3 comments about The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians: Why It has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again.

1. Despite some unfair negative press, this book is yet another example of Carr's masterful writing style and unparalleled ability to create strong, lasting images. Some readers expecting historical fiction might not appreciate Carr's subject matter, but it is important to remember that military history is Carr's field of expertise. Knowing this going in, I was able to immerse myself and enjoy from beginning to end.

   After September 11, it is important to have a reasonable, intelligent response that avoids sensationalism and fear-mongering. Carr's approach (and use of history) not only describes the ultimate futility of terrorist actions, but attempts something few people in the media dare to do -- provide context and comparative understanding. Our plight might seem unique and unprecedented to those in the full arrogance of their Americanism, but Carr rightfully dashes such nonsense, demonstrating that terror, far from a "Middle East problem," is (and has been) world-wide in scope, taking various shapes and employing wide-ranging tactics.

   Above all, however, Carr is simply a wonderful writer. His prose is clear and direct, yet always intellectually sound. This is far from the simplistic rants one comes to expect in this area; Carr always takes his book in the right direction and (thankfully!) expects his audience to bring more than a working knowledge of the subjects at hand. He is a challenging, provocative author, always avoiding self-righteousness and easy targets.

   Buy -- and read -- with confidence. Carr is, as always, the man to seek in such matters. I only wish he gave us more non-fiction for his love (and knowledge) of the subjet is quite apparent.




2. This book is elequent and occasionally hits a nerve. But basically it's message is simply: Terrorism (or war against civilians to achieve a political effect) is a self-destructive method of warfare, because the reaction to terror is more often than not outrage rather than capitulation.

   Carr goes beyond this to suggest that there are no exceptions to this rule, when some obvious exceptions come to mind (eg., Hiroshima, the extermination of the American Indians, and the frequent mass killings of any inconvenient population by various nations throughout history). So even the central message of the book is muddied by inconsistencies.

   And beyond that message, this book has little to offer, and is badly flawed by its single-mindedness, its rush to judgement about complex events, its deliberate ignorance of obvious counter arguments, and a tendency to patronize the audience by asserting that events be interpretted his way, even when more familiar interpretations are more convincing.

   On the plus side, I see no political bias or propaganda. Whatever biases the author has, they appear to be personal.




3. I listened to the audiobook version of this book and it was painful. The reader's voice was annoying and I couldn't wait for the book to be over.
   
   As far as the book goes, I don't think it was that great. OK, you do learn some history of how warfare has been conducted over the past 2000 years. And yes, civilians are killed often - I guess this is what Carr calls terrorism. So in his view, what happened on 9/11 is not so strange in the history of warfare. We are war with Al Qaeda and terrorism is offten a major facet of war. I was not utterly convinced that 9/11 is of the same flavor of terrorism as troops overstepping boundaries during wartime. We would call that latter war crimes but the 'war on terror' is of a definitely different sort of war. Like most things, terrorism is a term that is a spectrum of tactics and not a one size fits all definition. One must also consider motivations: is the motivation of saturation bombing the same as 9/11? It would seem to me that bombing is more to destroy an enemies resources that what 9/11 was - destroy American symbols and innocents.
   
   Even more doubtful is Carr's contention that his widely defined terrorism ALWAYS backfires on those who use it. When it seems not to, he say for example Rome succeeded so well 'in spite of' it's terrorist tactics not because of. Yes, creating malice in people will usually cause them to be malicious. Terror is one way that can happen. But not the only and probably not the most dominant. Of course the nuclear bombing of Japan seems to contradict Carr's premise. We killed a lot of civilians which directly contributed to us winning the war against Japan. And Japan has not sought revenge since as far as I know of. Is the lesson here that a large enough act of terrorism can actually lead to success for the terrorizers? It seems truer than Carr's categorical statements.
   
   Written in 2002, there is no comment on the Iraq War.
   
   And did I hear him call the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire?
   
   Skip this one.

No comments about The Alienist.

No comments about Killing Time.

No comments about Das Blut der Schande. 6 CDs.

5 comments about Killing Time.

1. This is a book with many good points, but they become so mired in confusion, and at times tedium, that they are largely lost. There is a kernel of an excellent book here as Carr has a point he wants to make, but it becomes lost in several threads of plot. With a better bit of editing this might have been an excellent book, but as it is it is probably better left on the shelf for one of Carr's earlier works.



2. I read this book because I enjoyed The Alienist and its sequel. Besides belonging to a different genre than his earlier work it is also much less of a page turner. The title of this book aptly describes my experience of reading it.



