Beach Haven

Bibliography
​Stark, Peter. 2018. Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America's Founding Father. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.

Review by Michael Beach

Like so many who interest themselves in the Revolutionary War period of United States history, I find biographies on the ‘founding fathers’ fascinating. Washington may be considered the quintessential example. In this work, Peter Stark takes the reader through George Washington’s immediate ancestry and his own childhood. The work then transitions through his colonial experiences, his love interests, and his decision to embark on a military career.

In his early military experiences, Stark makes an argument for Washington’s role in reigniting war between England and France. In what is called either The Seven Years War or The French and Indian War, Washington does learn some harsh lessons and is directly involved in a number of battles. Aside from his hardening as a wartime leader, Washington is keenly interested in becoming an officer in the regular British army. Time and again he is snubbed, along with all American militia. When the war ended, he resigned in frustration and begins his career as a plantation owner. This snubbing comes back to haunt the British years later when the future General Washington directly confronts some of his previous peers and superiors as part of the revolution. This particular work does not take us beyond his resignation and settling into Mount Vernon.

Stark shares excerpts of correspondences to, from, and about Washington that give insight into his early mistakes and how he begins to mature. Stark also shares his romantic interest in a married member of the Fairfax family. Eventually he realizes the pointlessness of the pursuit and his relationship with Martha comes into play. Peter Stark makes it clear that it is not so clear about George’s romantic inclinations toward Martha. His motivation may have been as much financial and cultural as romantic. In either case, the two become an early ‘power couple’.

Peter Stark writes this history in an engaging format that keeps the story moving along. I personally take all histories with a grain of salt, but Stark includes a significant number of contemporary sources, including Washington’s own writings. The content rings true and is probably as close to reality as is possible. 
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​Bibliography
Kleinman, Daniel Lee, ed. 2000. Science, Technology, & Democracy. New York: State University of New York Press.

Review by Michael Beach
 
Like so many of the books I’ve reviewed as part of my studies in the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS), this book is a compendium of chapters written as interdependent topics. Daniel Kleinman, as the editor, wrote the introduction and closing chapter. The title of his contribution as the final chapter is Democratizations of Science and Technology. This title hints at the idea that democracy has more than one meaning hence each version of democracy differently influences and is influenced by a given community’s relationship with science and tech.

Some of the chapters are a form of mini case study. For example, there is a chapter about AIDS treatment activism. Another looks at sustainable farming networks, where knowledge sharing among farmers and agriculturalists impact how food begins in our collective food chain. Several chapters consider actor roles such as experts, practitioners, and consumers. These chapters tend to examine how much influence each group has, or how much they are willing to rely on the insights of the other groups. There are a few more generalized philosophical chapters such as how the nuclear family is defined and how that influences technology acceptance. There is a review of federal science and 'human well-being’. Perhaps the most academic chapter is by Sandra Harding. She is a well-known author in STS and generally examines feminist thought. In this section she asks the question how much scientific philosophy should steer or be steered by democratic ideals.

Kleinman’s final chapter is a consideration of public policy and motivation. He concludes, “Scientific, professional, and corporate groups have a strong vested interest in seeing that innovations go forward, and they typically have substantial financial, organizational, and technical resources to invest in pursuing those interests. Most public groups, by contrast, as well as society as a whole, have a much less direct stake in the outcome of given policy choices, and usually can draw on only limited economic and institutional resources” (Kleinman 2000, 162). This is an interesting assertion. Even if ‘the public’ has limited input to direct policy deliberation, they ultimate are consumers (or non-consumers) of whatever technology results. The public votes with its money and its votes. As you might note, these topics are tricky. Any strong stand on one point or another makes for argumentative fodder. 
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Bibliography
​Skagg, Ricky, and Eddie Dean. 2013. Kentucky Traveler: My Life in Music. New York: itbooks.

Review by Michael Beach
 
This work is an autobiography by well-known bluegrass and country artist, Ricky Skaggs. He grew up in Kentucky inspiring the title. Skaggs became famous among the bluegrass crowd as he grew into young adulthood. Later he gained larger audiences as he moved into country music, winning many awards. His most famous hits came in the 1980s. Eventually he was able to become independent of record labels, create his own label, and return to his bluegrass roots.

