The Secret Service: The Hidden History of an Enigmatic Agency, by Philip H. Melanson, Ph.D. with Peter F. Stevens

The Secret Service has two main areas of responsibility: counterfeiting and protection. Interestingly, the more familiar protection functions didn’t start until 1894 (well after the Lincoln assassination) when President Cleveland was taking a trip to Colorado. The Agency was investigating a gang that had issued anarchist threats and assigned a couple of agents to Cleveland for the duration of his trip, stepping into the realm of presidential protection for the first time. It wasn’t until Truman was in office that congress officially approved of this mission (the prevailing thought of the time was the President was a man of the people, just another citizen, and providing special protection was tantamount to an imperial guard) so from 1894 to 1951 the body guarding that occurred was far outside of the agency’s mandate and technically against the law. When signing the bill authorizing the security, President Truman quipped, “Well it is wonderful to know that the work of protecting me has at last become legal.”

The first few chapters of this book were really interesting. They told the story of how an anti-counterfeiting organization grew to encompass presidential security and the early history of the Agency. When the narrative reaches the JFK assassination, though, the book goes off the rails. Instead of a history, it becomes a diatribe of everything wrong with the Service. Yes, there were many mistakes made during that fateful trip to Dallas, but they have been nauseatingly dissected in many, many other books. Briefly going through them again here is expected, but special care was seemingly taken here to make the agency look foolish. The same is done in a later chapter about the Reagan assassination attempt, but because of the obvious heroism of Agent McCarthy (the man who leaped in front of the President and took a bullet) and the fact that Reagan was wounded only because of a freak ricochet, the complaints come off as petty. In fact, the author seemed to me to be petulant that the public wasn’t more outraged at the errors the Service enacted that day. The most obvious example of negativity towards the Service came during a chapter discussing media coverage and public-relations. A Discovery Channel documentary entitled Inside the Secret Service was described like this: “A flattering puff piece, it portrayed the Agency as patriotic, competent, apolitical, and dedicated while glossing over the Service’s many problems and failures. There were no critics or detached analysts.” The snobbish, implied “unlike the meaningful, important book you currently have in your hands” came through loud and clear, causing me to roll my eyes for the umpteenth time. Discovering that the author uses his own earlier published works as references didn’t help the credibility, either. Typos and poor editing abound as well, giving the subtle feel of a clandestine manifesto created under the cover of darkness as opposed to an objective history.

To be fair, I would have been annoyed by a fawning look at the Secret Service as well, one that ignored that they did in fact lose JFK and allowed Reagan to be injured. What I wanted, though, was a balanced history that devoted as much space to the successful missions (two attempts on Ford and one on Truman were covered in a matter of a paragraph or two) as to the unsuccessful ones. Once we get into the modern era of the Service where presidential security becomes paramount, the other duties of protecting the federal money supply fade into obscurity. While I certainly know a lot more about the Agency than I did before, I was still quite disappointed at the stilted look presented here.

First Sentence:

On July 5, 1865, in Washington, D.C., a tall, wiry man raised his right hand.

It's Superman!, by Tom De Haven

Smallville is the popular TV show about Clark Kent before he becomes Superman. This novel is a similar take, but done in a pulp-noir treatment and set during the time when Superman was first created by Siegel and Shuster in the 1930’s. The language and setting strongly evoke the imagery of the old Fleischer shorts; even the cover is an animation cel from one of the cartoons. While the modern material has a more polished look, this older stuff has a style all its own.

Clark is not the confident master-of-all-trades we all read growing up; here he is a B student—not because he was intentionally dumbing-down while trying to fit in but because that was the best he could do—and the kind of guy that “can’t read his own stupid handwriting.” He wants badly to be smarter; in fact, he starts wearing glasses simply to appear more intelligent. Superman isn’t nigh invulnerable here either; bullets still bounce off (leaving a bruise, though), but he gets cut and bleeds a bit when a powerful bomb goes off in his hands. A far cry from the hero that could do everything up to and including super-ventriloquism in the comics when I was a kid!

This was an enjoyable read. The differences to the standard Superman mythos are large enough that there was still a sense of wonder as to what was coming next, and the plot lines were a lot of fun. I mean really, how can you go wrong with giant robots, death rays, and super heroes!

First Sentence:

Our version of the story opens on the last Saturday of May 1935 with the arrival of Sheriff Bill Dutcher at the police station in Smallville, Kansas.

