Sorry, we have to. It's not the most exciting topic, but you can't call yourself fully protected if you don't have your critical paperwork done. Below are the six things you need to have under control.
Last week I had a vision. I closed my eyes and all I could see were serving plates in Italian restaurants, stacked with lamb chops and veal escalops. Some of them had steamed fish with slices of lemon, others had mountains of pasta. At least one of them was held by a slick waiter in a white dinner jacket but mostly they were carried by plump women with multicolored aprons and smiles on their well-fed faces. One of the women had yellow plastic flowers in her hair. I know her well, she’s the lady from Cumpa Cosimo restaurant in Ravello where everything tastes divine (it’s our holiday hangout). And she’s got attitude. She used to hit the kids lightly on their heads if they didn’t finish their plates and say “Pasta non Pane”!
We do have a number of serving plates but these visions called for new ones – and Italian feast was on the cards and I would somehow trick my husband into making his delicious tomato sauce to start. We headed to Anne’s brocante in St Christoly, it’s the most beautiful place, she has such pretty, well-chosen things and spending time in her company is a treat – some people just ooze grace and kindness. There was too much choice so I got more than I needed (brocante shopping is very dangerous). Beautiful colors and patterns and exciting shapes. Talking of shapes and forms – since my body started taking on a new shape I have had a distinctive craving for all things sour and acidic (thus the tomato sauce) and a preference for lean meat over too fat. So out went the lamb chops, in came the veal escalopes. We still have a lot of sage that is braving winter so Saltimbocca it had to be. For dessert I made a pine nut and lemon ricotta cream tart, inspired from one of my favorite restaurants in Rome, Matricianella.
The “secret” sauce
Let me introduce myself, I’m the husband. Mimi, my wife, somehow talked me into making a tomato sauce for Manger and now she wants me to explain it … in writing. Well, first there is a story to tell. I met Mimi in Paris about a thousand moons ago and soon after (very soon actually) she visited me in Reykjavík. She arrived late and I wasted no time in trying to impress by making dinner for two. It was a simple tuna and parsley pasta with lemon and butter – served with Pinot Grigio. Perfectly decent but admittedly nothing amazing. Mimi was very gracious about my cooking and went on to admit that she herself wasn’t very accomplished in the kitchen. I on the other hand, empowered by my success with the tuna told her I was quite the little chef. Some days later, this time in Paris, I was working on some tedious project at her desk and she appeared, impossibly glamorous and put together as she always is holding a tray of “snacks”. I remember the moment well. It was a cheese soufflé, an endive and Roquefort salad with walnuts, served with a nice chilled beer. To finish she had made a strawberry tartlet with vanilla custard cream. It was the beginning of what has been an absolute defeat on my part when it comes to cooking. You might say that the last 10 years have been a humbling experience for me culinary speaking, like the garlic in the tomato sauce I have been, and continue to be, crushed in the kitchen. It does have its advantages, a wonderful three-course meal or two every day is nothing to complain about and all I have to do is wash the dishes afterwards. Once in a while, when Maman is tired or busy I make something for the family, often Italian or something on the grill. I always get rave reviews, practically a standing ovation. It makes me feel like the granny who finally figured out how to operate the DVD player and all the family is shouting bravo and yippee. It’s more of a sympathy vote. In our kitchen there is only one master … and I figured out a long time ago that it’s not me.
Vito Posillipo’s tomato sauce
In my life I’ve had endless versions of amazing tomato sauces and a few terrible ones too. It’s a good way to judge a restaurant if it’s Italian but if it’s French you should probably look elsewhere on the menu. This one is by no means a perfect tomato sauce but we like it, it has developed over the years with the family. It used to be more spicy but Louise doesn’t like that. I’ve had my aubergine period (which technically makes this pasta alla Norma) and my anchovy period which was very controversial. But this is a version everybody likes. We call it Vito Posillipo’s tomato sauce. He was a character, although never seen, in the movie 9 ½ weeks and unfortunately for him he was gunned down in a restaurant on Halloween. At the time he was having Ziti al forno which does have tomatoes in it but otherwise has little to do with our sauce. But what a name. Saying it is almost therapeutic – like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Vito Posillipo, try saying it! One day, I’ll have a dog called that. Enjoy the sauce.
A note on the sauce. Normally I would slice the garlic thinly and sauté in the oil first before adding the tomatoes. But I always forget that part and so I used to frantically crush garlic into the sauce after the tomatoes were already in. I am not sure if it’s an improvement – it’s more of a superstition but this is how we make it.
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 (8 ounces/ 230 g) cans good-quality peeled & drained tomatoes
2 dried red chillies
3 gloves garlic, crushed (minced)
1 big glass red wine
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1 bunch fresh basil leaves
100 g/ 1 cup and 2 tablespoons freshly grated parmesan cheese
100 g/ 6 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Coarse sea-salt and freshly ground black pepper
For this dish, we used long fusilli pasta/ 500 g/ 17-18 ounces.
Heat the olive oil over medium heat, add the tomatoes and crush them with a large spoon. Add the dried chillies, crushed garlic, vinegar, sugar and red wine. Season with salt and pepper. Cover the saucepan with parchment paper, lower the heat and simmer for 30-40 minutes.
Cook the pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water until al dente. Drain and mix in the piping hot tomato sauce. Add the butter, parmesan and basil, stir gently and serve immediately. Reserve extra parmesan and basil for individual servings.
Veal Saltimbocca (Veal with sage & prosciutto)
1 pound approx/ 450/500 g veal escalopes/ cutlets (preferably sliced thin) – I count about 2 slices per person (about the size of the palm).
6 slices prosciutto, about half a slice per veal escalope
A bunch of fresh sage
Plain flour for dusting
5 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 glass of white wine
4 tablespoons/ 60 ml veal stock
Coarse sea-salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preheat the oven to 180°C/ 350°F
Dust the veal escalopes with flour on both sides. In a large sauté pan, melt the butter and olive oil until sizzling on a medium heat. Sauté the veal, about 15 seconds on each side. Season with salt and pepper and scatter the sage leaves all over. Pour the wine and leave to reduce for 2 minutes. Remove the veal and transfer to an oven-proof baking dish. Add the veal stock to the juices of the pan, mix well and continue to cook the sauce for 3 minutes. Place the prosciutto on top of each veal slice. Pour sauce on top, a a few more sage leaves and place dish in the oven for 8 to 10 minutes. Serve immediately with roast potatoes (see recipe below). I also like to serve with steamed spinach with a drizzle of olive oil and a few squeezes of lemon. Perfect!
Rosemary, garlic and lemon roast potatoes
2 pounds/ 900 g potatoes, peeled and halved
Lemon zest of 1 lemon
3 to 4 large garlic cloves, unpeeled
A few sprigs of fresh rosemary, leaves picked and chopped
Olive oil
Coarse sea-salt and freshly ground black pepper
Parboil the potatoes for 10 minutes. Drain the potatoes, toss them in a baking dish, add the garlic, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle lemon zest, salt and chopped rosemary and freshly ground black pepper.
Cook in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until golden.
Pine nut and lemon ricotta cream tart
For the crust
2 cups/ 240g plain flour
1 egg
1/2 cup/ 120 g unsalted butter, cut into cubes & at room temperature
2 tablespoons/ 30 g sugar
½ cup/ 60 g confectioner’s sugar
¼ cup/ 30 g ground almond
½ lemon zest
A pinch of salt
In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients together until the mixture forms a homogenous dough. Shape into a ball, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for at least an hour.
Roll dough to fit a 9-inch/23 cm tart pan. Line the pan, prick the bottom with a fork and place in the freezer for 30 minutes.
For the filling
½ cup/ 120 ml honey
½ cup/ 100 g granulated sugar
A pinch of salt
1/3 cup/ 80 g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
1/3 cup + 1 tbsp/100 ml heavy cream
5 ounces/140 g ricotta
Zest of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons lemon juice
150 g pine nuts
1 egg
Preheat oven to 170°C/ 325 °F
Combine the honey, sugar and salt in a medium saucepan. Add the butter and bring the mixture to a soft boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Take off the heat and leave to cool for 15 minutes.
Whisk in the cream, lemon zest, lemon juice, ricotta and the egg until you get a smooth mixture.
Take the tart out of the freezer, scatter the pine nuts over the bottom of the tart, and pour the filling. Bake tart in the preheated oven for approximately 50 minutes, or until the tart and crust are golden brown. Don’t worry if the tart is still ‘jiggly’ when you take it out, it will set once cooled.
Leave to cool completely before unmolding.
With all the cameras and smartphones out there, it’s no surprise that, once in a while, someone captures a truly bizarre once-in-a-lifetime photo. Whatever you want to call them – forced perspectives, optical illusions or pictures taken at just the right angle – they are brilliant and hilarious because they totally twist your perception of what is real. We present you with a list of 33 perfectly-timed pictures that will fool your brain.
Some of these pictures make use of forced perspective – using their perspective to make objects of sometimes radically different size or composition seem related. Others are more like optical illusions, capturing confusing lines or environmental coincidences that twist your senses.
The most important common element, however, is that somebody took a picture in the right place at the right moment. So grab your camera, even if it’s just a cellphone, and get out there! There’s no telling what hilarious once-in-a-lifetime moment you might capture.
P.S.: we always try our best to credit each and every photographer, but sometimes it’s impossible to track some of them. Please leave a comment if you know the missing authors.
Imagine you're at the Vatican, hanging out with Pope Francis today. "Hey pope," you might ask, "How was your Epiphany on Monday?" referring, of course, to the feast day that marks the end of the 12 Days of Christmas. In response, Pope Francis might simply show you the above photo.
AP/Handout from Vatican paper L'Osservatore Romano
In other words, pretty great.
Francis visited a living nativity scene on Monday evening, where this photo was snapped. At some point, things got a bit crazy and Pope Francis ended up with a baaaaaaby lamb around his neck. The imagery itself is also a biblical reference to the gospel of the Parable of the Lost Sheep, about a shepherd who leaves his flock of sheep in order to find a single one that got lost. The shepherd carries the sheep back home on his shoulders. Which, as it turns out, has a pretty good tie-in message to his Epiphany sermon, which was all about reaching out to estranged Catholics:
‘I would like to tell all those who feel far from God and the church — and I say this respectfully to those who are afraid or indifferent: The Lord calls you and wants you to be part of his people and does so with great respect and love!’’
The pope also talked to some kids and ducks at the living Nativity scene in St. Alfonso Maria de' Liguori parish church near Rome, adding even more images to his already impressive collection of photo moments:
AP/Handout from Vatican paper L'Osservatore Romano
Winter has certainly arrived with a vengeance! There's only one antidote to these snowy days with their record low temperatures: a simmering pot of soup on the stove. Soups like pumpkin chili and Minnesota wild rice have a near-magical ability to warm our toes and erase the memory of shoveling out the car. We want to make sure you stay warm and nourished this cold season, so here are 10 vegetarian soups that are sure to keep the chill at bay.
Shredded Chicken, Chard and Chickpea Soup [Photograph: Yasmin Fahr]
Time, effort, and dishes? Making dinner on a weeknight can be a challenging prospect, especially for those hoping to steer clear of labor-intensive meals. But whether you're saving money or simply can't resist a home-cooked meal, we've dipped into our recipe archives for quick, simple, weeknight-friendly recipes that are easily prepared in just a single pot or skillet.