Skaggs is honest about how others helped him on his musical path. He also speaks to his failed first marriage. He wrestles with his decisions to shift from bluegrass to popular country music. He was soundly criticized by bluegrass purists, and he shared some of their sentiment. Yet his struggles with this musical categorization he also points out to how the much larger stage allowed him to introduce new audiences to the old songs and styles. Throughout the book he also speaks to his specific version of Christianity. The larger popular venues also allowed him to share some of that part of himself. Record company executives and producers pushed back at him, worried that approach might cause damage to record sales.

Record sales dropped off as he began to tire of the road and commercialism’s demands. He was in a place in life where he was less dependent on those pressures, eventually leaving the traditional business route. Skaggs began making income by becoming a producer for other artists. With the freedom to create whatever music he wanted, Skaggs returned to his bluegrass routes.

Eventually, Ricky Skaggs became a staple at the Grand Ol’ Opry. He still is. Many famous artists have included him in duets and other productions in their own recordings. I have heard a number of famous artists attribute Skaggs with helping them return to the music they love most after wandering through more popular music. I like pretty much everything I’ve heard from Skaggs. I learned of him during his more popular years of country music, but also really enjoy his more traditional music including both bluegrass and gospel. I read this book as a tale about how Skaggs became what he is through the combination of his own character, and how he was shaped by family, religion and the music business. Like all of us, he is a product of both nature and nurture. His music both influenced and was influenced by many others.
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Bibliography
​Lee, Harper. 1960. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Harper Perennial.

​Review by Michael Beach
 
This is a well-known classic of American literature. I saw the movie starring Gregory Peck a long time ago with only scant memory of it. I knew it to be about a trial in the south, specifically Alabama. The trial was about an innocent black man, Tom Robinson, accused of rape. Despite evidence to the contrary, he is convicted, sent to prison, and eventually killed while attempting to escape.

Reading the book, I was surprised. I imagined most of the work to be mostly about the trial and interactions of the adults. In fact, most of the first half does neither of these things. Harper Lee introduces all the characters through the eyes of three children. Jeremy ‘Jem’ Finch, Gene Louise ‘Scout’ Finch, and Dill. Jem and Scout are the children of Atticus Finch, a widower. Dill is a friend who stays in Maycomb, their town, over the summer, living with an aunt. They interact with every sort of person throughout the book.

The story contains themes of racism, class distinction, and societal notions of honor. Every character uses the N-word. It is simply the vernacular of the time in 1930s Alabama. Atticus is central to all the goings on and is quickest to excuse what is, or seems to be, bad behavior of others. In many ways this is a coming-of-age story for the children. Their experiences and interactions with each other and the adults teach them about adult issues and attitudes. Social norms are in question throughout the work.

Atticus is not the only adult with more modern sentiment about race and class relations, but his allies are but few as he acts as legal counsel for the accused, Robinson. He and the children are threatened, and near the end of the book are attacked by Bob Ewell. He is the father of the girl who accused Robinson of rape and of beating her. In reality, the girl threw herself at Tom, the father saw it and beat his daughter.

It goes without saying that Lee is masterful in her style in capturing the nature and dialog of the characters. The circumstances and attitude ring true for the time and location. Her storytelling brings the reader into the world of her creation, yet one that feels like they could be actual events. The version I read is the 50th anniversary edition. 
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Bibliography
​Hespelt, E. Herman, Irving A. Leonard, John T. Reid, John A. Crow, and John E. Englekirk, . 1946. An Anthology of Spanish American Literature. New York: Appleton-Century-Crosts, Inc.
 
