessary is different to my own. The author believes that Lincoln consciously used the war to impose the so-called American System of the Whig Party and Henry Clay, destroying the powers of the individual states and centralizing government in the United States. I believe rather that this was one of the unavoidable effects, wars always and everywhere being far more revolutionary events than people generally recognize.
There can be no doubt that Dilorrenzo marshals a strong case, but I believe that he largely fails to prove his main thesis. Lincoln, although not the sentimental figure of American text books and the Lincoln Memorial, was not America’s Joseph Stalin.
Most of his fact-marshalling is impressive, but when he goes off on a tangent to give a background on the basic political split between Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians, he actually gets it rather wrong. Jefferson was anything but the kind of figure he is in the eyes of libertarian devotees like Dilorenzo. He was hungry for power, hungry for empire, and ruthless to those who opposed him. He bent or broke laws many times and never was bothered about rights of others where they stood in the way of his vision. Jefferson was, in short, everything the author claims Lincoln was.
The tone of this book becomes almost oppressive as the author hammers away with citations and anecdotes tending to support his view – in other words, the author is guilty of overkill.
The sense of oppressiveness is increased by the fact the author writes from an ideological viewpoint, not many pages convincing the reader of the author’s pronounced libertarian attitude. In general, I do not like histories or biographies written with an ideological perspective, but here the fault is compounded by the author’s narrow focus.
I don’t think anyone with a fairly open mind can study Lincoln and come away with a view like Dilorenzo’s. Lincoln himself was a victim of believing in the American Civic Religion of his day. He genuinely believed in The Union as a semi-mystical concept. Lincoln was a genuine skeptic with regard to conventional religion and the existence of God, and the feelings that might have had an outlet there attached themselves to “The Union.” He was tough and hard-headed in many respects, but he would have been, in this writer’s judgment, temperamentally incapable of launching and continuing a vast war for the purpose of installing Whig policy.
For those interested, the reviewer believes the Civil War was unnecessary because most great wars are unnecessary and rarely solve anything. For example, World War I only created the foundation for World War II. The American Civil War, which was not fought over slavery, solved little about the ugly institution of slavery. The South went on for about a century afterward with a new set of arrangements for its black citizens hardly better than the previous institution.
The Civil War did establish the anti-democratic principle that no state can separate from the United States, hardly an admirable or advanced attitude. The Civil War is also the tipping point in America becoming a world power with fervent imperialistic views (demonstrated earlier in a more provincial theater of operation in many policies such as the Mexican War), again hardly an admirable outcome.
I believe too that the angry, long-unforgiving South actually dragged the United States backward in social progress over the next century. The United States might have become a better, more decent place without the South and its superstitious religion and traditions of personal honor, much resembling the blood-feud attitudes of backward places like Armenia. And slavery itself would have naturally died out even in the South in a few decades as it did in so many places like Brazil.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
JOHN CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: MY VERSION OF GENERAL TSO'S CHICKEN
I love Chinese food. This recipe is my version of a classic.
CHUCKMAN’S VERSION OF GENERAL TSO’S CHICKEN
INGREDIENTS
Chicken – Use either traditional cut-up Chicken Breast (about a pound – cut into bite-size pieces) or Drumettes or Drumsticks – drumettes or legs are unconventional but delicious – you need a greater weight to compensate for bones.
Broccoli – One medium head
Canola or Peanut Oil for frying
Dried crushed Chilli Peppers
Garlic – 1 medium-to-large clove, finely chopped
Ginger – a good-sized chunk (about the size of an average thumb), finely chopped – fresh is valuable for this recipe for its aromatic quality, but in a pinch, use bottled
Chicken Broth – 3 Tablespoons
Rice Vinegar – 2 Tablespoons
Hoisin Sauce – 2 Tablespoons (available in any Asian market and many supermarkets)
Sesame Oil – 1 Teaspoon
Sugar or Sugar Substitute – 2 Teaspoons Sugar or equivalent Substitute - the Substitute works nicely in this recipe
Dark Soy Sauce – this is the thicker type that has molasses in it
Cornstarch – a few Tablespoons
Dry Sherry – a good splash
METHOD
Spread Chicken pieces on a plate or platter and sprinkle lightly with cornstarch, a generous splash of Sherry, and a smaller splash of Soy Sauce. Toss lightly together and let stand briefly.
Blanch broccoli in a Covered Saucepan with a small amount of water on bottom. Bring water to a rapid boil, continue a minute or two, remove from the heat, and cool with cold running water. Broccoli will be bright green and par-cooked. Chop into florets and thin stalk slices. Set aside.
