The First Congress by Fergus M. Bordewich

Published by Simon & Schuster on February 9, 2016

Before the first Congress convened, the nation was deeply in debt, providing that some things never change. Without a central currency, commerce was haphazard, and in the absence of a manufacturing base, there was little enough to buy. Even convening the House and Senate proved to be a challenge, given the distances that many members needed to travel.

Fergus Bordewich takes the reader through the work of the first Congress as it progressed from month to month. Bordewich offers insight into the political issues, the politicians, and the political realities of the time. It’s interesting to see how many precedents set by the first legislators remain unchanged. Of particular interest are Bordewich’s descriptions of John Adams’ botched attempt to turn the vice presidency into a meaningful office, culminating in “a lasting template for vice-presidential inconsequence.”

James Madison, a key figure in the drive to form the Constitution, was the driving force behind the accomplishments of the first Congress. He labored tirelessly to enact the Bill of Rights and to assure that the government would have revenues with which to operate (“money is power,” he wrote, a truth in every age). He even wrote Washington’s inaugural address. Then he wrote the House of Representatives’ letter thanking Washington for the address. Then he wrote Washington’s reply. Madison was also instrumental in beating back the anti-Federalists, who seemed incapable of accepting defeat (and still do) even though their crabbed notion of “state’s rights” would have undermined the future of the United States.

Other notable accomplishments of the first Congress included creation of the Treasury Department and the levying of tariffs and duties so that the government would be able to finance its ambitious projects. Those included the federal court system, a national bank, a census, protection of patents and copyrights, the Department of Foreign Affairs (now the State Department), the Department of War (now the Department of Defense), the negotiation of treaties with Indians that would permit the nation’s expansion, and a standing Army that would permit expansion notwithstanding the desires of Indians.

It’s interesting how many issues that vexed the first Congress continue to divide politicians. Is it better to allow free trade or should some imports be restricted or taxed? Should “friendly” nations receive favored trade status? What is the fairest way for government to raise revenues? To what degree should presidential power be subject to congressional oversight? Is it wise for the federal government to finance itself by incurring debt? Under what conditions should new immigrants become citizens?

It’s also interested to read about the colonial hatred of lawyers (something that hasn’t changed much in the intervening centuries). Yet lawyers did much of the nuts-and-bolts work of the first Congress, including the creation of the federal judiciary. Oliver Ellsworth, for example, proposed to give diversity jurisdiction to federal courts, allowing the citizen of one state to sue the citizen of another state in federal court, thus minimizing “home-field advantage” by taking cases away from state courts that were too often biased. Ellsworth also thought federal courts could manage the subtle distinction between privateering (which helped fund the government) and piracy, which was frowned upon.

Other important questions were debated and resolved by the First Congress, including the president’s right to fire his appointments to executive offices without congressional approval and the apportionment of congressional districts. Madison’s heroic effort to enact the Bill of Rights gets well-deserved attention, and includes some interesting tidbits that are not mentioned in a recently published book (The Bill of Rights) that covers the same ground.

In hindsight, the first Congress was not perfect. It condoned the massacre of Indians even as it entered into the first treaty with an Indian tribe. It did not abolish slavery. Bordewich devotes a couple of chapters to the shameful pro-slavery arguments that prevailed (which Ben Franklin satirically gutted just before his death). The debate about where to locate the capital was driven by real estate speculations, including George Washington and many congressmen. How to deal with governmental debt incurred prior to ratification of the Constitution was also marred by conflicts of interest. Still, Bordewich makes clear that the achievements of the first Congress were remarkable.

Bordewich writes in a clear voice that falls somewhere between the liveliness of popular history and the dullness of academia. Bordewich adds color to the narrative by describing what elected representatives did with their free time (pumpkin beer!) and by revealing their personalities (except for George Washington, who had none). The First Congress offers a revealing look at a tumultuous period in American history and the post-revolutionary politicians who helped the newborn nation live up to its democratic ideals.

RECOMMENDED

The House of Daniel by Harry Turtledove

Published by Tor Books on April 19, 2016

The House of Daniel is a Depression-era semi-pro baseball novel. To fit it within the science fiction genre, Harry Turtledove added some zombies, vampires, werewolves, and wizards into the background. Bigfoot even shows up in the stands to watch a game. But those are just trappings, apparently meant to justify marketing a baseball novel as a science fiction novel. They have almost nothing to do with the story and make only occasional appearances. If you like baseball novels, you’ll probably like this one, but if you’re expecting the kind of alternate history that Turtledove usually produces, you might be disappointed.

