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The Mascot by Mark Kurzem

Jun8

The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father’s Nazi Boyhood by Mark Kurzem.

I read two books in a row about boys and their relationships with a father who had mysterious past. (See my review of Jesus, My Father, the CIA and Me by Ian Cron) Short version: it’s complicated.

In The Mascot, Mark Kuzem is surprised by a visit from his father to Mark’s apartment at Oxford in England. Alex Kurzem has come all the way from Australia, with no warning, and without telling Mark’s mother the truth about where he’s gone. Mark expects some earth-shattering communication from his father, but the visit continues for days with only surface pleasantries. Finally, just before Alex leaves to go back to Australia, he tells Mark that he remembers two words from his childhood in or near Latvia, before World War II. The words are “Panok” and “Koidanov”. Alex wants Mark to find out what the words mean.

These two words and Alex Kurzem’s recurring and expanding memories of his childhood during World War II begin a journey into the past for Mark Kurzem and his father. Are Alex Kurzem’s memories trustworthy, or has he chosen to remember too late for the memories to be confirmed as truth? Will his story damage the lives and reputations of the people in Latvia and elsewhere who were his rescuers and protectors? And most importantly, what does the story of Alex Kurzem, or Uldis Kurzemnieks, or whatever his real birth name was, mean? Mark wonders and later tries to find out exactly who this man, his father, really is, and what his experiences before, during, and after the war really mean to both his identity and Mark’s identity as the son of a Holocaust survivor.

Alex:
“I don’t have any choice about what I can remember and when. My memories are here inside me like vipers inside my bones gnawing their way out.”

“To be truthful, I don’t want to remember anything of what happened to me. Who is his right mind would? But the bigger truth is that I am more terrified to forget. I am trapped.”

Mark:
“I was disturbed, perhaps even slightly annoyed, that my father had kept so many things from me. . . . I was baffled by the fact that my father had remained silent for more than fifty years. What almost superhuman strength had this required? What toll had silence taken on his inner life? My father seemed to inhabit two separate worlds. . . . One world was inexorably unraveling while a new, unpredictable one emerged.”

Some doubts have been raised about the veracity of Mr. Kurzem’s memories. Author Mark Kurzem died in November 2009 of “complications following diabetes.” Alex Kurzem says, “My story is true. I have nothing to hide.”

The Mascot is an exciting, disturbing Holocaust memoir about a boy who was both protected and exploited by his Latvian and German captors. It’s also a story about a delicate, but loving relationship between a father and son and about the fragility and the importance of memories. I recommend the book to anyone interested in Holocaust memoir, not just for the story itself, but also for what it has to say about memoirs and the complications and even perils of unearthing the past.

Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir . . . of Sorts by Ian Cron

Jun7

Official release date: June 7, 2011

Thanks to NetGalley, I was able to read this funny, touching sort-of memoir by recovering alcoholic pastor Ian Cron. I laughed out loud several times while I was reading, even though some of the subject matter in the memoir is quite serious and sad. Abuse, anger and an alcoholic father give the young Ian several reasons to lose trust in God and in his own ability to cope with the world.

I’ll give you a taste of the style and wit of the author so that you can see if it would suit your sense of humor and literary bent:

“I practiced in our basement with the bell of my horn stuffed into a pillow so the sound wouldn’t disturb my father. This practice regimen had the same effect marathoners experience when they train at high altitudes and then run a race at sea level. Once that pillow came off, I was like Miles Davis after six cans of Red Bull.”

“I discovered that if I titrated my overdeveloped vocabulary with just the right amount of sarcasm, my peers thought it was funny, not to mention impressive. Teachers call this kind of student a precocious pain in the butt. In Washington I’m told they call them press secretaries.”

“Most seventh graders don’t set out to make trouble. They are like puppies with impulse-control disorders. Opportunities for mischief arise, and they can’t stop themselves. This is why they should be crate-trained.”

“Tyler and I planned to put the convertible top down and drive around the beach in search of girls to impress. I’m told male peacocks do the same thing, but with tail feathers.”

If not one of those excerpts gives you a little giggle, you probably won’t enjoy the book because there’s a lot more of the same as Ian Cron retells the story of his childhood and his alcoholic CIA agent father and his mother who was, according to Ian, some amalgam of “Lucille Ball, Grace Kelly, and Margaret Thatcher.”