Catch recipes for cassoulet, lasagna, and more flavorful, speedy meals in the list below, or you can see them all in the slideshow »
Meat & Poultry
Skillet Lamb Chops with Harissa, Spinach and Chickpeas [Photograph: Yasmin Fahr]
About the author:Ben Jay is an editorial intern at Serious Eats, photographer, carnivore, beer and whisky drinker, and music nerd. He's still not 100% sure why kale is so damn hip. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
Oven grease is difficult to get rid of and needs a lot of effort. But keeping a pot of hot water and a bowl of ammonia overnight will loosen it and make cleaning easier, according to the One Good Thing By Jillee blog.
Against a tasty backdrop of pastries, fruit, and vegetables, photographers Pierre Javelle and Akiko Ida have created a series of humorous dioramas that depict miniature people going about their daily lives in an edible world. Titled MINIMIAM, a play on words that marries miniature and “yummy” (miam in French), the project has been ongoing since 2002 and was inspired by the married couple’s profession as commercial food photographers. “We’re both food photographer in our daily work, and we’re both quite crazy about cooking, eating and everything about food,” says Ida. “So when we started this small people series, naturally we created the stories related to the food.”
The figures acquired for each photograph are taken from train model sets which are generally 1/87 scale, the perfect size for exploring lands of donuts or a frothy mix of meringue turned into a winter sledding adventure. The body of work has now grown to include some 60 sets of diptychs, and the pair is also creating large scale installations that more directly connect the model train world with sprawling food dioramas. You can see much more of their work over at MINIMIAM, or view it up close at the International Agriculture Show in Paris in February. (via Raw File)
Alongside this Thursday's "Merry Sis-mas" in Aggieland and beyond, at Roman Noon today the Pope launched Fr Joseph Kopacz, 63 – a career pastor and onetime vicar-general of Scranton – way down South as bishop of Jackson.
To be sure, it's the kind of long-haul move we haven't seen in a while. Still, as the most beloved, celebrated and prophetic daughter of the 50,000-member Northern Mississippi church our Upstater inherits went largely unheeded when she was called forward – and we're just shy of 25 years from that summer day when, in a sweltering Seton Hall gym, she bore a contagious, electric witness before the Stateside bench – especially amid this feast born from the "embrace" of a culture precisely for the purpose of evangelizing it (sound familiar, Church?), even now, leave it to Thea to commandeer the stage....
Again, this coming June marks a quarter-century since the above preach was given. Even so, trying to find a better summary of Evangelii gaudiumthan this would prove a useless task.
The Atlantic's editors and writers share their favorite titles—new, classic, or somewhere in between—from a year of reading.
Penguin
The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II by Charles Glass
High school seniors this year were in kindergarten when the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001. An entire generation of Americans has known nothing but America’s endless commitment to the war on terror, or terrorism, or whatever government officials are now calling our current fight against extremism. Patriotism, jingoism, the glorification of combat, is all these young people have ever known, and it is at a time like this in a nation’s history, especially this nation’s history, when counterviews are essential.
That’s precisely what Charles Glass delivers with his book about deserters in World War II. Glass’s work is a reminder—and it seems we always need one—that war is hell, that it wreaks havoc not just upon the bodies but upon the minds of young men, and that America has traditionally done a terrible job of addressing the psychic trauma of battle. Following three soldiers during World War II, Glass shows us a side of combat the military has tried to hide.
Some young men go to war and act heroically, and others do not. We make celebrities of the former and we sweep the latter under the rug. I have lost track of how many books I have read about World War II, but I had no idea how extensive the problem of desertion in the European theater was or what lengths American and British officials went to thwart it. Glass’s accounts of the battlefield courts-martial are particularly chilling, especially in an age when so many of us are engaged in a debate over the use of military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay. So are Glass’s narratives about the conditions of battle that cause some men to simply walk away from their comrades in arms, and the front lines. Deserters doesn’t glorify the men who stopped fighting the Germans, but it helps explain why they did what they did. And that’s a lesson today’s America would be wise to absorb.
A funny thing happened when I read Tenth of December. Lots of funny things, if I'm being honest, although I hesitate to confess how often I laughed at the deadpan horrors concocted by George Saunders, certified genius. It's a kind of laughter I'm ashamed to admit, a nervous chuckle that lives somewhere between empathy and dread. It's the way I would laugh when I was little, if a friend tripped on the playground and scraped his elbows raw. Now I only laugh that way when I read—and it happens every time I read a story written by Saunders.
Tenth of December is peppered with these wicked bouts of comedy, which buttress the grim tales Saunders uses to define his anxieties about class, power, and gratification. "The Semplica Girl Diaries" proposes a culture where the wealthy purchase third-world immigrant girls as lawn decorations, bound together with fine wire pierced through their skulls. "Puppy" bumps a neurotic, well-to-do housewife against a poor mother who chains her mentally ill son to a tree. These stories are not happy. But that doesn't mean they are meant to discourage, either.
Why? Because Saunders excels at an kinder sort of satire. His wit is neither caustic nor cruel, and for all of his concerns about our society, he is no pessimist. He just prefers tough love. Tough as it may be, though, it shines like no other. The simple philosophy of it all appears in "Escape From Spiderhead," an alarming story about a pharmacological prison: "Every human, at birth, is, or at least has the potential to be, beloved of his/her mother/father," he writes. "Thus every human is worthy of love."
Songbook is the essay collection most of us would secretly love to write: a set of musings about our favorite songs. But only a writer like Nick Hornby could pull it off without sounding totally pretentious. His goal isn’t to tell readers what they should think about Paul Westerberg or Ani DiFranco. In fact, the songs themselves are often beside the point. Each one evokes a certain experience or insight, and that’s what he’s writing about—often in the funniest and most self-deprecating way.
In one essay, he describes the challenge of having sex to Santana or Marvin Gaye without laughing. In another, about Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” he looks back at the “towns of losers” of his own youth: “Those towns, incidentally, were Cambridge—full of loser doctors and lawyers and academics—and London—full of loser successes of every description.”
But almost every essay has something poignant about it, whether it’s a grass-is-greener look at America or a reflection on mortality and parenthood. At one point, writing about a Rufus Wainwright song, he grapples with the essential mystery of music:
As a writer, I don’t normally have much patience for the ineffable—I ought to think that everything’s effing effable, otherwise what’s the point? But I’m not so sure there are words to describe what happens when two voices mesh .... All I can say is that I can hear things that aren’t there, see and feel things I can’t normally see and feel, and start to realize that, yes, there is such a thing as an immortal soul, or, at the very least, a unifying human consciousness, that our lives are short but have meaning.
Being Nick Hornby, he manages to write all this without sounding preachy. He still doesn’t really believe in God, he assures us, and music probably isn’t going to change that. “I’m not going to listen to stuff like this too often, though,” he adds, “just in case.”
This is a book about an Irish boarding school, I guess. It’s also a book about amateur drug dealing, the troubles with Catholic priesthood, and multidimensional string theory. And love and friendship and, obviously, loss. Skippy does die, after all.
But most of all, it’s a book about “the grim de-dreamification” of life, as author Paul Murray puts it. “Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg,” he writes, when it comes to harsh truths.
History teacher Howard the Coward, dissatisfied with his life’s lack of a “narrative arc” and flailing about for meaning in differently destructive ways, is our grown-up stand-in. But the colorful teens that populate the school are getting their first tastes of disappointment, too, their first inklings that they might not be able to mold their lives according to their desires. Self-proclaimed stud Mario’s lucky condom can’t be that lucky if it’s been in his wallet for three years. Or, more heartbreakingly, miserable, overweight genius Ruprecht can’t bring his best friend Skippy back to life. “In the end, you know, it’s our own expectations that crush us.” And how.
I’m making this book sound very sad. And it is, sometimes. But it’s also hilarious, rude, smart, heartwarming, etc., etc., etc. Throw your adjectives at it, and this book will knock them out of the park. It is one million times better than it has any right to be, if you just look at the numbers: a 650-page novel that spans just a couple of months, with chapters narrated by dozens of characters—it should be a rambling snore, or a complete mess. But thanks to Murray’s talent, it’s a kaleidoscope: You can turn it any number of different ways and see a new pattern each time.
The Measure of Her Powers: An M.F.K. Fisher Reader, edited by Dominique Gioia
“When somebody tells me their favorite food writer is M.F.K. Fisher, I immediately know they are dead inside,” wrote Josh Ozersky at Esquire this summer. I’d amend that slightly: When someone tells me they think M.F.K. Fisher is a “food writer,” I immediately know they are both dead inside and, relatedly, probably haven’t read much M.F.K. Fisher.
Which isn’t to say I don’t get where they’re coming from. When my father gave me a copy of The Measure of Her Powers: An M.F.K. Fisher Reader one Christmas, it languished on the shelf for years, thanks to the soporific title (and the recollection of my father’s previous gift: a 600-page tome on modernism). Fisher’s fans and publishers, The Atlantic included, aren’t always her best advocates—perhaps because if they sold her work the usual way, i.e. by its lurid details, it would sound like a four-decade bi-continental orgy.
Fisher writes about a German who gets off on placing grapeskins on his naked lover’s catatonic body; about visiting a man-eating, STD-giving former schoolmate as a break from her marriage troubles, but finding the friend has turned into a 300-pound lesbian alcoholic who makes a pass at her in a cab; about losing the love of her life; about single motherhood; about despising American housewives’ “dip” craze (“Down, down to hell itself, I said, with dips. Life tasted sweeter.”); about a mountaineering club that seeks out sour-cream fantasies made by an ancient lady in a far-off village, as if on a fairy-tale quest. And she does it so well you forget she’s been writing all this from the 1940s. Fifty dollars says if Elizabeth Gilbert and Cheryl Strayed got the time machine-assisted drop on Fisher in a dark alley, Fisher would send them away limping.
Reading Fisher is an ideological experience revealed in adjectival preferences (“honest wine”) and unusual obsessions: serving your guests what you damn well please, since it’ll be so good they won’t care—or the sanctity and sexiness of knowing how to order food for yourself, precisely and lavishly. As you puzzle over why an essay about soul mates should focus on fondue, or a story about curry on conviction, you’ll see what this collection shows better than others: The food is a metaphor.
One far off day, when software and intelligent robots have usurped our jobs and we poor humans are left with little to do but stuff our faces while pondering life’s mysteries and miseries in front of the television, I like to imagine there will be at least one prominent cult dedicated Kurt Vonnegut and the divine revelations contained in his debut novel, Player Piano.
I kid. Mostly. A Vonnegut cult would be sort of amazing, aside from deeply ironic in a way I’m sure he’d appreciate. But the bigger point is that, for a book written in 1952, Player Piano does an eerily good job nailing the anxieties we feel about the future of technology and the economy today—which is why it’s become a go-to literary reference for us notoriously uncultured business and tech writers. Vonnegut imagines a dystopic United States where most jobs have, yes, been taken over by machines, and industry is ruled by an elite clique of over-educated managers and engineers. The economy is centrally planned by a powerful computer named EPICAC XIV. And if your test scores aren’t good enough to get you into college, you’re shuffled off to the army or a mostly useless public-works crew known as the Reeks and Wrecks.
