I really dig Christopher Buckley's fiction, in spite of my disagreement with him on most things political.  Boomsday is not an exception.

The premise is the clash between Boomers and their kids, and I can relate.  While I am the progeny of the WWII generation, I came late, and have long resented the fact that I will hear Donovan on the radio until the day I day, while the Clash will never get their due. 

The book pits the under-30s against the greediest generation as the latter sucks up the federal budget through social security and the former must be lulled from saying "whatever" to voting for someone who will support a solution - one that involves state-subsidized suicide.

Very funny, sort of uneven.  I recommend it as a summer read.  But it's clear that this book was written by a boomer.  I look forward to new related material written by actual generation X-ers.

First, this book really could have used an editor.  Aside from the flagrant typographical errors throughout its pages, someone should have told Frey that nobody will actually read, for example, four pages of names of veterans along with one-line descriptiosn of their injuries/ailments.

In this review I will criticize Frey for being trite and unoriginal, so I will refrain from an initial reference to the memoir that made him famous (all other reviewers seem to begin their assessments with references thereto.)

This book is Frey's love letter to L.A.  It's interesting for a non-west-coaster like me to read a full embrace of a city cognizant of all its faults and disappointments.  The book tells us that LA wouldn't be itself, the object of the writer's affection, without those faults and disappointments.  It's a collection of vignettes and essays with four sets of recurring characters, and a lot of characters that don't come back.  The fictional bits are interspersed with "fun facts" and other data about LA.  It's an attempt to draw a portrait of the city in a mosaic fashion, acknowledging that LA is so huge and polymorphus that these characters only occupy small niches.

It's compelling in parts, and it's effective in drawing an attractive portrait of the city.  But by the end I really was not going to be able to take one more breathless account of young idealism coming to LA to die in the Sodom of the cut-throat entertainment industry.  Without spoilers, those four recurrent story-lines are:  1.)  The mega supermovie star who is secretly gay; 2.)  the hard-working Latina maid serving a cold-hearted bitch millionaire boss; 3.) the deeply-in-love young couple who ran to LA from the mid-west and 4.)  the homeless man with a heart of gold. 

Can it get any more canned than that? 

If Frey wasn't already famous, I don't think this book would have been more than a blip on the mainstream radar.  But reading it I had visions of stock characters throughout LA reading it and wondering what the big deal is.  That was my reaction - why is Tery Gross interviewing the author ... and asking him respectful questions?  Did she actually read this stuff first?

So I don't recommend this book, except as an illustration of what you can get away with once you're already famous.      

This guy, man, this guy.  He was born July 22 1995, and we put him down July 26, 2008.  He was my best dog.  I love him and I miss him every minute since 9:30 a.m. yesterday.  He was the best dog period.  Webster.

Presidents over the years have delivered some of our nation's most memorable oratory regarding those who serve in the military.  For example:  

Lincoln at Gettysburg said:  "From these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause to which they gave the last full measure of devotion."

In a Fireside Chat, FDR said about the military victims at Pearl Harbor:  "It is our sacred obligation to their children, and to our children, that we must never forget what we have learned."

In the quagmire of Vietnam, LBJ said of the soldiers he sent to war:  "To them be honor and praise, and to us the responsibility for redeeming their sacrifice."

And on Memorial Day 2008, our only Commander in Chief, George W. Bush, described the people serving in his war thusly:  "They're an awesome bunch of people."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90832148

I've just finished reading a captivating book that is also something of an historical artifact itself.  Crazy Horse:  The Strange Man of the Oglalas, was written by Mari Sandoz in 1942.  The writer grew up near Fort Robinson and the Black Hills, and interviewed oldsters who had lived through some of the events described in this biography. 

Sixty-six years later the book is still a good read.  It's on my in-law-family's reading assignment list for our trip to Fort Robinson this summer, and I suppose it's a good preparation for heading into that country where such tragic things happened.  Any biography that praises the subject will be open to charges of romanticism, and this one is no exception.  It would be pretty difficult to tell this story of the end of an entire people without slipping into some level of idealism.  Crazy Horse's lifespan from 1842-1877 roughly correpsonds to the end of the Oglala way of life at the hands of the U.S. Army.  As a spiritual and military leader of his people, Crazy Horse's own experiences mirror this downfall. 

This book, written in the cadences of Native America, provides a glimpse into the way of life of the nomadic tribe during its last generation.  Early in the story people talk about the loss of the old ways, even while they can't know the worse depredations in store for them.  By the end they are literally entrapped, kept behind fences and told when and where they are permitted to travel.  All of this within a few years of being promised peace "for as long as the grass shall grow."  Indeed, the "white man's promise" became synomymous with "lie" by the end of Crazy Horse's generation.   

I suspect this book's depiction of Oglala life has informed all the romantic images and stories about the Sioux with which we have grown familiar.  Undoubtedly life for a mid-19th century nomadic tribe in the north country was more hardscrabble and shorter than most of us post-industrialists could endure.  Sandoz describes the inter-tribal warfare and the sickness and death that were constant companions of the small tribes.  She also describes the reliance on the earth, the prayers to the four directions and to the sky, and the respect the Oglala people paid to the brave among their up-to-that-point deadliest enemies, the Crow. 

An important turning point in the book comes late, when Crazy Horse realizes, then tells his followers, that this war against white soldiers is something very different from the raiding parties and defensive battles they'd always had with the Crows.  This was no time for individuals to earn honors in battle, to go back home to brag about.  This was a time for cooperation among all rode against the whites, and time for planned battles with all the Indians working together to oppose these soldiers.  After all, as far as he could see, these white soldiers had no families and no wives.  Unlike the Indian warriors, their whole existence seemed to be dedicated to waging war.  He saw the difference and called for a different kind of warfare.  When he got cooperation the Indians won in battle - the Battle of the Little Big Horn being the most obvious example. 

The book is enlightening and terribly sad.  It ends with the hero's death at the hands of fellow Indians inside an American fort, a metaphor for the end of the Sioux nation itself.