The Imperial Cruise:  A Secret History of Empire and War
James Bradley, 2009
Little, Brown & Co.
387 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316014007

Summary
On the success of his two bestselling books about World War II, James Bradley began to wonder what the real catalyst was for the Pacific War. What he discovered shocked him.

In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Taft, his daughter Alice, and a gaggle of congressmen on a mission to Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea with the intent of forging an agreement to divide up Asia. This clandestine pact lit the fuse that would—decades later—result in a number of devastating wars: WWII, the Korean War, and the communist revolution in China.

In 2005, James Bradley retraced that epic voyage and discovered the remarkable truth about America's vast imperial past. Full of fascinating characters brought brilliantly to life, The Imperial Cruise will powerfully revise the way we understand U.S. history. (From the publisher.)

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About the Author 

• Birth—1954
• Where—Wisconsin, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Wisconsin
• Currently—N/A

In his words
I was born in Wisconsin surrounded by a loving family of ten and loved swimming in cold lakes. When I was a boy I read an article by former president Harry Truman recommending that young people read historical biographies. He said it was easy to follow the storyline of a historical figure's life, and you'll learn the surrounding history on the journey.

When I was thirteen years old I read an article by James Michener in Reader's Digest which I paraphrase: "When you're twenty-two and graduate from college, people will ask you, 'What do you want to do?' It's a good question, but you should answer it when you're thirty-five." Michener explained that his experiences wandering the globe as a young man later inspired his books on Afghanistan, Spain, Japan and other places.

When I was nineteen years old, I lived and studied in Tokyo for one year. I later brought my Japanese friends home to Wisconsin. My father, John Bradley, had helped raise an American flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima and had shot a Japanese soldier dead. John Bradley welcomed my friends to our home.

I traveled around the world when I was twenty-one, from the U.S. to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, France, Germany, Italy, England and back to the United States.

At twenty-three I graduated with a degree in East Asian history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

For the next twenty years I worked in the corporate communications industry in the United States, Japan, England and South Africa.

In my late thirties I took a year off to go around the world again. On this trip I made it to base camp on Mt. Everest and walked among lions in Africa.

My father died when I was forty years old. My search to find out why he didn't speak about Iwo Jima led me to write Flags of Our Fathers and establish the James Bradley Peace Foundation. (From the author's website.)

More
In 2000, Bradley published Flags of Our Fathers, written with the author Ron Powers, which tells the story of five U.S. Marines and a Navy corpsman, his dad Navy corpsman , John Bradley, raising the American flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima. In that book, which spent 46 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was made into a film directed by Clint Eastwood, Bradley took infinite care to locate and speak with family and friends who actually knew the men depicted. In doing this, he received great praise for his realistic portrayals and bringing the men involved to life.

The book and the film is an in-depth look at those involved and their war-time service. Of the six men, Bradley's father John, PFC Ira Hayes, and PFC Rene Gagnon were the only ones to survive the battle. SGT Michael Strank, CPL Harlon Block, and PFC Franklin Sousley were all killed in action later on in the battle. Bradley tells the story in a before, during, and after format, and both book and film were well received upon their release. An impromptu speech Bradley gave at the Iwo Jima memorial was transcribed by Michael T. Powers in October 2000, and widely circulated on the Internet.

In 2003 he published Flyboys: A True Story of Courage. That book tells the story of an air raid that took place during the Battle of Iwo Jima, some 150 miles away, when U.S. warplanes bombed the small communications outpost on Chichi Jima. While Iwo Jima had Japanese forces numbering 22,000, Chichi Jima's forces numbered 25,000.

Nine crewmen survived after being shot down in the raid. One was picked up by the American submarine USS Finback. That one man was then-Lieutenant George H. W. Bush, who later went on to become the forty-first President of the United States. The other eight were captured as POWs by the Japanese and were executed and eaten, a fact that remained hidden until much later. Like Flags of Our Fathers, Flyboys also topped the New York Times Bestseller list when it came out.

In 2009, he published his third New York Times best selling book, The Imperial Cruise. The book concerns the 1905 diplomatic mission led by then-Secretary of War William Howard Taft and Alice Roosevelt, as well as the larger implications of President Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy, particularly with regard to Japan. The New York Times wrote that "The Imperial Cruise is startling enough to reshape conventional wisdom about Roosevelt’s presidency."