Aside from the socialist overtones (in Vonnegut's world, the government passes a tax on machines to pay for public welfare programs, which is a concept I somehow doubt would make it through today’s Congress) it’s a future that at least afeweconomists think is frighteningly near.
Which is partly just a sign of how old these fears really are. We’ve been worrying about technology stealing our jobs since the Luddites started smashing looms. Vonnegut, for his part, wrote the book after seeing how General Electric had begun replacing its factory workers with punch-card operated machines. But I wouldn’t be recommending Player Piano if it were just a maybe-prescient piece of retro-futurism. The book is also a hilarious, thoughtful, and humane meditation on the meaning of work, petty office politics, inequality, class resentment, midlife crises, bad marriages, and college football. So go read it—you know, before we’re living it.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
It’s been more than 15 years since Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was first released in the U.S.—and for many young people, including me, Harry’s subsequent years’ worth of adventures blur inextricably with our own childhood memories. So this year, when I revisited Harry’s first year at Hogwarts, it was like revisiting an album of my own baby pictures: both sentimental and startling.
First, of course, I was delighted all over again by all the tiny, enchanting details that have eroded from my memories of Harry Potter over time—in the same way the “Dad, you wore that to the hospital when I was born? Nana anxiously munched through how many bags of peanut M&Ms in the waiting room?” kinds of minutiae fade out from oft-retold family stories. For instance: When Hagrid arrives at Harry’s home on his 11th birthday and changes his life forever, he brings Harry a “slightly squashed” chocolate cake with “Happy Birthday Harry” written in green frosting—and later, it seems, he ends up eating it himself. And when Albus Dumbledore first explains why wizards shouldn’t be afraid to utter Voldemort’s name, he does so distractedly, his attention focused instead on unsticking a pair of lemon drop candies.
But then, as is inevitable when you reflect as an adult on your own childhood, I found that suddenly the grown-ups in the story had a point of view—it’s like that moment you first recognize the barely veiled terror in your young parents’ eyes as they posed, smiling, outside their front door the day they first brought you home from the hospital. Even the most evil of the seemingly evil adults of Sorcerer’s Stone (like Professor Snape, or Petunia and Vernon Dursley), it turns out, aren’t wicked so much as frightened and protective, and rightly so: The wizarding world, like the real one, is a scarier place than the younger characters even realize. But all these years later, I discovered, Harry Potter's world is still worth returning to—not least to marvel at J.K. Rowling’s ability to tell a children’s story wise, earnest, and complex enough to grow up with its readers.
If you want to understand America’s place in the world today—from Iran’s deep distrust of U.S. intentions, to Latin America’s brand of populist anti-Americanism, to the American public’s fatigue with military interventions overseas—you need to understand John Foster and Allen Dulles, arguably the two most powerful brothers our country has ever produced. And you can’t fully appreciate the Dulles brothers without reading Stephen Kinzer’s The Brothers, which chronicles how Foster and Allen—the heads of the State Department and CIA, respectively—waged an audacious anti-communist shadow war in countries ranging from Guatemala to Iran to Vietnam during the 1950s, a period in U.S. history that we tend to think of as relatively peaceful.
Maybe the only thing more remarkable than the fact that these siblings could, with a terse phone call or casual lunch meeting, wield so much influence over overt and covert foreign policy is the fact that the two men have been so utterly forgotten in the years since their larger-than-life exploits. (In one telling scene, Kinzer tells the story of tracking down a bust of Foster at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, only to find it stuffed in a storage room opposite Baggage Claim Carousel 3.)
The Brothers restores Foster and Allen to their rightful place in the pantheon of America’s most influential statesmen while making a larger point about the extent to which individuals, rather than faceless bureaucracies or grand strategies, shape the conduct of international affairs. Would the U.S. have toppled Guatemala’s president if Foster had taken a post on the Supreme Court in 1953 rather than staying on as Secretary of State? Would the CIA have engineered a coup in Iran that same year had the Dulles brothers, both longtime corporate lawyers, been less worked up about the threat nationalism in Tehran posed to American corporations? Kinzer’s book encourages readers to appreciate not just modern-day geopolitics, but also the outsized role the people who climb to the highest rungs of power have in molding it.
Some readers were shocked to learn that essayist David Sedaris allegedly made up characters and scenarios in his best-selling memoirs, rendering his tales simply “realish.” But frankly, with Sedaris, we probably couldn’t handle the whole truth.
Unlike in his earlier novels, which largely focus on his misspent youth, Sedaris’s Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls heavily features anecdotes about his modern life, interspersed with obviously made-up rants written in the voices of outlandish characters. But if Sedaris didn’t make out his day-to-day existence to be more awkward than it likely is, we’d all be too jealous of it to enjoy his books. Who wouldn’t, after all, want to travel around Europe with their partner, living semi-lavishly while doing what appears to be very little work?
But Sedaris’s neuroses and misadventures make his success seem relatable, and even unappealing at times. As someone who covers American healthcare and has experienced the no-frills European healthcare system, I particularly enjoyed his descriptions of French doctors. After Sedaris asks one physician why he’s so sure that an ominous-looking fatty tumor won’t grow much in size, he responds, “I don’t know. Why don’t trees touch the sky?” (American doctors are, I suppose, too wary of lawsuits to be so droll.)
Pushkin said, “The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.” Sedaris’s hilarious yarns may be partially fake, but after reading several books full of them, they’re still dear to me.
Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails From Milan to Palermo by Tim Parks
In June, a friend and I took a trip to Italy. Well, to Rome, really, as we only managed to leave the city for two of our 21 days there. Not that we didn’t try to go other places—we spent the entirety of one day in Rome’s main train station, attempting to book tickets for a journey through Ferrara to Venice and back—but a tight budget and the idiosyncrasies of the Italian railway system, in collusion, make a powerful impediment.
This is a truth that Tim Parks understands well. For years, he mega-commuted from his home in Verona to a teaching gig in Milan, taking notes as he went. In Italian Ways, his memoir of those years spent “on and off the rails from Milan to Palermo,” Parks nimbly—and often hilariously—details the tangle of social absurdities that one encounters on the peninsula, especially when traveling by train. A man cuts a long line to the ticket booth, where dozens of early-morning travelers are waiting impatiently, and Parks sees what goes unsaid: “Nobody shouts. There is a slow, simmering resentment, as if the people who have behaved properly are grimly pleased to get confirmation that good citizenship is always futile, a kind of martyrdom ... It is a feeling that will justify some bad behavior at the appropriate moment.” Parks’s gift lies in his ability to give shape to this sort of unspoken truth—things you sensed, but could never pin down. Yet unlike many foreign observers of Italy, whenever he gripes about his quasi-compatriots and their Italian ways, he does so with an underlying respect for them.
I say “quasi-compatriots” because Parks often laments his inability to truly blend in, despite his having lived in Italy for 32 years. But his foreignness allows him the distance to see the complicated psyche of a country known for its contradictions. The book is an examination of his relationship with the railways—and through the railways, he finds the story of Italy itself.
—William Brennan, associate editor
Picador
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
"These days are perfect. The clear untroubled light picks out Each berry shimmering in a hedge. Each leaf of tree, The sun behind it, Hangs like a golden pear.
Riding westward in high summer, We have dipped in sylvan chases And crested the downs, Emerging into that high country where, Even across two counties, You can sense the shifting presence of the sea. In this part of England Our forefathers the giants Left their earthworks, Their barrows and standing stones.
We still have, every Englishman and woman, Some drops of giant blood in our veins."
This would probably appear to an astonishingly beautiful poem by a 17th-century author about riding a horse through the ancient English countryside—if it were a poem. But it's not a poem. It's just one random paragraph in Bring Up the Bodies that I copied and added line breaks. The book, which follows the rise of Thomas Cromwell in the 16th-century English court and the fall of Anne Boleyn, is adorned with passages like this one. Hilary Mantel is a perfect, shimmering, golden presence, and her book has giant blood in its veins.
The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo & Rose by Alice Munro
Surely Alice Munro is our most perfect writer.
Praise for her work often has a defensive cast: “Yes, she only writes short stories, but...” or “Yes, her stories are all about the private lives of isolated Canadian women, but...” None of this throat-clearing, which wrongly implies that Munro’s work is somehow good in spite of itself, is necessary. Nor do her stories have the timidity or inertia some of these descriptions suggest; they have a boldness and vigor as ostentatious as a diamond. Reading Munro, you have the thrilling sense of being in the hands of a master, something I first felt when I read Dubliners.
Having read a few newer Munro collections and a lot of her stories published in The New Yorker over the years—an experience that is frequently so shattering that I cannot read anything else for at least a day—I dug into the Munro back catalogue this year, picking up The Beggar Maid, published in 1978. (It is the fourth of Munro’s 14 collections.) The stories in this volume are an intertwined series of vignettes about a girl named Rose, from her isolated, impoverished childhood through her marriage, divorce, successful broadcasting career, and eventual homecoming. Though the plotting is not as artful as Munro’s mature work, there is a rawness to these early stories that is invigorating. Then as now, each delivers an electric and unsettling jolt of the human condition.
I can’t say with a straight face that this was the best book I read this year—I can’t, in fact, say much of anything with a straight face about this book. But it was the most unexpectedly delightful book I read, the greatest escape.
A friend pressed it into my hands; he’d never heard of it before, either, he told me, but he'd devoured it and now I surely would, too. The title is, of course, bizarre, and it seems to tell you nothing, though it turns out to signal the sensibility coiled inside—brisk, superior, decadent (what sort of thing, exactly?), a kind of venomous hybrid of P.G. Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler, both of whom Bonfiglioli invokes. (The author died in 1985; this novel—forgive me, those seeking a worthy book of 2014—was first published in 1972).
Narrator Charlie Mortdecai is a successful London art dealer, a lover of fine clothes and professional wrestling, a snob about furnishings and sexual positions, a thief, and a smuggler. The name Charlie, he suspects, was an act of vengeance by his mother against his father, but Mortdecai he likes: “a touch of ancientry, a hint of Jewry, a whiff of corruption—no collector can resist crossing swords with a dealer called Mortdecai, for God’s sake.” He cheats at Gin Rummy with his landlady, Mrs. Spon; he drinks a good deal; he has a mysteriously sophisticated knowledge of guns and ammunition.
Mortdecai may or may not have stolen a Goya. OK, he did steal it. But a secret, sadistic, lawless branch of the British police is onto him, in the form of Martland, a cunning schoolmate of our anti-Bertie. Mortdecai’s plan is to con Martland into giving him a diplomatic passport so that he can ship the Goya, hidden in the roof liner of a restored Silver Ghost Rolls Royce, to a lunatic millionaire named Milton Krampf in the American West. It all works, at least until it doesn’t, and eventually things begin to fall apart—for Mortdecai, perhaps, but certainly, toward the end, for me. No matter. The man wrote like this (I pick a passage almost at random):
Mrs. Spon rounded on him and Told Him Off. I had heard of her talents in that direction but had never before been privileged to hear her unlock the word bag. It was a literary and emotional feast: Martland withered visibly. There is no one like your gently nurtured triple-divorcee for really putting the verbal leather in. "Wart on the tax-payer’s arse," "traffic-warden’s catamite," and "poor man’s Colonel Wigg" are just a few of the good things she served up but there was more—much more. She swept out at last, in a cloud of "Ragazza" and lovely epithets. She was wearing a suede knickerbocker suit but you’d have sworn she twitched a twelve-foot train of brocade away from Martland as she passed him.
