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The second volume of the bestselling landmark work on the history of the modern state

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, David Gress called Francis Fukuyama's Origins of Political Order "magisterial in its learning and admirably immodest in its ambition." In The New York Times Book Review, Michael Lind described the book as "a major achievement by one of the leading public intellectuals of our time." And in The Washington Post, Gerard DeGrott exclaimed "this is a book that will be remembered. Bring on volume two."
Volume two is finally here, completing the most important work of political thought in at least a generation. Taking up the essential question of how societies develop strong, impersonal, and accountable political institutions, Fukuyama follows the story from the French Revolution to the so-called Arab Spring and the deep dysfunctions of contemporary American politics. He examines the effects of corruption on governance, and why some societies have been successful at rooting it out. He explores the different legacies of colonialism in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and offers a clear-eyed account of why some regions have thrived and developed more quickly than others. And he boldly reckons with the future of democracy in the face of a rising global middle class and entrenched political paralysis in the West.
A sweeping, masterful account of the struggle to create a well-functioning modern state, Political Order and Political Decay is destined to be a classic.

• Sales Rank: #82908 in Books
• Brand: Fukuyama, Francis
• Published on: 2014-09-30
• Released on: 2014-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.29" h x 2.04" w x 6.29" l, 1.00 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 672 pages

Review

“Straightforward and sensible . . . Fukuyama is nothing if not ambitious.” ―Sheri Berman, The New York Times Book Review

“It is not often that a 600-page work of political science ends with a cliffhanger. But the first volume of Francis Fukuyama's epic two-part account of what makes political societies work, published three years ago, left the big question unanswered . . . Political Order and Political Decay is his answer . . . Fukuyama's wealth of insights [are] worthy of the greatest writers about democracy.” ―David Runciman, Financial Times

“Political Order and Political Decay is a courageous book by an author at the peak of his analytical and literary powers. This project started as an attempt to rewrite and update Samuel Huntington's classic Political Order in Changing Societies, published in 1968. Yet Fukuyama has what Huntington sorely lacked, namely the ability to communicate complex ideas through engaging prose. He's both a perceptive political analyst and a wonderful storyteller. Clearly, something has indeed gone haywire in our world: Serious political science is not supposed to be so enjoyable.” ―Gerard de Groot, The Washington Post

“[A] monumental study [that] rest[s] on an astonishing body of learning.” ―The Economist

“Fukuyama has been both a policy maker and adviser . . . His latest opus [seeks] to clarify the fundamental problems of political order.” ―David Polansky, Wall Street Journal

“Fukuyama's brilliant work on political orders [is] cogent, clear, and often intellectually thrilling account of the development of the state . . . There is simply no way to do full justice in a review.” ―Zach Dorfman, The Los Angeles Review of Books

“This and the earlier volume, viewed as a single work, will remain vital contributions to the literature on democracy and government for some time to come.” ―Earl Pike, Plain Dealer

“Fukuyama has succeeded in proving, with a formidable display of erudition, that anyone who wants to reform American democracy had better start by reading his latest book.” ―Michael Ignatieff, The Atlantic

“Learned and lucid, Political Order and Political Decay is jam-packed with insights about political development.” ―Glenn C. Altschuler, San Francisco Chronicle

“This bold political scientist limns the transformation of societies politically galvanized by eighteenth-century revolutions and financially enriched by nineteenth-century industry . . . Strikingly ambitious and provocative.” ―Booklist (starred review)

“[Fukuyama's] superb synthesis of political science and history will be useful to experts as well as students and laypeople.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Th[is] deeply engaged political scientist offers a compelling historical overview . . . Systematic, thorough and even hopeful fodder for reform-minded political observers.” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About the Author

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has previously taught at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and at the George Mason University School of Public Policy. Fukuyama was a researcher at the RAND Corporation and served as the deputy director for the State Department's policy planning staff. He is the author of The Origins of Political Order, The End of History and the Last Man, Trust, and America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy. He lives with his wife in California.

Most helpful customer reviews

146 of 149 people found the following review helpful.
Engrossing and Frustrating Excellence
By Kindle Customer
A mess - the world, not the book which is excellent. In The End of History and the Last Man Dr. Fukuyama asked the question "is there a direction to political evolution?" In Trust: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order he explored the impact of high trust vs low trust societies on the evolution and nature of political governance. In his tour de force The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution we were given an in depth history of political development across many nations and regions. In it Dr. Fukuyama postulates that effective governance requires three sets of political institutions in some kind of balance: the state, the rule of law, and political accountability. In Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy he left me with the feeling that such an outcome (sustained effective governance) was "to dream the impossible dream."

Parts I and II discuss the "State" and "Foreign Influence." In an excellent historical overview he demonstrates that what would appear to be similar circumstances lead to disparate outcomes. Much less than in previous works Dr. Fukuyama treats us to current unanswered questions; how none of the current theoretical constructs adequately explain what has transpired and as such can not give clear guidance on how to proceed.

"The State made War and War made the State." In Part III the discussion turns to Democracy. Although revered on an intellectual basis we find that historically democracy is not the panacea one hopes. Periods of semi-benevolent autocracy have many times been fundamental to the development of the modern state. The extension of suffrage has in many cases resulted in clientism - the political elites purchasing votes from the newly empowered reinforcing rather than reducing the elites' political control.

In Part IV we get to political decay. Fundamental to human nature is the acquisition of power and the desire once obtained to hold on to it. In a constantly changing world this usually leads to a disparity between the needs and desires of the "in group" and the needs and desires of the "out groups." As the balance between state, law, and accountability becomes more and more out of sync and the "out groups" gain power political upheaval, frequently in the form of armed conflict, is the result. But in Part IV we are once again reminded that there are many paths to and outcomes from political upheaval.

I found this book to be both enlightening and frustrating. As an American who in Dr. Fukuyama's words "has a reverence to the Declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution" his thoughtful analysis of how our political system has contributed to the current state of American governance: political scandal, incompetent bureaucracy, overt and inappropriate power by special interest groups, approval of Congress in the single digits, was hard to accept - but accept it I did. Frustrating is that there does not appear to be a clear path to resolution.

As the book gets closer to modern times I am reminded of Dr. Fukuyama's question in "The End of History." He said (I paraphrase) are we evolving over time to a better form of political governance? Inherent in evolution are two facts: it takes a long time and many evolutionary paths result in dead ends. This suggests that the "mess" the world is in today may be a perturbation in the long term trend of political evolution.

On a personal note I found this a enjoyable book. As can be inferred from the time between its publication and my review I spent a couple of long nights engrossed in reading rather than sleeping. The book is more descriptive than prescriptive. If you are looking to justify your political outlook you will not find it here. Likewise if you are looking for the elegant solution to the world's problems it is not here either. But if you want to be educated into just how complex an undertaking of providing a balance between state, law and accountability this is your book.

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
Trust, Political Order, and the End of History
By Paul Krause
Francis Fukuyama is a widely celebrated political economist, and public intellectual. Having burst onto the scene with his classic work at the End of the Cold War, The End of History and the Last Man (1992), Fukuyama has since distanced and even repudiated the neoconservative label that was pinned on him in the lead-up to the Iraq War. In Political Order and Political Decay, Fukuyama brings the history of politics and governance into the modern era.

With an erudite overview of the evolution of the political state, especially of "liberal democracy," upon which the tenets of accountable government (trust), equality of the citizenry, and the rule of law are paramount in the development of democracy. Democracy is not necessarily an engine for these three themes, rather, these three tenets come together to build a robust democracy. The result is the emergence of the political state.