The book exposes the blatantly racist and exploitative policy of the United States in its attempt to extend its influence into the Pacific rim, acquiring Hawaii by conquest and the Philippines by purchase from the Spanish after ostensibly having entered the conflict to aid the Filipino freedom fighters. The American occupation was marked by torture and repression of the very people they had come to help. ("More" from Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews 
Mr. Bradley favors broad strokes and may at times be overly eager to connect historical dots, but he also produces graphic, shocking evidence of the attitudes that his book describes…if he brings a reckless passion to The Imperial Cruise, there is at least one extenuating fact behind his thinking. In Flags of Our Fathers he wrote about how his father helped plant the American flag on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II. In The Imperial Cruise he asks why American servicemen like his father had to be fighting in the Pacific at all.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


In the decades since his death Theodore Roosevelt has suffered many detractors, and with considerable justification. Yet he was also a great domestic reformer, a trust-buster and a conservationist. What is fascinating about Bradley's reconstruction of a largely neglected aspect of Roosevelt's legacy is the impact that his racial theories and his obsession with personal and national virility had on his diplomacy. Engrossing and revelatory, The Imperial Cruise is revisionist history at its best.
Ronald Steel - New York Times Book Review


Engaging...this is a book to admire and, it must be said, to enjoy.
Boston Globe


For readers under the impression that history is the story of good guys and bad guys, and that Americans are always the former, this book could be useful medicine.
Rick Hampson - USA Today

[Bradley's] ingenious narrative thread is to track an across-the-pacific 1905 goodwill voyage by Roosevelt's emissaries....[his indictment of Roosevelt] raises tantalizing questions.
Gene Santoro - American History


Theodore Roosevelt steers America onto the shoals of imperialism in this stridently disapproving study of early 20th-century U.S. policy in Asia. Bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers, Bradley traces a 1905 voyage to Asia by Roosevelt’s emissary William Howard Taft, who negotiated a secret agreement in which America and Japan recognized each other’s conquests of the Philippines and Korea. (Roosevelt’s flamboyant, pistol-packing daughter Alice went along to generate publicity, and Bradley highlights her antics.) Each port of call prompts a case study of American misdeeds: the brutal counterinsurgency in the Philippines; the takeover of Hawaii by American sugar barons; Roosevelt’s betrayal of promises to protect Korea, which “greenlighted” Japanese expansionism and thus makes him responsible for Pearl Harbor. Bradley explores the racist underpinnings of Roosevelt’s policies and paradoxical embrace of the Japanese as “Honorary Aryans.” Bradley’s critique of Rooseveltian imperialism is compelling but unbalanced. He doesn’t explain how Roosevelt could have evicted the Japanese from Korea, and insinuates that the Japanese imperial project was the brainstorm of American advisers. Ironically, his view of Asian history, like Roosevelt’s, denies agency to the Asians themselves.
Publishers Weekly


Bradley (Flags of Our Fathers) has written a compelling book on a forgotten diplomatic mission. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt sent Secretary of War William Howard Taft on a cruise to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea, a diplomatic mission that also included Roosevelt's daughter, Alice. The mission was to solidify a secret U.S.-Japanese agreement to allow Japan to expand into Korea and China, with the irrepressible Alice distracting reporters. This agreement, resulting in the Treaty of Portsmouth, ultimately helped spark not only World War II in the Pacific but the 1949 Chinese Revolution and the Korean War. Bradley describes Taft and Roosevelt as firm believers in the White Man's Burden: since Japan embraced Western culture, Roosevelt wanted it to spread that culture to the rest of Asia. However, their policies backfired because anti-American feelings grew in China, the Philippines, and Korea as America turned its back on these countries, while America and Europe did not check Japanese aggression. Ultimately, Bradley reminds readers in well-cited detail of Roosevelt's often overlooked racist attitudes. Bradley's writing style will appeal to the general reader, with its good mix of letters, newspapers, and sound secondary sources. —Bryan Craig, MLS, Nellysford, VA
Library Journal


The story of a forgotten diplomatic excursion inspired by Theodore Roosevelt's bigotry. Bradley (Flyboys: A True Story of Courage, 2003, etc.)—who wrote about his father's experience at Iwo Jima in Flags of Our Fathers (2000)—examines a little-known effort by Roosevelt to manipulate the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War and extend the Monroe Doctrine to Asia by encouraging Japan to act as a proxy for the West. In the summer of 1905, a party that included Secretary of War William Taft and Roosevelt's rebellious daughter Alice set sail on the ocean liner Manchuria to their Pacific destinations of Hawaii, Korea, Japan, China and the Philippines. At the time, the voyage captured the public imagination. However, Taft was charged with an agenda that included maintaining dominance over American territories-the protests of America's Hawaiian and Filipino "wards" notwithstanding-and promoting Roosevelt's dream of an "Open Door" in Asia. Bradley argues that the mission was a result of the president's adherence to a crackpot philosophy of "Aryan" racial superiority. "Like many Americans," he writes, "Roosevelt held dearly to a powerful myth that proclaimed the White Christian as the highest rung on the evolutionary ladder." In Roosevelt's mind, this excused American brutality in subduing Filipino insurgents, and it furthered his public image as a wise Western warrior. However, the president made a major intellectual blunder when he decided the Japanese could be considered "Honorary Aryans," due to "the Japanese eagerness to emulate White Christian ways." This, coupled with his contempt for the Chinese, Filipino and Hawaiian peoples, inspired him to play nation-builder, with disastrous consequences. Bradley asserts that Taft and Roosevelt violated the Constitution by offering Japan a secret deal, characterized as a "Monroe Doctrine for Asia." Arguably, Japanese pique over America's unwillingness to acknowledge this subterfuge fueled their expansionist dreams and pointed the way toward the Pearl Harbor attack. A rueful, disturbing account of a regrettable period of American imperialism.
Kirkus Reviews

