The Most Important Book of the Year

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Yes, it's only February, but the odds that someone will write a book more important than this one anytime in the near future are pretty low. Those who dismiss Diamond as a "determinist" ignore the whole point of this book: Societies don't fail or succeed based on their surroundings. They fail or succeed based on how they interact with those surroundings. Societies that adapt their values and practices to match what their environment can provide to them on a sustainable basis thrive; those that persist in practices that deplete their resources ultimately fail. He backs this notion up with examples from the past and present that are both fascinating and compelling.

But Diamond's remarkable insight is this: For the first time in human history, we have the ability to see our resource use--and depletion--on a global scale, and to recognize how our actions impact others and how their actions impact us. We can harness this new knowledge to sustain our planet, or we can continue on a path that leads nowhere but ruin. Some may not like that message, but Diamond is both honest about how he arrives at his conclusions and optimistic that humanity can solve its problems. It's not overstating the case to say that the higher the number of people who read this well-researched and well-reasoned book, the more warranted Diamond's optimism will be. If you've got the time, read Guns, Germs and Steel first; these two work best together.

Vision of the Future

Barry Schwartz, The Costs of Living

The Costs of Living isn't what you'd call light reading. Published in 1994, its subject could be broadly classified as the meaning of life. But the subtitle, How Market Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life, offers the constraint on the topic that prevents this book from being endless.

It's an enchanting but difficult read. Barry Schwartz, whose more recent Paradox of Choice garnered a New Yorker review and positive press for dealing with the same topics on the level of the individual, here demonstrates instead the powerlessness of the individual to stop the relentless advance of market forces into every domain of life. Moving from business to medicine to law to sports to love to education to democracy, Schawrtz shows how the things we purport to value most in life are now subject to market influence--and argues, persuasively, that they are far worse for it.

This is enchanting because Schwartz is a fantastic writer, good at using examples to make his points and capable of humor and serious concern in equal measure. The reading is made difficult by the fact that the book was written in 1994. Rather than the doomsday prophet that Schwartz surely seemed upon publication, he now appears oddly prescient about the continuing advances the market would make into all spheres of life if people did not band together to stop it. While he could not have anticipated the ways in which people's yearning for community in the face of these forces would be exploited by politicians willing to wield those communities' principles as marketable commodities--and how those politicians would use their resulting power to help the market forces advance ever faster--the ingredients of that recipe for disaster are all quite plain to the reader with benefit of knowledge of the ensuing decade.

Can we still turn things around? The task is undoubtedly even more difficult now than Schwartz suggested it would be ten years ago. But we ought to try, and Costs of Living still offers a good way to start constructing the framework by which we might begin to do so. Highly recommended.

A Minor Corrections

Adam Langer, Crossing California

There was a moment, reading this "breakout book of 2004," when I put it down next to me and said out loud, to no one, "I really hate these people. They're despicable." And many of the characters in Langer's first novel seem, at first, to be truly terrible people. But by the end, I felt sympathy for, or even empathy with, nearly all of them.

This is a "big" novel, in the vein of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, tying a set of characters to a larger set of circumstances. (It's not as long as Franzen's "big" book, though--at 420 pages, with smooth writing, it coasts by quickly.) Langer's framework is more defined than Franzen's; he fits the action of his novel into the 444-day hostage crisis in Iran, ending it on the day Ronald Reagan took office. In those 444 days, the characters all experience major events, including a move from one part of a Jewish neighborhood to another, better one--or out of the neighborhood altogether. The characters are representatives of three tiers of a microcosm for society as a whole, each struggling to advance. Married doctors struggle to send their kids to the right schools and find happiness in a worn-out marriage; a widower struggles to maintain a middle-class lifestyle for his motherless daughters; and a single mother and her son attempt to take care of one another. (In one of the novel's most touching subplots, the son does odd jobs to accumulate enough money to send his mom back to college so she can fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher.)

Like Corrections, though, this novel often inspires antipathy for its characters and rueful thoughts about the realistic situations that transpire. It examines the impact of psychology, divorce, religion, capitalism, and even pornography on a culture, doing so at first through the eyes of the children but eventually giving the adults and their needs and wants a fair share of attention as well.

This is not a perfect novel; in places it feels over-written, and at times Langer would be better served by getting out of the way of his characters rather than narrating their conversations. The ending, while it ties things together neatly, does seem to rely on one coincidence too many to deliver the requisite warm feelings for all the characters. Still, this is a dynamite first novel, broad in scope and laser-focused on the feelings and changes of its characters and, by extension, a nation in transition. I look forward to good things from Adam Langer.

Paul Collins, Not Even Wrong : Adventures in Autism

Not Even Wrong : Adventures in Autism

Those who know me will understand the depth of the following compliment: This book made me care deeply about a child and about parenting. As a person whose imagined future plans have almost never included children, my threshold for empathy with a memoir of parental experiences is pretty high--to me, you had a choice and you made it, knowing full well that your kid, like all kids, would one day be a bratty teenager. Maybe that's why this book works--because Paul Collins and his wife didn't have a choice about their son, Morgan, being born autistic.

The way that Collins blends a momentous year in the life of his family with a variety of stories about the history of autism and notable autists (including many whose conditions have been diagnosed posthumously, because autism wasn't understood at all until recently) works, too. We feel his pain and his growth, and laugh and cry with him, even as he gently gives us a textbook education in the development of society's understanding of the condition, from Peter the Wild Boy to Rainman and beyond.