This first tenet, accountable government, or trust, was an entire book in of itself, Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity (1995). The notion of accountability is not necessarily, again, tied to democracy in-of-itself, but is an important feature that has historically spurred greater democratic reform. Therefore, trust in government, and ultimately trust within a society and amongst peoples of that society, is an important feature of the liberal democratic state. Fukuyama deals with this tenet in the first part of his book. He sheds important insight how trust in government has allowed bureaucracy to flourish and politicians and statesmen to build the modern state. At the same time, he looks at various countries and analyzes this aspect of accountability. For instance, one of the great positives of Denmark is that it has, not only a very accountable government, but a very open and trusting society that spurs this positive view of the Danish government. However, the opposite is true in Italy, which has long wrestled with low trust, deceit, and corruption and is a major issue for the Italians to confront, and, in part, helps explains why Italy, along with Greece (the "historic birthplace of democracy") have become a drain on the European Union and the Eurozone. Fukuyama also looks at the United States' effort to achieve accountability, through the origins of the Federalist Papers, to the emergence of political parties, but the true birth of accountability happens during the Progressive Era when reforms attempted to curb the influence of big business and political machines in the political process -- the end to the spoils system (Ch. 10). This drive for accountability led to new political reforms and a greater democratization of American politics, paving the way for the trust in New Dealers come 1933 and beyond. The high degree of trust and accountability gives legitimacy to the state to build itself up, order and structure things both to the benefit of its citizens.

These developments in the political state also demands an active and equal citizenry, which often spurs such political and economic reforms and demands trust in the government-citizenry dichotomy which serves as the second tenet to democracy. Equality is therefore established by the rule of law, to which the government also says it will be accountable to, the third tenet, completing the triune legs upon which modern liberal democracy is built. You get the picture. Thus, accountability/trust is the most important aspect of modern political society, because everything else can fall in place, so to speak. However, this has dangers as Fukuyama illustrates in the latter part of his book.

Part III ultimately deals with the paradox that war is healthy to the state (if you're not a cynic that is). Emerging as a new force, the state undertakes war since it has the power and ability to do so in many cases, and also brings forth legitimacy for its institutions and a unity among the populace that supports national institutions in times of war. However, these political reforms crucial to opening the door for greater democracy also opened the door for a return of corruption through interest groups that the state will be accountable to, rather than being accountable to its citizenry.

Decay, in Part IV, is the most troubling of the new trends in political development. As governments have lost their accountability, the most important theme for a robust democracy. The return of clientelism (seeking out clients or interest groups), corruption, and government offices and personnel being more accountable to outside parties and groups has eroded trust between the citizenry and the state. Although these democratic states remain promotive of, to a certain degree, the rule of law and equality of the citizenry, even though reforms continue this struggle for greater degrees of equality among the citizenry itself (let's not forget it took a long time for universal suffrage to emerge in the poster-child liberal democracies).

Here, Fukuyama is most devastating but also quietly hopeful come the end of his work. While trust has certainly eroded in the great western liberal democracies, most notably the United States, there is still a global appeal for liberal democratic society and states. People, primarily from low trust nations where equality and the rule of law is lacking, tend to flock to the liberal states where there is found, at least on paper, accountability, equality of the citizenry, and the rule of law. This is, hopefully, going to give the fuel for democracies going forward, yet, Fukuyama doesn't offer a definitive path on how to get out of political decay, by which he mostly means the erosion of accountability/trust in the relationship between the state and its citizenry. Yet, his ending is very close to his misunderstood book "The End of History." Although democracies are having internal problems, by and large, liberal democracy remains the unchallenged political model at a global level. One-party autocratic states and the rise of Islamism is largely isolated and contained to a few parts of the world, and unlike with Fascism or Communism, which did seriously challenge liberal democracy in the twentieth century, no new model has come to challenge the liberal democratic model upon which accountability, equality of the citizenry, and the rule of law still, at least theoretically, reign supreme. The very serious question remains however, will the crucial tenet of accountability ever be regained?

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
the sequel offers great examples and good insights
By NJ
As with the part 1, the sequel offers great examples and good insights. However, the book is far more tedious, turgid and repetitive.

For anyone who has not read the first part or forgotten the basic theme, the main objectives behind the arguments could appear obfuscated until first summarized past the halfway. Even who are aware of the main thread of political evolution, the book would appear to be going off the main topic of what creates successful societies far too often. This is tolerable when the author is dealing with good examples but more difficult when one is made to plough through exotic theories or utterly simplistic points (particularly towards the end when the author decides to pinpoint all the analysis of societies over a few millenia over two books to turn preachy on the rot in today's US policymaking).

The book's biggest fault is possibly in the main theory itself which completely ignores the role played by unique individuals for their brilliance and errors. These are individuals that just come into being and not really children of their environment. To the author, such arguments might be too much chance dependent, but not only individuals' roles and influences are undeniable (below) in political evolution, the same is true in biological evolution.

Back to the book: between copious text and often irrelevant details, the author makes some great points in the first half of the book while discussing what creates political order in some societies and disorders in some others. A failed or non-functioning political system is mostly defined in terms of the leaders working for private benefits. The author labours somewhat excessively on the issue of clientalism (or corruption in common parlance). This is the word for pervasive non-merit or favour-driven political system which the author claims is natural to human societies and was a norm in almost all parts of the world until recently.

The broad conclusions with regards to order and chaos are obvious and also repetitive. Yet, interspersed throughout are some great insights, case studies and novel sub-points. For example, the discussion of Italy and Greece made a fascinating point on the sequencing: ie, systems where democracy developed before modernity and its implications on a society's long-term progress. Or the differing evolutions of systems where industrialization was accompanied with modernization and those where it was not.

The contrasting examples of US railway regulatory body versus the efficiently run USDA showed how patchy and personality-driven US emergence to a merit-based system has been. It is not often in modern day books one is told the high positives of relatively quick-to-develop and better German or Chinese bureaucracies/polities versus the favour-based systems of the US. Effectively, the author makes some convincing points on the stresses between democracy and meritocracy - how the presence of one naturally tilts the balance against the other and combining the two requires conscious efforts and a lot of luck. This argument is again illustrated well with examples like Nigeria, Indonesia and Argentina.

The sections on Latin America and Africa make plenty of fascinating points but as the author mentions multiple times at various points, there is no simple way to answer what helped some to prosper and others not. Many arguments appear post-facto justifications with the counter-factuals mostly theoretical. A more pertinent area of study is why certain economies or systems do not make the required mid-course corrections while lagging behind over a considerable period of time. Take Argentina that had seen the good times and had found the "success" formula: why did it not emulate what worked before or elsewhere while the economy was losing for almost a century. Why do failed systems just not learn in real time - particularly those not afflicted with the incapacity to learn because of the wrong institutional/personality-based rigidities?

While most arguments are over-hatched, one point that the author could have spent more time on was "historical amnesia" or the assertion that there are huge (and conveniently forgotten) abuses and mistakes at the root of any great nation building.

The main point the author (hopefully) deliberately skips is the impact of personalities. Like in science, religion, discovery and even wars, mammoth changes are often a result of some Columbus, Newton, or Mohammad. Such pioneers exist in the political space too - at some impressionable stage for any economic or political system, a Lenin or a Washington, a Nehru or a Lee Kuan Yew, a family of Kims or Deng Xiaoping could end up defining how a system evolves. Such personalities are as much a result of their system as any Einstein or Hitler - ie, very little of the society characteristics can explain the extreme impact of these individuals. This is true in every facet of the world of ideas including political ideas.