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Book Club Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Imperial Cruise:

1. Racism is a central theme in Bradley's book. In what way did racist perceptions on the part of President Roosevelt distort his foreign policy?

2. What were some of the academic and philosophical influences on Roosevelt's attitudes toward race?

3. Bradley writes, "One after another, white Christian males in America’s finest universities 'discovered’ that the Aryan was God’s highest creation, that the Negro was designed for servitude and that the Indian was doomed to extinction." In your opinion, does the fact that this thinking was common for the time exculpate Roosevelt and his contemporaries' belief in white supremacy?

4. Discuss the "Japanese Monroe Doctrine." For whose benefit was it proposed, and what was the rationale behind it?

5. What was Roosevelt's purpose in encouraging a Japanese takeover of Korea?

6. Ultimately, what were the consequences of the Japanese Monroe Doctrine? Over time, according to Bradley, how did it drive Japan's foreign policy goals?

7. Referring to the Russo-Japanese war, Roosevelt wrote to his son in February, 1904, that "I was thoroughly well pleased with the Japanese victory, playing our game." What did he mean?

8. Why did Roosevelt push for Japan to forgo indemnity after the war? What precipitated the Tokyo riots When the Treaty of Portsmouth was announced?

9. Talk about the ways in which Bradley presents America as an imperialist power, particularly with regards to Hawaii and the Philippines. Is The Imperial Cruise persuasive in its vision of history repeating itself later in the 20th and 21st centuries?

10. Contrast Roosevelt's differing attitudes toward the Russian people and the Japanese. Why did he consider the latter "natural leaders"? What, in particular, did he admire in the Japanese culture? And why would Japan have been so eager to adopt Western values?

11. In your opinion, was Roosevelt deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize?

12. Were you surprised to learn that what we now refer to as "waterboarding" was used during Roosevelt's time? Does its long-term practice lend it legitimacy in your view...or not?

13. What if anything have you learned by reading The Imperial Cruise? Has it altered your view of Theodore Roosevelt or the history of American foreign policy?

14. Does Bradley make a convincing case for the long reach of Roosevelt's actions? Can Roosevelt be held responsible for the long-term unintended consequences of his foreign policy? Why...or why not?

15. The book has sometimes been criticized for its at times casual, almost flippant, and sarcastic tone. For you, does that style and tone detract grom Bradley's overall message? Or does it make his work more readable and engaging?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music
Steve Lopez, 2008
Penguin Group USA
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425238363


Summary 
When Steve Lopez saw Nathaniel Ayers playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles' skid row, he found it impossible to walk away. More than thirty years earlier, Ayers had been a promising classical bass student at Juilliard—ambitious, charming, and also one of the few African-Americans—until he gradually lost his ability to function, overcome by schizophrenia. When Lopez finds him, Ayers is homeless, paranoid, and deeply troubled, but glimmers of that brilliance are still there.

Over time, Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers form a bond, and Lopez imagines that he might be able to change Ayers's life. Lopez collects donated violins, a cello, even a stand-up bass and a piano; he takes Ayers to Walt Disney Concert Hall and helps him move indoors. For each triumph, there is a crashing disappointment, yet neither man gives up. In the process of trying to save Ayers, Lopez finds that his own life is changing, and his sense of what one man can accomplish in the lives of others begins to expand in new ways.

Poignant and ultimately hopeful, The Soloist is a beautifully told story of friendship and the redeeming power of music. (From the publisher.)

The 2009 film version of The Soloist stars Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.

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Author Bio 
• Birth—1953
• Where—California, USA
• Education—San Jose State University
• Currently—Los Angeles, California

Steve Lopez is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, where he first wrote a series of enormously popular columns about Nathaniel Ayers.