The sauce consists of 2 Tablespoons of Rice Wine Vinegar, 2 teaspoons of sugar or equivalent of sugar-substitute, 2 Tablespoons of Hoisin Sauce, 1 Tablespoon Dark Soy Sauce, a large clove of Garlic finely chopped, a chunk of fresh Ginger finely chopped, 1 Teaspoon of Sesame Oil, 3 Tablespoons of Chicken Broth, and a generous sprinkle of crushed Chili Peppers. Set aside.
Mix about 1 Teaspoon more of Cornstarch and a splash of cold water. This will thicken sauce when cooking. Set aside.
GENERAL NOTE ON STIR-FRYING
This ingenious, fuel-saving method of cooking is done in a hierarchy of cooking times, the ingredient requiring the most time being first – when all ingredients are together, they are cooked with the sauce briefly.
In this case, start with the Chicken. Saute the Chicken pieces lightly (do not overcook or flesh looses its succulence).
If you are using drumettes or legs, you will need a more substantial cooking time, especially legs – they should become golden and no blood should run.
Add blanched Broccoli and stir briefly.
Add Sauce ingredients. Add thickener.
Let simmer together a few minutes.
OPTIONS
Make the flavour very hot with plenty of chili peppers or use a Teaspoon of genuine Chinese Hot Chili Oil (this is very hot stuff, available in any Asian market). Or add Whole Dried Chilis (a dozen or so) to stir-fry after Chicken – this is a traditional ingredient.
Sprinkle servings with finely-sliced green onions and/or crushed peanuts.
CHUCKMAN’S VERSION OF GENERAL TSO’S CHICKEN
INGREDIENTS
Chicken – Use either traditional cut-up Chicken Breast (about a pound – cut into bite-size pieces) or Drumettes or Drumsticks – drumettes or legs are unconventional but delicious – you need a greater weight to compensate for bones.
Broccoli – One medium head
Canola or Peanut Oil for frying
Dried crushed Chilli Peppers
Garlic – 1 medium-to-large clove, finely chopped
Ginger – a good-sized chunk (about the size of an average thumb), finely chopped – fresh is valuable for this recipe for its aromatic quality, but in a pinch, use bottled
Chicken Broth – 3 Tablespoons
Rice Vinegar – 2 Tablespoons
Hoisin Sauce – 2 Tablespoons (available in any Asian market and many supermarkets)
Sesame Oil – 1 Teaspoon
Sugar or Sugar Substitute – 2 Teaspoons Sugar or equivalent Substitute - the Substitute works nicely in this recipe
Dark Soy Sauce – this is the thicker type that has molasses in it
Cornstarch – a few Tablespoons
Dry Sherry – a good splash
METHOD
Spread Chicken pieces on a plate or platter and sprinkle lightly with cornstarch, a generous splash of Sherry, and a smaller splash of Soy Sauce. Toss lightly together and let stand briefly.
Blanch broccoli in a Covered Saucepan with a small amount of water on bottom. Bring water to a rapid boil, continue a minute or two, remove from the heat, and cool with cold running water. Broccoli will be bright green and par-cooked. Chop into florets and thin stalk slices. Set aside.
The sauce consists of 2 Tablespoons of Rice Wine Vinegar, 2 teaspoons of sugar or equivalent of sugar-substitute, 2 Tablespoons of Hoisin Sauce, 1 Tablespoon Dark Soy Sauce, a large clove of Garlic finely chopped, a chunk of fresh Ginger finely chopped, 1 Teaspoon of Sesame Oil, 3 Tablespoons of Chicken Broth, and a generous sprinkle of crushed Chili Peppers. Set aside.
Mix about 1 Teaspoon more of Cornstarch and a splash of cold water. This will thicken sauce when cooking. Set aside.
GENERAL NOTE ON STIR-FRYING
This ingenious, fuel-saving method of cooking is done in a hierarchy of cooking times, the ingredient requiring the most time being first – when all ingredients are together, they are cooked with the sauce briefly.
In this case, start with the Chicken. Saute the Chicken pieces lightly (do not overcook or flesh looses its succulence).
If you are using drumettes or legs, you will need a more substantial cooking time, especially legs – they should become golden and no blood should run.
Add blanched Broccoli and stir briefly.
Add Sauce ingredients. Add thickener.
Let simmer together a few minutes.
OPTIONS
Make the flavour very hot with plenty of chili peppers or use a Teaspoon of genuine Chinese Hot Chili Oil (this is very hot stuff, available in any Asian market). Or add Whole Dried Chilis (a dozen or so) to stir-fry after Chicken – this is a traditional ingredient.