Jack Spivey is looking for work in Oklahoma during the depression. Sometimes he does a job for Big Stu. Sometimes those jobs aren’t entirely legal. Spivey also plays semi-pro baseball, making the most of his limited talents. Not long into the novel, Spivey needs to get away from Big Stu and seizes an opportunity to make semi-pro baseball his full-time profession, traveling with a team called The House of Daniel.

As you’d expect from Turtledove, the era is portrayed in convincing detail. The freaky elements are also reasonably convincing. Zombies do manual labor. Nobody likes zombies because they take jobs away from living people, and it’s hard enough to find a job during the Depression. Wizards substitute for X-ray machines. Wizards also help gamblers with sports bets by putting a hex on the team that the gambler bets against. None of this is taken very seriously, including the flying saucers near Roswell, and other than a zombie riot in Denver that makes it difficult for the team to remain on schedule, none of it has much to do with the story.

Spivey is a likable guy who narrates the story in a folksy, semi-educated voice. He has a tendency toward redundancy (how many times does he need to tell us that he has a good glove but a weak bat?). More troubling is that Spivey is always saying things like “You think that bothered me? Oh, just a little” which is fine until it becomes wearing. After a couple of hundred pages, I was starting to hope that Spivey might get eaten by a zombie.

My growing irritation with the narrative voice notwithstanding, I enjoyed the story. It should appeal to people who like road novels (the House of Daniel is exclusively a road team) and historical novels that focus on the West and Southwest during the Depression. It will definitely appeal to hardcore baseball fans. It won’t appeal to science fiction fans who don’t enjoy anything other than traditional science fiction, or to zombie fans who don’t enjoy anything other than mayhem caused by the shambling undead. Fortunately, readers with such limited tastes can find plenty of other novels to enjoy.

RECOMMENDED

Beyond the Ice Limit by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Published by Grand Central Publishing on May 17, 2016

Beyond the Ice Limit is a sequel to The Ice Limit. It seems like the kind of book that is written for the purpose of selling movie rights. In fact, it would probably be an entertaining movie. It has a good amount of action and the kind of Earth-threatening alien monster that Hollywood producers adore. Books, on the other hand, give readers a chance to sit back and think about whether we’re willing to accept a ridiculous premise. I enjoyed Beyond the Ice Limit, but it really pushed the boundaries of my willingness to suspend disbelief.

Due to events described in The Ice Limit, a 25,000 ton alien seed sprouted on the ocean floor near Antarctica. The people who know of (and are partially responsible for) this event want to nuke the alien plant. They enlist Gideon Crew’s help because he’s an expert at nuking things.

The plot’s huge gap in logic (without revealing too much) involves how the alien propagates itself. To fulfill their destiny, the meteorite-size seeds need to sail aimlessly through space until they crash into a planet with an ocean (apparently any ocean will do). But the planet must be populated by creatures with compatible brains (human brains, for instance) and those brains must come into contact with the underwater seed that sprouts from the meteorite. Now how often is that going to happen? As a propagation strategy, this one seems unlikely to work even once.

Plot tidbits include a huge alien mouth capable of inhaling submarines, the voice of an apparently dead person transmitted underwater several seconds after the death occurs, perfectly preserved underwater corpses (except for the ones that are headless), whale songs in translation, and alien worms that take over human bodies. The “aliens take over humans” thing has been done so often that I was disappointed to see it recycled here. In fact, too much of Beyond the Ice Limit seems like an unoriginal reboot of half-century old Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episodes.

Having expressed my reservations, let me say that I enjoyed reading Beyond the Ice Limit despite its faults. It moves quickly, the action is reasonably exciting, and key characters are sympathetic. I particularly liked the epilogue, which displays more originality and depth than the rest of the novel. Because there are so many thrillers available that are better than this one, however, I can give Beyond the Ice Limit only a guarded recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Rain Down by Steve Anderson and The Lesson by Jesse Ball

The advent of digital publishing has made it possible for publishers to market individual short stories. Examples include Kindle Singles, Vintage Shorts, and the Bibliomysteries series. Although Tzer Island primarily reviews books, I occasionally review single stories, usually doubling up the reviews as an extra treat for readers.

"Rain Down" by Steve Anderson

Published as a Kindle Single by Endeavour Press on May 4, 2016

Rain Down is marketed as a thriller but I’d call it a noir-flavored mystery mixed with a story of self-discovery. Roughly one-fifth the length of an average novel, Rain Down might qualify as a short novella or a long short story. Regardless of its classification, Rain Down is the right length for the story Steve Anderson tells. No words are wasted here.