Before joining the L.A. Times, Lopez wrote for Time, Sports Illustrated, Life, and Entertainment Weekly. Prior to working for Time, Inc., Lopez was a columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer, San Jose Mercury News and Oakland Tribune. His work has won numerous national journalism awards for column writing and magazine reporting.

A California native, Lopez is the author of three novels and a book of non-fiction, The Soloist: A Lost Dream, An Unlikely Friendship, and The Redemptive Power of Music. The book is based on columns Lopez wrote for the Times about his friendship with a downtown Los Angeles musician.

Lopez is married and has two sons and a daughter. (Adapted from the publisher and L.A. Times.)

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Book Reviews 
Lopez is a natural storyteller, giving us a close-up view of the improbable intersection of musicianship, schizophrenia, homelessness and dignity. The result is a surprisingly lively page-turner, propelled by the close friendship developing between these two men and filled with eloquent passages.... The Soloist goes a long way toward explaining the workings of the musical mind, albeit one tragically touched by madness. It doesn't shy away from exploring the failures of governmental programs and mental health services for the needy, but it does so without preaching and finger-pointing. It doesn't editorialize; like good music, it just is.
Daniel J. Levitin - Washington Post

Compelling and gruffly tender...Lopez deserves congratulations for being the one person who did not avert his eyes and walk past the grubby man with the violin.
Edward Humes - Los Angeles Times

(Starred review.) Scurrying back to his office one day, Lopez, a columnist for the L.A. Times, is stopped short by the ethereal strains of a violin. Searching for the sound, he spots a homeless man coaxing those beautiful sounds from a battered two-string violin. When the man finishes, Lopez compliments him briefly and rushes off to write about his newfound subject, Nathaniel Ayers, the homeless violinist. Over the next few days, Lopez discovers that Nathaniel was once a promising classical bass student at Juilliard, but that various pressures—including being one of a few African-American students and mounting schizophrenia—caused him to drop out. Enlisting the help of doctors, mental health professionals and professional musicians, Lopez attempts to help Nathaniel move off Skid Row, regain his dignity, develop his musical talent and free himself of the demons induced by the schizophrenia (at one point, Lopez arranges to have Ayers take cello lessons with a cellist from the L.A. Symphony). Throughout, Lopez endures disappointments and setbacks with Nathaniel's case, questions his own motives for helping his friend and acknowledges that Nathaniel has taught him about courage and humanity. With self-effacing humor, fast-paced yet elegant prose and unsparing honesty, Lopez tells an inspiring story of heartbreak and hope.
Publishers Weekly

By turns harrowing, winsome, and inspiring, this work by novelist (In the Clear) and Los Angeles Times columnist Lopez relates the first two years of his friendship with Nathaniel Anthony Ayers. A budding string genius at Juilliard in the early 1970s, Ayers succumbed to paranoid schizophrenia and became homeless, yet he continued to play the violin as a way to keep the demons at bay. With the help of Lopez and others who responded to his columns, Ayers took steps to recovery, residing in a group facility, making trips to Disney Hall for concerts, and achieving the dream of having his own music studio. The tangle of mental health policies and government priorities comes in for a thorough drubbing, as does the callous disregard for students' personal situations at many elite institutions, at least at the time Ayers was enrolled. Lopez's newspaper experience serves him well, and both he and his subject come across as fully developed individuals. A deeply moving story; highly recommended for all collections and of special interest to those dealing with the intersections of music and psychology or therapy.
Library Journal

Los Angeles Times columnist Lopez (In The Clear, 2001, etc.) brings empathy, intelligence and humor to his poignant portrait of a homeless man who once studied at Juilliard. The author first encountered Nathaniel Ayers, a longtime resident of Los Angeles's Skid Row, while en route to work. A Cleveland native who was among a handful of blacks enrolled in Juilliard in the early 1970s, Ayers developed schizophrenia while at the school. After unsuccessful treatment in psychiatric facilities, he landed on the streets of L.A. where, drawn by a statue of Beethoven in a local park, he began to play classical music on a battered violin. Lopez wrote a series of newspaper articles about Ayers that highlighted the plight of the homeless and brought the mentally unstable man donations of numerous violins, a cello and a string bass. Bedraggled and often spewing invectives, Ayers stored the instruments in a shopping cart that he wheeled through town. At night, he fended off sewer rats that scurried across the litter-strewn sidewalk on which he'd slept for years. Outraged, Lopez helped Ayers secure housing in a facility for the homeless and arranged for him to attend concerts at Disney Hall. By the book's end, Ayers has met cellist Yo-Yo Ma, a former classmate at Juilliard. But this is not a feel-good memoir. Determined to understand the evolution of Ayers's illness, Lopez probes his family history, revisits his painful past at Juilliard and seeks advice from mental-health professionals. He also details the myriad complications of forging a bond with a gifted musician whose schizophrenia continues to rage. Energetic prose delivers powerful insights on homelessness and mental illness.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions 
1. When they first meet, Steve looks at Nathaniel as a compelling story for his newspaper, one that has the potential to bring attention to the inhabitants of Los Angeles’s Skid Row. What do you think compels him to continue to take on responsibility for Nathaniel’s wellbeing following the initial article?