"Golly," he said when she’d gone.
Golly, indeed. You'll want to tell your friends, too.
I’m about half a decade too late to the moral brawl over The Golden Compass. When it was made into a movie in 2007, religious and secular groups alike criticized the adaptation, citing concerns about censorship and a supposedly anti-Catholic message.
But when I re-read the book earlier this year, I found its little details much more compelling than any religious meta-narratives. On my first look, long ago, fourth-grader me didn’t notice the compelling metaphysical questions the world of the book raises. Several characters are “experimental theologians” who use “philosophical apparatuses” to gather data—about the essential nature of the universe. The main character, Lyra, wields a tricked-out compass to divine answers to any question she asks, as if all “truth” is a static thing that can be deciphered with a machine. The book’s main source of mystery, something called “dust,” is most curious of all: It’s the ambiguous embodiment of either good or evil (depending on whom you’re talking to), and it’s physical, measurable, concrete.
All of which makes the “real world” (if I dare use such a loaded term in a short, vaguely philosophical blurb) more fascinating by comparison. Lyra’s world seems both less and more “advanced” than ours—less, because of the scholarly fascination with measuring God, and more, because these people have calculated the essential nature of the universe. The Golden Compass is a twisting, splendid argument for the re-enchantment of the world: When science, magic, and metaphysics collide, only adventure can ensue.
You don’t need to be a veteran of artsy sleep-away camps to appreciate Meg Wolitzer’s ninth novel, because the lesson of The Interestings isn’t that the treasured places of youth shape our formative years—it’s that the people around us do.
Over the course of four decades and 480 pages—save this book for a long, empty weekend—six teenagers who meet at a gifted-youth camp in 1974 grow up to be much more than Breakfast Club-esque archetypes: The handsome, charismatic Goodman and his aspiring-actress sister Ash brim with potential. Cathy’s dance career is threatened by her developing curves, while the quiet, closeted musician Jonah is haunted by his folk-singer mother’s poisonous entourage. Most curious of the bunch are Ethan, the “unusually ugly” animator who later strikes it rich, and Jules, the plain protagonist who enters their orbit the night they christen themselves “The Interestings.”
Together, the gang witnesses the Watergate scandal, the AIDS crisis, and 9/11. The friends fall in and out of touch, and in and out of love; some achieve greatness, while others fail miserably. The Interestings touches on how these relationships survive, but it spends more time exploring the forces that threaten to pull them apart: envy, class differences, illness, sexual assault. Jumping back and forth in time and perspective, Wolitzer holds an unforgiving magnifying glass up to their cruelest thoughts and their oh-so-human bodies—seriously, this book offers anatomical descriptions that are hilarious, cringe-worthy, unforgettable, and totally apt all at once. Grief, trauma, and longing are plentiful here, but Wolitzer manages to uncover simple yet revelatory truths about what it means to live a fulfilling—and, yes, interesting—life.
Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, edited by Sari Botton
In 1968, Joan Didion wrote Slouching Towards Bethelem—a collection of essays including the now seminal “Goodbye to All That.” That essay’s premise: Young writer falls madly in love with New York City. Young writer falls madly out of love with New York City, moves to the West Coast and pretends that was the plan all along. The classic quarter-life crisis.
In 2013, I, too, left New York City. And perhaps in an effort to justify a choice I never imagined making, I indulged hard and fast in the flood of trendy “why I left New York” essays. Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, which takes its title from the original Didion, was just the ticket. Edited by The Rumpus columnist Sari Botton, GTAT consists of 28 funny and poignant essays by 28 female one-time New Yorkers. Each one angles in on the distinct yet ever-so typical expectations of New York's young creative class and the specific heartbreak that comes with realizing you’ve had your fill of the drafty walkups, dangerously overcrowded subway platforms, $18 cocktails, and Brooklyn-phobic taxi drivers. There are only so many times one can cut an agonizingly exorbitant rent check to a guy in orange-tinted aviators and a Members Only jacket before Pittsburgh starts looking like the next Williamsburg.
From the practical (Meghan Daum’s 1999 New Yorker essay on the manic urban debtor), to the dreamy (Roxane Gay’s reflections on that unattainable Manhattan-literati glamour), to the comically macabre (Cheryl Strayed on casual daytime stabbings in the West Village), the writers Botton has brought together capture this oppressive, sacred fatigue with stylish humor. And yet, even if you’ve never lived it, you might find yourself missing “all that.” Just a little.
Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss
Salt, Sugar, Fat brings to mind watching something catastrophic happening in slow motion: It’s frightening and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, but in its own odd, grotesque way, it’s compelling.
Most recent books on the food industry and the state of the American diet share in the grotesqueness; unfortunately, they tend more toward the boring than the riveting. Fortunately, Moss does an excellent job of edifying (and perhaps disgusting) his readers while not boring them to death. He presents a thoroughly researched account of the food industry, encompassing both the politics and the science that factor in. Of particular note is his discussion of how the processed food industry of today emulates the tobacco industry of the mid-20th century: by profiting from the strategies of some of the same executives and the desires of heavy users.
Salt, Sugar, Fat also could have been yet another manifesto against the evils of “big food.” But instead, Moss takes a far more unique look at the science behind what makes processed food so alluring, going into great detail on experiments conducted by food researchers to optimize the desirability of food. Commonly mentioned is the “bliss point,” borrowed from economics and applied to food to denote the ideal quantities of sugar, salt, and fat needed to make a product as irresistible as possible.
In the view of society that Moss reveals, food is distant from health, nutrition, and humans. It is a product, like a mobile phone or a pair of shoe—studied, engineered, mass produced, and sold for profit.
—Marie Sbrocca, product fellow
Vintage
The Passage to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro
Robert Caro expects to publish his fifth and final volume on the life of Lyndon Johnson in 2015 or 2016, some four decades after he began his research on the legendary Senate leader and 36th president. Caro’s first book on LBJ, The Path to Power, covered Johnson’s childhood in Texas Hill Country through his failed bid for a Senate seat in 1941, when he was 33 years old. ThePassage to Power, the fourth volume, covers 1958 to 1963. To me, it’s the most engrossing so far because it shows Johnson both at his lowest and at his most commanding.
This volume opens with LBJ waffling over whether to run for president in 1960. He talks privately to friends and aides as if he will announce his candidacy, but he can’t commit. By the time he declares in July 1960, it’s too late. John F. Kennedy is nominated and LBJ, in a deal aimed at sewing up the South, is named his running mate, a decision that infuriates Robert Kennedy, who tries to get LBJ to withdraw. After chronicling the general election in which Kennedy-Johnson defeats Nixon-Lodge, Caro divides the rest of the book into two broad storylines: the the Kennedy team heaping indignities on Vice President Johnson (they deny him any substantive role and dismiss him as a whiny hillbilly whom they nickname “Rufus Cornpone”); and Johnson’s assumption of the White House in the weeks after Dallas, in late 1963, with a display of leadership and confidence that makes it hard to recognize the shattered man of just a few months earlier.
When the newly sworn-in Johnson is advised not to use the political capital he’d acquired after the assassination on a hopeless cause like civil rights, Johnson bridles: “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” History tells us how LBJ answered that question, but to be safe, we should wait for Caro’s version. Bring on Volume Five.
The literature of war is memorable for what it shows about the battlefield, but also for what it reveals about the connections and disconnections between combat and civilian life. For me, for instance, the most moving part of All Quiet on the Western Front is when the soldier victim-protagonist, Paul, receives a brief furlough to his home village and realizes he no longer has anything in common with people not exposed to the slaughterhouse of trench warfare. Other obvious examples: Cold Mountain, with its Confederate deserter finding his way through the war-battered South; or Catch-22, in which brutal combat alternates with shameless hucksterism; or the scenes from Apocalypse Now in which a helicopter load of Playboy Playmates is taken into the boondocks to entertain the troops.
In tone, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, which came out in 2012, is both comic (like Catch-22) and surreal (like the upcountry scenes in Apocalypse Now). And to me, it stands as the best-yet literary representation not of the combat side of the Iraq War but of the “Chickenhawk Nation” America that sent a tiny fraction of its people off to war and congratulated itself on saying “Thank you for your service.” (By the way: David Finkel’s book of that name is also very good.) Ben Fountain’s novel turns on a halftime ceremony on a Thanksgiving Day Dallas Cowboys game, honoring a group of soldiers who survived an Iraq firefight caught on a Fox News video. It’s short, funny, and piercing—and I predict that years from now, people will read it to understand our times.
The Stench of Honolulu: A Tropical Adventure by Jack Handey
Jack Handey finally wrote a novel this year. It's called The Stench of Honolulu, and it's amazing.
Handey has written Shouts & Murmurs for The New Yorker for years, but perhaps most famously, he did Deep Thoughts on SNL in the 1990s (and also created the characters Toonces the Driving Cat and Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer). In The Stench of Honolulu he takes "the Deep Thoughts character"—who never had a real name, and was often incorrectly taken to be Handey himself, but had a clear, simple, borderline psychopathic perspective—and wrote him into an absurd longform narrative wherein he unwittingly destroys the city of Honolulu. That conceit could easily have gotten old after a few pages, but never does; Handey is uniquely able to take non-topical, apolitical, timeless absurdism in simple sentences of unadorned language, and put me in tears. I read it out loud with my girlfriend this summer, passing it back and forth when we couldn't read through the laughing.
The things Handey was writing in the 1990s would be loved on Twitter today, but he doesn't even tweet. He opted out of much press touring this summer because he said he doesn't enjoy New York in the summer. Even through the eyes of the Deep Thoughts character, you can tell Handey sees the world in that beautiful, "I'm not trying to to impress you, I just like making jokes, and I'd be writing this to amuse myself even if you weren't reading" kind of way.
What does it mean to be smart? The answer will vary according not just to who's doing the answering, but also to where—and when—they're doing it. What human intelligence looks like today is different, slightly, from what human intelligence looked like in the 20th century. Or the 19th. Or the ninth. And that's in part because of technology: Part of what it means to live in a world mediated by tools—which is to say, part of what it means to be human—is to participate in a kind of transactional relationship between mind and machine. As our tools change, so do we.
Smarter Than You Think, the first book from the (very, very smart) journalist Clive Thompson, explores that idea with a focus on the digital technologies that are, in ways both obvious and subtle, augmenting our intellect. The book is, on the one hand, an answer to the anxieties (neuroplasticity! amateurism! population-wide ADD!) that tend to accompany those new tools: It offers a sweeping survey of human innovation whose upshot is, essentially, it has always been thus. "For eons," Thompson writes, "people have fought back against the fabrications of memory by using external aids." On the other hand, though, Smarter Than You Think is speculative nonfiction—a map of "our cognitive future" that tracks where our new tools might be taking us. What do products of networked intelligence like Wikipedia mean for the way we codify knowledge? How should the development of the ultimate outsourced brain, the searchable Internet, change the way we approach formal education? How will our newfound ability to measure ourselves—the steps we take, the calories we burn, the number and variety of interactions we have with friends and family—change the way we relate to the world?