The most disappointing part is the final section on the "decay". The broad point is fine: every successful system eventually loses its rigour as it establishes resistance to change and as a result lose its vitality. Somewhat unusually, the author makes his sweeping conclusions as an inevitability using big words than any great historic examples like Huttington. As a result, there are hardly any subtle sub-points like in the main section. Rather, what one gets are the lamentations of all things going wrong in Washington.

All that said, the book is a must read sequel of Fukayama's pioneering work.

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~~ Download How We Are: Book One of the How to Live Trilogy, by Vincent Deary

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How We Are is the first part of the monumental How to Live trilogy, a profound and ambitious series that gets to the heart of what it means to be human: how we are, how we break, and how we mend.

In How We Are, Vincent Deary explores the power of habit and the difficulty of change. As he shows us, we live most of our lives automatically, in small worlds of comfortable habit, unless an outside force compels us to adjust. Over decades of psychotherapeutic work, Deary has helped hundreds of people cope with change-teaching them to understand how they get stuck, how they struggle with new circumstances, and how they can finally transform for the better. Drawing on a staggering range of cultural and literary references- from Jacques Lacan to Mad Men, Marcel Proust to Chicago dance crazes-How We Are shows us how much of our lives are lived according to beaten paths, and explains why we are so resistant to conscious change.

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• Sales Rank: #917996 in Books
• Published on: 2014-12-30
• Released on: 2014-12-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.50" h x .95" w x 5.84" l, 1.00 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Review

“[How We Are is] a book about human nature. It's crammed with ideas. It makes your head spin, in a good way. It tells us that human beings form habits, and that we are less in control of our minds than we thought we were. This is how we are. I'm looking forward to How We Break.” ―William Leith, The Spectator

“Exhilarating . . . a lyrical, consoling exploration . . . It takes guts to recognize that change is called for, and more to follow it through. This book--so long as you don't read it on autopilot--should help.” ―Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian

“Fascinating . . . Profound . . . Wonderfully well-observed . . . [How We Are] could change lives.” ―Bel Mooney, The Daily Mail

About the Author

Vincent Deary is a health psychologist at Northumbria University who specializes in helping people change their lives for the better. How We Are is his first book.

Most helpful customer reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Brilliant and Profound. Has the potential to bring you back in control of your life or start you on the path.
By Siddharth Nair
As someone who has read a lot of books about the brain and how we think and why, I didn't have too many expectations about this book. I saw it in my public library and picked it up out of interest, but after finishing this book, all I can say is Wow!

This book has given me some deep insights about myself and helped me understand my subconscious to a degree of depth where I'm confident that the changes will have a life long impact. I can see myself changing routines and catching things that I wouldn't have done before and this is in part because of the style with which Vincent writes and communicates his subject.

The writing style is more 'Flow of consciousnesses' and introspection into his own thought process, and this is both the pro and the con of this book.

Pro: You have a first hand experience of the challenges and the thoughts that run through someone who is aware of what's going on so he can mentally label and identify the process. This give you a better way to catch it yourself.

Con: It's harder to keep track of the theme and how things relate because it jumps from one topic to the other. But all of the topics have such hidden gems of insight in the way they are compared and contrasted and each rabbit hole will give you a deeper insight into the topic at hand..But you'll have to look hard for it...

In some sense I think the kind of person that would enjoy this book is one who likes to have conversations about the mundane or typical with a very intelligent or keenly observant group of friends. You move beyond the surface and really parse out patterns and thoughts and ideas that are at the heart of what makes us individuals and what makes us the human species at the same time.

Can't wait for the next books. But my advice would be to tighten up the narrative a bit to keep the them more centered but not to the extent of sacrificing the insightful quality and conversational nature of this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
To give some perspective on my opinion I have read ...
By Benjamin Stevens
To give some perspective on my opinion I have read my share of self help, psychology, spirituality, and philosophy books. I've spent the bulk of the past two years studying the unconscious mind. I was abused as a child and have been reading in order to recover for decades now. In the self help genre this book is a work of art. It is not the canned, sell lots of books, stereotypical self help book that fill the shelves. I quit reading self help books for a long time because they all seemed the same after awhile. This book is not typical. There is some advice in this book, of course, but it is the truth that sets one free; this book is true. I find it tremendously helpful to gain the perspective of someone who has spent so much time trying to figure out life while helping others. Isn't that the most valuable kind of book?

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Stream of Consciousness Meets Changemaster
By Bob Griffin
So, I saw the other review for this book and I guess I don't get it, either that or I have ADD. I think this is brialliant. Not in the same way that "The Power Of Habit" is brilliant. But just as potent. If you are seeking to make changes in your life you should read this and the above book. Each has much to offer you if you are open to it. This book is more stream of conscious, but it has its moments of clear, pointed logic that slays things to its core.

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? Ebook On the Rez, by Ian Frazier

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A great writer's journey of exploration in an American place that is both strange and deeply familiar.

In Ian Frazier's bestselling Great Plains, he described meeting a man in New York City named Le War Lance, "an Oglala Sioux Indian from Oglala, South Dakota." In On the Rez, Frazier returns to the plains and focuses on a place at their center-the Pine Ridge Reservation in the prairie and badlands of South Dakota, home of the Oglala Sioux. Frazier drives around "the rez" with Le War Lance and other Oglalas as they tell stories, visit relatives, go to powwows and rodeos and package stores, and try to find parts to fix one or another of their on-the-verge-of-working cars.

On the Rez considers Indian ideas of freedom and community and equality that are basic to how we view ourselves. Most of all, he examines the Indian idea of heroism-its suffering and its pulse-quickening, public-spirited glory. On the Rez portrays the survival, through toughness and humor, of a great people whose culture has shaped our American identity.

• Sales Rank: #663720 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.27" h x 6.51" w x 9.57" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 311 pages

Amazon.com Review
Given that the Great Plains long functioned as a stomping ground for the Oglala Sioux, it was inevitable that Ian Frazier would cross paths with them when he wrote his 1989 chronicle of that sublime flatland. But the encounter between the self-confessed "chintzy middle-class white guy" and his Native American counterparts went so swimmingly that Crazy Horse assumed a starring role in the book. Now Frazier continues his cross-cultural romance in On the Rez. This account of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota is as touching, funny, and maniacally digressive as anything he's written. What's more, he manages to avoid most of the politically correct potholes along the way, producing a vivid, ambivalent (i.e., honest) portrait of a community where the very "landscape is dense with stories."

