SWReader 42. USA

Like Ayn Rand, Hayek used his personal experiences to sound the alarm against creeping government take-over of the individual. He disabuses the reader of the falsehood that Communism and Fascism were polar opposites. Both were anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, "planned" economies rooted deeply in Marxism. While intended as a warning primarily to his adopted Great Britain, it's chilling how he accurately foresaw so much of what is currently going on within the United States. My copy is now so heavily underlined and marked-up in the margins it's frightening.

Of course, I had seen the movie time and time and time again, but I had never read the L. Frank Baum book. But I'd read a very interesting essay about how Baum's book, while certainly a children's classic, was actually a political commentary (as many fairy tales actually are). It was about the political battles over the gold standard (the Yellow Brick Road), the "green backs" (Emerald City), and the "Free Silver" movement (Dorothy's silver--not ruby--slippers). The Scarecrow represented farmers, the Tin Man- industry, and the Cowardly Lion, specifically, William Jennings Bryant. Reading this book with the essay in mind, I could easily see the references and symbolism of the late 19th century era. But I also found myself transported into the magical fantasy world Baum has enchanted so many children.

A back cover blurb touts Pope Bock's "Charlatan" as in the same league as Erik Larsen's "The Devil in the White City". I beg to disagree. Good information when he sticks to Brinkley and Fishbein. But when he tries to describe the times, it falls apart. Larsen has a unique talent for pulling seemingly unrelated historical/cultural details into his narratives of the people he writes about, which serves to present rich settings for the events. Brock just seems to toss things in randomly. The result is an uneven and disjointed at times.

It took me a bit to get into this book. I don't read much fiction, and it started out feeling a bit too "fluff" for my usual tastes. But soon I was hooked. It also shed light on an aspect of an historical era I thought I knew pretty well, but had never heard about the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands. I've got to learn more about this . . .

The best and most up-to-date book on New Mexican ghost towns I've yet to run across. Only a couple of quibbles--I would've included Datil, Pie Town, Old Horse Springs, and Palvadera. And according to a recent (this past summer) trip to Elizabeth Town, Dawson was completely bull-dozed years ago. Of course, maybe this hadn't happened as of 2003 publication.