Thompson, being a journalist rather than a futurist, doesn't offer prescription or prediction. Instead, he takes the data he's assembled in his extensive research and reporting, ranging from the musings of Socrates to the doings of Watson to the revelations of the "Cute Cat Theory of the Internet," and offers a compelling case for optimism. We're not getting dumber. We're getting smarter. Or, at least, we're getting smarter than we think.
S. is a turducken of a book: The baseline text is a made-up 1948 novel by a mysterious author named V.M. Straka, whose writing is footnoted by a made-up editor named F.X. Caldeira—both of whose writings are being scrutinized by two made-up college students writing (and getting to know each other) in the margins. (In other words, every layer of S. is fictionalized.) What's more, slotted between the book’s pages are the physical traces of the college students’ quest to uncover Straka’s true identity: postcards, yellowed old xeroxes, a scribbled-on napkin.
I’ll be honest: I’ve only read 50 of S.’s 500 pages, and that’s all I needed to declare it my favorite book this year. But to be more precise, I’ve read 10 percent of the pages and one fake newspaper clipping, one handwritten note, and a whole lot of marginalia. I’ll concede that the book’s concept is a little over-the-top, but as a recovering Lost fan (R.I.P. logical continuity, circa Season 4), I had to give J.J. Abrams another shot. Now, I’m having so much fun that I’m taking a slow-cooker approach, permitting myself to pick it up for a few minutes whenever I feel like it, with plans to finish it over a couple of months. At a time when print’s obsolescence is more or less agreed-upon, it’s refreshing to pick up something that makes good use of the technology known as paper. With all of the pleasant tchotchkes it contains,S. is more tactile than a touch screen—and, might I add, doesn't receive any push notifications.
Most books are "not for everyone." You know: “This one” won’t do if you love dense plots and lavish sentences, and “that one” must be skipped if you aren’t in the Jane Austen Book Club. But an allegory is an exceptionally unfriendly kind of story. It says, I am only for a very few people. The people who can understand why so-and-so is called what’s-his-name, who can decipher what the pregnant dialogue in Chapter One is really talking about.
I’m sure there are (a few) people who have read J.M. Coetzee’s latest novel in this way, and would recommend it to you on many merits that I can only fuzzily begin to discuss. But you don’t have to read The Childhood of Jesus this way—because it is an unusually friendly allegory. It is the story of a boy named David (not Jesus!), who has arrived in Spain with no real parents, no real memory of his past, and no particular claim on the future except the strength of his very precocious mind.
Much of David’s life is strange, in the style of utopian fiction (cue the allegory experts). With the help of his guardian Simon, he identifies a perfect stranger as his “one and only mother,” and quickly becomes inseparable from her, her enormous German Shepherd, and the various shady men that come in and out of her life. And yet much of David’s saga is perfectly modern. He becomes a perennial troublemaker in his first-grade classroom, and the school’s psychologist intervenes. Her pedagogy is written right alongside the weighty political and religious philosophy that occupies much of the book, but it sounds as if it has been lifted from a contemporary parenting book: David might be dyslexic, she concludes, and at the very least is suffering from a dislocation that causes him to “retreat into a fantasy world where he feels more in control.”
What bridges these two tonal registers is David himself. His character is both uniquely and universally profound. In one moment, he is like no child to have ever existed. In the next moment, he captures perfectly the essence of all children, everywhere. His is a story, in short, that will confuse you constantly, even as it resonates deeply. I highly recommend the combination.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is not a perfect book. Its pacing is off at several points—I found myself wanting to skip past pages of exposition so I could finally find out what happens next. The ending is not quite satisfying; it almost feels unfinished, as it leaves one of the central questions of the story unanswered.
But the novel's vivid, absorbing world makes up for its deficiencies. The characters and places Tartt creates are beautifully, poignantly real. The book opens in uptown Manhattan, where a boy named Theo and his mother are spending the morning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I could picture their every move in my mind: hailing a taxi at their apartment, getting out near Central Park, running into the museum to escape the rain, wandering through the galleries. I grew up in New York, so at first I thought Tartt's descriptions seemed so rich simply because I know the city so well myself. But later, Tartt takes Theo to Las Vegas and then to Amsterdam—places with which I'm much less familiar—and again I felt transported. If you set me down in Nevada today, I could pick out the house where Theo and his dad live after Theo's mom dies.
The characters, too, are wonderfully alive: the grieving Theo, his manipulative father, his charming best friend, the beautiful girl of his dreams. The Goldfinch succeeds where so many books fail: in making the reader feel that she's living the story right along with the characters.
One way to think about Jamil Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon is as Pakistan’s version of The Kite Runner, but way better. Both books by first-time authors, and like Khaled Hosseini’s breakout hit, this is a rare glimpse of a faraway land most readers won’t ever get close to. Despite its growing global importance (think drone strikes and Abbottabad), Pakistan remains obscure. Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, tens of thousands of American troops and workers and journalists haven’t passed through in the last decade, keeping it out of sight. That’s especially true of the remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas, stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban.
Octogenarian Ahmad spent nearly half a century as a government bureaucrat in the FATA before publishing this book, a collection of interrelated short stories-cum-novel. The culture Ahmad depicts is just as brutally violent, both emotionally and physically, as one might expect. But it’s not a religiously motivated Islamist brutality—it’s more primordial, more visceral.
The Wandering Falcon is more like a Western than anything else: The title character, a mysterious man with a hidden past, moves quietly but consequentially through forbidding, stark, halfway-lawless landscapes. This is a place where tribalism and force seem to govern. But Ahmad’s stories are about how human beings deal with impossible situations; tribalism and force are just a background. What makes The Wandering Falcon powerful is an unadorned style that avoids saccharine sentimentality on one hand and the risk of subsuming its characters into faceless, centuries-old Orientalist archetypes on the other. Instead, Ahmad—like his protagonist—manages to stay on the narrow of path of being humane.
Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Dow Schüll
Two books stand out among everything I read this year. The first you know: Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge. The second, you probably don't: Natasha Dow Schüll's Addiction by Design. Since you can read a definitive review of Pynchon's novel by David Auerbach in The American Reader, I'll focus my comments here on Addiction by Design.
Schüll is an anthropologist at MIT, and she studies people in extreme artificial environments—namely, Las Vegas casinos. She looks at how the gambling companies engineer behaviors as they simultaneously create and satisfy human desires. The core of her critique is that "giving people what they want" is never as simple as it seems. And the new tools of the digital age (machines, data, algorithms, interfaces) make a level of emotional precision possible that just did not exist in the analog era.
Her work shows that "what people want" out of a slot machine is not the payout, but the experience of receiving feedback. Players call the altered mental state that the slot machines induce The Zone, where everything but the machine disappears. And companies have gotten much, much better that delivering people there faster and holding them there longer.
Though her book is nominally about the development of digital slots, the implications of her work reach into every interaction we have with an engineered artificially intelligent system like Facebook or Netflix or (soon) your car or home. These systems train humans with imperfect, fast payouts that leave us wanting more. They can create what I call "coercive loops," that begin with an intent (see a friend's baby pictures) outside the machine's world, but quickly begin to operate on the machine's logic (click more pictures!).
If books can be tools, Addiction by Design is one of the foundational artifacts for understanding the digital age—a lever, perhaps, to pry ourselves from the grasp of the coercive loops that now surround us.
Of all the excellent books I’ve read about the Iraq War, George Packer’s The Assassin’s Gate, with its portraits of Iraqis affected by the crisis, lingered with me the most. But in this year’s magnificent The Unwinding, Packer trains his eye on subjects far closer to home—here, in the present-day United States.
The Unwinding concerns how the central bargain that once underpinned American life—that people who worked hard and played by the rules would get ahead—has unraveled over the past four decades. But rather than offer an explanation, Packer instead tells his story through the narratives of real Americans.
Who are the people who best epitomize our new, uncertain nation? There’s Tammy Thomas, a laid-off factory worker from Youngstown, Ohio, who finds new purpose as a community organizer. There’s Dean Price, a serial entrepreneur who embraces biofuels—and Obama—only to be disappointed. There’s Peter Thiel, an IT billionaire disillusioned with his field’s vacuousness. There’s Jeff Connaughton, a career-long aide to Joseph Biden who grows to resent Wall Street’s dominance over politics. Then there’s a character that isn’t a person at all: the city of Tampa, where the foreclosure crisis was most acute.
Packer weaves together stories of these five characters throughout the book, interspersing their narrative with news headlines from the last 30 years and biographical sketches of familiar figures like Oprah Winfrey, Sam Walton, and Alice Waters. And while some have criticized Packer’s book for not pairing these narratives with detached analysis, Packer wisely chose to let his characters speak for him. Their stories, after all, are ours too.
In The Light Between Oceans, by M. L. Stedman—set in Western Australia in the aftermath of the First World War—emotionally shell-shocked veteran Tom Sherbourne finds peace (or at least some calm) working as a lighthouse keeper. But on his way to his new post at Janus Rock, a lighthouse on an island miles from the shore, his plans for a solitary existence are disrupted when he meets the spirited and beautiful Isabel Graysmark. Isabel, who also experienced the brutality of the war with the death of her two brothers, sees Tom, to his surprise, as her chance for love and new life. She promptly proposes and moves to his lighthouse post.
If the world were a kinder and more just place, Tom and Isabel would live their life together as happily as they did in the first months of their marriage, but Isabel's hopes for a family are replaced with grief as she repeatedly miscarries. When one day a boat drifts ashore with a dead man and a wailing baby inside, Isabel convinces Tom that they should not report the boat and claim the baby as their own—a decision that returns Tom to the moral murkiness of the war, and leads eventually to dreadful consequences. I started to read this tragic, beautifully written book one morning and didn't put it down until I had finished it late that night.
Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore
In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf invented a bold and poetically brilliant sister for Shakespeare, and then spun out her grim fate: Judith escaped home at 17, only to commit suicide upon finding herself pregnant after being seduced by an actor. In this year’s Book of Ages, Jill Lepore tells a true story to top that tragic parable of gender-skewed destinies: Jane Franklin, who thought of her big brother Ben as her “Second Self,” married a ne’er-do-well at 15. Stuck in the same dark house where she’d grown up, she proceeded to watch child after child (she had 12 in all) die, or go astray, or sicken. But Jane also went on to write letter after letter to the soul mate of her childhood, who had been her fond tutor before he ran away from home at 17. Off making his heroic, independent way in the world, Ben Franklin always—or almost always—wrote her back.
Jane kept his letters, guarding them with care. Many of her letters were lost, and Lepore has to scrounge for facts that shed light on a life as obscure as Benjamin’s was renowned. The result is a one-of-a-kind biography, which also offers an upstairs-downstairs vision of colonial turmoil, along with astute insights into the challenges of writing history—all without losing sight of Jane. “I think there was hardly Ever so unfourtunate a Famely,” she wrote her brother of her travails. At the same time, Lepore’s bracingly vigorous account reveals a Jane who never ceased to consider herself an unusually lucky sister. Don’t be “too Difident,” Benjamin had urged her early on. She took the counsel to heart, venturing ever bolder opinions the older she got, and trying to read everything he wrote. Or almost everything: Lepore can’t say for sure that Jane, who outlived her brother by four years, ever saw the version of Franklin’s memoirs that began circulating shortly after his death in 1790. If she did, she wouldn’t have found herself anywhere in it.