Much of On the Rez revolves around Le War Lance, whom Frazier first met in Great Plains. This yarn-spinning, beer-swilling figure serves the author as a kind of Native American Virgil, introducing him to the hard facts of reservation life. In fact, their friendship, with its accents of deep affection and dependency, anchors the entire narrative and elicits some typically top-drawer prose: Le's eyes can be merry and flat as a smile button, or deep and glittering with malice or slyness or something he knows and I never will. He is fifty-seven years old. I have seen his hair, which is black streaked with gray, when it was over two feet long and held with beaded ponytail holders a foot or so apart, and I have seen it much shorter, after he had shaved his head in mourning for a friend who had died. On the Rez delivers a history of the Oglala nation that spotlights our paleface population in some of its most shameful, backstabbing moments, as well as a quick tour through Indian America. The latter, to be honest, seems a little too conscientiously cooked up from primary sources and news clippings. But elsewhere Frazier is in superb form, reporting everything he sees and hears with enviable clarity and promptly pulling the rug out from under himself whenever he seems too omniscient. Few accounts of reservation life have been this comical; even fewer have moved beyond the poverty and pandemic drunk driving to discern actual, theological wickedness on the premises: "At such moments a sense of compound evil--the evil of the human heart, in league with the original darkness of this wild continent--curls around me like shoots of a fast-growing vine." In the hands of many a writer, the previous sentence might resemble a rhetorical firecracker. In Frazier's, it comes off as a statement of fact--which is only one of the reasons why every American, Native or not, should take a look at this sad, splendid, and surprisingly hopeful book. --James Marcus

From Publishers Weekly
When telling non-Indians that he was writing a book about the American Indian, Frazier (Great Plains, etc.) received a nearly unanimous reaction: that the subject sounds bleak. "Oddly," he says, "it is a word I never heard used by Indians themselves." Frazier builds his narrative--or, more deliberately, unpacks it, since he has no discernable plot, chronology or conclusion--around his 20-year friendship with the Indian Le War Lance and the Oglala Sioux of South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation. Though no "wannabe" or "buckskinner," Frazier emulates and reveres "the self-possessed sense of freedom" that he claims is the Indian contribution to the American character, adopted by the earliest European settlers and preserved in our system of government. Frazier's record of his travels with Le War Lance includes the tolls of alcohol, fights and car wrecks (Le claims to have survived 11 of them) and acknowledges the realities as well as the clich?s of reservation life. But in his rendering, the calamities of American Indian life are outweighed by the pervasiveness and endurance of that same sense of freedom, a feeling that Frazier captures in his style, his organization, his wonderful eye for detail. Probably no book since Evan S. Connell's Son of the Morning Star has so imaginatively evoked the spirit of the American Indian in American life; like Connell's tours of the Little Bighorn battlefield, Frazier's visits to Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee, and to the descendants of Red Cloud and Black Elk, frame a broad meditation on American history, myth and misconception. Funny and sad, but never bleak, his meandering narrative is, in fact, the composite of many voices and many kinds of history. Agent, Andrew Wylie. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-Frazier's book occupies a refreshing middle ground between sentimental worship of everything Native American and a blanket dismissal of all Indians as drunks and layabouts. Some early chapters are about the state of particular tribes today, including statistics; much of this information will be new to most readers. Most of the book is about the Oglala Sioux of the Pine Ridge reservation south of South Dakota's Badlands and about Frazier's long friendship with an Oglala Sioux named Le War Dance. Readers meet Le while he is living in New York City, where his contribution to the narrative seems obscure. Later, though, Frazier visits him on the rez, where he is the entr e to reservation life. In large part, the author observes that the women work while the men drink beer and the ensuing chaos-auto accidents, suicides, etc.-is a sad turnoff to readers. At the same time, Frazier limns the good parts: the businesses that work, and the people who make things run despite daunting odds. Much of the last half of the book is given to the short but generous life of an extraordinary high school basketball star who helped her Indian team win the state championship and whose ideals live on at Pine Ridge. From a concise retelling of how some tribes got into the casino business, or a short treatise on odd Indian names, to a portrait of the American Indian Movement of the '70s, there is something here for anyone interested in current Indian affairs.
Judy McAloon, Potomac Library, Prince William County, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Most helpful customer reviews

81 of 87 people found the following review helpful.
A beautiful, thoughtful book
By Andrew Poupart
I always enjoy Ian Frazier's writing and On the Rez has him at the top of his form. This is a long, ruminative essay, really, on Mr Frazier's relationship with the Oglala Sioux and Le War Lance in particular. Along the way, he highlights some of the sorrowful history of Native Americans since contact with Europeans. By turns this book is informative, funny, tragic, and hopeful.
Mr Frazier makes you care about the people in this book. As he comes to know them better, so do you, the reader. I was sorry when the story stopped, which appears to happen largely because Mr Frazier had to stop writing sooner or later. But I do need to know: what happened to Le War Lance after the last page?
If you are a fan of Ian Frazier, or if you are interested in Native American issues, or history, or just like reading about interesting folks, you'll enjoy this book.

59 of 65 people found the following review helpful.
Don't Let The Title Fool You.
By taking a rest
It's true this book has witty remarks, but humor is a very small part of this brilliant work. This book is very difficult to read without being deeply affected by Mr. Frazier's words.
Mr. Frazier accomplishes what I find remarkable. He clearly is a great admirer of the tribes and individual members he writes of, but he also is brutally candid about these people who are his friends. The remarkable part is that you never sense he is judging their behavior, nor is he an apologist. He deftly mixes the history of this Country with a variety of Tribal Nations, and shows you the results. He destroys many misconceptions that exist, and makes very intuitive remarks about the future they may await these people.
If you have not already done so, I believe this book will act as a catalyst to read more about the history of these remarkable people, the opportunities that were lost, the crimes that were committed and are being addressed in Congress right now.
I live in the state that has the largest of the Casinos that many feel are providing all manner of solutions to a variety of tribes. The facts about these Casinos are a far cry from the perceptions that many people hold.
Wounded Knee and The Trail of Tears are not just words that make up titles of books. These places and events, the Presidents that governed at the time, and the President who sanctioned the largest mass execution in this Country's History will, in at least one instance shock you. I say, at least one, as one President's attitude is in keeping with his life-long conduct.
These Peoples were not exterminated, or to use the official Federal Government's word, "Terminated". They survived, and their numbers continue to grow, which alone is astonishing.
Enjoy reading about what a hero/heroine really is? Mr. Frazier brings the story of SuAnne Marie Big Crow to the reader, and when he is finished, you will be emotionally drained. You will be challenged to read the story through to its end. The Author does not discuss this young woman until page 200 of a 279-page book, why? The answer is I don't know, my opinion is, the story was that difficult for him to relate to his readers. The story is powerful enough to have been it's own book, and it some day may be. He introduces the subject as follows "Reader, books are long, and I know that even the faithful reader tires. But I hope a few of you are still with me here. As much as I have wanted to tell anything, I wanted to tell you about SueAnne". The Author need not worry, I would imagine the few who do not complete this book would be small, and if they do cease, they will have denied themselves something very special.
One of the most powerful books I have read.

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful.
I don't think Jennifer Nixon read the book....
By A Customer
...this book focuses on the many contemporary problems facing Native Americans on the Pine Ridge rez: alcoholism, suicide, unemployment and apathy, as well as short histories of both Wounded Knee conflicts. Frazier approaches these topics in a non-judgmental way, providing observations rather than solutions. The book happens to read more like a novel at times, rather than a textbook. The chapters centering on SuAnne Big Crow are worth the price of the book alone. Highly recommended!

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It is winter in Area X, the mysterious wilderness that has defied explanation for thirty years, rebuffing expedition after expedition, refusing to reveal its secrets. As Area X expands, the agency tasked with investigating and overseeing it--the Southern Reach--has collapsed on itself in confusion. Now one last, desperate team crosses the border, determined to reach a remote island that may hold the answers they've been seeking. If they fail, the outer world is in peril.

Meanwhile, Acceptance tunnels ever deeper into the circumstances surrounding the creation of Area X--what initiated this unnatural upheaval? Among the many who have tried, who has gotten close to understanding Area X--and who may have been corrupted by it?

In this last installment of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may be solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound--or terrifying.