This anthology contains many original works, and excerpts of original works. As the title implies, all the authors are Hispanic. One could argue that first portion authors are not American authors, but rather Spanish authors writing in the ‘new world.’ For example, some of the more interesting writings to me are up front. They include memoirs of several Spanish conquistadors, contemporaneously written by members of their teams with specific assignment to capture events. These were generally also religious representatives intending to convert indigenous people to Christianity. As a reader of history, one has to take these accounts for what they are. The saying goes that history is written by the victor. Reading these sorts of historical memoirs, I tend to assume they are only loosely true, but they do show a great deal about the perspectives of the author if not the subjects.

I think my favorite section includes gaucho stories. These are mostly poems and remind me of comedic cowboy poetry of the American ‘wild west’. I found the most entertaining to be Fausto written in 1866 by Estanisao del Campo. In the poem, Anastasio el Pollo relates to his gaucho buddy Laguna the story of Faust. He stumbles into an opera house while visiting the city. He sees the play and believes he is watching actual events happening in front of him. He has never been to a play and did not understand the idea of fiction. The whole thing reminds me a bit of some of the work done by Andy Griffith when he would recount Shakespearian plays using ‘down home’ or ‘red neck’ expressions and a southern accent to tell the story.

As one might guess, this anthology contains a wide range of prose and poetry, some comedic, others patriotic, historical, or emotional. Their is a short exposition in English at the beginning section of each writer's works giving a short bio of the author and some descriptions of their writing style and focus. The actual works are in the original Spanish. Since the writings range from the 1500s through the mid-1900s, and includes authors from many countries, the Spanish language used differs from piece to piece. I was comfortable with most of it, but kept an online dictionary close at hand. 
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Bibliography
​Schwartz, A. B. (2015). Broadcast Histeria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News. New York: Hill and Wang.
 
In the broadcast industry, the events during the radio broadcast led by Orson Welles is the stuff of legend. It was said that as people believed they were hearing real news interruptions into otherwise normal programming, they went crazy collectively. The broadcast warned up front it was a fictitious portrayal. Several times during the program similar messages were shared. Yet, people often tuned in during times that did not include the caveats. Supposedly, people ran out into the street screaming. Others packed up the family car and headed for the proverbial hills. A few are said to have committed suicide. In this work, Schwartz examines many of these myths and debunks them. He does share some examples where a relatively small number of people did think the program real and started fleeing, but these documented examples are few.
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What Schwartz does document is a somewhat skeptical public. Newsrooms and police station phones rang off the hook. People were looking for some sort of official confirmation to what they were hearing. Was there really a Martian invasion in progress? Were people dying by alien death rays?

In the chapter titled ‘Journalism and Showmanship’ the author examines how the news covered a real story of the same time period, specifically the Lindberg baby kidnapping. Sensationalism in reporting inspired people to flood the Lindberg estate. Charles Lindberg was a celebrity in his day. He was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. “Within half an hour, newsrooms in three states had gotten word of the crime and begun frantically revising their front pages” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 13). Much of the Welles fictional story had the same trappings of what people experienced during the immediate aftermath of the Lindberg kidnapping story. The storytellers were acting in a believable manner. In other words, they were good at their writing and acting craft.

Schwartz wonders if things are all that different today. Whether one calls it fake news, misinformation, disinformation, or whatever the newest terms will become, there are people who purposefully copy realism fictitiously. Welles was in it for entertainment, and perhaps that the same goal of some modern-day trolls. It seems clear to me that some of this effort is not just for a joke, but with specific outcomes intended. Motives may be political, social, or criminal, but each looks to sway some portion of the population into a preference action or inaction. Schwartz shares several examples such as ‘the Veracruz Twitter panic’ in the popular resort of Veracruz, Mexico. A few residents of the city started reporting crimes and violence throughout the city that were not actually happening. The reports were forwarded by others, then picked up by some websites that “capitalized on this by writing fake news stories with provocative headlines” noting how such headlines “can generate a small fortune in ad revenue by exploiting gullibility” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 223).

In the same page, Schwartz does note that “the same technology that spread that false report also made it possible to verify the story in almost no time at all” (Ibid.). He argues that Americans were skeptical of the original Martian attack story but seem to be more inclined to accept the stories about the hysteria that ensued. He suggests we apply skepticism in both stories and meta-stories we hear. Perhaps we should be less inclined to accept those stories that seem to fit a narrative we already accept.