The religious part of the story starts out with a traditional Catholic upbringing, veers into agnosticism and anger with God, slowly slides into evangelicalism (Young Life) combined with Episcopalian charismatic revivalism, and then settles into a faith that is grounded in personal experience and study of Scripture and tradition, with a bit of emergent mysticism and love of Christian liturgy thrown in. Now that’s a journey, but Mr. Cron doesn’t make it sound nearly so confusing as I have managed to do, and he’s a lot more humorous. I’m not sure we’re in the same place, theologically speaking, but I think the man definitely has a God-touched story to tell. And I can “honor the story.”

Definitely read this one if you’re interested in an honest, open, spiritual memoir about a man with a dysfunctional family who struggles with forgiveness and with idolatry and with becoming the father that God wants him to be. The story in the penultimate chapter of the book (18) about Mr. Cron and his son and their adventure in diving and courage is worth reading, even if you don’t read anything else.

Thank you, Mr. Cron, for making me think and making me laugh. I need both.

Ian Cron’s blog.

Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities by Chris Barton

Jun6

I was really looking forward to reading this new YA nonfiction title. I think there ought to be more action in the nonfiction category for young adults, and the topic is intriguing. Who doesn’t wonder about imposters and con men?

For this book, Mr. Barton chose ten famous pretenders who managed to fool a lot of the people for a long time by claiming to be someone they were not. The chapters focus on both men and women, people such as The Great Imposter, Ferdinand Waldo Demara and Mary Baker, who convinced Victorian England for a while that she was really Princess Caraboo from the island of Javasu. I liked the variety of people, settings, and circumstances that made each of the ten stories a good read.

However, and here’s my big issue with this book, I absolutely hated the choice that was made to tell the stories in second person. I felt as if I were being kidnapped and dragged forcibly into the tricksters’ lives and minds, one after the other, instead of being invited to think about who these people were and what impelled them to present a false identity to the world. I didn’t like it. Here’s an example; you see what you think:

“You weren’t hurting anybody. In fact, really, you’ve always been out to help, to share your impressive talents and energy and intellect with the world. But clashing with abbots, downing barrels of beer, going AWOL from the U.S. Army, and faking suicide to get out of the U.S. Navy made it a bit difficult to bestow those gifts as Fred Demara. So you took to borrowing birth certificates and academic credentials and writing letters of recommendation for yourself on official stationery you’d swiped.”

If you can handle a entire book in which you are invited to participate in multiple personality disorder, taking on ten different identities in 121 pages, this book is for you. The revolving I.D. turnstile gave me a headache. The second person point of view felt gimmicky and annoying. FYI, I didn’t like the Choose Your Own Adventure books that were so very popular back when I was a children’s librarian either, but my students loved them.

But, hey, you decide if you want to inhabit the minds of ten different imposters for a few pages each. If so, go for it.

Love Wins by Rob Bell

Jun4

Rob Bell is slick. I use that word to describe him and his book, Love Wins, because I believe it’s applicable, even charitable. (Charitable, because I’m trying not to say that he’s only interested in selling lots of books.) Immediately after I read the book, my first thought was, “What’s the big fuss?” I don’t agree with everything in Mr. Bell’s book, but I can certainly agree with much of it. Then, I began to go back and try to find the things I agreed with, those points that were supported by Scripture. First I found that even when I agreed with Bell’s exegesis of Scripture or his explanation of Christian doctrine, he often contradicted his own words in the next paragraph or on the next page. Then, I found that much of what I could support was phrased in the form of a question, and it was not a good kind of questioning. In fact, Mr. Bell seems to question in the same way that the serpent in the garden of Eden questioned: “Hath God truly said . . . ?”

Then, I saw, in the book and especially in the debate with Adrian Warnock linked below, that Mr. Bell likes to play games with words and with communication. When he is asked a question, he likes to not answer, but rather ask another question or turn the question back toward the interviewer, maybe with a slightly different emphasis or meaning. He reminds me of Humpty Dumpty who famously said, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” Only with Mr. Bell it’s usually more; words mean lots of things; stories mean lots of things, and Rob Bell chooses the story he likes the best and the meaning he wants to fit his chosen story.

