An unusually structured narrative by a well-regarded San Francisco Giants baseball radio announcer. The book is only half devoted to baseball and rarely addresses the topic after midway, save for a coda. Other chapters treat feckless college life at Syracuse in the Jim Brown era, taking a punt on moving to Sydney, and the author’s fascination with Douglas MacArthur. Drily witty, the disjointed narrative makes it difficult to envision the less glamorous side of the business such as travel. It is believable, however, that the author wished to exit before soured by commercialization. Yet Greenwald might have offered perspective on other changes to the game (and craft).
Book abstracts
8. Cohan, Money and Power (6 Jun 2012)
Narrates Goldman Sachs’ rise to national prominence in investment banking and charts its transformation into a prop-trading powerhouse as well as a ‘crony capitalist’. Through the first half of the 20th century, Syd Weinberg and Gus Levy dominated proceedings, even as the limited partnership developed corporate best practices (exemplified by John Whitehead’s famous 10 points). Though the author continues portraying the company’s leading lights through Jan Corzine, Hank Paulson, John Thain, and Lloyd Bankfein, the latter pages also seek to outline how the transformation to a public company and trading its own accounts put the bank at odds with its commercial clients. The tension prefigured by previous conflicts is illustrated by detailed review of Goldman’s derivatives trading in mortgage products (including the word of Mike Swenson ’89). An easy and sometimes engrossing read, the book is somehow not quite coherent. It goes some ways toward identifying a solution to conflicts of interest, without definitely making a case for modernizing Glass-Steagall. Perhaps it should have been two books.
9. Atkinson, Rugby-Playing Man (12 Jul 2012)
Remember America’s ‘tavern league’ era, when ill-resourced, player-coached teams contested lightly organized leagues while celebrating the cultish, borderline behavior of 20- and 30-year-olds?
These days, most do not. The game is predominated by students, most of whom weren’t born at the time of its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s. So what do we really know of the stereotype?
Jay Atkinson’s
- Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man: Guts, Glory, and Blood in the World’s Greatest Game
, a well-crafted autobiography of a senior-grade player in Florida, Boston, and elsewhere, is a poignant, representative snapshot of the men who identified with rugby beyond all else.
- Rugby-Playing Man’s
dust jacket sensationalizes its contents, but the narrative is more nuanced. As the author begins, ‘There are the things we do for love, and the things we do for rugby, which are pretty much the same, at least in my case’.
To be sure, there are any number debauched adventures, some of which could still transpire today. It is one thing to revisit tales among teammates, however, and another to bring them to life – without pandering – for a new audience. This is a primary achievement of Atkinson’s effort.
Still more interesting are recollections of how Atkinson found his home at hooker, a controversial state championship match, or a tour of Wales. Anyone who played in the era will relate. Though the book is consciously neither historical or sociological, later generations and outsiders will glimpse the game as commonly experienced.
Disgust with the tavern-league era – homespun administrators as much as outre players – is one explanation for American rugby’s latter-day obsession with professionalizing. The union’s present constitution seals the board off from the grassroots: only well-heeled capitalists need apply. Most have no affinity for American rugby culture, always a weakness for any government.
Atkinson’s
- Rugby-Playing Man
surpasses its author’s narrative, portraying the good and bad of a bygone time. America’s modern era, which has fallen short of its self-declared goals, will do well to find an equally skillful telling.
See also http://www.gainline.us/gainline/2015/02/on-the-tavern-league-era.html
11. Wright, France in Modern Times (29 Sep 2012)
Surveys the leading events and historiography of France from the mid 18th century. Far more than England or Germany, French society and government passed through radically distinct phases, and yet inevitably retained pronounced features of previous periods. As such, the royalist-republican duality reconstitutes itself in clashes such as the catholic-statist Dreyfus affair. Although it is not his intention, the author regrettably avoids taking sides: the narrative is strictly chronological. Also, there’s no mention of the things which are distinctly French, or the dichotomy of Descartes and Pascal (reason or revelation).
13. Kagan, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (20 Oct 2012)
Demonstrates the Athenian statesman’s commitment to popular (democratic) governance in the face of monarchical and (uber)aristocratic tradition as well as the Peloponnesian War’s tribulations. As summarized by Thucydides, his leadership aspired ‘to know what must be done and to be able to explain it, to love one’s country, and to be incorruptible’. His successes are portrayed against the backdrop of the Athenian empire and regional conflagration, which broke both the city’s power and its experiment with representative government. As so often with Kagan, the bygone era’s realities are comprehensible to the modern reader.
16. Kempe, Berlin 1961 (25 Dec 2012)
Narrates the construction of the Berlin Wall, along with Sputnik perhaps the Soviet zenith of the Cold War era. Under pressure stemming from Ossie migration, the Communists were surprised to find the tactics unopposed by West Berlin and German as well as American leaders. Well researched and readable; but only a small piece of the puzzle.
1. Rumelt, Good Strategy (2 Jan 2013)
Strategy discovers a situation’s critical factors and derives a coherent, simply presented approach to the objective. According to Rumelt, who does not address the interplay with tactics, it comprises diagnosis, setting a guiding policy, and identifying / specifying a coherent set of actions. The latter creates strength, which sets it apart from Rumelt’s examples of bad strategy, which amount to sloganeering and disconnecting activity. Good strategy is often unexpected – not necessarily complex – because (pace Drucker) it has identified what’s really (already) going on. The key to the policy is to make it participatory (i.e., shared leadership).
4. McChrystal, My Share of the Task (2 Jun 2013)
A military memoir sketching how General McChrystal reorganized practice and doctrine during America’s two anti-terrorist wars of the 2000s, Iraq and Afghanistan. The author’s command was primarily reactive and tactical: indeed, politics proved his undoing, as the Obama administration disliked both the Afghan theater and a McChrystal interview. Though highly praised, there seems little in the way or overarching approach; however, McChrystal’s extended record of sound decisions and execution is enviable.
6. Fukuyama, Origins of Political Order (10 Nov 2013)
Efficient apparatus, rule of law, and accountability are the pillars of effective government and thus political order. Bypassing the thinking of Ancient Greece, Fukuyama relies on anthropology to locate the modalities of government and simultaneously man’s tendency to underline structure through familial instincts. Premodern China, 13th-century Egypt, 16th-century Turkey, and the medieval Catholic Church provide leading case studies of statecraft and its demise. As ever, decline is an important theme: moral and cultural advancement suggest political decay. To paraphrase Chris Caldwell, in this taxonomy of political forms (up to the French Revolution), the author as political thinker considers what is best for man, and as political scientist what is best for government. As such, passages are dry and detached; however, the beginning each chapter helpfully limns its contents. Worth rereading.
7. Norman, Edmund Burke (29 Dec)
A short, dual-purpose treatment that competently sketches Burke’s life and career and deficiently maps his applicability to modern conservative politics. The profile’s achievement ironically stems from making the context of his political career accessible to 21st-century (British) readers. In an ahistorical, generalized setting, however, prescription without the counterbalance of opportunity costs and other risks loses rigor. Still, an impressive effort for a practicing politician.