An Age of Extremes 1880-1917

Book 8 of Joy Hakim's "A History of US", An Age of Extremes is another fine entry in the 10-volume young adult US history set. Even though I like to consider myself quite knowledgeable about history in general and US history in particular, I always uncover new facts when I read these books. Moreover, I gain greater insight on the happenings of the era because of the excellent presentation. I love all of the interesting sidebars, pictures, and diagrams that are included.

This volume covers numerous topics from 1880 to the beginnings of World War I such as the rise of industry, the politics of business vs. government, and inventions galore. We get nice summaries of the major players of the day: tycoons such as Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, or JP Morgan; Presidents like Grant, Hayes, Taft, Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson; and other prominent people who impacted US history like John Roebling, Frank Lloyd Wright, John Muir, William Jennings Bryan, and the Wright Brothers. Of special interest to me, because I like reading about the history of books, were nice summary biographies of L. Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz books, as well as the Muckrakers like Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair, not to mention Sam McClure and his stable of writers: Jack London, Rudyard Kipling, Stephen Crane, and Willa Cather. We bought this set of books for use in our kids' homeschooling effort and they are perfect for that purpose as they bring the history to life. Highly recommended.

The Raiders

We had an early snow/wind storm this morning so I was allowed a two hour delay in coming in to work. That allowed me to finish up The Raiders by Harold Robbins. This is the sequel to the The Carpetbaggers, one of the most successful bestsellers of all time. However, this one was written 34 years after the first one and I can tell you it is not nearly as good.

It is now 1951 and the main character, Jonas Cord ( a Howard Hughes type of tycoon) is under subpoena to appear before a Senate committee about his business practices. So he flees to Mexico where he discovers that he has an illegitimate son by an old girlfriend. The novel becomes as much about the son as it does about the father, especially how the son is becoming just like his father. Along the way, the Cords move into the Las Vegas scene, building hotels and casinos, nudging in on mafia territory. At the same time their Hollywood production studios turns to television production. I wish the story focused on that as well as the father-son relationship but unfortunately, it gets bogged down with numerous lesser characters including their extensive back stories. I did enjoy the cameo appearances by prominant people of the times such as Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Jimmy Hoffa, Che Guevera, Jack Benny, as well as several mobsters that I'm not sure are historical or fictional. But the story really suffers from cardboard Hollywood starlets, cliche'd mobster types, and the never ending sexual escapades of both father and son. Harold Robbins is known for that kind of thing but since The Carpetbaggers contained several well-developed characters, and a good plot, I had hoped for the same thing here.

The only satisfaction I got from the novel is to see what happened to the various characters from the first novel. There was some closure on that and there was a fairly happy ending. All the same, I'm glad this one is behind me.

I was also able to read the last of Harlan Ellison's short stories in the current section of The Essential Ellison. "Strange Wine" was a quick read and concerned a space alien that had been living on Earth as a human. He's had many bad experiences here on Earth, including the death of his daughter, estranged wife, etc...so bad that he commits suicide. But then he wakes up back on his native planet and is reminded of the horrible lives they all lived there. The moral of the story seems to be that if we really think about it, life is good. It was an odd story to me and seemed to be missing something. This isn't the first time that Mr Ellison has made me feel I am not intelligent enough to fully appreciate his writing :) Since this section of this large volume of stories is now complete, I'll turn to a different collection of short stories next.

Next up for novels: I've been feeling the need for some old fashioned fantasy fiction, not necessarily high brow stuff, so I think I will turn to the first of "The Harpers" series, The Parched Sea, by Troy Denning.

The Carpetbaggers

This morning I decided to take a break from my normal morning reading project and instead chose to complete The Carpetbaggers, by Harold Robbins. I did that for two reasons: I wanted to get it wrapped up because I knew I would have time to blog about it today but I also really wanted to see how it ended. Yes, I liked it quite a lot. This is one that I picked up at a used book store years ago, not knowing anything about it. But I do like the time period...an awful lot of things changed in the world between the early 1900s and 1945 when the book ends, and so I made the purchase.

According to my research, at least one source lists this book as the 4th most read novel of all time. I don't know if that is really true but certainly it has been a widely read story for more than 40 years so obviously a lot of people have read it. The book apparently is somewhat notorious, largely for pushing the sexual boundaries of the time, right up to the edge. By today's standards it is relatively tame and, in fact, most of the sexual scenes occur offstage although there is a lot of innuendo. The book is fairly long; my paperback is almost 700 pages long with pretty small print.

The main story takes place over a 20 year period between the World Wars. The main character is a Howard Hughes type tycoon named Jonas Cord with all sorts of business interests but most especially aircraft development and Hollywood pictures. His is mostly a tragic story up until the very end when he finally realizes what makes him happy. It is interesting to note that Harold Robbins knew Howard Hughes fairly well but despite so many similarities to Hughes, Robbins claims the model for the Jonas Cord character was actually Bill Lear (developer of the Lear jet and the 8-track tape player). The backdrop for the novel is absorbing as well; we get to see the roaring 20s, the depression era 30's, the lead up to World War II as well as the war itself; all major impacts on the plot.

The intriguing thing about this book though is not so much the story but rather, how the story is told. It is divided into eight sections: four sections are Jonas Cord's life told in his own first person point of view and the other four sections are devoted to the backstories of four key people who Jonas interacts with during his life. One is a former gunfighter turned stuntman turned star of the silent movie era. One is a Hollywood actress (allegedly based on Jean Harlow). A third is a movie company executive and a fourth is a high-priced courtesan turned movie starlet. We get absorbed in their individual stories; they are very captivating all on their own. And it is really through them that we come to know Jonas himself. When you put the whole thing together you really get a great sense of the characters as well as the era itself. I have to say I really enjoyed the novel a lot more than I expected I would.

I've also completed the next entry in Stephen King's collection, Skeleton Crew. This one was just a short poem though, "For Owen" but unlike most of the other stories in this colllection, this poem was previously unpublished. It is only 34 lines long and concerns Mr King walking his young son to school. His son tells him how the students in the school are like fruit. That's about all I can tell you because as I have mentioned before, I really don't get poetry. I'm sure there are meanings here within deeper meanings but I am simply too obtuse to understand them. Perhaps I am overly sensitive to the poem because as a young student, one of my nicknames was "Banana-Head." Life goes on.

Next up: Undiscovered Gyrl as part of my obligations to the Amazon Vine program.