Fourteen years ago when I was a junior at Willamette University I took the course Nonviolent Activism and Peace.  To graduate we had to take two integrated studies courses: a 100-level ISA course and a 400-level ISB course.  For the ISA, I took World Views with all the other freshmen during the fall semester of my freshman year.  Its focus would change every 4-5 years and that year the focus was Latin America.  I wrote my first and one of my only A+ papers on the book The House of the Spirits for that course.  I also made friends with whom I’ve kept in contact, one of whom introduced me to my future wife.  For the 400-level ISB course, we had many different options.  I chose Nonviolent Activism and Peace because my adviser, a mathematics professor, taught it.  I had enjoyed taking the math courses Logic and Proof and Sequences and Series from him during spring semester freshman year.  For this ISB course he had us read many photocopied articles along with the textbooks.  Class time was spent discussing the readings.  I had a tough time with the discussions that other students more versed in the social sciences tended to dominate.  The readings ranged from historical figures such as Frederick Douglas to early activists such as Dorothy Day and Gandhi to more recent ones such as Elise Boulding who actually visited our class.  We had other visitors such as Jesuit Volunteers and we had to write a few long papers for the class.

One reading that struck me as particularly profound consisted of chapters 1, 4, and 5 of the book Love in Action by Thich Nhat Hanh who my adviser described as a “socially conscious Buddhist”.  Hanh presented the idea that world peace begins within each of us: peace in our hearts and mindfulness of our actions.  After the semester ended I wanted to explore Hanh’s ideas further so I bought and read his book Peace is Every Step.  It further fleshed out his concepts of taking refuge in the present moment, mindful breathing, and acknowledging and taking care of the negative emotions to turn them into positive ones.  Thich Nhat Hanh is a Buddhist monk from Vietnam.  He gained prominence during the 1960’s for his non-violent activism against the Vietnam War.  Martin Luther King Jr. nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.  He was exiled from Vietnam in the 1960’s and since then has lived in his community of practice, Plumb Village, in France.  He wasn’t able to visit Vietnam until 2005.

In January 2004 I was having a stressful time.  While reading the L.A. Times I saw an ad saying that Thich Nhat Hanh was going to speak at the Bren Events Center at UC Irvine within the next couple of weeks.  I got a ticket, though I don’t remember if it was through Ticketmaster or online.  I think it was will call.  I drove down there and I remember that all the chairs for the audience were folding chairs and the first person to take the stage was someone from UCI, I believe.  She mentioned our newly elected governor and there was a smattering of laughter.  The Governator had just been elected the year before.  The UCI official spoke with an accent and when she said “California”, she sounded similar to how the Governator says it generating more giggles from the audience.

Thich Nhat Hanh took the stage along with a contingent of monks and nuns from his order (the Order of Interbeing) dressed as he was in dark red robes.  I could only tell which one was him from the photos I had seen of him earlier.  One of the nuns introduced him and she described how some people who had his books, tapes, or CD’s would accidentally leave them in their apartment after moving out.  The new tenants would find the books, tapes, or CD’s and feel so happy and lucky for finding them.  I don’t remember a lot of what Thich Nhat Hanh said because much of it gets mixed up with what I’ve read of his before and since then.  I remember how they rang a gentle bell periodically and everyone would stop, breathe slowly, and refocus.  Thich Nhat Hanh talked for a little over an hour and then answered questions for half an hour.  One of the nuns translated the questions because, even though he spoke English, he needed some help understanding others.  When answering one question he used the analogy that if one of his hands accidentally hurt another one hammering a nail, the unhurt hand would try to soothe and help the hurt hand.  The hurt hand wouldn’t seek vengeance on the unhurt hand because they’re part of the same body.  His point was that we should treat each other the same way.  What I remember most about the talk was how calm it was.  Usually when I attend an event with crowds of people such as a concert, it’s stressful getting there, waiting in line, finding a seat, and sometimes dealing with rude people.  It usually gets more fun after the performance begins but it never really calms down.  But for Thich Nhat Hanh’s talk, the crowd wasn’t loud and unruly and everyone calmly took their seats.  Thich Nhat Hanh’s tone, more than his words, calmed me down.  Afterward I picked up a catalog and a brochure.  From the brochure I learned that Thich Nhat Hanh’s order has a monastery in Escondido, CA near San Diego called Deer Park so he comes to Southern California fairly often.