“It’s important that we be honest about the fact that some stories are better than others. Telling a story in which billions of people spend forever somewhere in the universe trapped in a black hole of endless torment and misery with no way out isn’t a very good story. Telling a story about a God who inflicts unrelenting punishment on people because they didn’t do or say or believe the orrect thngs in a brief window of time called life isn’t a very good story.
In contrast, everybody enjoying God’s good world together with no disgrace or shame, justice being served, and all the wrongs being made right is a better story.” Love Wins, p.110-111.

Love Wins is supposed to be “a book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived.” However, don’t ask Rob Bell to tell you what the Bible says will happen to you after you die or whether you need to consciously choose to follow Christ in this life, or even whether or not God desires our obedient love for Himself so much that He gave His only begotten Son to secure our salvation from the ravages of sin and hell. Mr. Bell is likely to respond to those questions with a question of his own: “What do you think?” or even “What story do you want to be true about heaven and hell and your own fate?”

My answer to that bit of sophistry is: what I want to be true doesn’t change reality. I would dearly love to rewrite history and say that there never was any fall into sin. I would like for the Story to be all about God’s love and our obedience and love for Him with nothing to mar that perfect fellowship. But I live in a world of sin and suffering, some of that sin and suffering caused by me and the choices I have made, and the good news is that I can have hope and redemption and eternal life through the marvelous sacrifice of Jesus on my behalf. And because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I can live an abundant eternal life with Him. That’s a good story and a true story, and it’s available to anyone who chooses to follow Jesus.

However, it’s also true that if any one of us chooses to go our own way, make up our own story, hold on to our sin, and worship some idolatrous figment of our own imagination, God will allow us our tragic freedom. And He will someday say, “Depart from me. I never knew you. (Because you never chose to know Me.)” And that, too, is eternal, and it will be an irrevocable decision. So, in a sense, each of us does get to choose his own story; either we believe the truth or we choose the lie.

I found the book Love Wins ultimately to be slick and slippery, and in the interviews and discussions I saw with Mr. Bell, he comes across as evasive and flippant. Although I think it’s O.K. to smile and even laugh as we discuss important things, Mr. Bell doesn’t seem to seriously care about truth. In fact, I’m not sure he believes that truth is knowable. If not, then we might as well eat, drink and be merry, right?

Adrian Warnock, a Christian blogger from the U.K., debated Rob Bell when Bell was doing a book tour in the UK, and then Warnock wrote a series of posts, engaging key points on which he disagrees with Mr. Bell.

Pastor Kevin DeYoung writes an excellent critique of the book from a Reformed perspective.

We Die Alone by David Howarth

May27

We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance by David Howarth. Recommended by The Ink Slinger.

This true adventure story was published in 1955, and it read like 1955. Maybe it’s that I expected a first person memoir, and I got a journalist’s view of the story, a bit detached and told from the point of view of several of the participants in the story. However, that journalist’s retelling didn’t feel strange to me when I read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. I’m not sure what it was about this book, but I never felt the same empathy for Jan Baalsrud, the hero of We Die Alone, that I did for Louis Zamperini, the hero of Unbroken. Maybe I felt more for Zamperini because I got more background on his life both before and after his World War II adventure. Or maybe Jan Baalsrud was too much of a Scandinavian stoic for me to be able to identify myself with him; I’m certainly no stoic.

That’s not to say I didn’t like the book, We Die Alone, because I did. If Jan Baalsrud remains a sort of distant and remote character in spite of his very real sufferings described in excruciating detail in the book, the adventure and survival story itself is riveting and amazing:

“In March 1943, a team of expatriate Norwegian commandos sailed from northern England for Nazi-occupied arctic Norway to organize and supply the Norwegian resistance. But they were betrayed and the Nazis ambushed them. Only one man survived–Jan Baalsrud. This is the incredible and gripping story of his escape.”

Incredible it is. Jan Baalsrud is frostbitten and snowblind. He becomes unable to walk and must be carried to freedom by some astonishingly brave Norwegians and Lapps, through the snow and the mountains and at the risk of Nazi capture and reprisal.

Wouldn’t a book of World War II survival stories for young people (YA) with a chapter for each survivor be a great idea? The book could condense adult books like this one and Unbroken and then refer young adult readers to the full length stories if they were so inclined. What other survival adventures would you recommend for such a compilation? Add your favorite WWII survival stories to my list in the comments.