Bibliography
Ramsdell, Mike. 2006. A Train to Potevka: An American Spy in Russia. Layton: Zhivago Press.

Review by Michael Beach
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This book is an autobiographical sketch of some experiences of a CIA operative working in Russia in the waning years of the Soviet Union. Mike Ramsdell speaks of his early training days in the agency and how his unit was betrayed by another trainee with whom Ramsdell had a friendship. He tells of his bringing up in northern Utah, his marriage and divorce brought on in part by how much he was away on assignments.

The main story of the book is how his unit in Russia was attempting to turn an official into an asset for the CIA. It goes wrong and his unit is told to bug out. That is, the others in his unit are sent to the relative safety of Moscow. Ramsdell is left alone to finish sanitizing the various locations the group of American spies were using. He is eventually ordered to take a train to a safe house in the far away village of Potevka. Before he can make his get away, Ramsdell is attacked by local thugs. He escapes the assassination attempt, but barely. He is beaten and seriously injured. In this rough condition he gets on the train in a lot of pain. It’s the slow train that stops often with the lowest class ticket. He ruminates about his life and what seems to him like abandonment by the agency. As he slept, another passenger steels what little food he had, leaving him to travel for days hungry and bloodied.

Eventually he arrives only to find the safe house empty and with no food. Eventually villagers help him, but not at first. He speaks of how the local people have little for themselves because of the bad policies of the Soviet government. Several times he is stalked by wolves that at one point keep him from walking from the house to the outhouse to relieve himself. After a long stay in the bitter cold and deprivation that included Christmas, he eventually makes his way to rescue and a return to the United States.

Throughout the ordeal, Ramsdell was sustained by his memory of his relationship with his son and a coworker who later becomes his girlfriend and future wife. He wrote to them and imagined future times together. He also considered his own perspective about God and his faith. The humbling experiences at first caused him to question, but then he was drawn closer to God and found his faith growing.

The story is an interesting mix of spy thriller, introspection, and social commentary with a religious connection. Since I lived part of my life in northern Utah, I was familiar with the places he describes. I also made two work-related trips to far eastern Siberia, but after the fall of the Soviet Union. I can see his perspective offering praise and sympathy to the Russian people while questioning their government as well as our own.
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Bibliography
​Collins, H. M. 1992. Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach

The original publication of this book was in 1985. I read the updated 1992 edition. The focus on this book is an examination of how we perceive order and our need to replicate. In science, replication is important in particular because when one makes a factual claim, it must be based on evidence and any empirical evidence must be replicable. Collins shares three chapters of specific examples to make his point. He discusses the TEA-Laser, detecting gravitational radiation, and paranormal experiments.

Order and perception are subjectively designed. Whenever there we examine a large number of things we try to categorize. In science, categorization is necessary to make sense of differences. The problem with categorizing is that things don’t really exist in discrete groups of things, but rather as a continuum of individual things. Scientists attempt to define categories by defining attributes. Whenever one creates experiments that either attempt to define a category, or attempts to make conclusions about subjectively defined categories, it becomes difficult to take the next step. That is, it is difficult to draw general conclusions about specific empirical outcomes. This is the problem with inductive reasoning. As soon as one attempts to apply a finding in a specific situation to larger groups, the generalized conclusion will inevitably have to include exceptions.
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The major concern Collins points out about replication is that each group defined and included in an experiment will influence outcomes differently. Generally, empirical work includes undocumented steps. “My concern is not how we could be certain in principle about induced regularities but about how we actually come to be certain about regularities in practice” (Collins 1992, 6). For example, some processes are taught from one lab worker to another through tacit practice. Explicit documented procedures carry a project so far, but there are different ways of doing lab tasks. Practices vary from lab to lab and from practitioner to practitioner. This means that replication includes variation, and variation leads to different exceptions when attempting to analyze and generalize findings.