With the catalog I ordered one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s CDs, a recording of him giving a talk called “Truly Seeing”.  The two CDs focus on the idea of impermanence and non-duality.  He uses the example of how a pretty flower will eventually become garbage (in his words “on its way to the garbage”) and that garbage is “on its way to the flower”.  The CDs also contain a humorous but sympathetic and insightful story about a man with a mental illness who believes he is a grain of corn.  It also emphasizes taking refuge in the present moment (e.g. eat breakfast in order to eat breakfast and not to have energy for the day) and mindful living.  I’ve listened to the CDs many times, usually in the car when I have to drive a long distance by myself.  I’ve one of his earlier books, Being Peace, that repeats many of his ideas, and listened to his book (not read by him but by an English actor, Ken McCloud, I believe), No Death No Fear.  Among other repeated ideas, the latter book describes how our lives run “vertically” from birth to old age and how we also live “horizontally” through how we affect other people and the world around us.  I don’t subscribe to all of his ideas and many seem a bit “New Agey” but I find some of them comforting.

At the beginning of this year it was suggested to me that I needed to lower my stress level.  I thought listening to another talk by Thich Nhat Hanh would help me with that.  My wife had a gift certificate for Borders Digital Audiobooks.  I looked up whether they had a talk called The Present Moment.  They did but it cost over $70 which we couldn’t afford even with the gift certificate.  There were several audiobooks by him but not narrated by him but rather by English actors such as Michael York.  The less expensive ones tended to be short, only 2-3 CDs.  But there was one 5-CD book that was also less expensive.  It was a newer book written and recorded in 2007-2008 called The Art of Power.  I had some reservations because I thought it would be about foreign policy rather than peace in one’s daily life.  But reading some reviews assured me that it did contain the usual themes only this time applied to the workplace.

We downloaded the book from the Borders Digital Audiobooks website and loaded it onto the Sansa Clip.  I listened to it over the course of 2-3 months usually while I was folding clothes or riding home on the train.  It does re-emphasize many of Thich Nhat Hanh’s main ideas: deep conscious breathing, meditation, walking meditation, living in the present moment, practicing mindful living.  The book applies these ideas to more modern, everyday work situations.  It describes how office workers program a “bell” into their computers to remind them to breathe clear their minds.  It mentions how one worker’s only time to herself was when she was walking between the buildings so she would practice walking meditation, focusing on each of her steps, breathing, and paying attention to what she saw along the way.

The book using more modern day examples to illustrate concepts.  It describes how going from a negative to a positive environment is like first listening to a CD of music you don’t like, taking it out and playing a CD of music you like.  The book mentions how there are so many devices that allow us to do many things at the same time but insists that we’re happier and more productive when we’re only focused on one thing at a time.  We tend to over-think things.  Often we’re in one place while our mind is in another.  We’re with our loved ones but we’re not really “there” for them.  In addition to modern examples the book cites examples from the story of the Buddha and from things going on at Plumb Village.

Some of the book seems to be addressing bosses and managers at companies, insisting that they respect their employees, get to know them, and treat them fairly.  Pretty obvious stuff but still important to emphasize.  The book also insists on getting proper rest, having the right work-life balance, and being mindful of whether you work is making a positive or negative difference.  Parts of the book address politicians and leaders about using their power responsibly, how true power comes from respect and understanding and not from being feared.

