Tag: Nonfiction

Review: Is There Life After Football

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Is There Life After Football: Surviving The NFL

A look at life as an American Football player by sociologists and former NFL player James Koonce, Is There Life After Football is a very interesting and evenhanded tale of how football players (and to a degree many other athletes) struggle culturally. While very few of its points are surprising or shocking, it’s well-written and handled.

The authors are eager to debunk some of the skewed and sensationalist claims of football players recklessly spending piles of money and then ending up as brain-damaged hobos. Careful to cite formal studies, they point out that there isn’t a disproportionately high amount of either financial or legal trouble amongst NFL veterans (a point others such as former player Merrill Hoge have made)-but that it still can and does often happen, with a look at the cultural dynamics to see why.

Indeed this manages to mostly avoid the twin sportswriting perils of what I call the “Johnny Manziel” and “Colin Kaepernick” paths, to use two quarterbacks who both got (in?)famous for things that had nothing to do with their play on the field. The Manziel route is classic media focusing on the freak show excesses, portraying the players as overpaid, under-mature babies, often with moral scolding. (Spoiler alert: Some players are just that). The Kaepernick route is the more modern “sensibility” in which every single player is an underpaid exploited victim of Evil Capitalist Society.

If I had to quibble, I’d say that they lump NFL players too closely together. The stats are skewed by short-career replacement level players, and the compartmenalization of different positions and paths is well-known. Their talk of the “conveyor belt” should have brought more attention to hyped prospects who flame out. The authors mention old-timers who had to work in the offseason and bubble fringe players who knew very well that they were living on the edge. But I’d be curious to see the end result of the worst of all worlds-a sheltered pampered college stardom followed by just legitimately not having the talent to match at the pro level.

But these are minor concerns for an excellent book.

Review: Super Mirage 4000

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Super Mirage 4000

Finally translated into English, this is a look at what was to France what the Avro Arrow was to Canada, the TSR-2 was to Britain, the Lavi was to Israel, and the Osorio tank was to Brazil. (Or what the AMX-32 and AMX-40 tanks were to… France).

It’s what you’d expect from a small coffee table book whose sources came from inside the program: A combination of knowledge and bias, mixed with tidbits without being the deepest. This isn’t a bad thing if you know what you’re getting into, and the plane is certainly worthy of such a book.

Review: Three Week Professionals

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Three Week Professionals

Though not the deepest sports book, Ted Kluck’s Three Week Professionals tells the story of the 1987 NFL replacement players with humor and the right tone. On one hand, the players had more of a justification for striking than was often the case given the lack of free agency and the sport being incredibly harsh. On the other, it was poorly handled and working-class people even at the time thought little of it.

As both a time capsule and a short breezy history, this book is good. Not deep, but it’s not supposed to be. It is fun and that’s what matters.

Review: The War of Return

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The War of Return

A very timely book, Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz’s The War of Return is a look at the Israel-Palestinian conflict. That the two support a two-state solution and a return of Israel to pre-1967 borders makes it all the more credible. Trying to go and see why the Palestinians have been more intractable than even the other Arab states, they come to a “temporary UN program”.

I knew about the legitimate beefs the Palestinians have with Israel (yes they exist), and how the other Arab nations have used them entirely as political props and tools for decades without wanting to care for them. Yet the key in the lock they’ve explained is the UNRWA, which ended up becoming both a local government (seriously) with an international fig leaf and something that fanned the fires by using the term “refugee” in a way completely different than what everyone else, including the rest of the UN, uses.

(Short oversimplified version: The UNHCR which handles refugees literally everywhere, has a narrow definition and formal apoliticality. Once someone is settled, they aren’t a “refugee” anymore. So WRT Syria, if they’re settled they’re no longer a refugee. Be it in Turkey, Germany, the UAE, Ireland, America, or Bangladesh, that’s that. Also, whether they were pro-or-anti-Assad is irrelevant in that case. In contrast, the UNRWA has effectively made every single Palestinian family into a dynasty of “refugees”.)

It’s hard not to read this book and think that just a bit of negotiation here and a settlement there can still work (or could even before the current war). This makes it a sad but excellent and true story.

A Thousand Words: Jodorowsky’s Dune

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Jodorowsky’s Dune

In the early-mid 1970s, arthouse filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky ended up helming an “adaptation” of Dune. The quotes are deliberate as the movie and its tone would have been Starship Troopers/The Natural levels of intentionally different from the book. In 2013, the story of the most extravagant and absurd movie that never was was finally told in the titular documentary.

This is a great production. Everyone is clearly enjoying themselves as they talk about how the production got more and more crazy. Jodorowsky had his own son play a major role, and of course the son talks about it decades later. The art and effects brought together such figures as Jean “Moebius” Giraud, Dan O’Bannon, and H. R. Giger, the latter two of whom would make a monster movie that was a little successful. Yet the all-star cast was the craziest, featuring Orson Welles (paid in free food) as Baron Harkonnen, Salvador Dali, and Mick Jagger.