3. Much has been written about the content of this book here at amazon. I agree with some in that it started strong and finished slowly. There is a great story there, some of which Carr uncovered at the beginning of the novel. What I want to showcase is the interesting correlation to events in the book and what is happening today. Technology development and its consequences, Afghan conflict, financial collapse in 2007, staph outbreak of 2006, etc. really made an interesting bulb go off in my head since it was penned sometime in the late 1990s. Interesting to see the links from his story to our present situation.



4. I loved his first two books and had hope for this one; the premise was intriguing.
   
   But this book is really more Dan Brown than Dan Brown, melded with an incomprehensible plot seemingly ripped from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea melded with a collapsing modern society.
   
   I particularly enjoyed how a man is able to buy plutonium from a jungle warlord and somehow cast and machine that -- in the air -- while trying to evade several air forces.
   
   But the best incongruity comes when a civilian parachutes out, gets a broken leg, and ultimately blasts away veteran guerrillas surrounding him with a stun gun. Two pages later, because it fit the author's needs, we find out that he actually shot them not with the stun gun but fatally, and with his portable rail gun, which is made from no metallic parts, but another set of guerrillas who were watching him didn't realize what happened.



5. I listened to the audio book of this novel read by the author. I had previously listened to the Alienist which really didn't hit the mark with me either. This one, however, was really wide of the target.
   
   The concept of the novel is interesting but it seems like a wasted opportunity. I didn't feel a connection the main character at all. In fact, I didn't feel a connection to any of the characters. None of them seemed real nor, in the course of the novel, particularly developed. For me, this was the fatal flaw in the book because the story could have worked with a little tweaking.
   
   The story is basically a rehash of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with a privileged outsider making a high tech vehicle and attacking technology. The main character Gideon (is there a heavy-handed biblical reference here?) is the observer (think Kirk Douglas) who taken aboard the vessel to witness events (and to write this book, because as we're told at the end this novel is really his manuscript) and sleep with the captain's sister. I can't really figure out any other reason why he was taken on board as he never really had any input into the crew and captain's decisions. (He's a psychiatrist and he's supposed to play the Deanna Troy role -from Star Trek TNG - but I don't recall him ever giving any advice or counseling.) In any event, the Captain Nemo character kind of runs amuck and causes all sorts of grief in the world -- the kind of grief he was trying to prevent. Lots of guilt here. Gideon quits and goes to live in tribal Africa. (This part is compressed into comparatively very few pages.) Finally Nemo invents time travel and saves the world. Don't worry, you knew he would; it was very much foreshadowed.
   
   I like science fiction. The story's concept had a lot or promise but it failed in its execution and I can't tell you why. Lack of character development and empathy certainly played a big role. Maybe Carr had so much stroke after the Alienist that he didn't have an editor. I really cannot account for why the story and characters left me so flat.
   
   And through out it all I kept finding my self by being annoyed by the narrator's mind reading of the other characters. He had this annoying ability to tell the reader what any of the other characters was thinking at any given time. I kept thinking to myself that you might think you know what they're thinking or you might guess at their motivation, but you don't really know and for the author to present it as fact was really irritating. And the other annoying habit that I think an editor would have picked up on was Carr's use of the superlative. For no reason we'd be told things like the "sky was the bluest blue" or "he was the happiest he'd ever been" or something similar. Never just "blue" or "happy" but it was blue or happy to the furthest possible degree. I just started cringing after a while. Things are not always the most or greatest and repetitive and unnecessary use of the superlative really got old.
   
   All in all, its a pass thought it might be a jumping off point for someone else to develop further.

5 comments about The Italian Secretary.

1. The criticism of this book appears to be evenly spaced. For me, I enjoyed it. Could it have been better? Absolutely! Could it have been worse? Again, the answer is yes. But the fact remains, to me at least, that Mr Carr does a very good job creating and writing a tale worthy of the legendary detective.
   
   The book centers, as it should, on Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. They are enlisted by Holmes' brother, Mycroft, and all three travel to Scotland together. The author weaves in an historical reference to recent murders and the game is afoot.
   
   The supporting characters are believable as well as the interpretation of Holmes and Watson. The adventure is fairly fast-paced, enjoyable, and has a sense of urgency and danger. The ending is quite unique. I would definitely read another of this author's books.