But the book covers more than just work and politics.  It addresses family, relationships, mental and physical peace of mind, all familiar themes since they are connected to work and power.  The last section of the book is a history and profile of the outdoor clothing company Patagonia written by its founder, Yvon Chouinard, as an example of a company that models many of the concepts in the book.  At Patagonia they allow employees to take time off without much advance notice.  They have onsite childcare facilities.  They don’t just try to make their profits grow, but do so responsibly.  I didn’t know that 100% cotton is actually 70% cotton and 30% chemicals including formaldehyde.  At Patagonia they look for ways to be environmentally responsible.  They also encourage their employees’ creativity.  It sounds like a great place to work though I bet it’s difficult to get a job there.

I liked the parts of the book about managing work stress, how rest and time away can lead to better focus and productivity and the parts about living in the moment that I’ve always found comforting.  It seems like each of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books applies his ideas in different contexts: Being Peace in general, Peace is Every Step in the home, No Death No Fear to mortality, and The Art of Power to work and leadership.  He has written many other books and it may be interesting to learn how they apply the concepts.

I heard about this one when I saw on a social networking site that it was one of my professor’s favorite books.  This was before I had his class and I shared some of his tastes in music, movies, and other books (e.g. Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist).  My opinion of him lowered after taking the class, but I remembered his choices and I decided to give Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZATAOMM) a try when I saw it was part of the limited audiobook collection at the Covina Library.  I needed something to get me through some cleaning chores.  ZATAOMM has a weird title but I read an excerpt and it seemed like an uplifting journey of self-discovery similar to The Alchemist.

My impression wasn’t entirely correct, however.  It is about a journey and about self-discovery, but not so much uplifting.  It jumps around between an account of the author’s cross country motorcycle trip, his descriptions of how he maintains his motorcycle, and his expounding on philosophy.  There isn’t much organization and a lot of digressing making it hard to follow.  I have no doubts about his high intelligence but can’t say that about his clarity.  With the word “zen” in the title I expected more about unity, calm, acceptance, and non-duality.  But the book seems to focus more on conflicts, divisions, categories, and differences.  He explains how his approach differs from his travelling companions.  He mentions his philosophy as actually someone else’s, an enigmatic figure he calls Phædras, who turns out to be an earlier alternate personality of his own.  I learned this through Internet research.  I found everything just too bizarre and disconcerting, insightful, but not the kind of insights I wanted to explore.

I made it through the first 3 of the 13 CD’s that comprised the audiobook.  I estimated that to be about 100 pages (the print copies of the book range from 380-449 pages), well above the rule of fifty.  I learned the rule of fifty from Nancy Pearl, a retired library and author from Seattle.  She wrote a book called Book Lust that suggests books for reading by many categories.  Book Lust also describes the “The rule of fifty” that state that “if you’re fifty years old or younger, give every book about fifty pages before you decide to commit yourself to reading it, or give it up.  If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100–the result is the number of pages you should read before deciding.”  Based on the rule, I’m giving up on ZATAOMM.  I’ll leave the Zen to the Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights and the art of motorcycle maintenance to the Harley Davidson store in West Covina.

My wife downloaded the audiobook version of Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer from Borders.com for free.  They were doing some kind of promotion.  The book consists of six CD-length sections each over one hour long.  She saved it onto our Sansa Clip MP3 player so I could listen to it.

Into the Wild tells the true story of ill-fated wanderer Chris McCandless (A.K.A. Alexander Supertramp), a story made famous by this book, the article in Outside magazine also written by Krakauer that preceded it, and the film version of the story directed by Sean Penn and starring Emile Hirsch that came out last year.  I had actually read the print version of the book about 10 years ago.  I remember finding the story somewhat depressing.  Last year I saw the movie version originally because it featured Alaska but I actually enjoyed it very much.  My wife’s downloading of the audiobook gave me a chance to give the book another try.  Maybe I’d like it better since I enjoyed the movie.  I felt it might also help put the events in the movie in better context with the true story.