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom.
Night by Elie Wiesel.
The Boy Who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
The Zookeeper’s WIfe by Diane Ackerman.
Evidence Not Seen: A Woman’s Miraculous Faith in the Jungles of World War II by Darlene Deibler Rose.

Glimmers of Hope: Memoir of a VSO in Zambia by Mark Burke

May9

Glimmer is right. Mr. Burke, who served as a math teacher in a rural Zambian school for boys from 2004 to 2006, under the auspices of the VSO (a British something like the American Peace Corps?), left Zambia disillusioned and rather disgusted with the “wastefulness and inefficiencies” that were “trapping Zambia in self-fulfilling, perpetual stagnation.”

“I had been sceptical of religion beforehand and my experiences in Africa had cemented my poor opinion of Christianity in particular. Christianity was paraded endlessly in Zambia, but I often reflected that I never really met anyone there who I would consider genuinely Christian, most especially those in the employ of the church.”

Perhaps Mr. Burke is right, and all Zambian Christians are hypocrites and materialistic, selfish beggars. Or perhaps he found what he expected to find in the Christians of Zambia.

“In the context of Zambia I came to see Christianity not just as harmless nonsense but as positively dangerous. It encouraged irrational thinking and opposed the development of Reason. I had always had this view of religion, but now saw it brutally in action in a poverty-stricken country.”

He attributes almost all aspects of Zambian behavior and culture that he does not like and finds backward and unreasonable to “a lack of critical faculties encouraged by the sheepish following of religion.” It’s the Enlightenment versus the Age of Faith, Frederick the Great versus Bach, debate all over again.

I could not escape the impression that Mr. Burke came to Zambia hostile to Christianity, and he found in Zambian culture reasons to support his hostility. I’m sure that were I to go to Zambia I would find problems within the Zambian church and in the practice of Christianity in that country, but since I am a committed Christian I would see issues and aberrations that needed to be fixed rather than an entire belief system that needed to be jettisoned in favor of a devotion to Reason and Western common sense.

If Christianity is a foundational part of Zambian culture at this point in history, wouldn’t it make sense for even secular aid workers and others who want to help Zambians pull themselves out of poverty and stagnation and ignorance to work with the prevailing culture and help them to live up to the tenets of their faith rather than criticize the people for their Christian “obsession” in the first place? Should outsiders really damn the Christian message itself for not living up to whatever secular heights of Reason the author wants the Zambian people to scale? If your preconceived attitude is that Christianity is equivalent to superstition, then you will find evidence to support that notion wherever you go. Because of my underlying, entirely reasonable, preconceptions, I find Reason itself to be an inadequate god, and I believe that persons in the helping professions need a foundation that is stronger than secularism to provide strength and purpose over the long haul.

I thought this book was informative in regard to the problems in Zambia, but short on answers and quite lacking in a genuine empathy for the Zambian people. Unfortunately, Mr. Burke comes away from his “missions” experience discouraged and dominated by compassion fatigue. He does mention some of those “glimmers of hope”, one or two aid programs that he thinks might be somewhat effective, but the main themes of the memoir consist of disillusionment and disappointment.

Elisabeth Elliot wrote a fiction book after completing her work with the Quechua people in Ecuador in which she meditates on the inability of missionaries to effect change in a culture and on the unfathomable ways of God. The book is called No Graven Image, and it should be required reading for missionaries and other Christian aid workers. In the story, Margaret Sparhawk goes to South America to work with the Quichua (just as Elliot did). While there her most basic assumptions about God and about the effectiveness of missions work are challenged. The difference between Ms. Sparhawk’s fictional experience and Mr. Burke’s real-life experience is that even though the fictional missionary finds out that God does not always “bless” the work, it is the calling and the service lived out before Him that matter.

Again, Mr. Burke has some valid questions about Christianity as it is lived out in the context of Zambian culture and to tell the truth, as it is lived out many times in the U.S. and in other places. It is true that atheists are sometimes more compassionate and more honest than those who claim to follow Jesus. But I could wish that Mr. Burke would have looked a little more carefully in Zambia and elsewhere in his life experience to acknowledge that not all Christians are hypocrites and not all of the consequences of a Christian worldview are negative.