2. I had concluded that attempts to continue a popular series of stories by a deceased author never succeed. However, when I ran across The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr, and the jacket boasted that this Sherlock Holmes novel was "commissioned by the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," I had great hopes. History is replete with convincing forgeries in art, archeology, exploration, and other fields. Why should it not be possible for someone to write a credible Sherlock Holmes adventure?
   
   I began the book optimistically, but my high hopes were soon shattered. I must iterate that a book purporting to be a further adventure of Nero Wolfe, Sherlock Holmes, or James Bond must be judged to a different standard than a normal novel. If Carr were writing about Detective Jones and Dr. Smith, we would ask simply: Is the plot good? Are the characters and setting believable? Is the grammar and syntax sufficient? But since Carr is attempting to counterfeit a Sherlock Holmes story in the manner of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, we must judge the book on how well he succeeds. Unfortunately, he does not.
   
   In certain sections of prose Carr does capture Doyle's rather ponderous syntax, and I admire his use of various Victorian terms, such as packing a Gladstone (p. 39). However, in the main, the book will not come close to fooling, let alone satisfying, an avid lover of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. There is an atmosphere of modernity about the book in the quips of the characters and the narrative in general, which distinguishes it from authentic Victorian novels.
   
   One failing of the counterfeit authors is that they invariably wish to "go one better" than the original artist. We might be shocked to read an imitation Rex Stout novel and find Nero Wolfe going up in a hot air balloon--something that would never happen in the writings of the original author. Just so, we find Carr's Sherlock Holmes commissioned by Her Majesty, Queen Victoria herself. Doyle would never, ever take the liberty of involving his monarch in a plot, except by implication. The plot itself is far-fetched and something that Conan Doyle would never have conceived--I will not reiterate it, since several others have outlined it.
   
   Caleb Carr should have engaged a good proofreader to winnow out grammatical errors. You will never find a split infinitive in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's writings. Carr splits them with great abandon. I soon gave up listing them, but a few are: p. 47 "to definitely extinguish;" p. 51 "to so dismiss;" p. 56 "to finally eradicate." You can find tons more if you read the book.
   
   Carr makes other grammatical errors and, if not errors, usages that are un-Doyle-like. On page 45 he says "myself," when he should have used "me." On page 45 Carr uses the contraction "we'd," which I do not believe I have ever seen in Doyle's writings. Carr uses the term "shape-shifter," (p. 51) an expression that was not invented until the late twentieth century. On page 65, he says "who," when Doyle would have used the correct objective pronoun "whom." Such errors continue throughout the book.
   
   Possibly the most jarring misuse of all is to describe Mary, Queen of Scots, as "pregnant." In fact, Carr uses the word more than once in his novel. In Victorian times the word "pregnant" was strictly taboo and would have been extremely offensive to the eyes or ears of virtually any person in that era. In fact, even in the mid-twentieth century the word was still taboo. In my youth in middle America of the 1950's no one would have uttered the word "pregnant." It was always euphemisms such as: "She's expecting" or "She's in a family way." I doubt that even such bold expressions as these would ever have been used by Conan Doyle in his writings.
   
   Most of these criticisms I have mentioned might not ruin a novel about Caleb Carr's own characters. However, as I stated before, here we must judge him on how well he fools us into believing that we just might be reading a genuine rediscovered Conan Doyle novel written in late Victorian England. His brave attempt does not succeed in this ambitious undertaking.



3. Very, very enjoyable.
   
   "The Alienist" is just a tad bit better, but this book is wonderful.
   
   I hope Caleb Carr does another in this NYC-based (circa 1896-97 or so) series.



4. I bought this book in hardcover when it first came out in 2005. I am writing this review in Nov. 2009. "Italian Secretary" was a fast paced novel and I found myself taking it everywhere with me and reading it during lunch and other breaks in my time. My first exposure to Caleb Carr's writing was "Lessons in Terror." This was the second Carr offering that I read. Since then I have gone back and read "The Alienist" and I am currently reading "Angel of Darkness." As a long-time fan of Sherlock Holmes, I found myself sitting on the train to Scotland, roaming the halls of the Scottish castle and trying to figure out what kind of ancient military equipment could completely destroy a man's body, and what kind of man was allowed to sit and speak with the Queen of England, while everyone else was required to stand in her presence...all this and more after more than 4+ years since I turned the first page of this book. It's definately worth the read. Enjoy.



5. I was an avid fan of Carr's Alienist and Angel of Darkness. This novel pales in comparison. Rather than equaling the efforts of Doyle, it leads the reader to an anticlimactic conclusion. I would like to see Carr return to the venue of the aforementioned works.