While the movie switches between two parallel storylines (McCandless’s/ Supertramp’s time in Alaska and his wanderings through the contiguous U.S.) the book follows a much more haphazard path.  It begins with what’s actually the end of the story, goes back to the beginning, goes through much of the wanderings south of Alaska, switches to his background and family and eventually works its way back to the end.  After reading it, I felt I got the whole story and some good background info.  The order might coincide with how the story grew as Krakauer did his research, conducted interviews, and travelled to the places mentioned.  However, the book doesn’t quite give a sense of the order in which events took place.

Every chapter begins with a quote, usually a passage that McCandless/Supertramp had underlined or highlighted in one of his books.  Some of these quotes were included as dialogue in the movie.  They’re mostly quotes about nature, philosophy, and other beliefs that motivated the wandering.  They include passages from Jack London and Thoreau.  Some quotes get very deep and detailed sometimes making them difficult to follow when listened to on an audiobook.  One quote that did not appear at the beginning of a chapter but in one of McCandless’s letters struck a chord with me.  I’m not sure if it’s his original quote or if he got it from somewhere else.  It goes, “Nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.”  I found this quote oddly comforting.

As expected, the book includes a lot of content not presented in the film.  It goes through all the doubling back in the wanderings.  It mentions the more mundane times such as him working at an Italian restaurant in Nevada for a few months.  The film actually portrays fewer than half of his travels and it overemphasizes ones that actually weren’t so significant.  The book mentions that McCandless went to Los Angeles to “get an ID.”  The movie has him spending a couple of days there wandering the streets, trying to get a bed at a homeless shelter, and imagining his life if he hadn’t chosen to reject society.  That’s just Hollywood building up events it feels are more interesting to the audience but it makes for a very different story.  What’s really interesting is that some of the actual events that were very exciting in the book were given less emphasis in the film such as McCandless’s journey down the Colorado River through Mexico.

The book provides more information about McCandless’s background and family.  The dysfunctional situations were a bit more subtle and complicated than how they were portrayed in the film.  There’s also more information about the aftermath such as his family’s and friends’ reactions and the public’s reaction.  Krakauer provides many of his own reactions and opinions.  He states very early in the book that his account is biased and he espouses many of his own theories on events and what motivated McCandless.  Much of what Krakauer learned came from McCandless’s journals and photos taken during his wanderings.  Other information is from interviews with family and friends and people McCandless met along the way.  There are some time periods for which Krakauer had no information requiring him to speculate.  As for McCandless’s motivations, Krakauer tries to paint the most favorable portrayal, however biased.  He notes that many people, especially Alaskans, disagree with him.  I disagree with some of his options but I think this is because Krakauer can relate to McCandless better than I can.

The book includes a chapter about other wanderers similar to McCandless.  Everett Reuss wandered the Southwestern U.S. in the 1930’s.  John Waterman made solo climbs of many peaks in northern and central Alaska sometimes with minimal equipment.  Krakauer notes the similarities and differences.  He seems to equate McCandless most closely with Reuss.  These other wanderers, explorers, and eccentrics underscore that McCandless is not wholly unique.

Another chapter details Krakauer’s own perilous solo adventure.  When he was 23 years old he travelled on the cheap to Petersburg, Alaska to climb the dangerous face of a mountain known as Devil’s Thumb.  He had many setbacks and endured very dangerous ice climbs and harsh weather.  His journey was similar to McCandless in that it was fraught with danger, he went solo and was young and brash.  It differed in that he didn’t try to subsist off the land and he wasn’t as motivated by intellectual philosophies and thinking.  I was impressed with the detail of his account.  It was like I was right there with him.  The rest of the book never gets as detailed, but then, it’s not all about him.  I can understand the connection he felt with McCandless.