Of Prophets and Pundits and Politics

May3

First I read William F. Buckley by Jeremy, one book in a series called Christian Encounters, published by Thomas Nelson. These are short books dealing specifically with the Christian faith of various historical figures—John Bunyan, Sir Isaac Newton, and Winston Churchill, for example—and Buckley is the most recently living person profiled in the series.

I’ve always thought Mr. Buckley was a fascinating man; his wit, vocabulary, and, of course, his accent were quite attractive to me. I’m a political conservative, so I enjoyed most of his ideas, too. But I must say the manipulation of words and the way he spoke were the real draw whenever I listened to him, which was not very often. Anyway, Lott’s treatment of Mr. Buckley’s faith and its influence on his public persona was thorough, but a little disjointed. I felt as if I should have read a more complete biography of William F. Buckley first, and then read Lott’s dissertation to fill in the blanks, if any, in reference to Buckley’s Catholic faith and practice. And there were places where Jeremy Lott could have used a better editor; in one section he refers to “the event”, and I never did understand what the event he was referencing was.

Reading this incomplete, but tantalizing biographical treatment of William F. Buckley’s life, made me want to read some more of Buckley’s writing and a thorough biography of the man. I also wondered what WFB thought about Rush Limbaugh and other younger conservative firebrands, since the next book I read was Andrew Breitbart’s new book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World! I tend to think that WFB would have enjoyed Mr. Breitbart, even if he found the younger man a bit brash and vainglorious (as I did). I googled Rush and Buckley together and found this quote from Sam Tanenhaus who was supposed to be writing a biography of William F. Buckley at the time of this interview: “He (Buckley) liked Rush Limbaugh, who was published in National Review, but was more skeptical of Ann Coulter, whose book “Treason” he reviewed.” Mr.Tanenhaus’s biography must be DOA or still in abeyance.

Anyway, back to Breitbart, who were he here in person, would likely not have allowed my focus to stray from him and his mission to save the world for so long. Egotistical much? Yes, although similar to Rush Limbaugh’s persona, it’s part ego and part showmanship. Mr. Breitbart says in the book that Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and Ann Coulter are his heroes, and I would say that Breitbart does a creditable job of emulating that trio while still being an original. He also uses the ideas of community organizer Saul Alinsky to out-maneuver the most devious media manipulators of the left, and when all else fails and he realizes that he’s sounding like a crazy conservative, he pleads ADHD and plunges on to the next controversy.

It’s all highly entertaining, if you’re on his side, the conservative/libertarian side, and even if you’re not, it might be worth reading to see how the other half thinks and lives. Mr. Breitbart, if you’re not familiar with him, is the man behind the ACORN expose, and his web of of blogs, including BigHollywood, BigGovernment, Big Journalism, and BIgPeace, are his attempts to replace what he calls the “Democrat-Media Complex” with a New Media, more responsive to and in touch with the people it claims to serve.

As I said already, I enjoyed the book, even though Mr. Breitbart is something of a one-note Charlie. His message is that the liberals/Democrats control the mainstream media, and that to defeat the Dems conservatives have to discredit and defeat the Democrat-Media Complex. Oh, and the way to take out the mainstream media is to use the tactics that they’ve been using for years, the tactics of Saul Alinsky and the Huffington Post and the not-so-mainstream media.

I’m mostly in agreement with Andrew Breitbart, just as I mostly agree with William F. Buckley, Jr. And either man would make a scintillating dinner conversationalist or a highly explosive and dramatic political speaker. I would prefer to stay on their good side because I’m not as quick-witted as Buckley was, nor does my mind jump around as rapidly as Breitbart’s ADHD enables him to do. If you’re of the conservative persuasion already, you’ll enjoy both books in spite of their flaws and despite the inevitable character flaws of the subjects, Buckley and Breitbart.

If you lean toward the left politically speaking, you might find ammunition in one or both of the books, but probably not much pleasure.

The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson

Apr28

David Wilkerson, author of The Cross and the Switchblade and founder of World Challenge Ministries, died in a car crash today, Charisma and CBN are reporting.

CBN reports that Wilkerson was 79. The church that he founded, Times Square Church in New York City, has more than 8,000 members. His wife Gwen, was also involved in the crash and was rushed to the hospital where she is said to be in critical condition.

Oddly enough, my English/History class at homeschool co-op is reading Wilkerson’s most famous book, The Cross and the Switchblade, this week. My son, who is in the class, told me yesterday that he thought the gang stuff in the book was exaggerated. I told him him he was mistaken. Gangs were and are very bad, but God is bigger.

