Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer

     Jon Krakauer is a great writer. I can still distinctly remember my first introduction to the 1996 Everest disaster documented in Krakauer’s book, Into Thin Air. I was camping out at about 7000 ft on Mt. Fuji in Japan with a couple of guys I wouldn’t trust to carry my bag. Instead, I trusted them with my life. We were attempting to climb up Fuji and to ski down. Before you are impressed, Fuji is really just a very tough hike, but the conditions that day didn’t inspire any sort of confidence and at the time I had been skiing about four or five times in my life. As we were huddled in our tent the day before our ascent, a huge thunderstorm broke out and lightning was stabbing down all around us, and those two bums started discussing mountain-climbing.  The story that they told was of the Everest disaster.

     Approximately one year later, I stood in my kitchen deciding to read the first page or so of Into Thin Air and ended up reading the first four chapters without moving. I couldn't stop. I was riveted. The story alone is captivating, but what really did it was the feeling of horror as I saw that I had some of those same desires to conquer mountains that led to all that tragedy. Krakauer brought it all to life for me. His abilities as a writer and the fact that he was a first-hand witness to the disaster and all the minutia that led to the deaths of so many have sealed Into Thin Air as one of my favorite books. It is raw and wonderful.

     I really like Jon Krakauer’s books, and this is one of the reasons that I was so disappointed when I read his latest book, Where Men Win Glory. His writing style is still superb, and there are portions of the book that are completely gripping. Unfortunately, my disappointment lies in Krakauer’s departure from subjects that are intriguing to one that is less so.
     Many people are familiar with the story of Chris McCandless thanks to the recent film based upon Krakauer’s book, Into the Wild. Another of his books, Under the Banner of Heaven, tells the story of a brutal double murder that took place in Utah. In each of these two books, Krakauer excels at asking why. Why would a young man who had recently graduated from an elite university disappear and leave what looked to be a promising future only to be found starved to death in Alaska a couple years later? Why would two brothers kill their sister-in-law and niece and claim that God told them to do it? When he wrote those two books, he managed to tell a very well-researched and informative story that left it up to the reader to make judgments about the people involved. That is fantastic writing.

     However, in this book Krakauer left those things behind. I was expecting more of the same detached story-telling that revealed some of the virtues and shortcomings of Pat Tillman and his decision to join the Army. I knew little of Pat Tillman other than what was in the headlines. He left a NFL career to join the military to fight terror. He was killed sometime later in Afghanistan by what turned out to be friendly fire, and I was aware that there was some fishy business around the incident as well.  Unfortunately, this book isn't really about the complexity of Pat Tillman.  Instead, it is about the shortcomings of the Bush administration and the U.S. Army.  This is a book with an agenda. 

     My dislike isn’t political because I am sure that his story is true in its main points. However, authors don’t know everything and always omit some of what they do know. I live in a region of the world where I hear almost every day how bad Bush and his buddies were, and I am aware that about half of America has similar feelings. Yet, when the author would leave Tillman to talk of Bush, I wanted to scream, “Shut up and tell the story!!!!” I am about 33 years old, and 20 years ago, I quit expecting leadership of any sort to be anything less than seriously flawed. I still complain, but I don’t write books about it. The subject of the failure of government is so unbelievably ragged-out and uninteresting that I am amazed that Krakauer thought it worth his time, and his diversions into the misdeeds of the Bush administration actually detracted from the more interesting story of Pat Tillman and the choices that he made.
     In his research for this book, Krakauer used very few sources.  The family of Pat Tillman, with the exception of his wife, Marie, declined to be interviewed by Krakauer, and this certainly limited his ability to focus on him. This was probably because Tillman’s mother wrote a book on the life of her son.

     To me Krakauer was a unique author. He picked subjects that few people knew anything about and wrote about them with skill using terrific research. After reading this book, I want to ask him, “why?” Why did you leave writing about those things? Why don’t you go back to what you are good at?

     Taken together, the limited research and the tired subject matter, tainted this book throughout. I wish I could edit an abridged version of Where Men Win Glory for my friends because some of sections covering the actual life and death of Tillman and the first few days of the war in Iraq are vintage Krakauer, harrowing. However, until that day, I recommend that you borrow the book if you must read it, or just wait until Reader’s Digest releases a condensed version.  They did with Into Thin Air. 

Jerusalem 1913 by Amy Dockser Marcus

     Jerusalem 1913 is just one of hundreds of books written on the conflicts occurring within Palestine/Israel over the previous century. Amy Knockser Marcus certainly reflects a viewpoint that is unique among the authors of such books with which I am familiar. As an American-born woman residing inside Israel, her take on things  is not different from the thousands of other Americans living in Israel.  However, she is an Israeli with a more moderate perspective who is trying to find a way to even begin building a bridge over the gulf separating Israeli Jews from Palestinian Arabs.  By itself that angle isn't very common, and when it is coupled with her Pulitzer Prize-winning skills as a journalist, an unusual composition is the result.

     Unfortunately, this book was well-written but poorly conceived. She doesn’t really have a clear point. In the book she began by speaking of her interest in exploring the relationships between Jews and Arabs within Palestine under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, but, in the end she tapers off into 'shoulda, coulda, woulda.' Like many others, she maintains that the relationships between them weren’t strained until the appearance of Zionism and nationalist sentiments among both Jews and Arabs.

     Though this book wasn’t incredibly informative or enlightening, there were a few interesting bits. I was saddened by the fact that we as humans are capable of so much self-centeredness. All it takes is a heart hardened to others, and the will to perform what that heart dictates. People on both sides of the conflict were unwilling to compromise their plans and goals in order to accommodate others who didn’t fit their program. Mouths were open, but ears and hearts everywhere were closed. There were twinges of conscience, but ultimately, there was not enough to change matters, and some seemed to get swept along though inside they had grave misgivings. Plenty of people recognized that ultimately war would be the result of their choices, but they were willing to let that be the cost that they (and their children, grandchildren, and so on) would pay.

     Jerusalem 1913 is an easy read, and it is a somewhat beneficial for those well-versed in the issues and realities of the conflict, but it is not a primer. Don’t let it be the first book that you read on the subject.