I’ve never felt as close a connection, especially when I first read the book 10 years ago.  My life followed a very different course from McCandless’s.  While he went from suburban Washington D.C. to Atlanta, GA to wandering the American West to the Alaskan wilderness, mine went from Juneau, Alaska to Salem, OR to Seattle, WA to Los Angeles, CA when I was nearly the same ages.  It’s like he tried to work his way out of society while I worked my way into it.  There are many differences and our motivations clearly differed but I believe we both sought our own desired adventures (in my case, still seeking).  I can relate to some of his gripes about society and the desire for adventure, but I could never understand the extremes to which he took himself despite Krakauer’s strong opinions and Sean Penn’s Hollywood magic.

The audiobook is read by Phillip Franklin who does a great job as the “voice” of Krakauer.  When quoting McCandless he makes his voice sound more carefree and exciting, embodying his youthful exuberance.  Overall, Krakauer did a great job writing the book.  In some ways, it’s just as much his story of trying to learn about and understand McCandless.  All readers should keep this in mind.  I didn’t really like the last chapter where Krakauer seems to go overboard in his justification but I understand what he’s trying to do.  McCandless probably never would have been this famous or even known to me if his story turned out differently.  He probably still wouldn’t have been so well-known if it wasn’t for Krakauer and, much later, Sean Penn.  What’s really ironic (and been noted by others) is that McCandless probably never would have wanted this fame.

To anyone mildly interested in the story, I recommended seeing the film before reading the book.  Keep in mind that it’s “inspired by” and not 100% based on the true story.  I should also warn that, despite being made by Hollywood, it does not have a Hollywood ending.  I probably would not have enjoyed the movie as much if I hadn’t already known this.  Then, if you’re interested in more background, check out the book.  Again, view it as someone else’s (i.e. Krakauer’s) interpretation and don’t accept everything he says and justifies without thorough consideration.  I try to focus on what I find most interesting and relatable, though that isn’t everything.  I wouldn’t call the story inspiring.  I found other stories of survival inspiring such as Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado.  But McCandless, Krakauer, and Penn were able to bring a good story out of the wild.

Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama’s Plan to Renew America’s Promise is a book recently released by Barack Obama’s campaign for president that lays out what he plans to do if elected.  The foreword to the book is by Barack Obama himself.  We got the audio version of the book from the Castleton Square Mall in Indianapolis.  The reader is Andre Blake who does a great job.  He reads passionately and when quoting from Obama’s speeches, he ratchets up the enthusiasm.  He also does a good job reciting the transcripts of some of Obama’s speeches in the last chapters as if he (Andre Blake) is giving the speeches.

The book covers many issues ranging from the economy to healthcare, education, foreign policy, energy independence, and government ethics.  It details how Obama will address these issues and often prefaces statements with “As president, Barack Obama will . . . “  Each chapter begins with a quote from one of Obama’s speeches and covers one major issue or group of related issues.  I found the ordering of the issues by chapter a bit haphazard with the book sometimes switching between foreign and domestic or economic and social issues.  I can’t think of a major issue that the book may have skipped.  It even addresses infrastructure and the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

The scope of the issues covered by the book is appropriately comprehensive but the degree of depth in which each issue is covered varies.  When addressing government ethics, the book presents some good, practical ideas such as making important cabinet and government meetings viewable by the public via the Internet.  The section on families reveals a thorough understanding of what single-parent families go through.  Obama should know since he came from one, though he acknowledges that he was luckier than most since his grandparents played a very active role in raising him.  However, coverage of healthcare and education are a bit vague.  For the former the book describes how the plan will allow those that are satisfied with their coverage to keep it at a lower cost and those dissatisfied or lacking coverage to be given a choice of programs similar to what members of Congress get.  Well, what do members of congress get?  If the plan is “similar to” but not “the same as” then what are the differences?  Do members of Congress pay coinsurance or copayments and will the plan also require them?  The book also mentions reducing medical errors and making the process more efficient but it doesn’t say how.

I’m also not 100% satisfied with how the book addresses education.  It says that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) needs to be “fixed” rather than replaced, how testing needs to be “improved” and “good” teachers rewarded.  It doesn’t go into much more detail than that.  I prefer Hillary Clinton’s statement that she would end NCLB because it turns students into “little test takers”.  But I do like how the book repeatedly says that parents should turn off the TV and the video games and have their children open a book once in a while.