I remember reading The Cross and the Switchblade over thirty years ago, and I re-read it last week. It holds up. The story of a country preacher who takes on the street gangs of New York City armed with nothing but the sword of the Spirit and the shield of Faith was just as compelling last week as it was when I read it as a teenager growing up in West Texas far from the evils of the big city, but not far at all from many of the same issues that Wilkerson faced in his work with street people and gang members. The poverty Wilkerson described in his book was foreign to me as a middle class teenager, but I had friends who had given themselves over to drugs and to illicit sexual relationships and who were just as much in need of a Saviour as anyone in New York City. And I saw in my own heart, too, the possibility for sin and evil just as horrific as that of any drug-addicted junkie in NYC. There but for the grace of God . . . Even though I never did agree with Rev. Wilkerson’s Pentecostalism, I certainly found his commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ and his dependence on the Holy Spirit to be inspiring and encouraging.

How did David Wilkerson’s life and minstry impact you? (on Facebook-CBN)

David WIlkerson’s last blog post, faithful to the end: “Beloved, God has never failed to act but in goodness and love. When all means fail—his love prevails. Hold fast to your faith. Stand fast in his Word. There is no other hope in this world.”

Now that’s a legacy.

Christians Meet the World: Adventuring in Faith

Apr20

I’ve been reading a string of adventure, world travel, conversion memoirs in which common themes of caring for orphans, reuniting and dividing families, and surviving tragedy, kept reiterating.

First, I read Mary Beth Chapman’s Choosing To See, about the commitment of her and her husband, singer Steven Curtis Chapman, to adopt three girls from China, and also about the tragic death of one of those girls, Maria, in a car accident. Ms. Chapman is about as real as I would imagine anyone could be in writing about her battles with clinical depression, even before the adoptions, and about her struggle to make some kind of sense or gain some peace in the midst of a seemingly senseless tragedy. the story itself is powerful enough to overcome any deficiencies in the writing, and I was amazed and heartened to see God at work in the Chapmans’ story in spite of the suffering that they have endured. The foundation that the Chapmans started, Show Hope, is involved with orphan care and adoption aid around the world.

Next, I read a very different sort of book, set in a very different part of the world: Son of Hamas by Mosab Hasan Yousef. The Middle East, and the Palestinian Authority in particular, are very difficult parts of the world, and it makes sense that a memoir set in that violent and conflict-ridden area would leave some questions in my mind as I read it. Son of Hamas is the story of the oldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the founders of the Palestinian/Muslim organization, Hamas. Over the course of events in the book, Mosab Yousef becomes his father’s bodyguard and security detail while at the same time working for the Israeli security service, Shin Bet. He rationalizes this double life by telling himself that he is saving lives by informing on the terrorist activities and secrets that he is privy to knowing, but the strain becomes too much as he is also involved in a Christian Bible study and becomes convinced of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

While I was able to rejoice in Mr. Yousef’s conversion to Christianity and his eventual resignation from both Hamas activities and from his spying assignments for the Israeli Shin bet, I also took seriously Yousef’s admonition in the afterword of his book:

“So if you meet me on the street, please don’t ask for advice or what I think this or that scripture verse means, because you’re probably already way ahead of me. Instead of looking at me as a spiritual trophy, pray for me, that I will grow in my faith and that I won’t step on too many toes as I learn to dance with the bridegroom.”

The third memoir I read has a very different feel to it. Little Princes by Conor Grennan is the story of Nepalese children in an orphanage in Katmandu who were thought to be orphans but who were discovered to be mostly children who had been taken from their parents under false pretenses and abandoned or enslaved in the capital city of Katmandu. Grennan tells the story from his (American) point of view and shares some personal details of his own life, but he keeps the focus on the children. After stumbling into his work with the orphanage with less than pure motives (he wants to impress the women with his altruism), Grennan learns to care about the children and begins an organization dedicated to the goal of reuniting the trafficked children of Nepal with their families. You can read more about Conor Grennan’s non-profit organization Next Generation Nepal at the website.