​Bibliography
Aiken, Katherine G. 2019. "The Environmental Coneqences Were Calamitous: Smelter Smoke Controversies in Progressive Era America, 1899-1918." Technology and Culture, The International Quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology (Johns Hopkins University Press) 60 (1): 132-164.

Review by Michael Beach
 
In this article, Katherine Aiken looks at legal battles between smelter operation companies and community organizations that sued for damage created by toxic smoke. Most of these organizations represented farmers, but the author includes the “four-way interaction among farmers, industrialists, government, and technology” (Aiken 2019, 134). Aiken speaks to claims and settlements, but since this journal is about technology, as one could guess, the primary focus is on technological ways smelter owners approached reducing particulate output. Her intention with the article is to “survey major smelter smoke battles with an emphasis on the intersection of industrial growth, engineering solutions to challenges, and the role of farmers and the government” (Aiken 2019, 135).

The specific systems developed included baghouses, large buildings filled with filtering bags that captured much of the particulate matter. A weakness to this approach is it was expensive and did not stop gasses. Two related solutions were to extend the location of smoke exhaust. In one version, large underground tunnels would be used to move the smoke away from locations with people and farms to less concerning (more remote) locations. The other was to build ever taller smokestacks so the particulates were spread more widely, having less affect in any one location.

Perhaps the most exotic approach was something called ‘electrostatic precipitation’ in which emissions were passed through an electric field that caused some of the gases to break into other compounds that had other uses. This was costly in terms of electricity generation, but some of the cost was offset by revenues created from sale of the chemical byproducts.

Social and financial forces were at odds with each other. They were also connected to each other. For example, Aiken shows how farmers’ claims were argued by the smelter companies to be exaggerated. Experts on both sides made their cases. Both groups had financial motivation. The technology was developed to lower the financial impact claims of farmers while minimizing cost to smelter operators. 
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​Bibliography
Reeman, Douglas. 1986. The Iron Pirate. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Review by Michael Beach
 
This story is set in the waning years of WWII. It centers on the German heavy cruiser called Prinz Luitpold. As some of the German fleet were bottled up in the Baltic waters around Scandinavia, the ship receives orders to break away and sail into the north Atlantic to act alone sinking as many support ships of the allies as possible. They are to specifically avoid military ships that might engage them and only approach ships that have little or no defense. They rightfully assume most of the British and American combatants would be busily engaged guarding the invasion of Europe that began in France. They wreak havoc as hoped. As word gets out of a German rogue, some of the British fleet had remained in South Africa during the invasion of Europe. The admiralty of that part of the fleet give chase, eventually sinking her.

The characters on the German ship are twisted into several love triangles. Captain Dieter Hechler was embarrassed by his wife’s constant cheating. She comes aboard before the ship’s departure from the Baltic and attempts to seduce her husband. He refuses her. He rightfully suspects she is pregnant and trying to cover her state by claiming the child to be his. A former classmate of Captain Hechler who is now Admiral Leitner, comes aboard with a public relations film crew and a famous woman aviator to create hope for the German people who are beginning to suffer from losses in battle and bombings in the homeland. He also brought with him some boxes that are quickly locked away, their contents not even disclosed to Captain Hechler. They turn out to be valuables stolen from Jews and political prisoners destined for execution. These poor souls included the wife of the ship’s medical officer, Doctor Kroll. Over time the captain and women pilot fall in love and have an affair. As the ship engages in its final battle, Kroll kills Leitner because of his hiding information surrounding the death of the doctor’s wife. Several crew members abscond with the admiral’s boxes of jewels and money. Many survive and later find themselves in prisoner camps, eventually returning to Germany.

There are other story lines and romantic parings. For me, the romantic angles were not appealing. Intimate interludes are at times described in a rated-R level in my estimation. Also, in my estimation, these portions of the book add little to the story and are unnecessary. They could have been toned down and still help the reader to understand how the relationships influence events and outcomes. The battle scenes and internal tensions that result are well written and realistic.  One other distraction for me is how the author tends to shift suddenly from on scene to another. Often the discussions in distant locations and with different characters seem almost intertwined. At times it can be difficult to follow the transitions, or rather non-transitions. 
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