The book isn’t just about what Obama plans to do for America.  It also urges Americans to act.  In addition to urging parents to help their children study, it urges people to participate in national service whether through the military, volunteering, or other methods.  Real change requires contributions from everyone, not just the Federal Government.  A more general discussion describes how the American way used to be if you worked hard you could achieve success.  But that’s changed and not because of the American people and not because of some accident beyond our control but because of misguided leadership and interests other than those of most Americans influencing government.  Obama’s plan is to restore the American way.

Most of Obama’s plans require more government spending.  The book mentions increasing the size of the military to reduce deployment time lengths, expanding AmeriCorps, investing in renewable energies, and giving schools the resources they need to satisfy the NCLB requirements.  It also describes keeping taxes the same for those making moderate incomes, and giving them family tax credits.  These actions will not add revenue.  But tax cuts for the rich will be eliminated along with breaks for large corporations and the tax incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas.  Will that be enough to pay for all the new and expanded programs?  It’s not clear from the book.  I almost wish the book included a rough budget proposal to show how everything will balance out.

The last chapters of the book consist of eight speeches by Obama including the announcement of his candidacy, his win in Iowa, loss in New Hampshire, response to the Reverent Wright’s comments, and a speech delivered in Berlin, Germany about international relations.  The speeches repeat many of the points made earlier in the book.  They include statements more applicable to the topics of the speeches (eg. Reverend Wright) and statements of personal experience (e.g. his grandparents’ raising him).  They’re all very long speeches read clearly and passionately by Andre Blake.  Some almost seem dated given how many things have happened in this past year alone.

Overall, the book gave me a slightly more favorable impression of Obama’s candidacy.  My doubts about it were mostly confirmed but some things impressed me such as increasing transparency of government, supporting dads who pay child support, and helping families.  I’ll be paying attention to the debates in the next couple of weeks and maybe do some more research to determine what kind of change I can believe in.

I needed an audiobook to accompany me on a long drive home from West L.A and I also wanted to get some more chores done.  Since I happened to be in the Science and Technology section of the Los Angeles Central Library for other reasons, I grabbed an audiobook from there that looked promising.  After the last audiobook I listened to (see the review of On the Beach), I wanted something more uplifting.  I was already familiar with James Herriot’s books because I used to watch the BBC TV series “All Creatures Great and Small” with my parents on public TV in Alaska.  I found the show humorous, though some may call it fuddy-duddy.  It combined light humor with some drama and fairly accurate depictions of veterinary science.  The show was based on the book of the same name along with 2-3 other books by James Herriot including All Things Bright and Beautiful.

When I checked out the book I thought it was the first in the series.  It’s actually the second, but order really doesn’t matter much since every 1-2 chapters is more or less an independent vignette.  They’re based on James Herriot’s real life experiences as a veterinarian in the Yorkshire countryside of England during the early 1940’s.  Along with his partner in practice and his partner’s younger brother, Herriot mostly treats farm animals: cattle, horses, sheep, and pigs; though he also works with family pets such as dogs, cats, and a bird in one case.  Subplots include flashbacks of him awkwardly wooing his future wife, his more present adjusting to life as a newlywed, and his partner’s younger brother, who is a student in veterinary science, behaving mischievously.  Nearly all the vignettes end happily.  Most are humorous and a few are laugh-out-loud funny.  Herriot goes into great scientific and graphic detail about his work that almost made me queasy.  But his remarks about how much veterinary science has progressed between the 1940’s and the 1970’s when he wrote the book are interesting.

