THE POWER BROKER by Robert Caro
During his presidency, Donald Trump popularized the idea of the "deep state," a cadre of unelected bureaucrats who do all the real governing and stymie any attempts by elected leaders to subvert their efforts. Some embraced the idea, others dismissed it as a conspiracy theory, still others believed the truth was probably somewhere in between.
In New York City, from 1927 to 1968, Robert Moses was the Deep State personified. Never once elected to office—not for lack of trying—Moses acquired and consolidated power through a host of appointed positions until he was the de facto czar of the city. Nothing was built in NYC for 4 decades without his approval, and the success of every mayor largely depended on their relationship with him. Ostensibly an urban planner and parks commissioner, Moses ruled the city with an iron fist.
The Power Broker is Robert Caro's now-legendary biography of Moses, an exhaustive account of the man's rise and fall and an explanation of why New York City is laid out the way it is. Told with both a writer's flair for the dramatic and a journalist's thirst for evidence, The Power Broker did more than anything to make the general public aware of Moses, forever shaping his legacy.
The verdict? In Caro's telling, Moses must be admired for his ability to Get Things Done, building at a rate unmatched before or since. But his methods, his narrow-minded vision (for example, he was so fixated on building highways that he essentially ruined the city's public transportation), and his disregard for the poor ultimately make him feel like a supervillain as you read The Power Broker. Year after year, Moses wielded incomparable power in the city, and year after year people suffered so that another bridge, another highway, and another park could go up.
Plowing through The Power Broker is a herculean feat for a reader—not only is it long, but in places it's pretty dense, especially for those (like me) who are not native New Yorkers. But admiration for Caro's airtight research typically overpowers any threat of boredom or overwhelm, and Caro has a gift for balancing the more tedious sections of the book with juicy conflicts, such as Moses' Dickensian relationship with his brother Paul. This book not only won Caro the Pulitzer Prize, it gave him the credibility to write his multivolume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, arguably the finest historical writing of the last 50 years. Any student of history owes it to themselves to read The Power Broker—it lives up to the hype.
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY by Roald Dahl
CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR by Roald Dahl
My big kids have officially hit the ages where we've moved from picture books to chapter books for bedtime reading. So this month, following a successful showing of 1971's Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I decided to introduce them to the classic book it's based on. And then after they liked it, it was on to the sequel!
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the whimsical story of a poor boy's tour through the most magical candy factory imaginable. When the factory's owner, the enigmatic Willie Wonka, issues invitations for a few lucky individuals to tour his heretofore secret abode, the destitute Charlie Bucket is one of the lucky winners. But when the tour begins, he sees that Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory is more than anyone bargained for, a "world of pure imagination," as the movie puts it—and, for children with hearts less pure than his, danger.
If you've seen the original film (the less said about the 2005 Johnny Depp version, the better), you've got a good idea of the story beats; the movie's a pretty faithful adaptation. Like all Roald Dahl books, this one is brimming with imagination, along with just a hint of menace. It's a classic for a reason.
I wish I could say the same of the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, an ill-conceived, tedious story that only occasionally hints at the magic of its predecessor. Picking up right where the previous book left off, it hurtles Charlie, Wonka, and the entire Bucket family into space aboard Wonka's magical glass elevator, where they encounter everything from aliens to a a giant space hotel to the President of the United States (via telephone). Where the first book is silly in a charming way, this one is just kind of dumb, aiming for laughs and usually falling short. Things get better when they finally return to the chocolate factory for a few chapters of aging and de-aging the grandparents with Wonka-Vite and Vita-Wonk, but by that point I was mostly just counting down to the end.
While one of these books was much better than the other, both proved that Roald Dahl remains a read-aloud favorite for good reason. The kids were begging for "more Charlie" every night, and that did their reader dad's heart good!
EAST OF WEST VOL. 1-10 by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta
While I read most of this series
back in 2017, it hadn't reached its conclusion yet at that point, and I'd always wondered how Hickman and Dragotta managed to tie up the loose ends in those last dozen issues. So, at a rate of 2 issues per day, I spent most of the month in the dystopian world of the Chosen, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the dystopian sci-fi Western version of America they inhabit.
Here comes the summary, and buckle up— as usual for a Jonathan Hickman project, it's a lot. The world we are given is one in which the United States is divided into 6 dueling nations: the Union, the Confederacy, the Republic of Texas, the PRA (a Maoist nation of Chinese exiles), the Endless Nation (Native Americans), and the Kingdom of New Orleans. Each of these nations has a representative who believes in the Message, an apocryphal text building upon the Book of Revelation that prophesies how the end of the world will come. The Chosen serve the Horsemen of the Apocalypse...or at least three of them. The problem is that Death, one of those Horsemen, long ago married and had a child with one of the Chosen and is now at odds with the followers of the Message, including his fellow Horsemen. He and his son, the Beast of the Apocalypse, now seek to avert the end of the world that everyone else is seeking to bring about.
If that was a lot to take in, know that it was equally hard to summarize. But here's what matters: East of West mixes the aesthetic of a spaghetti western with sci-fi, adds in some Game of Thrones-style palace intrigue, and tosses in biblical prophecy for a ride as thrilling as it is complex. The cast of characters is large and compelling, the twists are unexpected and exciting, and the dynamic art is a perfect match for the story.
East of West is the kind of story independent comics ought to be telling, one so visual that it wouldn't work in prose but so driven by words that it would lose something onscreen. If you miss watching Game of Thrones, this would make a great replacement.
SUPERGIRL: WOMAN OF TOMORROW by Tom King and Bilquis Evely
When a young girl's father is murdered, she vows revenge on the killer and dedicates her life to that pursuit. When Kara Zor-El's dog Krypto is kidnapped by that same murderer, she joins the girl in her quest. And as the two make their way across the universe together, they both learn a little something about trauma, purpose, and hope.
Longtime readers of this log will not be surprised to hear that I liked a Tom King series; in my opinion he's the best writer in comics today (and when he's on his A game, I don't think it's particularly close.) But this story is notable for the way King moves away from certain devices that, by his own admission, had started to become crutches—there are no 9-panel grids here, no art by Mitch Gerards, no confessionals to camera. Indeed, at a surface level this is a pretty straightforward action-adventure story, a simple revenge quest.
But beneath the surface, King is doing some of the best character work of his career, sharing a story that effectively differentiates Kara from her famous cousin, showing her to be a tougher, more traumatized, less pristine hero than Kal without diminishing her in any way. With young Ruthye as the tale's narrator, the reader is kept at a remove from Kara, meaning we pick up on these things through story rather than inner monologue. And Ruthye herself evolves as the story progresses, with Supergirl's heroic influence building on her issue by issue.
As great as King is, a word must also be said about Bilquis Evely's art, which is gorgeous throughout. Vaguely recalling the kind of fantasy artwork you might see in a Tor paperback, it's intricate, colorful, and dynamic, ensuring that the story always comes first, with the character work happening under the surface. I look forward to seeing what Evely will work on next; she's got to be in high demand after the success of this series.
By the end of the book, this was probably my second favorite Tom King series ever (Mister Miracle, my favorite miniseries of all time, has a lock on #1). Word is that DC Studios is looking to adapt this into a feature film, and I can see why. Highly recommended.
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