It’s hard to describe The Night Circus without using words like dazzling, mesmerizing, or enchanting. I read it after a long fantasy-novel dry spell, so I might have been especially susceptible to the book’s precious Victorian imagery. There’s an incredible description of a giant black-and-white clock with clouds and stars that drift across its morphing face. A game of chess is played out in one corner. A princess paces in another. At the center, is a juggler that slings one extra ball every hour. The clock is so elaborate that it’s easy to forget it has a specific function, and that’s kind of what this book is like as a whole.
The plot is tied loosely to The Tempest and features a large cast of characters whose individual stories add color when they don’t bog down the main narrative. And the most evocative setting, a highbrow circus with mysteriously convincing acts, is painstakingly depicted. Some reviewers found Erin Morgenstern’s glut of details to be florid and heavy-handed (and weird phrases like “a wonderful coalescence” sometimes make it hard to disagree). But even when certain relationships were given too much face time and others not enough, the peek inside such a well-conceived world propelled me along.
Art isn’t just meant to look pretty – it can also be used to transfer ideas and messages. Polish illustrator Pawel Kuczynski’s grim and sharply satirical works, which we’ve featured before here, are a perfect example of art that speaks volumes.
Kuczynski’s images are so powerful because they force us to face some of the worst realities of our times. It’s beautiful – not in a flowers-and-sunlight kind of way, but in a brutally truthful way. He addresses war, political manipulation and hypocrisy, environmental damage, economic disparity and many other ills facing mankind today. The images strike just the right balance between obvious and complicated – just about anyone can get what they mean, but you will have to discover that meaning first.
The pastel colors and simple shapes and forms of his artwork gives it a sort of timeless look. And, for better or for worse, so do the messages he displays in his work.
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For the man with an unlimited budget, style is easy. The rest of us have to work a little harder to look good with the cash we have.
A key wardrobe concept for any man is interchangeability.
It sounds complicated and tedious, but it’s a very simple idea.
An interchangeable wardrobe is one with fewer specific pieces, but many possible clothing combinations.
That is to say, each piece you purchase works with the maximum number of other pieces, allowing you to mix and match in a variety of ways.
Building an interchangeable wardrobe isn’t a one-time project. You don’t just go out and buy one at the store. So treat this as a long-term goal, and in fact almost a mindset, rather than a quick fix for your look!
Work With What You Have – Check Your Current Closet
Take an honest inventory of your existing style.
Look through your drawers and your closet and see what you have to work with, including the old pieces that you haven’t worn in a while. Some of those might be surprisingly easy to repurpose while others are destined for the thrift store or the trash heap.
Do a realistic assessment and adjust your existing wardrobe as needed:
Throw out the obvious losers. Anything that doesn’t fit (and can’t be adjusted to fit) needs to go, not just to the back of the closet but to the trash or a thrift store, so that you won’t be tempted to try to include it in an outfit someday. “What was I thinking?” pieces that you can’t bring yourself to wear with anything else in your wardrobe can probably also go — don’t fall for a “sunken costs” fallacy by wearing a bad style just because you bought it and it’s still in useable shape.
Pull anything that needs repairs or adjustments while you’re looking through your options. Make a pile and get it seen to — that way you take care of all of the “I should have someone fix that some day” tailoring jobs in one go. To be interchangeable, clothes have to be in decent repair. A frayed hem doesn’t go with anything!
Think about repurposed styles. Maybe you don’t wear an old suit anymore because the pants don’t fit — but if the jacket still fits, see if you can dress it down with jeans for an urban-casual look. A lot of pieces can have a second life as a funky accent once they’ve served their time as a wardrobe staple.
Be thinking about the common themes that tie your wardrobe together as you do this. Are there a lot of work clothes? Business dress items? Sports jackets?
The items and styles that you have a lot of will determine, to some extent, what you should be shopping for in the future. If the only shirts you own are T-shirts and flannel work shirts, for example, there’s no sense in running out and buying sharkskin wool slacks — they don’t go with any of your shirts.
In a case like that, a man would need to buy shirts to bridge the gap between his current wardrobe and his desired wardobe. Someone who’s starting with nothing but jeans and T-shirts, for example, can branch out into casual dress shirts that go with jeans — but that will also look fine with nicer trousers, should he choose to add them at some point.
Pick Your “Core” Items
An interchangeable wardrobe is a lot easier to build when you’ve got a half-dozen to a dozen basic staple pieces that go with everything.
These aren’t necessarily exciting on their own, but they make you look good, and they serve as a neutral framework for more unique accent pieces.
Everyone’s core items are going to be a little different. That’ll be a part of defining your own personal style. But here are a few can’t-go-wrong staples that just about every man should consider owning for purposes of interchangeability:
A dark suit, navy or charcoal. I can’t think of a reason why any successful man shouldn’t own at least one well-fitted, timelessly classic suit.
A sport jacket made from a fabric that does not look like it comes from a suit. Brown, blue, olive, tan — in muted patterns are all options. Practice wearing it – you’ll learn to love what it does for your confidence and how it affects the attitude of others.
Five solid or small-patterned light-colored dress shirts (white and light blues). You could wear it with a suit for the most formal business setting imaginable, or you could wear it with jeans on a cattle ranch. It’ll work for pretty much everything in between, too. Now that’s versatility.
A lightweight, conservative (grey, navy, olive), solid-colored sweater. The quintessential layering item. Goes with everything. See what we mean about sweaters here.
At least two pairs of dress pants. Grey flannel, tan, medium-grey worsted wool, or khaki. A pair of well-fitted chinos or cords is a third option – but these are more casual, so make sure they suit your needs.
Two pairs of casual shoes. Pick your style (brogues, work shoes, dress boots, loafers, saddle shoes, etc.), but have ‘em. This is how you dress up jeans, or dress down nicer outfits. Click here for a refresher on footwear.
Are you getting the idea of interchangeability? Simple, sturdy, and functional are your key words here — styles and qualities that’ll last you for years.
Not everything has to be as plain as Amish country, mind you, even in the core wardrobe. Your “plain white dress shirt” can realistically be something with a light stripe or check pattern instead, if you prefer. It won’t serve for ultra-formal business dress, but it’ll do for everything else, and look a little more interesting in casual outfits.
The goal is to build your core around things that will play nice with others, not to eliminate all uniqueness from your wardrobe staples.
The end result?
2 pairs of shoes
3 trousers
5 shirts
2 jackets (we’ll double that navy suit as a blazer)
2 X 3 X 5 X 2 = 60 unique outfits from a simple wardrobe.
Add in neckties, pocket squares, the suit, and sweater…we could turn this into 300+ outfits.
Expand the Core
There’s a difference between adding to your wardrobe and expanding it.
Expanding means you’re actually pushing the boundaries a little — moving into new styles and areas where you weren’t already strong. That’s how you take the existing core and “interchange” it (the goal here is interchangeability, remember?) into new looks without leaving it completely behind.
If your entire wardrobe is based on jeans and casual shirts, for example, you should be looking at things like sports jackets and blazers that can be worn with blue jeans. Once you have those, you’ll rapidly discover that they can be worn with nicer slacks as well — making those your next likely expansion. And so on.
It works both ways on the scale of formality, too — a guy with a high-paying job and a sharp wardrobe of suits, wool slacks, and crisp blazers can benefit by adding some casual trousers and some softer sports jackets to give him access to a more relaxed style.
Think of it as a game of leapfrog. Each new item should provide a springboard to new options, but it should work with the clothes you already have, too.
Create Uniqueness with Accent Pieces
Let’s think about a completely neutral, ordinary outfit for a casual man: dark, fitted jeans and a white (or lightly patterned) dress shirt tucked in.
Generic, right?
But no man’s going to leave the house wearing just those two items. He’s also got his shoes and belt to pick, possibly a jacket, as well as any jewelry he wears (and hopefully undergarments of some kind).
Turns out those choices make a lot of difference. The same jeans and shirt are going to look very different paired with a broad brown belt and brown tooled-leather western boots than they would with black brogues, a slim black dress belt with a silver buckle, and a silver watch.
One outfit is rugged and “country,” the other is sleek and urban. That’s the power of accent pieces.
Use your choice of accents to turn your core wardrobe into a true personal style. Traditional accent pieces that you can play around with include:
Neckties (smooth, knit, bow, etc.)
Pocket squares (worn with any kind of sport/blazer/suit jacket)
Jewelry (wristwatches, tie clips/chains, rings, cufflinks, etc.)
Belts (plain, braided or stamped leather, cloth, decorative buckles, etc.)
Shoes (dress and casual leather, canvas, boots, etc.)
Outerwear (coats, hats, gloves, etc.)
These will be your primary tools for turning basic core items into a fully-functional wardrobe that expresses your personal style.
That said, there’s also room in everyone’s wardrobe for larger pieces that are too eye-grabbing or unique to really be “core” pieces. A pair of brightly-colored corduroys, for example, aren’t nearly as versatile as a pair of khakis, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever wear them. Just treat them as an accent, and pair them with some neutral core pieces so the whole outfit doesn’t get too overwhelming.
Most of your outfits will consist of a couple core pieces and a couple accent pieces. The more accents you add, the more unique the outfit gets. Learning not to overdo it is a valuable skill — if you’ve bought good core pieces, you don’t need to go overboard layering on top of them!
Invest in Quality
Fit – Fabric – Style – The Style Pyramid
One of the most important wardrobe-building skills is knowing when to say “no.”
A single good piece of clothing that works with almost everything in your closet is worth more than two or three single-use items that you can only work into one or two outfits.
Fit is the most important characteristic of your clothing. If a piece doesn’t fit properly — comfortably close but not over-tight, with no pinching or sagging — it’s not going to make you look good, and it won’t work with the rest of your wardrobe. Only buy pieces that fit well, or that can be easily adjusted by a tailor.
Fabric the weight and thickness of the cloth matters! A smooth, heavy fabric will drape more naturally than a thin, cheap one. You also want to look for quality construction — there’s no sense in buying something that’s going to come apart at the seams in a year or two.
Style is your personal judgment of how well the piece in question will fit with the rest of your wardrobe. Don’t be afraid to add the occasional outlier or experiment — but make sure most of the things you’re purchasing are interchangeable with your core items.
Turn things down if they don’t pass all three of these tests. You want to be satisfied with the fit, the fabric, and the style. Something that suits your aesthetic tastes but doesn’t fit right, or isn’t made to your satisfaction, won’t ever become a good wardrobe addition. You’re better off holding out for something better.
How to Test Interchangeability
This all might sound great in theory, but how does an interchangeable wardrobe work in practice?
Try this: pick a piece out of your wardrobe. Any core piece will do — a shirt, a jacket, a pair of trousers.
Now, think about another type of item that you wear with that piece. So if you’re looking at a shirt, think about jackets you might wear over it.
Do at least half of your options match? (So in the example of a shirt, do half your jackets go with it?)
If the answer is “no” — if there are really only one or two items that go with the piece you’re thinking about — it’s not that flexible.
That doesn’t mean you should throw a piece out, but it does mean it’s probably not a reliable core wardrobe staple. Use it as more of a statement piece, jazzing up otherwise neutral outfits from time to time.
Overall, you’re shooting for a wardrobe that’s about “half working with half” — in other words, about half your options should be neutral enough that any one of them would work with half the wardrobe.