• Sales Rank: #36320 in Books
• Published on: 2014-09-02
• Released on: 2014-09-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 7.50" h x .99" w x 5.04" l, 1.00 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review

“A satisfying conclusion to this captivating trilogy” ―Booklist

“This trilogy is that rare thing--a set in which the whole is as great as the parts.” ―Publishers Weekly

“I'm loving The Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. Creepy and fascinating.” ―Stephen King on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“Chilling.” ―Julie Bosman, New York Times on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“VanderMeer masterfully conjures up an atmosphere of both metaphysical dread and visceral tension . . . Annihilation is a novel in which facts are undermined and doubt instilled at almost every turn. It's about science as a way of not only thinking but feeling, rather than science as a means of becoming certain about the world. . . . Ingenious.” ―Laura Miller, Salon on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“A clear triumph for Vandermeer . . . a compelling, elegant, and existential story . . . .The solitary voice of its post-humanist narrator is both deeply flawed and deeply trustworthy--a difficult and excellent balance in a novel whose world is built seamlessly and whose symbols are rich and dark.” ―Lydia Millet, LA Times on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“A book about an intelligent, deadly fungus makes for an enthralling read--trust us.” ―Tara Wanda Merrigan, GQ on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“[A] strange, clever, off-putting, maddening, claustrophobic, occasionally beautiful, occasionally disturbing and altogether fantastic book . . . Annihilation is a book meant for gulping--for going in head-first and not coming up for air until you hit the back cover.” ―Jason Sheehan, NPR Books on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“Successfully creepy, an old-style gothic horror novel set in a not-too-distant future. The best bits turn your mind inside out.” ―Sara Sklaroff, The Washington Post on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“If J.J. Abrams-style by-the-numbers stories of shadowy organizations and science magic have let you down one too many times, then Annihilation will be more like a revelation. VanderMeer peels back the skin of the everyday, and gives you a glimpse of a world where science really is stretching the bounds of our knowledge--sometimes to the point where we can't ever be the same . . . [Annihilation] will make you believe in the power of science mysteries again.” ―Annalee Nevitz, io9 on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“Fans of the Lost TV series . . . this one is for you.” ―Molly Driscoll, Christian Science Monitor on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“What frightens you? According to many psychologists, our most widely shared phobia is the fear of falling. Jeff VanderMeer's novel Annihilation taps into that bottomless terror . . . VanderMeer ups the book's eeriness quotient with the smoothest of skill, the subtlest of grace. His prose makes the horrific beautiful.” ―Nisi Shawl, Seattle Times on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“Much of the flora and fauna seem familiar, but that's what's so fascinating about the carnage that VanderMeer sets loose. He has created a science fiction story about a world much like our own.” ―John Domini, Miami Herald on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“Annihilation feels akin to isolated sci-fi terrors of Alien . . . teases and terrifies and fascinates.” ―Kevin Nguyen, Grantland on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“The plot moves quickly and has all the fantastic elements you'd ever want--biological contaminants, peculiar creatures, mysterious deaths--but it's the novel's unbearable dread that lingers with me days after I've finished it.” ―Justin Alvarez, The Paris Review on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“Jeff VanderMeer ventures on to strange ground in this enigmatic story.” ―Alex Good, The Toronto Star on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“[VanderMeer's] writing is courageously imaginative, fiercely unformulaic, and utterly immersive. You don't read Jeff VanderMeer, you experience him.” ―Paul Goat Allen, The Barnes & Noble Book Blog on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“The first book in what may be a modern classic of post-apocalyptic sci-fi . . . .Annihilation's story struck me hard and pulled me in fast. I haven't had a reading experience this creepy, intense, and edge-of-your-seat since H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.” ―Paul Schwartz, UR Chicago on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“Annihilation is smart, tense and utterly engrossing.” ―Mike Reynolds, Bookgasm on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“Master of the literary headtrip Jeff VanderMeeer's Annihilation is simply unlike anything you've read before. It gnaws away at your nerves with a slow-building sense of dread and impending madness.” ―Marc Savlov, Kirkus Reviews on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“VanderMeer both defies and challenges genre boundaries, forcing readers to forget about traditional tropes and clichés and simply enjoy the storytelling.” ―John DeNardo, Kirkus "Best Bets for Speculative Fiction Books, February 2014 on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“A gripping fantasy thriller, Annihilation is thoroughly suspenseful.” ―Heather Paulson, Booklist on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“After their high-risk expedition disintegrates, it's every scientist for herself in this wonderfully creepy blend of horror and science fiction. . . . Speculative fiction at its most transfixing.” ―Kirkus (Starred Review) on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“A gripping fantasy thriller, Annihilation is thoroughly suspenseful. In a manner similar to H. G. Wells' in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), VanderMeer weaves together an otherworldly tale of the supernatural and the half-human. Delightfully, this page-turner is the first in a trilogy.” ―Heather Paulson, ALA Booklist (Starred Review) on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“Brilliant . . . ever-more-terrifying, yet ever-more-transcendent . . . .Using evocative descriptions of the biologist's outer and inner worlds, masterful psychological insight, and intellectual observations both profound and disturbing--calling Lovecraft to mind and Borges--VanderMeer unfolds a tale as satisfying as it is richly imagined.” ―Publishers Weekly on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“In much of Jeff VanderMeer's work, a kind of radiance lies beating beneath the surface of the words. Here in Annihilation, it shines through with warm blazing incandescence. This is one of a grand writer's finest and most dazzling books.” ―Peter Straub, author of Lost Boy, Lost Girl on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“Original and beautiful, maddening and magnificent.” ―Warren Ellis on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“One of those books where it all comes together--the story and the prose and the ideas, all braided into a triple helix that gives rise to something vibrant and alive. Something that grows, word-by-word, into powerful, tangled vines that creep into your mind and take hold of it. Annihilation is brilliant and atmospheric, a novel that has the force of myth.” ―Charles Yu, author of How to Live in a Science Fictional Universe on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“A dazzling book . . . haunted and haunting.” ―Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“A tense and chilling psychological thriller about an unraveling expedition and the strangeness within us. A little Kubrick, a lot Lovecraft, the novel builds with an unbearable tension and a claustrophobic dread that linger long afterward. I loved it.” ―Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“The great thing about Annihilation is the strange, elusive, and paranoid world that it creates. . . .I can't wait for the next one.” ―Brian Evenson, author of Last Days on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“It's been a long time since a book filled me with this kind of palpable, wondrous disquiet, a feeling that started on the first page and that I'm not sure I've yet shaken.” ―Matt Bell, author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“This swift surreal suspense novel reads as if Verne or Wellsian adventurers exploring a mysterious island had warped through into a Kafkaesque nightmare world. The reader will want to stay trapped with the Biologist to find the answers to Area X's mysteries.” ―Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars trilogy

“Unsettling and un-put-downable like an old-fashioned adventure story, only weirder, beautifully written and not at all old-fashioned.” ―Karen Joy Fowler, BookPage on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“The prose is phenomenal . . . it toyed with my imagination in ways that haven't happened since A Wrinkle in Time.” ―Madison Vain, Entertainment Weekly on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“Its deepest terror lies in its exploration of . . . the human heart, and the terror that can grow from the ways in which we are untrue to each other, and to ourselves.” ―Jared Bland, The Globe and Mail on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“VanderMeer's masterful command of the plot, his cast of characters, and the increasingly desperate situation will leave the reader desperate for the final volume in the trilogy.” ―Publishers Weekly on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“What frightens you? According to many psychologists, our most widely shared phobia is the fear of falling. Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation taps into that bottomless terror . . . VanderMeer ups the book's eeriness quotient with the smoothest of skill, the subtlest of grace. His prose makes the horrific beautiful.” ―Nisi Shawl, The Seattle Times on The Southern Reach Trilogy

“There's something Poe-like in this tightening, increasingly paranoid focus . . . the payoff is absolutely worth the patience.” ―N.K. Jemisin, The New York Times on The Southern Reach Trilogy

About the Author
Jeff VanderMeer is an award-winning novelist and editor. His fiction has been translated into twenty languages and has appeared in the Library of America's American Fantastic Tales and in multiple year's-best anthologies. He writes nonfiction for The Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian, among others. He grew up in the Fiji Islands and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife.

