Fireside Reading

Three nonfiction and three fiction recommendations for your fireside reading. Enjoy!

Rat City, Jon Adams & Edmund Ramsden

How does a city get rid of its rats? In the 1940s, the city of Baltimore hired researchers at Johns Hopkins to study the problem and devise an eradication program. Over the ensuing decades, the research expanded to encompass how these social animals lived and how their living conditions affected their behavior and population. Rats naturally maintained a stable population in a given area, and researchers found that forced density altered their behavior to become more aggressive and anti-social, A connection was made to humans, where overcrowding led to similar behavior and outcomes, and urban planners took note, with disastrous consequences.  Some of the worst planning developments, Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, Cabrini-Green in Chicago, for example, were the dreadful outcomes of poor planning. Too much density is bad, but too little density has its own set of problems, such as social isolation and depression, which is what the rats taught us. As the city of Baltimore discovered, as has every city that has attempted rat eradication, it is not possible to eliminate rats: where there are humans, there will be rats. You may recoil at the subject, but this is excellent science writing on an important and timeless topic.

Reagan, Max Boot

Max Boot has written the most comprehensive biography of Ronald Reagan to date. Boot is subjectively critical of many of Reagan’s actions—his visit to the Bitburg cemetery where Waffen SS are buried, his tepid response to the AIDS crisis, his ignorance of the machinations of his aides in Iran-Contra, for example—but makes the persuasive case that Reagan was above all a pragmatist, willing to take half a loaf from a Democratic Assembly (in California) and Congress (in DC) than to hew to an ideological line. Reagan was genuinely optimistic and had a strong belief in the goodness of people. This led to a blind eye in  trusting people he should not have trusted, but it was his optimism that the country needed at that time. As Boot notes, a decade before or a decade later, Reagan could not have been elected. Careful to delineate his many errors, Boot concludes that Reagan was the right person at the right time for America. You won’t agree with every assessment, but this is, for now, Reagan’s definitive biography.

A Day in September, Stephen Budiansky

Antietam was the deadliest day in American history, a tactical draw militarily, but a strategic victory for the Union as Lee’s push into Maryland was repulsed and diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy was thwarted by the outcome. There have been many books on the battle, those by Stephen Sears and John McPherson among the best, but add Budiansky to this list. Here he approaches the battle as a clash of leadership styles. Both Robert E. Lee and George McClellan are heavily criticized, the former for his rash and faulty judgment, the latter for his overly cautious ineptitude. Antietam had an impact beyond the battlefield as it was the first battle to be extensively photographed, and the first to become a tourist site. Antietam was a turning point, perhaps the turning point in the Civil War, and Budiansky adds dimensions to our understanding of that critical day.

Orbital, Samantha Harvey

Six astronauts circle the Earth in the International Space Station, sixteen orbits around the globe every twenty-four hours. What are their thoughts as they go about their daily chores, or when they pause to look out the window at the Earth below and stars above? There is no plot here, just the meditations of these six astronauts reflecting on their lives on Earth and their meaning up in space. I cannot do justice to the enormous beauty of Harvey’s prose; it is simply breathlessly astonishing.

Netherland, Joseph O’Neill

Hans is a Dutch equity analyst who has moved from London to New York with his wife Rachel and their small son. His wife soon becomes disenchanted with post-9/11 New York, and returns to London without Hans. We empathize with Hans as he tries to reconcile with Rachel even as she pushes him away. Meanwhile, alone in New York, Hans falls into a crowd of cricketers, a game he last played in college, and falls under the tutelage of a shady Trinidadian with grand plans for a cricket stadium in Brooklyn. O’Neill’s observations of the immigrant fringes of society are especially acute, and the meaning of relationships is sharply drawn. A beautiful, funny, insightful book.

Time of the Child, Niall Williams

Faha is the small, fictional Irish village in this beautiful novel. Jack Troy is the town’s doctor, a widower with three daughters, two of whom have left Faha, but the oldest, Veronica, remains living with him as his assistant. He fears that he stopped a romance years before, ensuring that Veronica would never find love, and he ponders how he might atone. Then an infant is found in a field, presumed dead, but brought to the doctor and somehow revived. Veronica bonds with the baby whose presence is kept secret from the villagers. There are more twists to the plot, but mostly this is a heartwarming story of vulnerability and love that will bring tears of both sorrow and joy. A truly beautiful novel.

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