2. Although Steve didn’t enter into his relationship with Nathaniel looking for either a friend or a musical teacher, he winds up with both. Discuss how their relationship progressed from writer-subject to the friendship the two men now enjoy. Is there a turning point in their relationship that you can identify? Have you experienced something similar in your own life?

3. Classical music is a much a ‘character’ throughout the book as any of the people. For Nathaniel, the music he plays at times can help to keep his illness at bay. Do you believe that these creative kinds of therapy can ever be a replacement for anti-psychotic drugs? How does Nathaniel’s love of music eventually begin to influence Steve?

4. From their first meeting, Steve and Nathaniel both have an impact on each others’ lives that is almost palpable and touches the lives of the people around them. Discuss the ways in which their relationship becomes not only a catalyst for change in their lives but also the lives of others.

5. Upon visiting Disney Hall for the first time, Nathaniel comments “It’s like a dream. I don’t know if it’s a dream or purgatory (p. 114)”. Steve ruminates upon this comment for a moment, finally accepting it as is. Discuss what you think Nathaniel means by this. Do you think there’s any deeper meaning to it, or do you agree with Steve’s assessment?

6. One of Steve’s goals in the book is to shed light on the homeless situation on Skid Row and the mental health problems that most of the people there suffer, going into some depth regarding different forms of therapy and medication. How do you think families should handle a mentally ill relative? Do you think it is okay to force treatment on a person? Are there any instances that could change your mind?

7. Readers begin to donate instruments and money almost immediately following Steve’s first article. What do you think compels people to help a stranger? Do you believe that people would have been as eager to help Nathaniel had Steve not written about him and his plight? Why or why not? What do you think this says about human nature in general?

8. Nathaniel attended Julliard during the 1960s, when its students were predominately white. How much do you think the pressures of being one of the only African-American students at Julliard contributed to Nathaniel’s breakdown?

9. After Steve’s articles are published, the mayor of Los Angeles visits Skid Row with him to see it firsthand. Discuss whether or not you think he’d have made this visit without Nathaniel’s story as a catalyst. Would a series of articles that simply focused on the homeless in Los Angeles as a group been as effective?

10. On page 139, Nathaniel states “I can’t survive if I can’t hear the orchestra the way I like to hear it.” Do you agree with Steve’s assessment that, in a variety of ways, Nathaniel is freer as a man than most "regular" people? Do you think it’s possible for people to live unfettered by society without living outside of its confines?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
Timothy Egan, 2009
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
324 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780547394602


Summary
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men—college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps—to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them.

Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by and preserved for every citizen. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Born—November 8, 1954
• Where—Seattle, Washington, USA
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize, Journalism (2001); National Book
   Award, Nonfiction; Washington State Book Award (twice)
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington

Timothy Egan is an American Pulitzer Prize winning author who resides in Seattle, Washington. He currently contributes opinion columns to the New York Times as the paper's Pacific Northwest correspondent. In 2001, he won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his contribution to the series "How Race is Lived in America."

In addition to his work with the New York Times, he has written six books, including The Good Rain (Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, 1991), Breaking Blue, and Lasso the Wind.

The Worst Hard Time is his non-fiction account of those who lived through The Great Depression's Dust Bowl, for which he won the 2006 Washington State Book Award in history/biography and a 2006 National Book Award.

In 2009 he wrote The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, which details the Great Fire of 1910 that burned about three million acres (12,000 km²) and helped shape the United States Forest Service. The book also details some of the political issues of the time focusing on Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot. Egan won a second Washington State Book Award in history/biography in 2010 for this work, and a second Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award.

In 2012 Egan published a biography of Western and Native American photographer, Edward Curtis: Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis. (From Wikipedia.)