If you can achieve that — and can slowly build a good collection of accents that speak to your own personal style — you’ll have interchangeability mastered.
Watch a Video Summary of This Post
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Written By: Antonio Centeno Founder of Real Men Real Style Creator of The Style System – a college-level course that teaches the foundations of professional dressing so you control the message your image sends.
In 1964, Larry Kunkel’s mother gave him a pair of moleskin pants for Christmas. He found that they froze stiff during the Minnesota winters, so the following Christmas he wrapped them up and gave them to his brother-in-law, Roy Collette. Collette returned them to Kunkel the next year, and the pants began oscillating between the two as a yearly joke. This was fun until it escalated:
One year Collette twisted the pants into a tight roll and stuffed them into an inch-wide pipe 3 feet long and gave them to Kunkel.
Not to be outdone, Kunkel returned them the following year compressed into a 7-inch cube and baled in wire.
So Collette gave them back immured in a 2-foot crate full of stones and banded with steel.
Collette next had them mounted inside an insulated window with a 20-year guarantee.
Kunkel soldered them into a 5-inch coffee can and sealed that in a 5-gallon container filled with concrete and reinforcing rods.
Kunkel locked them in a 225-pound homemade steel ashtray made of 8-inch steel casings.
Collette returned them welded inside a 600-pound safe decorated with red and green stripes.
Kunkel put them in the glove compartment of a 2,000-pound 1974 Gremlin crushed into a 3-foot cube.
Collette put them inside a tire 8 feet high and 2 feet wide and filled it with 6,000 pounds of cement.
Kunkel hid them inside one of 15 identical concrete-filled canisters, which he loaded into a 17.5-foot rocket ship filled with concrete and weighing 6 tons.
Collette put them in a 4-ton Rubik’s cube fashioned from kiln-baked concrete and covered with 2,000 board-feet of lumber.
Kunkel put them into a station wagon filled with 170 steel generators welded together.
Collette returned them inside a cement-truck tank delivered by a flatbed truck and accompanied by a crane.
Here it ended. In 1989 Collette planned to encase the pants in 10,000 pounds of glass and leave them in Kunkel’s front yard. “It would have been a great one,” Kunkel admitted. “Really messy.” But the insulated container failed during pouring and the molten glass reduced the pants to ashes. They reside today in an urn on Kunkel’s mantel.
Korean artist Seung Mo Park (previously) continues to amaze with his astonishingly crafted figurative sculptures made with tightly wrapped layers of aluminum wire based on fiberglass forms. The works shown here are part of the Brooklyn-based artist’s Human series where he recreates the delicate wrinkles and folds of clothing as well as the sinuous musculature of the human body in metallic layers remeniscent of tree rings. He’s also sculpted bicycles, musical insturments and other forms as part of his Object series. (via My Modern Met)
Over these last weeks, it's been a constant point here that – as the head of the Gang of Eight subsequently put it – the Synod of Bishops "will be transformed"... and that said evolution could prove the linchpin of the Franciscan reform of the church's universal governance.
As a corollary, it bears noting that – for all the optical changes to reflect the Conciliar ecclesiology – fifty years since Vatican II, the authority of the papacy has remained almost entirely unaltered (or, if anything, became even further amplified)... at least, until now. Yet even as a recalibration of the Petrine role in light of the Council is now underway, perhaps the greatest irony of recent events is that the forces who've historically favored a maximal clout for Rome have suddenly sought to downplay the Pope.
In any event, to punctuate the point of the Synod's intended reboot – apparently in a way that's finally become graspable elsewhere – earlier this month the Holy See (under Francis' close watch) prepared an initial summary to guide the preparations for next October's Extraordinary Synod on "The Pastoral Challenges of the Family," with specific questions for the local churches to answer over the year to come with an eye to aiding the process.
Dated 18 October, the summary with a cover-letter from the newly-named Secretary-General of the Synod, Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, was circulated yesterday to the US bishops via the conference, seeking the body's input by December 31st to forward to Rome. (Ostensibly released to the bench via the private "bishops-only website," a copy of the package was obtained by Whispers earlier today.) In keeping with Baldisseri's request that Chanceries share the text "as widely as possible to deaneries and parishes" for their input, some Stateside dioceses have already begun to move toward extending the consultation process into the local level.
Along the way, Baldisseri revealed Francis' "expressed will" to hold a second Synod – the larger, more intensely-prepped ordinary assembly – in 2015 to mark the 50th anniversary of the organ's establishment in the wake of Vatican II. As previously noted, another meeting of the Synod's permanent Council will be the closing bookend of the Consistory announced today for February 22nd. (During the body's last sit-down earlier this month, the papal Ford Focus rolled down the Via della Conciliazione twice to quietly shuttle the Pope to consecutive days' sessions of the group.)
While only two extraordinary Synods have previously been held (the last in 1985), the distinction from the norm lies largely in a more intimate, less clunky – and as a result, arguably more effective – format; unlike the ordinary assembly (comprised of scores of elected bishop-delegates and appointed observers), an extraordinary Synod's makeup consists mostly of the presidents of the episcopal conferences ex officio, with a select number of papal appointees. In addition, the 2014 gathering's two-week duration – 5-19 October – is a reduction by half of the Synods' eventual length over most of John Paul II's pontificate; on his ascent, Benedict XVI slashed a week off the assemblies, while adding a widely-praised hour of open exchange at the end of each day's business. Still, having won plaudits as Relator-General of the 2001 assembly on the role of the bishop, the now-Pope is keenly aware that for no shortage of Synod Fathers, the greatest benefit of the experience has been a healthy amount of nap-time during the sessions.
Further information on the Synod's altered modus operandi will be given next Tuesday at a Vatican press conference featuring Baldisseri and Francis' chosen leaders for the 2014 gathering: Cardinal Peter Erdö of Budapest and Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto, the widely-lauded Italian theologian. For now, the jump-link below will bring up the full text of the 3,600-word "Preparatory Document," which the bishops of England and Wales took the unusual step of publishing online earlier this week, alongside an online version of the questionnaire which concludes the text.
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SYNOD OF BISHOPS
III EXTRAORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY
PASTORAL CHALLENGES TO THE FAMILY IN THE CONTEXT OF EVANGELIZATION
PREPARATORY DOCUMENT
VATICAN CITY 2013
I. Synod: Family and Evangelization The mission of preaching the Gospel to all creation, entrusted directly by the Lord to his disciples, has continued in the Church throughout history. The social and spiritual crisis, so evident in today’s world, is becoming a pastoral challenge in the Church’s evangelizing mission concerning the family, the vital building-block of society and the ecclesial community. Never before has proclaiming the Gospel on the Family in this context been more urgent and necessary. The importance of the subject is reflected in the fact that the Holy Father has decided to call for a Synod of Bishops, which is to have a two-staged itinerary: firstly, an Extraordinary General Assembly in 2014, intended to define the “status quaestionis” and to collect the bishops’ experiences and proposals in proclaiming and living the Gospel of the Family in a credible manner; and secondly, an Ordinary General Assembly in 2015 to seek working guidelines in the pastoral care of the person and the family. Concerns which were unheard of until a few years ago have arisen today as a result of different situations, from the widespread practice of cohabitation, which does not lead to marriage, and sometimes even excludes the idea of it, to same-sex unions between persons, who are, not infrequently, permitted to adopt children. The many new situations requiring the Church’s attention and pastoral care include: mixed or inter-religious marriages; the single-parent family; polygamy; marriages with the consequent problem of a dowry, sometimes understood as the purchase price of the woman; the caste system; a culture of non-commitment and a presumption that the marriage bond can be temporary; forms of feminism hostile to the Church; migration and the reformulation of the very concept of the family; relativist pluralism in the conception of marriage; the influence of the media on popular culture in its understanding of marriage and family life; underlying trends of thought in legislative proposals which devalue the idea of permanence and faithfulness in the marriage covenant; an increase in the practice of surrogate motherhood (wombs for hire); and new interpretations of what is considered a human right. Within the Church, faith in the sacramentality of marriage and the healing power of the Sacrament of Penance show signs of weakness or total abandonment. Consequently, we can well understand the urgency with which the worldwide episcopate is called upon to gather cum et sub Petro to address these challenges. For example, by simply calling to mind the fact that, as a result of the current situation, many children and young people will never see their parents receive the sacraments, then we understand just how urgent are the challenges to evangelization arising from the current situation, which can be seen in almost every part of the “global village”. Corresponding in a particular manner to this reality today is the wide acceptance of the teaching on divine mercy and concern towards people who suffer on the periphery of societies, globally and in existential situations. Consequently, vast expectations exist concerning the decisions which are to be made pastorally regarding the family. A reflection on these issues by the Synod of Bishops, in addition to it being much needed and urgent, is a dutiful expression of charity towards those entrusted to the Bishops’ care and the entire human family. II. The Church and the Gospel on the Family The good news of divine love is to be proclaimed to all those personally living this basic human experience of couples and of a communion open to the gift of children, which is the family community. The teachings of the faith on marriage is to be presented in an articulate and efficacious manner, so that it might reach hearts and transform them in accordance with God’s will, made manifest in Jesus Christ.
The citation of biblical sources on marriage and family in this document are essential references only. The same is true for documentation from the Magisterium which is limited to that of a universal character, including some texts from the Pontifical Council for the Family. It will be left to the bishop- participants at the synod to cite documents from their own episcopal assemblies. In every age, and in the many different cultures, the teaching of the Pastors has been clear nor has there been lacking the concrete testimony of believers — men and women — in very diverse circumstances who have lived the Gospel of the family as an inestimable gift for their life and their children. The commitment for the next Extraordinary Synod is inspired and sustained by the desire to communicate this message with greater incisiveness, in the hope that “the treasure of revelation, entrusted to the Church, more and more fill the hearts of each person” (DV, 26). The Plan of God, Creator and Redeemer The beauty of the biblical message on the family has its roots in the creation of man and woman, both made in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen 1:24-31; 2:4-25). Bound together by an indissoluble sacramental bond, those who are married experience the beauty of love, fatherhood, motherhood, and the supreme dignity of participating in this way in the creative work of God. In the gift of the fruit of their union, they assume the responsibility of raising and educating other persons for the future of humankind. Through procreation, man and woman fulfill in faith the vocation of being God’s collaborators in the protection of creation and the growth of the human family. Blessed Pope John Paul II commented on this aspect in Familiaris consortio: “God created man in his own image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26, 27): calling him to existence through love, he called him at the same time for love. God is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8) and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion (Gaudium et spes, 12). Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being”(FC, 11). The plan of God the creator, which was disrupted by original sin (cf. Gen 3:1-24), has revealed itself throughout history in the events of the chosen people up to the fullness of time, when, with the incarnation of the Son of God, not only was the divine will for salvation confirmed, but also the redemption offering the grace to follow this same will. The Son of God, the Word made flesh (cf. Jn 1:14) in the womb of the Virgin Mother, lived and grew up in the family of Nazareth and participated at the wedding at Cana, where he added importance to the festivities with the first of his “signs” (cf. Jn 2:1-11). In joy, he welcomed his reception in the families of his disciples (cf. Mk 1:29-31; 2:13-17) and consoled the bereaved family of his friends in Bethany (cf. Lk 10:38- 42; Jn 11:1-44 ). Jesus Christ restored the beauty of matrimony, proposing once again the one plan of God which was abandoned because of the hardness of the human heart, even within the tradition of the people of Israel (cf. Mt 5:31-32; 19:3-12; Mk 10:1-12; Lk 16:18). Returning to the beginning, Jesus taught the unity and faithfulness of the husband and wife, refuting the practice of repudiation and adultery. Precisely through the extraordinary beauty of human love — already celebrated in a heightened manner inspired by the Song of Songs, and the bond of marriage called for and defended by the prophets like Hosea (cf. Hosea 1:2, 3.3) and Malachi (cf. Mal 2:13-16) — , Jesus affirmed the original dignity of the married love of man and woman.