Hags, Sirens, and Other Bad Girls of Fantasy, edited by Denise Little

Twenty short stories focusing on the female characters from the world of fantasy. Pandora, Medusa, the sirens, you get the idea. While interesting, only one story really stood out. Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth by Christina F. York tells the tale of Cinderella, but from the point of view of the stepmother. It is a very different story where Cinderella is a calculating ingenue, but as the stepmom says, "history is written by the victors." The other stories were a mixed bag, but nothing special.

First Sentence (from the introduction):

Bad girls have more fun.

Oops: 20 Life Lessons from the Fiascoes That Shaped America, by Martin J. Smith and Patrick J. Kiger

This is a fun book. It describes various disasters in our history and attempts to derive lessons from them. The lessons are a bit trite (the chapter on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge has the admonition, “Ignore the past at your peril.”) but tinged with humor that is dry and fairly tongue-in-cheek. One of my favorite lines is from the chapter on the Kaiser-Hughes flying boat: “If you’re crazy enough to take on an incredibly difficult project in an unrealistically short deadline, don’t ask an even crazier person to help you get it done.” Good stuff! Other entertaining sections talk about the infamous ten-cent beer night at a Cleveland Indians game and Microsoft’s Clippy, called “the Jar Jar Binks of word processing.” Most of these stories I already knew in a general sense, but not in much detail. For instance, I knew that the unlikely duo of Jimi Hendrix and the Monkees toured together but not how it happened or why anyone thought it was a good idea!

The cover is clever; what looks like a printing mistake on a book named Oops. Ironically, the way I obtained the book also is an apparent oops. I entered a contest on InBubbleWrap and was told I’d won a copy of Oops. A month goes by, and nothing arrives. I sent them a note and got a very nice reply saying they’d look into the mix up. Another month and I send another email. Another reply with another apology, but this time a week or so later Oops arrives at my house. Ironic that a book with this title had such a hard time arriving!

First Sentence:

Whether we’re shocked by a “wardrobe malfunction” or hooting as a reality-show contestant is humiliated on national television, Americans are none-too-secretly fascinated with failure—and with good reason.

The City Under Ground, by Suzanne Martel

This is a science-fiction book aimed at children. It tells the story of a society that has survived underground for a couple of centuries after a nuclear holocaust. They live in a closed environment controlled by an apparent artificial intelligence in a sort of benevolent dictatorship. A fear of the outside has developed over time, but interestingly not agoraphobia. Of course, the times are changing and a crack in the seals keeping the people safe from the surface has appeared.

This was lent to me by a co-worker after we were talking about our kid’s reading habits. I tried to get my son interested, but he couldn’t understand why anyone would be scared of being outside. He is also pretty into pirates and fantasy tales right now, so I’ll probably try again later. It reminded me of some of the earlier sci-fi I read, like John Christopher and Madeline L’Engle. Ah, memories!

First Sentence:

“We mustn’t be seen!”

Battle Royale, by Koushun Takami

Battle Royale details a ruthless program where middle-school students are armed and dumped on a small isolated island. They are forced to fight each other until there is only one child left alive, while the totalitarian government monitors the whole thing. To make sure the teenagers obey the rules and try to kill each other, metal collars are fastened around their necks that will explode if they linger in a forbidden area or attempt to remove them. If twenty-four hours pass without a murder, all of the collars will be detonated simultaneously. A few students willingly participate in the slaughter, which gives everyone on the island a palpable fear of their classmates.

Very violent and fairly graphic, the manga roots of this novel are easy to see. This was described to me as a Lord of the Flies for our generation; after reading it I can easily see the comparison. Lord of the Flies detailed the psychological unravelling of a group of marooned kids on a desert island, where Battle Royale focuses more on how commonplace violence has become. While both involve children in untenable situations, Battle Royale is much more horrific because the kids are forced to act against their classmates by an uncaring government.

While a fascinating read, it was somewhat difficult to follow in places. I found the Asian names hard to keep straight, especially because I’m not savvy enough to tell which names are male and female. Yoshio, Kazuhiko, Noriko, and Yukiko are four examples—the first two are male, the last two female—of names I confused throughout. Luckily there was a roster in the front of the book telling who was who, but it was distracting to flip around when I needed help. Even so, this was a compelling read that was hard to put down. Very entertaining.

First Sentence:

As the bus entered the prefectural capital of Takamatsu, garden suburbs transformed into city streets of multicolored neon, headlights of oncoming cars, and checkered lights of office buildings.