What makes the documentary shine is its soundtrack, with Kurt Stenzel’s minimalist electronic score being both a perfect accent and a great piece of music in its own right. (Although I’m biased because I like minimal electronic music, fair warning). The cinematography is also effective.

If I had to have one quibble, it’s that the documentary didn’t have the necessary devil’s advocate/reactor scram button to bring things down to earth. The movie is mentioned as being impossible, but in the sense it was too ambitious for Hollywood. In actuality, it would have been unreleasably bizzare, bound to burn money in its production, and simply strange. (There are scenes in at least some versions of Jodorowsky’s Dune that the documentary doesn’t mention, likely because they’re too weird and/or gross). If it actually got out the door, Jodorowsky’s Dune would probably just have been a bloated mess like Marlon Brando’s The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Still, this is a great documentary about a great story, even if it wouldn’t have been a great movie.

Review: Eastern Front 1945

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Eastern Front 1945

An Osprey book on the air war in WWII’s final year, Eastern Front 1945 is about the often-overlooked in the west clash in the eastern skies. It basically does every Osprey book thing right. While it’s not the most detailed, it provides an excellent overview of the somewhat different air war (ie, where the P-39 shined even as it flopped in other theaters).

One thing I particularly liked was how the book accurately showed the air campaign’s influence on postwar Soviet/Russian doctrine. Instead of a “big blue blanket” smothering every enemy in its tracks, it was focused on targeted air superiority and supporting maneuver formations. Which led to February 1945 when the Luftwaffe actually regained air superiority for a time. ( In short, they pulled more or less every propeller fighter away from the fruitless bomber interceptions and were were able to operate from intact developed airbases while the Soviets were worn and had their field strips wrecked by bad weather)

It’s a good look at both Soviet air doctrine being successful and at the eastern air war.

Review: Stuck On The Drawing Board

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Stuck On The Drawing Board: Unbuilt British Commercial Aircraft Since 1945

Passenger planes made in Britain followed an almost exactly stereotypical British pattern: At first bold and trend-setting, then fell behind due to both luck and skill, finally becoming just an international cog. The could have beens and never weres of this are shown in Richard Payne’s Stuck on the Drawing Board.

This is a fun, if niche, book for aviation enthusiasts. The big problem from the nature of the planes it describes. For passenger planes that are all essentially just tubes with different capacities, VTOLs and odd shapes are the absolute most different you’re going to get.

But this isn’t the book’s fault, and you’re left with a fun look at what could have happened before the 707 and its successors crushed any hope of a full-scale British aviation industry.

Review: Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation

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Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation

Every so often I get a textbook that is not really the best to conventionally review at all, much less amongst cheap thrillers. Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation is one of those books. I feel a little guilty reviewing it because the target audience is scientists and the like who know the math, physics, and engineering subject matter a loooooooooooooooooooooot more than an armchair enthusiast like myself. So yeah, a lot of this goes over my head. And that’s fine.

If the “Type 1 Academese” was understandable and inevitable, the “Type 2” is a legit point of criticism. Despite the fact that anyone who’s read a single piece on the modern history of South Africa would instantly grasp why the post-apartheid government gave up the nuclear weapons, the book explains this in a long and pretentious way. Where I think this is more than a stylistic issue is how it wouldn’t be easy to get its points across to a non-scientist, whereas other similarly dense works on the same topic are still more understandable.

Review: Death by Pitbull

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Death by Pitbull

Lawyer Richard Morris’ recent Death by Pitbull takes a look into something involved with dogfighting-and not the kind that involves airplanes. Namely, it looks at the Pit Bull Terrier, the monstrous beasts that have terrorized human and other animal alike since the 1800s. The tone is rather sensationalist and its politics are frequently right wing, but it still cites its sources and makes a good argument.

Morris repeatedly hammers the ‘it’s how you raised them’ claim, one as faulty as it is a part of the dangerous Harley Quinn/serial killer lover “Tame the Beast” fantasy. To his credit he also includes a model law and regulation for banning dangerous dogs (since pit bull fans are notorious for mysteriously switching claimed breeds to dodge bans).

I think the book could have used a bit more context with the dogfighting culture to explain why pit bulls ended up, as well as dispelling the misunderstandings people used to tamer dogs have to explain their psychology (you can’t compare two “normal” dogs fighting emotionally over a concrete thing with a breed designed to fight naturally, and instead of lashing them along, pit bull kennels have to work hard to have their dogs not fight until the time comes). But this is a small quibble.

Pit bulls do not belong as pets.

Review: Dragon’s Wings

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A 2013 book by noted PLAAF watcher Andreas Rupprecht, Dragon’s Wings is one of the first looks behind the curtain of the Chinese aircraft industry. Though now obviously old, it’s still a good snapshot into the past. Besides the familiar J-6/7s and the newer domestic J-8/10-etcs, it provides a look at many of the never-were (and frequently technically impossible at the time) aircraft proposed.

However much it’s shown its age, it’s still a great book. It’s an excellent coffee table book for aircraft enthusiasts.