Also see the extensive interview with Egan and his publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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Book Reviews
Egan weaves his account of the Big Burn with the creation story of the United States Forest Service. This might seem a dull, bureaucratic yarn, but Egan tells it as the stirring tale of a very odd couple: the irrepressible Teddy Roosevelt, who "burned 2,000 calories before noon and drank his coffee with seven lumps of sugar," and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, an ascetic loner who sometimes slept on a wooden pillow and for 20 years mystically clung to his deceased fiancee.
New York Times


In terms of sheer political courage, reforming the American health-care system is but a minor parliamentary maneuver compared to the chutzpah mustered by Teddy Roosevelt in 1907, when he established the national forest system. In one frenzied week, Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, outlined 16 million acres of Western woodland that they felt needed to be preserved.... Egan always writes insightfully about his native region; here he commands the full sweep of characters, from the president on down to the loneliest mining-town drunk. The only off note, in fact, is the book's subtitle, which sells it just a little too hard. Did the Big Burn really "save America"?
Bill Gifford - Washington Post


Muir called Pinchot "someone who could relish, not run from a rainstorm"—a phrase that also describes The Big Burn's narrator. For as long as Egan keeps chasing storms, whether of dust, fire, rain or snow, you'd be smart to ride shotgun.
Los Angeles Times


[Egan] has already proved himself to be a masterly collector of memorable stories. His new book, The Big Burn, continues in the same tradition.... What makes The Big Burn particularly impressive is Egan’s skill as an equal-opportunity storyteller. By this I mean that he recounts the stories of men and women completely unknown to most of us with the same fervor he uses to report the stories of historic figures.... Even as we mark the centennial of this great fire, wildfires in the West continue to burn. It makes this book—which is a masterwork in every sense—worthy of a very careful reading.
Christian Science Monitor


(Starred review.) Egan, National Book Award winner for The Worst Hard Time, spins a tremendous tale of Progressive-era America out of the 1910 blaze that burned across Montana, Idaho and Washington and put the fledgling U.S. Forest Service through a veritable trial by fire. Underfunded, understaffed, unsupported by Congress and President Taft and challenged by the robber barons that Taft's predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, had worked so hard to oppose, the Forest Service was caught unprepared for the immense challenge. Egan shuttles back and forth between the national stage of politics and the conflicting visions of the nation's future, and the personal stories of the men and women who fought and died in the fire: rangers, soldiers, immigrant miners imported from all over the country to help the firefighting effort, prostitutes, railroad engineers and dozens others whose stories are painstakingly recreated from scraps of letters, newspaper articles, firsthand testimony, and Forest Service records. Egan brings a touching humanity to this story of valor and cowardice in the face of a national catastrophe, paying respectful attention to Roosevelt's great dream of conservation and of an America for the little man.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Historians will enjoy Egan’s well-written book, featuring sparkling and dynamic descriptions of the land and people, as a review of Roosevelt’s conservation ideas, while general readers will find his suspenseful account of the fires mesmerizing.
Library Journal


Most reviewers thought that The Big Burn equaled or exceeded Egan's last book in both its prose and its historical synthesis. The majority were impressed by his ability to balance a riveting story with strong characters and an original analysis of the American conservation movement.... [A] fine piece of writing, a powerful history, and a great read.
Bookmarks Magazine

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Discussion Questions
1. This gripping account begins with the fire’s destruction of Wallace, Idaho. What kinds of things make people late to the evacuating train? What would you bring with you if you were allowed only a case small enough to fit on your lap?

2. With so much animosity between Pinchot and Roosevelt’s young Forest Service and the “robber baron” businessmen, what ultimately brings people together to fight the Big Burn of 1910? How does Congress—still controlled by powerful business interests—fail the rangers and citizens of the West after the fire has finished raging?

3. Egan details the childhood and early careers of both Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot in order to give readers a fuller picture of why and how these men came to pioneer conservation as a national value in America. In what ways do Roosevelt’s experiences shape his politics? How do Pinchot’s experiences influence his work as “Big G.P.” of the Forest Service?

4. Roosevelt and Pinchot are very different types of men, and yet they share a passion for the great outdoors. What do Roosevelt and Pinchot have in common? How are they different from one another?

5. Throughout the book, Egan reveals that some powerful men whose hubris and greed would decide the fate of America’s still-untamed West spend time in that region, while others distance themselves both literally and figuratively. Discuss the relationship these men have to the land they all but rule over and the way Egan portrays them.

6. On page 112, Egan quotes Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe as wondering, “Why are you in such a hurry?” He’s referring to the rush of “manifest destiny,” with America’s population exploding from colonies of 2.9 million people to an ocean-to-ocean nation of 91 million. In the first decade of the twentieth century alone, the populations of Idaho and Washington doubled. Discuss the effect this rapid growth has on the young nation—why are they in such a hurry? What does it cost them—and us?

7. In many ways, the battle against the forest fires of 1910 is a war of the disenfranchised. Identify the players and discuss their roles in this epic disaster. Why do you think they answer the call for labor when those with the most at stake—such as the “idle men” of Wallace—do nothing?