Most helpful customer reviews

66 of 76 people found the following review helpful.
Trilogy Review
By Tyson
'Annihilation' is a great book. It was mysterious, dripping with imagery, and told through an intimate, brilliant, journalistic narrative. Unfortunately I have no praise for book 2 or 3.

I agree with critics 95% of the time, but any rave review of 'Authority' and 'Acceptance' truly has me baffled. Both books are almost entirely plotless, repetitive and feature annoying characters who ramble about nothings. The magic of the first book is instantly snuffed out. If I were Vandermeer's editor, I would encourage him to avoid 3rd person narration and refuse to publish anything in 2nd person. Whenever he does 1st person (and we get a small chapter of it in this book too) it's miraculous. All other times, I want to throw the book across the room. Even when he writes from Ghost Bird's point of view in 3rd person, it's terrible.

OVERALL: I suggest stopping at book 1. The mysterious ending will make you want to pick up the rest of the series, but the other books ruined it for me. If you liked book 2, I'm sure you'll enjoy book 3 as well, because there's lots more of the same. It does appear that I have a minority opinion here, but that's my reaction and I'm sticking to it.

45 of 51 people found the following review helpful.
well written but thinnest of the three (weak 4), still a great, great series
By B. Capossere
I wouldn't be surprised to find that Jeff VanderMeer's first two books in his SOUTHERN REACH series, Annihilation and Authority, end up on my top ten list for the year, so it was with great excitement and high expectations that I opened up Acceptance, the third and final book of the trilogy. Having finished, I can't honestly say those expectations were wholly met, though my lack of satisfaction has less to do with any real complaints about the novel itself and more about the question I had at the end, which was, if it was still a good novel, was it a necessary one? Thinking about it a day later, I'm still not sure about the answer to that.

While I'm going to try as much as possible to avoid spoilers for Acceptance (which admittedly may make this review somewhat vague at times), it will be hard to do the same for the first two books. Fair warning.

Acceptance picks up shortly after Authority, and much more so than the prior two novels, either of which could have stood on its own, it needs to be read in context (i.e. after reading the first ones) as so much depends upon knowledge of earlier events. Annihilation dealt with the exploration by the latest in a string of expeditions of "Area X", a weird anomaly on the coastal US that has been abandoned for decades, cut off from the "normal" world by a deadly barrier that has only one entryway. For years, a governmental agency, the Southern Reach, has been sending these teams into Area X, always to horrifically tragic ends. We follow the Twelfth Expedition through the first-person POV of the Biologist as they discover amidst the oddly pristine wilderness an underground chamber filled with strange writing. Eventually, the Biologist descends into the chamber.

In Authority, VanderMeer shifted the focus from Area X to the Southern Reach bureaucracy. The Biologist (now calling herself Ghost Bird) has mysteriously reappeared on our side of the barrier, and the new Director of the Southern Reach, who asks to be called Control, tries to figure how that happened, why she seems different, what happened to the twelfth and prior expeditions, and finally, what is it in Area X that is reshaping that portion of our world and can anything be done to stop it?

Acceptance returns to Area X, as have the two main characters from the previous novels -- Ghost Bird and Control. As they further explore Area X, aiming at first for the island that has been mentioned but not yet seen, the book moves backwards and forwards in time, shifting points of view amongst Ghost Bird, Control, the former director of the Southern Reach (the psychologist in Annihilation), and Saul -- the lighthouse keeper in Area X before it was Area X, in other words, just before the anomaly, whatever it is, happened.

That, "whatever it is" is of course one of the larger questions of the series: What is Area X? And following not too far behind are How is Area X doing what it is doing and Why is Area X doing what it is doing? Does VanderMeer answer the questions?

Well, I guess it depends on the meaning of answer. We do get some answers, that's for sure. And we also get some theories. But a lot is left open, something I'd say is to be expected because it seems to me that one of the major subjects of this series (and I could be wrong both on the subject idea and on the idea that some things are not answered -- maybe they were and just sailed over my head), is what happens when human beings confront the unknowable. The truly strange. The truly incommunicable. I think as a reader I would have felt it a bit of a cop out had everything been explained, so I for one am glad of this feeling that it was not.

Another aspect of Acceptance that adds to a sense that not all is known is that even when we get theories, we get them from people who themselves admit (or make it clear in other ways) that they don't know a heck of a lot, and who are, let's just say, not always in the clearest frame of mind. Add to this a major sense of temporal dislocation as the many shifting time frames begin to blur one into the other, constant references to "messages" being sent but not understood, and just-as-constant references to worlds behind worlds: copies, doppelgängers, reflections, hybrids, and the reader, or at least this reader, is left standing on always shifting sands. On a strange beach. Under unfamiliar skies. With weird people. Who talk funny. And maybe the reader did a little acid. And had a beer or seven. And. Well, you get the point.

In a novel that focuses on the unknowable and the incommunicable, plot would seem to be a rather low priority, and I'd say that has been true throughout the series. What seems most important in the trilogy is not how the plot happens but how the books feel. In the prior novels VanderMeer proved himself a master of the creeping dread. I found this less true in Acceptance, perhaps because there was less of it or perhaps because I'd seen/felt it before and so it was less creepy because it was more familiar (though, in some ways, familiarity can make things more creepy, especially with doppelgängers). I also felt I saw a little too much of the man behind the curtain, whom I would have preferred more hidden -- too many references to mirrors, to copies, to reflections. A few serve to unify a novel, express a theme, too many begin to distract, and that's how I felt here.

Too, because Acceptance was less steeped in atmosphere for me, plot became more noticeable, and there were several times where the book slowed a bit too much for me, where it became a little repetitive, or felt as if we were traveling for the sake of traveling to fill in some time between flashbacks. In many ways, just as little "happened" in the other two books, but I was so unconcerned with "happening" that it didn't matter. Here, it did. I think plot felt thin to me as well because I had never felt while reading the first two books that I needed, or even wanted, answers or explanations as to how Area X came to be, why it came to be, and so forth. In fact, I said in my review of Authority that I would have been perfectly happy if it had ended there.

On the other hand, it's true there is a lot to admire and enjoy in Acceptance. The writing at a sentence level is consistently superb -- sharp, vivid, often highly original, and as in the prior two novels, VanderMeer's prose really shines when it comes to descriptions of the natural world. Saul is a wonderful creation of a character and while I'm not sure I needed to be back in time with him, I enjoyed every moment I spent with him, and thought the sections showing him interacting with young Gloria and with his lover Charles were warmly, realistically related. And when VanderMeer wants to offer up some emotional heft, he falls into a lovely cadence of language that moves the reader as much via sound and style as by what is being described.