Quietly, deftly, Collins also seeks to reshape the way we think about autism. For instance, he says, "Autists are described by others--and by themselves--as aliens among humans. But there's an irony to this, for precisely the opposite is true. They are us, and to understand them is to begin to understand what it means to be human. Think of it: a disability is usually defined in terms of what is missing. A child tugs at his or her parents and whispers, 'Where's that man's arm?' But autism is an ability and a disability: it is as much about what is abundant as what is missing, an overexpression of the very traits that make our species unique. Other animals are social, but only humans are capable of abstract logic. The autistic outhuman the humans, and we can scarcely recognize the result."

And then, of course, we have the moment when Collins sees an adult version of his son at a fast food restaurant and watches the reaction of people around him, then walks a few blocks, stops, sits down on the stoop of a church, and cries. "I can't bear the thought that someday, somehow, someone will be cruel to my child. Or pretend that he is not even there." His pain is palpable; you can't help but care about him and empathize with his struggle.

Destined to be a comfort to parents of autistic children, this most recent Paul Collins book is a worthwhile and exceptionally enjoyable read with or without such a personal stake. Even more than Sixpence House, this book perfects the genre of personal history and intense research into the arcane that Collins is creating for himself. Give him 200 pages of your time.

Andrew Sean Greer, The Confessions of Max Tivoli

The Confessions of Max Tivoli

In attempting to find words to describe Andrew Sean Greer's new novel, I discover none, so I refer you to the words of the New York Times and of John Updike in the New Yorker. For its portrayal of pre-earthquake San Francisco, its deft weaving of history with the tale of a man aging backwards, and its unique meditation on the endurance and importance of loving someone no matter the circumstances, I have little doubt that this book will make many year-end best-of lists and not a few prize shortlists as well. This is a remarkable reminder of the power of fiction.

Gregory Maguire, Wicked

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

The title of this wonderful book should probably include a question mark--Wicked? Because that’s the question we’re meant to ask ourselves as we read this chronicle of the life of the Wicked Witch of the West. Was she really wicked? Or did we just catch her at her worst, last moment in The Wizard of Oz?

Beyond being compulsively readable, filled with moments of recognition as the Witch moves steadily toward an end we’ve already seen on film, this book tackles serious issues on many levels. The Witch’s father is a preacher, fighting to protect “unionism” from the new “pleasure faith” while also balancing it with the pagan tendencies and folklore of Oz culture. The presence of talking animals in Oz—remember the Cowardly Lion?—gives Maguire the makings of a civil rights struggle dedicated to fair treatment of these high-functioning beasts, as well as raising questions about the proper dividing line between man and animals and whether either has a soul. Maguire’s Oz is filled with political intrigue and romantic tensions, re-imagining the Yellow Brick Road as a tool in the Wizard’s assault on the freedoms of Munchkinland and the Good Witch of the North as a spoiled noblewoman, wooed by many, who started out as the Wicked Witch’s college roommate. The magical shoes, the flying monkeys, and even the Witch’s green skin all have fascinating explanations.

It is a measure of the book’s success that I want to watch the movie again with all this back story in mind. Maguire has used one classic to create another, and in doing so, he has amplified both.

Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

The counterintuitive title of this book makes sense by page two, which is only the first of many wonders Schwartz makes happen over the course of this deceptively thin and breezy tome. Paradox explains why we feel like we have less time even as technology continues to promise to make life easier. In a nutshell, it's because we have too many choices and invest great amounts of time and mental capital in making decisions that were far simpler or simply didn't exist in the past. Schwartz start with examples like buying jeans--slim fit? baggy fit? classic fit? relaxed fit? tapered leg? button fly? zip fly?--or choosing phone service--AT&T? MCI? countless baby Bells? myriad cellular providers?--but quickly demonstrates that our choices in every area of life, including where to live, who (or whether) to marry, what to do for a living, and much more have expanded to a degree that we not only spend more time contemplating our choices, but experience far more regret afterward--or sometimes, he argues, choose not to choose at all because thinking about all the choices we must forego in order to choose just one paralyzes us--or makes the option we like the best seem less appealing.

Schwartz also notes that the increased array of choices combines with the human imagination in dangerous ways that make us sadder. Life gives us choices with fixed qualities--a good job with potential in a city far from home or a decent job with little potential that's close to home--but we compose our own options by assembling aspects of the real choices into fictional options that we then compare with reality. What a surprise that, as we learn of more and more choices, reality falls further and further short! I can't have it all: live close enough to family and retain the freedom to use distance as an excuse to avoid obligations, live in Minneapolis and also in a house with Brad, work with people I loved working with and also return to Illinois. Yet in times of distress, I (and all of us, Schwartz says) tend to compare the situation that troubles me not with a real alternative but with a fantasy constructed from several conflicting components. This is not a useful way to deal with whatever it is that troubles me, or any of us.

Fortunately, Schwartz closes the book by offering useful suggestions for understanding the problems unlimited choices pose in our society and dealing with them in our own lives. His book isn't perfect--it gets a bit redundant at times--but it's a fascinating take on a topic that plays a bigger role in modern life than many of us realize.