8. Gifford Pinchot firmly believed that man could control forest fires, though he’d never seen anything like the Big Burn of 1910 when he published his A Primer of Forestry in 1900. What methods do the rangers and townsfolk use to try to control the fires? What methods do they use to survive?

9. The aftermath of the Big Burn seems like one colossal governmental failure, though some bright spots exist, such as the sea change in many Americans’ opinions about the black “buffalo soldiers” who became heroes in Wallace, Idaho. How does Egan’s portrayal of this seminal moment in American history make you feel? Did it change your mind about anything, or teach you anything new?

10. William H. Taft is portrayed as a complicated man in this book. He idolizes Roosevelt and yet fails to keep his promises to him; on page 246, Egan describes how he publicly attacks T.R. in an effort to save face, but retreats afterward to weep in private. Do you feel any sympathy for Taft? Why or why not?

11. Ten days after the fires die down, infuriated by Taft’s betrayal of his predecessor’s conservation efforts, Teddy Roosevelt takes to the bully pulpit once more to pioneer a “New Nationalism.” What does this term mean to him and to his supporters? Discuss how some of these principles may still be seen alive and well in today’s America and how others have not quite taken hold.

12. In the final chapter of the book, Egan describes the current landscape of what was once several national forests in Montana, Idaho, and Washington. He shares how the Forest Service still carries “the Pulaski” as their prized firefighting tool, and how the great “Milwaukee Road” is now gone, its tracks pulled up and sold for scrap. Towns like Avery, Taft, and Grand Forks are now gone or reduced to wilderness outposts. What effect does this chapter have on you, and what message do you think the author hoped you would come away with?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson, 2011
Simon & Schuster
656 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451648539


Summary
Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination.

He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published.

He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted. Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair.

But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—May 20, 1952
• Where—New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; M.A., Oxford University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—Washington, D.C. area


Walter Isaacson is an American writer and journalist. He was the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. He has been the chairman and CEO of Cable News Network (CNN) and the Managing Editor of Time. He has written biographies of Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Early life and education
Isaacson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Irwin and Betty Lee (Seff) Isaacson. His father was a "kindly Jewish distracted humanist engineer with a reverence for science," and his mother was a real estate broker.

Isaacson graduated from Harvard University in 1974, where he earned an A.B. cum laude in history and literature. He later attended the Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, where he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) and graduated with first-class honors.

Journalism
Isaacson began his career in journalism at The Sunday Times of London, followed by a position with the New Orleans Times-Picayune. He joined Time magazine in 1978, serving as the magazine's political correspondent, national editor, and editor of new media before becoming the magazine's 14th editor in 1996.

Isaacson became chairman and CEO of CNN in July 2001, two months later guided CNN through the events of 9/11. Shortly after his appointment at CNN, Isaacson attracted attention for seeking the views of Republican Party leaders on Capitol Hill regarding criticisms that CNN broadcast content that was unfair to Republicans or conservatives.

He was quoted in Roll Call magazine as saying: "I was trying to reach out to a lot of Republicans who feel that CNN has not been as open to covering Republicans, and I wanted to hear their concerns." The CEO's conduct was criticized by the left-leaning Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) organization, which said that Isaacson's "pandering" behavior was endowing conservative politicians with power over CNN.

In 2003, Isaacson stepped down as president at CNN to become president of the Aspen Institute. Isaacson served as the president and CEO of the Aspen Institute from 2003 until 2017, when he announced that he would leave to become a professor of history at Tulane University and an advisory partner at the New York City financial services firm Perella Weinberg Partners.

Writing
Isaacson is the co-author, with Evan Thomas, of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986). He is the author of Kissinger: A Biography (1992), Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003), Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), and American Sketches (2009).

In 2011, Steve Jobs, Isaacson's authorized biography was published, becoming an international best-seller and breaking all sales records for a biography. The book was based on over forty interviews with Jobs over a two-year period up until shortly before his death, and on conversations with friends, family members, and business rivals of the entrepreneur.

Next came another bestseller, The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014), which explores the history of key technological innovations — notably the parallel developments of the computer and the Internet.

Isaacson's biography, Leonardo da Vinci, came out in 2017 to great fanfare and, even before it's actual publication, became the object of a Hollywood bidding war. Leonardo DiCaprio's production company won the film rights with DiCaprio planning to play the title role of da Vinci.

Government positions
In 2005, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco appointed Isaacson vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority to oversee spending on the recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

In 2007, President George W. Bush appointed him as chairman of the U.S.-Palestinian Partnership, which seeks to create economic and educational opportunities in the Palestinian territories.