Along with the above-mentioned subjects, I'd say isolation is another theme throughout the series, and VanderMeer has created a slew of characters who feel isolated, who are seen as or see themselves as "other" in many ways. The biologist is called anti-social, Control has family issues, Saul is a homosexual at a time when it was considered "deviant" (not to mention being a lighthouse keeper is pretty much the symbol of the isolated human), Ghost Bird wonders how human she is, if at all. Failure to communicate is a form of isolation. And of course, the isolation presented is also that of being isolated from nature, from the world that surrounds us, isolated even from our own day-to-day lives. Acceptance details this isolation in sundry ways and explores it movingly and thoughtfully.

Finally, on a more ground level construction-pragmatics note, authors of trilogies/series could do worse than to take lessons from VanderMeer on how to slide in reminders of previous events, who slips these sly references in almost unnoticed so that the reader has all the information they need from prior books without even knowing they're being fed these recaps.

Partway through Acceptance, one of the characters wonders:
if perhaps so many journals had piled up in the lighthouse because on some level most came, in time, to recognize the futility of language. Not just in Area X but against the rightness of the lived-in moment, the instant of touch, of connection, for which words were such a sorrowful disappointment, so inadequate an expression of both the finite and the infinite.

That's a hell of a statement for an author to toss into a novel made up wholly of language. And yet, it does get at the heart of not just this book but also the series as a whole. I guess if language is futile, I can't get too bent out of shape if Acceptance didn't quite match my expectations or even felt a little, well, unnecessary. But despite being an exercise in futility, this series as a whole, and several of the scenes in this concluding novel, pack a wallop. One that will linger for some time after you close the pages. Not only do I highly recommend this series, but I strongly recommend budgeting yourself the time to read it not as three books over a lengthy period of time, but as a single story read in as few sittings as possible so that you can better catch its haunting echoes, and be more fully enveloped in its strangely wonderful world.

50 of 58 people found the following review helpful.
“You could know the what of something forever and never discover the why.”
By Gregory Baird
Well this was disappointing. Seriously disappointing. The Southern Reach trilogy started out promisingly enough in Annhilation, but there were signs of trouble even then. Jeff Vandermeer began spinning a wickedly creative story about an expedition into the heart of a mysterious, possibly alien wilderness that had completely overtaken a portion of the coastline and separated itself from the rest of the world. I compared it to the first season of Lost (which I loved, for the record), but wondered if like Lost it would eventually begin drowning in its own mythology and refusal to provide answers.

Disappointingly, that is exactly what happened in Authority, the second part of the trilogy. Vandermeer changed up the setting that time, putting us at the heart of the Southern Reach, the organization responsible for the expeditions into Area X. But instead of revealing much of anything about what went down in the first book (or even peeling away a few layers), things only got crazier. Vandermeer was so enamored of the mythology he was creating that it all began to get overhwelming. I became worried that all of this ... stuff was ultimately leading nowhere. There would be no payoff, no big reveal, no satisfaction for bearing with all the mystery for three books.

And once again, I was disappointingly correct. It turns out that Vandermeer never wanted or cared about getting to the heart of what has been going on in Area X (or in the Southern Reach, for that matter). In fact, Vandermeer frequently tries to enhance the mystery by distracting you. These increasingly desperate attempts at misdirection get more obvious and more annoying each time. It reaches the point where something incredibly bizarre will happen to someone, only for that character to actively avoid thinking about what just happened. Ostensibly this is because they can't process what is going on around them, but the truth is that if Vandermeer allowed them to pursue the clues we might actually have to arrive at a conclusion (or start dispensing some of those answers Vandermeer disdains so much). It also only serves to make his characters frustrating to no end.

What the Southern Reach ultimately centers on isn't a mystery, nor a mythology or an adventure--it's nothing more than a serious of deliberate obfuscations. That gets old pretty darned quickly.

Look, I'm not saying you need to wrap everything up in a neat little bow in order for a book to be satisfying. That would be patently untrue. It's the execution of the Southern Reach trilogy that ruins it in the end. It's deliberately unsatisfying in every way, and it only gets worse as the series goes on.

Grade: D

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? Fee Download The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., 1835-64, by Carol Bundy

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Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., led a brief, intense life. Born in 1835 to a Boston family that for more than a century was a guiding force in the history of New England, Lowell died in 1864 at the battle of Cedar Creek, mortally wounded during the crucial Union victory there.

The Nature of Sacrifice offers a lively history of abolitionist Boston and of Lowell's remarkable family there; his grandfathers were each larger-than-life figures who represented quintessential Yankee elements of business brilliance and spiritual energy. Lowells were at the heart of the American Anti-Slavery Society; Louis Kossuth came to call at the Lowells' house; Longfellow and Emerson were family friends. But the unexpected bankruptcy of Charlie's father altered the family's fortunes, and before the son was out of Harvard, he had determined to redeem the family name.

After a bout with tuberculosis and a recuperative stay in Europe, Lowell turned to the business of making money. Soon after his return he went out West, involving himself in the vital new industry of railroading, until his career was interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War.

The rich tapestry of Bundy's narrative shows the many threads that made this war such a climactic experience for Charlie Lowell, whose family and circle had, after all, been instrumental in fashioning it into a war against slavery. And Bundy masterfully demonstrates how Lowell was transformed as he served on General McClellan's staff, helped to form the fabled Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Regiment of black volunteers (led by his cousin Robert Gould Shaw), fought Colonel Mosby's guerrillas, and implemented Grant's ruthless strategy in Virginia. Lowell's years as a rising Union cavalry officer were shadowed by the battlefield deaths of his brother, cousins, and many friends. What were they dying for, and was the sacrifice worth it? For Lowell and his friends, a new concept of self-sacrifice evolved as they faced the horrors of war, and Lowell, who championed this principle in life, became in death his generation's symbol of American idealism in action.

• Sales Rank: #1754331 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-13
• Released on: 2005-03-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.44" w x 6.00" l, 1.97 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 560 pages

From Publishers Weekly
It's perhaps through individual lives that we can best understand the social impact of the Civil War. As Louis Menand, in The Metaphysical Club, explored the war's impact on Oliver Wendell Holmes, here first-time author Bundy examines the life of another Boston Brahmin of the time, and Bundy's is easily the best account we have of the life of the brilliant, magnetic and tragic Charles Russell Lowell Jr., examining how he became a martyr for the cause of freedom. Born into one of the poorer branches of the prominent Lowell clan on January 2, 1835, valedictorian of his Harvard class, Lowell was a youthful idealist, drawn to the cause of abolition. Accepting a commission as captain in the 3rd (later 6th) U.S. Cavalry, the once-tubercular Lowell immediately made a name for himself as a reckless adventurer on the battlefield. Serving on the staff of General McClellan, Lowell chomped at the bit as the copperhead commander hesitated to wage necessary battles. Later on, Lowell helped found the famous 54th Regiment of black volunteers, fought against Mosby's insurgents following Gettysburg, and--as a part of Sheridan's forces--played a key role in implementing Grant's Shenandoah Valley Campaign in Virginia. In October 1864, aged 29 and by then a colonel, Lowell was felled at the battle of Cedar Creek by a Confederate bullet. Bundy does an excellent job of telling Lowell's tale and explaining the ethic of selfless sacrifice out of which he emerged. This is an admirable life of an admirable man. Photos not seen by PW. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
This massive, scholarly work is a biography of a Boston Brahmin killed in the Civil War--Charles Russell Lowell Jr., whose death provoked much cogitation among those who had known him about the value of the sacrifice being made for the Union. What the book may provoke, one cannot say, but Bundy merits high praise for her thoroughness, relative readability in so scholarly a tome, and the admirable lack of psychobabble in her analysis of motives and relationships. Lowell's family's fortunes had already suffered a downturn when his father went bankrupt, and he had battled tuberculosis after graduation from Harvard. He stepped briskly forward, however, when the war broke out and served in the infantry, in staff assignments, and eventually as commander of a brigade of cavalry, at whose head he was killed at Cedar Creek, Virginia, in 1864. Meanwhile, he managed to marry a sister of Robert Gould Shaw's, and he left many memories behind. In Lowell's biography, Bundy also offers a group portrait of the era's Boston elite at war. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“In this clear-eyed, unsentimental biography Carol Bundy introduces us to a genuine Civil War hero, Charles Russell Lowell. The transformation of an idealistic Harvard student into a brave, intelligent and tough cavalry officer is a riveting story, and Bundy writes extremely well. Her description of a cavalry charge conveys the experience better than any Civil War film, and her portrait of Boston society in the mid-nineteenth century is just as finely etched. This book is not just for Civil War buffs.” ―Frances Fitzgerald