Rain Down is told from the perspective of a 37-year-old homeless man in Portland who works at day labor jobs with his friend Oscar Alvarez. At least he does until Oscar’s body is discovered -- dismembered parts, scattered by the train that hit it. The homeless man’s investigation of Oscar’s death causes him to have uncomfortable encounters with the man who often hired them as day laborers, with a couple of women who were connected to Oscar, and with a couple of cops.

The homeless man is odd but credible and therefore interesting. Initially homeless by circumstance, he now seems to prefer sleeping rough. He has an aversion to charity and bathing. He’s intelligent, cynical (or realistic, depending on how you view life), and caring. He’s philosophical but for much of the story, his is the philosophy of despair -- understandable, given his situation. But it’s a hopeful sort of despair, if that’s possible.

The mystery of Oscar’s death is sad but consistent with the story’s theme. The simple plot, however, is less important than the atmosphere and the characters. Anderson paints a convincing picture of life on the street. Rain Down offers a sympathetic glimpse of day laborers, although it is just a glimpse. The homeless man might not offer a perfect lesson in how to deal with adversity, but the real lesson is that everyone deals with adversity in his or her own way, and that there’s always reason to hope for a better tomorrow.

RECOMMENDED

"The Lesson" by Jesse Ball

Published by Vintage on November 3, 2015

Ezra and Loring Wesley were chess masters. Five years after Ezra’s death, Loring accepts as a chess student a 5-year-old whose chess strategy reminds her of Ezra. The boy was, in fact, born at the very moment of her husband’s death. So you can guess where this is going.

Well, probably you can’t, because the story doesn’t go anywhere. It is a collection of odd events that add up to almost nothing. I can usually understand the point an author is trying to make, even when fiction is experimental, but with The Lesson, I am simply lost. Perhaps I am too dense to make sense of it, but from my dense perspective, I find little value in the story.

This is my first experience with Jesse Ball and I have to say that his writing style, at least in this story, is too precious for my taste. The story is written in the third person. The narrator is annoyingly intrusive. The narrator asks questions that are followed with “Who can say?” or tells of a character looking out a window, followed by “What she saw is not reported” or notes that a character went into the kitchen, followed by “Something stops us from following.” If there is a point to emphasizing the narrator’s non-omniscience, I couldn’t find it.

The narrator also offers little tidbits of wisdom like “of what we are capable, we seldom know” or “our personalities, our selves, border on the possible, and when the possible grows, well, so then do we.” A little of that is fine but I grew weary of Jesse Ball’s pop philosophy. I like a narrator to narrate and otherwise to stay out of the way. Granted, some writers are capable of chatting with the reader while telling a story, but Ball doesn’t seem to be one of them.

Many scenes are written in fine prose. Many would fit neatly into an absorbing story. Sadly, that is not the story that Ball wrote.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Dig by John Preston

First published in Great Britain in 2007; published by Other Press on April 19, 2016

The Dig is a fictionalized retelling of a famed archeological dig in Suffolk during 1939. The story takes place on property owned by Edith Pretty. Point of view changes from time to time as different characters narrate parts of the story from their own perspectives.

The most interesting character is Basil Brown, the self-taught archeologist Mrs. Pretty hired to search the burial mounds on her property for treasure. The first half of the novel consists of Basil digging around and his eventual discovery of a buried ship -- a shockingly large ship, larger and older than any found before.

When it becomes clear that Brown has uncovered an Anglo-Saxon royal burial site that may be filled with priceless antiquities, word travels fast. The novel’s second half is largely political, as the Ipswich Museum and the British Museum vie for control of the project, as does everyone else who can think of an excuse to share in the glory of discovery.

There is an elegant subtlety to the characters -- Brown digs a bomb shelter, knowing England is on the brink of war, while doing his best not to think about its purpose -- but perhaps they are too subtle. None of the characters leap from the page as fully realized beings, although the passion for discovery that drives archeologists is evident in key characters. In that regard, a woman named Peggy Piggott (who turns out to be Preston’s aunt) stands out as a pioneer among women who cast aside traditional roles for the joy of digging in the dirt.

The Dig is fascinating, but it might have worked better as a work of nonfiction. For example, the novel explores the conflicting claims of buried treasure ownership (does it belong to the British government or to the property owner?), a question that was resolved by a jury after an inquest. As interesting as the political issues are, John Preston develops the intrigue with only a modest degree of dramatic tension.

The story also seems a bit cursory. That makes it a quick read, but a nonfiction account would likely have fleshed out the story with a wealth of detail that Preston omits. Still, the story captures the time, place, and sense of wonder associated with the key archeological discovery in twentieth century England, and that’s more than enough to make The Dig a satisfying read.

RECOMMENDED