Sprinkle servings with finely-sliced green onions and/or crushed peanuts.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
JOHN CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: QUICK, THIN CHEESE/ BACON/ SPINACH PIZZAS
An absolutely delicious snack or light meal or appetiser
CHUCKMAN’S QUICK, THIN CHEESE/BACON/SPINACH PIZZAS
INGREDIENTS:
Commercial Tortillas or Flat Breads – the very thin kind – whole wheat or white – 7 small ones for the amounts in this recipe
Oil – to lightly coat tortillas
Red Sauce – leftover or a good bottled – you need just enough to coat each tortilla
Cheese – grated – I suggest a mixture of mozzarella, parmesan, and provolone, but use your favourite - have enough to cover each tortilla generously
Spinach – I small box of frozen – thawed and excess water lightly squeezed out
Bacon – thick-sliced kind – cut – through the width - five or six strips, each about half an inch wide – this will yield enough small chunky pieces for 5 or 6 to a tortilla
METHOD:
Preheat oven to 400.
Saute Bacon chunks ahead, drain and let cool – do not over-crisp because it will cook additional time in the oven.
Use a cookie sheet for Tortillas, either lightly oiled or, as I prefer, covered with parchment paper (no clean-up with this wonderful stuff).
Lightly oil both surfaces of each Tortilla. Spread a very thin layer of the sauce on one side.
Sprinkle each Tortilla with Spinach.
Sprinkle each Tortilla with 5 or 6 chunks of Bacon, spread fairly evenly.
Sprinkle generously with Grated Cheese so it is almost spilling over.
Bake until all the cheese has melted and turned lightly golden – this should be on the order of 10 minutes, but go by appearance
Serve either whole as light meals or sliced (scissors work best) into wedges as an appetiser.
FURTHER SUGGESTION: Top cheese with thinly sliced brown mushrooms before baking.
CHUCKMAN’S QUICK, THIN CHEESE/BACON/SPINACH PIZZAS
INGREDIENTS:
Commercial Tortillas or Flat Breads – the very thin kind – whole wheat or white – 7 small ones for the amounts in this recipe
Oil – to lightly coat tortillas
Red Sauce – leftover or a good bottled – you need just enough to coat each tortilla
Cheese – grated – I suggest a mixture of mozzarella, parmesan, and provolone, but use your favourite - have enough to cover each tortilla generously
Spinach – I small box of frozen – thawed and excess water lightly squeezed out
Bacon – thick-sliced kind – cut – through the width - five or six strips, each about half an inch wide – this will yield enough small chunky pieces for 5 or 6 to a tortilla
METHOD:
Preheat oven to 400.
Saute Bacon chunks ahead, drain and let cool – do not over-crisp because it will cook additional time in the oven.
Use a cookie sheet for Tortillas, either lightly oiled or, as I prefer, covered with parchment paper (no clean-up with this wonderful stuff).
Lightly oil both surfaces of each Tortilla. Spread a very thin layer of the sauce on one side.
Sprinkle each Tortilla with Spinach.
Sprinkle each Tortilla with 5 or 6 chunks of Bacon, spread fairly evenly.
Sprinkle generously with Grated Cheese so it is almost spilling over.
Bake until all the cheese has melted and turned lightly golden – this should be on the order of 10 minutes, but go by appearance
Serve either whole as light meals or sliced (scissors work best) into wedges as an appetiser.
FURTHER SUGGESTION: Top cheese with thinly sliced brown mushrooms before baking.
Monday, February 04, 2008
JOHN CHUCKMAN TRANSLATION: A PAKISTANI LANGUAGE
Segalanya Dengan Nama Jesus
Posted on Thursday, May 15 @ 01:03:09 EDT by admin
Assalamualaikum sdr.
Dalam keghairan kita mengharungi dunia hidup yang penuh dengan keindahan ciptaan Allah SWT kita perlu sentiasa berwaspada dengan persekitaraan kita yang penuh dengan ranjau dan onak. Dalam banyak hal orang Islam sentiasa Take for granted terhadap apa yang berlaku di sekeliling kita sehingga dah terantuk baru terngadah.
Oleh itu Paksu akan cuba mengupas beberapa isu yang sentiasa dekat dengan kita sebagai Muslim yang beramal (practicing Muslim) agar Paksu sendiri dan anak buah Paksu dapat sama-sama menghayati Islam sepenuhnya.