Most interesting are the people with whom Herriot interacts: the farmers, the pet owners, and some of the other vets.  Some farmers are so old-fashion they don’t believe in telephones.  They have their own traditional names for animal ailments that Herriot must learn in order to work with them.  The pet owners can be very eccentric such as this woman who owns dozens of cats.  One of Herriot’s vet colleagues always takes him out for drinks after doing difficult surgery and Herriot always drinks too much under pressure of the hospitality.  The actor reading the book, Christopher Timothy, does a great job with all the English countryside accents and he captures the emotions and sets the scene of each episode.  Timothy portrayed Herriot on the TV series so he has a strong connection with him.

I found the book to be a nice change from the previous one.  It helped me on my long drive home through traffic and helped get some chores done.  I recognized many of the vignettes from the storylines of the TV series, though not all of them made it to TV.  There are some differences between the characters in the book and the TV series such as their ages and their descriptions and portrayals.  The TV show focuses more on an ensemble of characters while the book is told entirely from Herriot’s point of view.  All the happy endings may make it a bit sappy and the vintage setting may seem fuddy-duddy but sometimes that’s what I need.

Our shower needed cleaning and I couldn’t do such a tedious chore without something to listen to.  The selection of audiobooks at the Covina Public Library is limited at best.  I’d already listened to all their John Steinbeck and the other authors I preferred.  They did have On the Beach by Nevil Shute that had potential.  My mom had recommended another book by Shute called Round the Bend and I’ve enjoyed most of my mom’s recommendations.  However, they did not have Round the Bend as an audio book, only On the Beach that, from the text on its case, seemed like a depressing story.  But I needed an audiobook and the choices were few so I decided not to “judge it by its cover” and give it a try.

Initially, I wasn’t disappointed.  It was about what the jacket described:  life in Australia after World War III has wiped out everyone in the Northern Hemisphere.  Shute wrote the original edition of the book in the 1950’s.  Despite its bleak setting, the story seemed strangely upbeat.  The characters had altered their lives around the major changes in the world.  They didn’t have petrol so they used horses and electric trams for transport.  They got food directly from dairies and farmers rather than from supermarkets.  Many people still had jobs.  Scientists predicted that the radiation from World War III would eventually spread south wiping out the whole population but that was several months away.  All the characters’ civility under the circumstances impressed me.  I would think that if people knew the end of the world was coming they would be living it up to excess, that there would be looting, rioting, and other lawlessness as society broke down.  Maybe people would go to great lengths to preserve the normalcy in their lives.  Or it could just be that people acted more civil in the 1950’s or people in Australia are more civil than in other countries.

The story centers around four main characters, three Australians and one American who happened to be in the southern hemisphere during World War III.  They all play different roles and have different ways of dealing with their world.  The two male main characters are naval officers who are still bound to serve the remnants of their branch of service.  Their mission takes them into the northern hemisphere and they learn more about the effects of the latest world war.  They are some mysteries to investigate and some possibilities for longer term survival.  They go to places in the Pacific Northwest with which I am familiar such as Seattle, Edmonds, and Bremerton.  All four characters develop and change as the months move closer to the predicted inevitable.  The book also introduces some minor characters.

Though the characters develop, the story doesn’t stray much from the course laid out at the beginning.  It’s more of a “slice of life” story than a plot-driven tale and the author picked a rather depressing life to slice.  Again, all the characters seem to face it with surprising civility perhaps to emphasize humanity’s best succumbing to a fate brought about by its worst.  The title, “On the Beach” doesn’t seem to have much significance other than it’s used often in the story.  We have to consider the time period during which Shute wrote it.  The Cold War and the Atomic age were both in full swing and the threat of nuclear war was very real.  The book was popular in the 1950’s.  Hollywood produced a movie of it starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner.  Some believe the book was responsible for the U.S. signing the treating abolishing above-ground nuclear tests.

On a personal note, the book made cleaning the shower less tedious and it also helped me get a couple of other chores done.  The recorded reader does a good job switching between the American and Australian accents and between the male and female voices.  I’d recommend the book to students studying the early Cold War and anyone with an interest in post-apocalyptic science fiction.