Sad to say, although I believe after reading the books that all three of these authors are sincere in their beliefs and truthful in telling their respective stories, I can’t vouch for any of them personally. And in light of the recent revelations about Greg Mortenson and his immensely popular book Three Cups of Tea an the organization that he directs, Central Asia Institute, any book of this sort, especially Grennan’s which takes place in the same general area of the world, is bound to come under some scrutiny. Such scrutiny and due diligence is good, but a lack of compassion and charitable giving and general skepticism used to justify stinginess and apathy are not good and not right. We must give our money and our compassion wisely, but also generously.

Further information and links related to these books and to Mortenson’s CAI:
60 Minutes report on inaccuracies in Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea
Central Asia Institute website
Greg Mortenson’s response to 60 Minutes’ questions
John Krakauer: Three Cups of Deceit, How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way
Conor Grennan’s non-profit organization Next Generation Nepal.
Conor Grennan’s blog
Conor Grennan on Condemning Greg Mortenson and a Thousand Little Girls
Son of Hamas blog
Son of Hamas book website
Show Hope foundation
Maria’s Big House of Hope Orphan Care center
Mary Beth Chapman’s website
Steven Curtis Chapman official site

By the way, by grouping these reviews and links together, I don’t mean to imply in any way that all or any of the books are inaccurate or filled with lies just because one book, Three Cups of Tea, has been accused of containing falsehoods. I read these books in succession, and then I read the news reports on the issues with Mortenson’s story. And I, of course, wondered. The fiasco surrounding Three Cups of Tea and Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute should be a strong warning to all memoirists, especially those involved in fund-raising, to be scrupulously honest in their story-telling. Mr. Mortenson’s looseness with the truth has hurt more people than just himself and more organizations than just CAI.

Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger

Apr11

I grew up in West Texas, San Angelo, not Odessa, but definitely football country, the era and culture of Friday Night Lights. I learned football sitting in the flute section of the Edison Junior High School band as my band director explained to me first downs and safeties and extra points. I never learned it well, but I knew enough by the time I got to high school that I could get my flute in place to play the fight song when our team made a touchdown.

Friday Night Lights has become a movie and a TV series. I’ve never seen either one. However, I can vouch that the culture and the obsession depicted in the book did exist, and probably still does. I graduated from Central High School in San Angelo in the mid-seventies, and football was a Big Deal. We saw Permian, the school featured in the book, as the school to beat. We detested “Mojo” and all their black and gold trappings. They probably saw us as not so much of a threat since the San Angelo Bobcats have only won two state championships in their history, in 1943 and again in 1966. I think Mr. Bissinger, who is a Yankee from Philadelphia, probably got a a narrow but accurate picture of the place and influence of high school football in a West Texas town, as he spent a year following the fortunes of the Odessa Permian Panthers.

He also made a lot of people mad. In the afterword, written in 2008 ten years after the book was written, Bissinger says he received death threats at the time of publication and that many Odessans still resent and argue with the depiction of their town, their attitudes, and their football team in the book. I’m sure the fictional extension and embellishment of the story in movie and television has done nothing to change the perception that Bissinger misquoted, fictionalized, and sensationalized a narrative that was dear to the people of Odessa. I don’t know. Certainly, football is important, even worshipped, in Odessa and in other towns and high schools and colleges in Texas. I’ve seen it myself. Perhaps Mr. Bissinger could have found many people with a more balanced and rational view of the significance of the Permian Panthers football team and its win/loss record had he tried. However, he wasn’t writing about those balanced people with little or no interest in football; he was writing about the Mojo of Permian High School football and about its effect on a group of young men who found their identity in a series of Friday night football games.

Friday Night Lights is a sad book. It asks the question, “If football is your life, what happens when the season is over?” Win or lose, the answer to that question isn’t pretty. I felt sorry for the boys in the book. How could such a system be good for anyone concerned? And why do we continue to perpetuate such intense pressure on young men to succeed at a game that is essentially meaningless in and of itself? When I read about football mania as practiced in Friday Night Lights, I’m glad we homeschool. And it makes me look carefully at my own life and the expectations I have for my children. Is there anything that I have made into an idol that takes the place of God in the lives of my children? I pray not.

The book is excellent. It deals with both the strengths and weaknesses of a community’s having a cause or a team to unite them. Taking pride and inspiration from the accomplishments of a group of athletes or other successful people is a good thing, in moderation. Loading the hopes and dreams of an entire city on the shoulders of a group of seventeen and eighteen year old boys is a mistake and a perversion of true community.