Kali ini Paksu tertarik untuk mengulas satu penomena yang serius yang menghentam Islam tetapi kita samada sedari atau tidak tak ambil pusing. Macam juga isu COCACOLA yang banyak dibincang di situs ini sebenarnya kita dilanyak dari kiri-kanan atas bawah luar dalam namun kita masih leka. Nama ancaman ini yang Paksu sebut sebagai Dengan Nama Jesus. Dengan Nama Jesuslah maka bumi kita dijajah, malah seluruh dunia. Orang Kristian akan membuat segala sesuatu untuk mematikan Islam. Kini mereka seolah-olah mempunyai justifikasi melalui peperangan melawan keganasan yang = Islam.
Sedarlah segala-galanya adalah Dengan Nama Jesus. Sebuah tabloid melaporkan melalui tulisan oleh John Chuckman bahawa Presiden AS mempunyai penasihat agamanya bernama Franklin Graham anak Billy Graham yang memainkan peranan yang sama kepada Nixon. Franklin Graham adalah di antara mubaligh Kristian gaya motivator yang menjadi kegilaan (craze) masyarakat AS. Orang seperti ini selalu berceramah di TV (yang sedihnya perkara seperti ini pun sudah menjadi perkara biasa di TV Indon….dan awas apa yang menghalang daripada ianya berlaku di negara Islam Malaysia…kan Injil terjemahan yang menggunakan Allah sebagai Tuhan Kristian pun sudah dihalalkan oleh negara Islam Malaysia) dan seminar besar-besaran (Macam forum Perdana). Billy Graham Organization adalah sebuah organisasi yang besar dan kaya yang berjaya “menyelamatkan” orang Kristian dan konvert. Apa yang menjadi isunya ialah Graham melalui organisasinya, Samaritan`s Purse mengajak pengikutnya kepada satu fahaman Kristian yang sempit yang orang Kristian arus perdana sendiri merasa jijik. Dinominasi(mazhab) Kristian yang dibawanya adalah The Southern Baptists yang terkenal dengan kepercayaan ekstrim yang pada awalnya menyingkir kaum Negro daripada gereja kemudian menetang usaha kemanusiaan yang dibawa oleh Dr King. Kini Franklin (yang gemar bermain dan mengumpul senjata otomatik) yang menjadi kawan rapat Rumah Putih dengan organisasi-organisasi licik mereka sedang memasuki Iraq dalam usaha untuk mempengaruhi orang Iraq melalui bantuan dan dakwah/dakyah mereka. Sebelum perang Iraq Franklin Graham telah memberi ceramah(surmons) hari good Friday di Pentagon (Kementerian Pertahanan AS). Di antara kata-katanya; “Kita bukan menyerang Islam tetapi Islam telah menyerang kita. Tuhan Islam bukanlah Tuhan yang sama. Dia bukan anak Tuhan kepercayaan Kristian dan Judeo-Kristian. Ia adalah Tuhan yang berbeza, dan saya yakin ia adalah ugama yang cukup jahat dan keji”
The Southern Baptists akan juga turut memberi bantuan kepada Iraq. Dan bayangkan apa yang mereka akan buat kerana bekas presiden Southern Baptists Mission Board, Jerry Vines pernah berkata bahawa Nabi Muhammad SAW adalah “seorang perogol kanak-kanak yang dirasuk syaitan”…astagfirullah ! ! (Teringat apa kata Farish Noor, seorang Melayu Islam terhadap Rasullallah… lebih teruk lagi daripada itu yang ditulis dalam surat kabar milik kerajaan tak lama dahulu dan dia masih bebas malah menjadi perantara forum di TV kerajaan). Jadi jangan hairan apabila Bush kata `kita akan perang salib(crusade)` apabila menara WTCnya runtuh. Ini selaras dengan pandangan sempit Kristian yang dianutinya iaitu Islam mesti diperangi dengan apa cara sekali pun.
Penulis John Chuckman merumuskan bahawa adalah jelas dan nyata tindakan Pentagon memerangi pengganas adalah pembunuhan professional diatas nama Jesus untuk negara.
Jadi Paksu berseru kepada semua termasuk pemegang kuasa memerintah dan diri Paksu sendiri supaya mengatur langkah dengan berhati-hati jangan tersangkut reba lalu rebah dan terpijak jerangkap samar lalu musnah.
WallAllahu`alam
PAKSU
Alorsetar 150503
Posted on Thursday, May 15 @ 01:03:09 EDT by admin
Assalamualaikum sdr.
Dalam keghairan kita mengharungi dunia hidup yang penuh dengan keindahan ciptaan Allah SWT kita perlu sentiasa berwaspada dengan persekitaraan kita yang penuh dengan ranjau dan onak. Dalam banyak hal orang Islam sentiasa Take for granted terhadap apa yang berlaku di sekeliling kita sehingga dah terantuk baru terngadah.