He also served as the co-chair of the U.S.-Vietnamese Dialogue on Agent Orange, which in January 2008 announced completion of a project to contain the dioxin left behind by the U.S. at the Da Nang air base and plans to build health centers and a dioxin laboratory in the affected regions.

During the Obama administration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed him vice-chair of the Partners for a New Beginning, which encourages private-sector investments and partnerships in the Muslim world.

In 2009, President Obama appointed him as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which runs Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and the other international broadcasts of the U.S. government; he served until January 2012.

In 2014, he was appointed by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu to be the co-chair of the New Orleans Tricentennial Commission, charged with planning the city's 300th-anniversary commemoration in 2018.

In 2015, he was appointed to the board of My Brother's Keeper Alliance, which seeks to carry out President Obama's anti-poverty and youth opportunity initiatives.

Isaacson is the chairman emeritus of the board of Teach for America.

Honors
Time magazine selected Isaacson in 2012 to be on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Isaacson is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was awarded its 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and an Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.

In 2014, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Isaacson for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. The title of Isaacson's lecture was "The Intersection of the Humanities and the Sciences." (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/3/2017.)

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Book Reviews
[Jobs's] story calls for a book that is clear, elegant and concise enough to qualify as an iBio. Mr. Isaacson's Steve Jobs does its solid best to hit that target…[It] greatly admires its subject. But its most adulatory passages are not about people. Offering a combination of tech criticism and promotional hype, Mr. Isaacson describes the arrival of each new product right down to Mr. Jobs's theatrical introductions and the advertising campaigns. But if the individual bits of hoopla seem excessive, their cumulative effect is staggering. Here is an encyclopedic survey of all that Mr. Jobs accomplished, replete with the passion and excitement that it deserves.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


Isaacson's biography can be read in several ways. It is on the one hand a history of the most exciting time in the age of computers, when the machines first became personal and later, fashionable accessories. It is also a textbook study of the rise and fall and rise of Apple and the brutal clashes that destroyed friendships and careers. And it is a gadget lover's dream, with fabulous, inside accounts of how the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad came into being. But more than anything, Isaacson has crafted a biography of a complicated, peculiar personality—Jobs was charming, loathsome, lovable, obsessive, maddening—and the author shows how Jobs's character was instrumental in shaping some of the greatest technological innovations of our time.
Michael S. Rosenwald - Washington Post

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Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Steve Jobs:

1. Talk about Steve Jobs as a human being, the man beneath the myth and the hype. What kind of person was he—in his private as well as professional life? Jobs told his Isaacson to leave out nothing, to lay bare his flaws. He also told his friends to stint on nothing. Does Isaacson lean too far in any one direction: or does he steer a steady course between Jobs's Jekyll and Hyde?

2. What aspects of Steve Jobs's life disburbed you and /or impressed you most? Did Jobs's dark side overwhelm his good side?

3. Isaacson raises the question of whether feelings of abandonment in childhood shaped Jobs's personality. Is his argument convincing?

4. At the end of the book, Jobs answers the bedeviling question "What drove me?" Do you find his answer satisfying ... thoughtful ... self-serving ... or incomplete?

5. What would Jobs have been like to work with...or for? He was clearly a demanding boss. Was he unfairly so—abrasive and unrealistic in his demands? Or was he simply a strict task master who had a vision to be communicated? How might you have fared as a colleague or employee?

6. What was Steve Jobs's concept of beauty—what was his aesthetic vision? Why were aesthetics such a crucial part of his life?

7. Jobs was eliminated from Apple, the company he founded, and in his absence the company foundered. Why? And when Jobs returned to Apple, he guided its meteoric comeback. Why was Jobs so critical to the company? Why was its performance lackluster without his leadership?

8. How would you characterize Isaacson's book: as an intimate study of a visionary or a treatise on the rise and fall of one of the world's most successful companies? Were your expectations, either way, fulfilled by the book?

9. Can you describe the Reality Distortion Field? What exactly is it, and how did it serve Jobs?

10. Talk about the way in which Jobs wrestled with his contradictions—a counterculture rebel who became a millionaire; a disdain for objects yet someone who shaped others' desires for the products he made? Was he ever able to resolve those dilemmas?

11. Talk about Steve Jobs's legacy. On what do you believe he will he have a lasting impact? How much did he change the landscape—in technology, design, or gadgetry?

12. In his "Think Different" ad, Jobs wanted to convey his belief that the ones who are crazy enough to think they might change the world are the ones who end up doing so. Do you agree? Can you think of other examples of singular individuals whose vision changed the world? Does that statement apply to all of us...or to the very talented few?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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