“Carol Bundy's book, which I read with great interest and great pleasure, offers rich insight into a young man at war. It shows compellingly how the experience of military life and of combat changed him and his relationships to those around him. I also very much appreciated Bundy's vivid portrait of the impact of the Civil War on a northern community.” ―Drew Gilpin Faust, Dean, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

“The Nature of Sacrifice is a beautifully rendered portrait of a remarkable young man who became a still more remarkable soldier in the crucible of the American Civil War. It is also a timely reminder of the real cost of combat in any era and marks the debut of a first-class biographer.” ―Geoffrey C. Ward, author of Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Wonderful bio of an obscure Civil War figure
By David W. Nicholas
The field of Civil War biography is a growth industry. Especially on the Confederate side, generals and even junior soldiers are written about constantly, and some of the more senior or famous soldiers have had several books written about them in recent years. This latter group includes Sherman, Sheridan, Grant, and (of course) Custer among the Yankees, and Lee, Jackson, and Longstreet among the Confederates. Many Confederate soldiers are written about also, including such household names as Alexander P. Stewart, Benjamin F. Cheatham, and John Bell Hood. By contrast, few if any of the junior Union army generals have had biographies written about them. One of the few books in this line in recent years is My Brave Boys, a study of Edward Cross and his New Hampshire volunteers. It's an excellent book, and the present volume, The Nature of Sacrifice, is worthy of standing on the shelf right along side it.

The subject of the Nature of Sacrifice is Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., the son of a failed businessman who graduated from Harvard first in his class, worked in business and travelled Europe, and joined the regular Union Army in 1861 as a lieutenant in the cavalry and rose to the rank of colonel in the next three years. He was promoted to brigadier general after his death.

The course of his career over the three years between the start of the Civil War and his death comprises the last two thirds of this book, while the first third covers his early life. Much time is spent inspecting his thoughts, feelings, philosophies and intents. When the Civil War started, his joining the Union Army and subsequent career are detailed at length. In the first two years of the war he saw action at Antietam, where he served as an aide to General McClellan. He then went North to raise a cavalry regiment in his home state of Massachusetts, led it back south the next year, chased guerillas for much of a year, then participated in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864. He was killed in the last battle of that campaign, Cedar Creek, and was instrumental in the Union victory there.

Lowell is a fascinating character. He was a fierce, devoted abolitionist, an aesthetic character who was Robert Gould Shaw's (Matthew Broderick in the movie Glory) brother-in-law, a man who could have gotten out of service in the war and instead embraced it repeatedly. He was universally well-regarded by the time of his death, receiving accolades from characters as diverse as George Armstrong Custer and Wesley Merritt (who detested one another, but agreed in their regard for Lowell). His men started out grumbling about his disciplinarian ways, but wound up loving him.

This is an excellent book, written by a relative who's never written a book before. It's well-written, informative, and frankly fills a gap in Civil War biography that I wouldn't have anticipated being filled in a long time, perhaps never. I thoroughly enjoyed this book (in case it wasn't obvious already) and would recommend it to anyone interested in the Civil War.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Well written but too many factual errors
By J. A. Morgan
Ms. Bundy paints an exceptionally fine picture of the Boston cultural and political scene in the pre-war years. She clearly knows the Lowell family's story (she's a descendent) and she also is a good writer.

However, when she gets away from that and into the details of the war, she falls very short. Her information on Ball's Bluff, for example, contains several errors. Capt. Caspar Crowninshield did not command the 20th Massachusetts and was not the only officer from that regiment to make it back from Ball's Bluff.

On three occasions, she describes California governor Leland Stanford as a "copperhead" or a southern sympathizer though Stanford helped found the Republican party in California and was an ardent Unionist.

She notes Sen. Henry Wilson of Massachusetts as Chairman of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, though Wilson was not even a member of that committee.

She treats the tactic of fighting cavalry dismounted almost as if it were invented by Col. Lowell instead of being an old and well-known dragoon technique.

There are numerous other small mistakes like that which some fact-checking or a little more research would have let her avoid. I give the book three stars instead of two only because it is very well written and because the mistakes she makes are not central to the story she is trying to tell about Lowell. They are very jarring, however, and the reader should be prepared for them.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Death Stains Cedar Creek
By Kevin Killian
I first became interested in the career of Charles Russell Lowell Jr., when earlier this spring I saw the author, Carol Bundy, speak about him and read from her book on TV, on a fourm provided by the Public TV station Boston's WGBH. For this reader Boston visits always include at least a few hours spent curled up in front of a high-definition TV and turning on the public station, for it seems nowhere else in the country do the arts get such play. Nor the humanities, including the utterly humane biography that Bundy has written of a man she says is her great-great-great-great uncle I think. She was amazed when, after her grandmother died, among her trunks and effects out tumbled the clattering sword of Lowell, as well as his dress uniform, preserved through generations who had relished remembering him as their fallen hero.

As though honoring this family mandate, Bundy has done her level best to help preserve his memory for at least another generation. For on the one hand although Lowell was a forgotten soldier, dead before he was thirty, he fought with distinction at a number of pivotal sites in the War Between the States, at one point serving with "Mosby's Marauders." He was a curious chap, as Bundy relates. While his peers and elders were romantic dreamers-transcendentalists, really-who swore by the abolitionist movement and excused the barbarities of some of its activists as examples of ends justfying means, Lowell took the middle ground, sort of turning his nose up at the ideals in question, while cherishing a different set of ideals, by and large culled from a classical education and a tour of Europe on the grand scale. On this extended sojourn, the privilege of young gentlemen of the 19th century, Lowell became haunted by Michelangelo's painting of the three fates. Later on in the annals of art scholarship, ironically enough, it emerged that the painting was not by Michelangelo at all-not even close. But such is its power that it made Lowell sort of an ironist, and a fatalist too.

Bundy brings the War alive as Shelby Foote did, though from the union side of course. The sights and sounds of the battlefield waft over the reader who dares finish this exhsuaring biography all the way through, not only the sounds of glory but the rotting flesh of the dead and the mad faces of the survivors. Like Shakespeare, Lowell begs the question. No wonder his funeral was attended by so many notables, still spooked by him, for none could follow the oddments and the contours of his soul. Today his distinguished descendant has widened the field of inquiry, allowing us to see the lineaments of a brief life with tantalizing hesitance.

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