Oleh itu Paksu akan cuba mengupas beberapa isu yang sentiasa dekat dengan kita sebagai Muslim yang beramal (practicing Muslim) agar Paksu sendiri dan anak buah Paksu dapat sama-sama menghayati Islam sepenuhnya.
Kali ini Paksu tertarik untuk mengulas satu penomena yang serius yang menghentam Islam tetapi kita samada sedari atau tidak tak ambil pusing. Macam juga isu COCACOLA yang banyak dibincang di situs ini sebenarnya kita dilanyak dari kiri-kanan atas bawah luar dalam namun kita masih leka. Nama ancaman ini yang Paksu sebut sebagai Dengan Nama Jesus. Dengan Nama Jesuslah maka bumi kita dijajah, malah seluruh dunia. Orang Kristian akan membuat segala sesuatu untuk mematikan Islam. Kini mereka seolah-olah mempunyai justifikasi melalui peperangan melawan keganasan yang = Islam.
Sedarlah segala-galanya adalah Dengan Nama Jesus. Sebuah tabloid melaporkan melalui tulisan oleh John Chuckman bahawa Presiden AS mempunyai penasihat agamanya bernama Franklin Graham anak Billy Graham yang memainkan peranan yang sama kepada Nixon. Franklin Graham adalah di antara mubaligh Kristian gaya motivator yang menjadi kegilaan (craze) masyarakat AS. Orang seperti ini selalu berceramah di TV (yang sedihnya perkara seperti ini pun sudah menjadi perkara biasa di TV Indon….dan awas apa yang menghalang daripada ianya berlaku di negara Islam Malaysia…kan Injil terjemahan yang menggunakan Allah sebagai Tuhan Kristian pun sudah dihalalkan oleh negara Islam Malaysia) dan seminar besar-besaran (Macam forum Perdana). Billy Graham Organization adalah sebuah organisasi yang besar dan kaya yang berjaya “menyelamatkan” orang Kristian dan konvert. Apa yang menjadi isunya ialah Graham melalui organisasinya, Samaritan`s Purse mengajak pengikutnya kepada satu fahaman Kristian yang sempit yang orang Kristian arus perdana sendiri merasa jijik. Dinominasi(mazhab) Kristian yang dibawanya adalah The Southern Baptists yang terkenal dengan kepercayaan ekstrim yang pada awalnya menyingkir kaum Negro daripada gereja kemudian menetang usaha kemanusiaan yang dibawa oleh Dr King. Kini Franklin (yang gemar bermain dan mengumpul senjata otomatik) yang menjadi kawan rapat Rumah Putih dengan organisasi-organisasi licik mereka sedang memasuki Iraq dalam usaha untuk mempengaruhi orang Iraq melalui bantuan dan dakwah/dakyah mereka. Sebelum perang Iraq Franklin Graham telah memberi ceramah(surmons) hari good Friday di Pentagon (Kementerian Pertahanan AS). Di antara kata-katanya; “Kita bukan menyerang Islam tetapi Islam telah menyerang kita. Tuhan Islam bukanlah Tuhan yang sama. Dia bukan anak Tuhan kepercayaan Kristian dan Judeo-Kristian. Ia adalah Tuhan yang berbeza, dan saya yakin ia adalah ugama yang cukup jahat dan keji”
The Southern Baptists akan juga turut memberi bantuan kepada Iraq. Dan bayangkan apa yang mereka akan buat kerana bekas presiden Southern Baptists Mission Board, Jerry Vines pernah berkata bahawa Nabi Muhammad SAW adalah “seorang perogol kanak-kanak yang dirasuk syaitan”…astagfirullah ! ! (Teringat apa kata Farish Noor, seorang Melayu Islam terhadap Rasullallah… lebih teruk lagi daripada itu yang ditulis dalam surat kabar milik kerajaan tak lama dahulu dan dia masih bebas malah menjadi perantara forum di TV kerajaan). Jadi jangan hairan apabila Bush kata `kita akan perang salib(crusade)` apabila menara WTCnya runtuh. Ini selaras dengan pandangan sempit Kristian yang dianutinya iaitu Islam mesti diperangi dengan apa cara sekali pun.
Penulis John Chuckman merumuskan bahawa adalah jelas dan nyata tindakan Pentagon memerangi pengganas adalah pembunuhan professional diatas nama Jesus untuk negara.
Jadi Paksu berseru kepada semua termasuk pemegang kuasa memerintah dan diri Paksu sendiri supaya mengatur langkah dengan berhati-hati jangan tersangkut reba lalu rebah dan terpijak jerangkap samar lalu musnah.
WallAllahu`alam
PAKSU
Alorsetar 150503
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