The Church's Teaching on the Family Even in the early Christian community the family appeared as the “domestic church” (cf. CCC, 1655): In the so-called “family canons” of the Apostolic letters of the New Testament, the great family of the ancient world is identified as the place of a profound solidarity between husbands and wives, between parents and children, and between the wealthy and the poor (cf. Eph 5:21-6:9; Col 3:18-4:1; 1 Tim 2:8-15; Titus 2:1-10; 1 Pt 2:13-3:7; cf. also the Letter to Philemon). In particular, the Letter to the Ephesians recognized the nuptial love between man and woman as “the great mystery”, making present in the world the love of Christ and the Church (cf. Eph 5:31-32 ). Over the centuries, especially in modern times to the present, the Church has not failed to continually teach and develop her doctrine on the family and marriage which founded her. One of its highest expressions has been proposed by the Second Vatican Council in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, which, in treating certain pressing problems, dedicated an entire chapter to the promotion of the dignity of marriage and the family, as seen in the description of their value for the constitution of society: “the family, in which the various generations come together and help one another grow wiser and harmonize personal rights with the other requirements of social life, is the very foundation of society” (GS, 52). Particularly striking is its appeal for a Christ-centered spirituality in the spouses’ life of faith: "Let the spouses themselves, made to the image of the living God and enjoying the authentic dignity of persons, be joined to one another in equal affection, harmony of mind and the work of mutual sanctification. Thus, following Christ who is the principle of life, by the sacrifices and joys of their vocation and through their faithful love, married people can become witnesses of the mystery of love which the Lord revealed to the world by his dying and his rising up to life again”(GS, 52 ). After the Second Vatican Council, the successors of St. Peter enriched this teaching on marriage and the family, especially Pope Paul VI with the Enyclical Humanae vitae, which offers specific principles and guidelines. Subsequently, in his Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio, Pope John Paul II insisted on proposing the divine plan in the basic truths of married love and the family: “The only ‘place’ in which this self-giving in its whole truth is made possible is marriage, the covenant of conjugal love freely and consciously chosen, whereby man and woman accept the intimate community of life and love willed by God himself(cf. Gaudium et spes, 48) which only in this light manifests its true meaning. The institution of marriage is not an undue interference by society or authority, nor the extrinsic imposition of a form. Rather it is an interior requirement of the covenant of conjugal love which is publicly affirmed as unique and exclusive, in order to live in complete fidelity to the plan of God, the Creator. A person's freedom, far from being restricted by this fidelity, is secured against every form of subjectivism or relativism and is made a sharer in creative Wisdom” (FC, 11). The Catechism of the Catholic Church gathers together the fundamental aspects of this teaching: “The marriage covenant, by which a man and a woman form with each other an intimate communion of life and love, has been founded and endowed with its own special laws by the Creator. By its very nature it is ordered to the good of the couple, as well as to the generation and education of children. Christ the Lord raised marriage between the baptized to the dignity of a sacrament [cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Gaudium et spes, 48; Code of Canon Law, 1055, 1]”(CCC 1660).
The doctrine presented in the Catechism touches on both theological principles and moral behaviours, developed under two separate headings: The Sacrament of Matrimony (nos. 1601-1658) and The Sixth Commandment (nos. 2331-2391). An attentive reading of these sections of the Catechism provides an updated understanding of the doctrine of faith, which supports the Church’s work in the face of modern-day challenges. The Church’s pastoral ministry finds inspiration in the truth of marriage viewed as part of the plan of God, who created man and woman and, in the fullness of time, revealed in Jesus the completeness of spousal love elevated to the level of sacrament. Christian marriage founded on consensus is also endowed with its own effects such as the goods and duties of the spouses. At the same time, marriage is not immune from the effects of sin (cf. Gen 3:1-24), which can cause deep wounds and even abuses to the dignity of the sacrament. The recent encyclical of Pope Francis, Lumen fidei, speaks of the family in the context of a reflection on how faith reveals “just how firm the bonds between people can be when God is present in their midst” (LF, 50). “The first setting in which faith enlightens the human city is the family. I think first and foremost of the stable union of man and woman in marriage. This union is born of their love, as a sign and presence of God’s own love, and of the acknowledgment and acceptance of the goodness of sexual differentiation, whereby spouses can become one flesh (cf. Gen 2:24) and are enabled to give birth to a new life, a manifestation of the Creator’s goodness, wisdom and loving plan. Grounded in this love, a man and a woman can promise each other mutual love in a gesture which engages their entire lives and mirrors many features of faith. Promising love for ever is possible when we perceive a plan bigger than our own ideas and undertakings, a plan which sustains us and enables us to surrender our future entirely to the one we love” (LF, 52). “Faith is no refuge for the fainthearted, but something which enhances our lives. It makes us aware of a magnificent calling, the vocation of love. It assures us that this love is trustworthy and worth embracing, for it is based on God’s faithfulness which is stronger than our every weakness” ( LF, 53). III. Questions The following series of questions allows the particular Churches to participate actively in the preparation of the Extraordinary Synod, whose purpose is to proclaim the Gospel in the context of the pastoral challenges facing the family today. 1. The Diffusion of the Teachings on the Family in Sacred Scripture and the Church’s Magisterium a) Describe how the Catholic Church’s teachings on the value of the family contained in the Bible, Gaudium et spes, Familiaris consortio and other documents of the post-conciliar Magisterium is understood by people today? What formation is given to our people on the Church’s teaching on family life? b) In those cases where the Church's teaching is known, is it accepted fully or are there difficulties in putting it into practice? If so, what are they? c) How widespread is the Church's teaching in pastoral programmes at the national, diocesan and parish levels? What catechesis is done on the family?
d ) To what extent — and what aspects in particular — is this teaching actually known, accepted, rejected and/or criticized in areas outside the Church? What are the cultural factors which hinder the full reception of the Church’s teaching on the family? 2. Marriage according to the Natural Law a) What place does the idea of the natural law have in the cultural areas of society: in institutions, education, academic circles and among the people at large? What anthropological ideas underlie the discussion on the natural basis of the family? b) Is the idea of the natural law in the union between a man and a woman commonly accepted as such by the baptized in general? c) How is the theory and practice of natural law in the union between man and woman challenged in light of the formation of a family? How is it proposed and developed in civil and Church institutions? d) In cases where non-practicing Catholics or declared non-believers request the celebration of marriage, describe how this pastoral challenge is dealt with? 3. The Pastoral Care of the Family in Evangelization a) What experiences have emerged in recent decades regarding marriage preparation? What efforts are there to stimulate the task of evangelization of the couple and of the family? How can an awareness of the family as the "domestic Church" be promoted? b) How successful have you been in proposing a manner of praying within the family which can withstand life’s complexities and today’s culture? c) In the current generational crisis, how have Christian families been able to fulfill their vocation of transmitting the faith? d) In what way have the local Churches and movements on family spirituality been able to create ways of acting which are exemplary? e) What specific contribution can couples and families make to spreading a credible and holistic idea of the couple and the Christian family today? f) What pastoral care has the Church provided in supporting couples in formation and couples in crisis situations? 4. Pastoral Care in Certain Difficult Marital Situations a) Is cohabitation ad experimentum a pastoral reality in your particular Church? Can you approximate a percentage? b) Do unions which are not recognized either religiously or civilly exist? Are reliable statistics available? c) Are separated couples and those divorced and remarried a pastoral reality in your particular 5
Church? Can you approximate a percentage? How do you deal with this situation in appropriate pastoral programmes? d) In all the above cases, how do the baptized live in this irregular situation? Are aware of it? Are they simply indifferent? Do they feel marginalized or suffer from the impossibility of receiving the sacraments? e) What questions do divorced and remarried people pose to the Church concerning the Sacraments of the Eucharist and of Reconciliation? Among those persons who find themselves in these situations, how many ask for these sacraments? f ) Could a simplification of canonical practice in recognizing a declaration of nullity of the marriage bond provide a positive contribution to solving the problems of the persons involved? If yes, what form would it take? g) Does a ministry exist to attend to these cases? Describe this pastoral ministry? Do such programmes exist on the national and diocesan levels? How is God’s mercy proclaimed to separated couples and those divorced and remarried and how does the Church put into practice her support for them in their journey of faith? 5. On Unions of Persons of the Same Sex a) Is there a law in your country recognizing civil unions for people of the same-sex and equating it in some way to marriage? b) What is the attitude of the local and particular Churches towards both the State as the promoter of civil unions between persons of the same sex and the people involved in this type of union? c) What pastoral attention can be given to people who have chosen to live in these types of union? d) In the case of unions of persons of the same sex who have adopted children, what can be done pastorally in light of transmitting the faith? 6. The Education of Children in Irregular Marriages a) What is the estimated proportion of children and adolescents in these cases, as regards children who are born and raised in regularly constituted families? b) How do parents in these situations approach the Church? What do they ask? Do they request the sacraments only or do they also want catechesis and the general teaching of religion? c) How do the particular Churches attempt to meet the needs of the parents of these children to provide them with a Christian education? d) What is the sacramental practice in these cases: preparation, administration of the sacrament and the accompaniment?
7. The Openness of the Married Couple to Life a) What knowledge do Christians have today of the teachings of Humanae vitae on responsible parenthood? Are they aware of how morally to evaluate the different methods of family planning? Could any insights be suggested in this regard pastorally? b) Is this moral teaching accepted? What aspects pose the most difficulties in a large majority of couple’s accepting this teaching? c) What natural methods are promoted by the particular Churches to help spouses put into practice the teachings of Humanae vitae? d) What is your experience on this subject in the practice of the Sacrament of Penance and participation at the Eucharist? e) What differences are seen in this regard between the Church’s teaching and civic education? f) How can a more open attitude towards having children be fostered? How can an increase in births be promoted? 8. The Relationship Between the Family and the Person a) Jesus Christ reveals the mystery and vocation of the human person. How can the family be a privileged place for this to happen? b) What critical situations in the family today can obstruct a person’s encounter with Christ? c) To what extent do the many crisis of faith which people can experience affect family life? 9. Other Challenges and Proposals What other challenges or proposals related to the topics in the above questions do you consider urgent and useful to treat?
Why doesn’t the government just get out of the way and let the private sector -- the “real revolutionaries” -- innovate? It’s rhetoric you hear everywhere, and Mariana Mazzucato wants to dispel it. In an energetic talk, she shows how the state -- which many see as a slow, hunkering behemoth -- is really one of our most exciting risk-takers and market-shapers.
It’s easy to forget that we have access to a virtually limitless resource of information, i.e. the Internet. For a lot of us, this is even true at our fingertips, thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and an ever-increasing push for online greatness by tech engineers all over the world.
As a result, there are countless websites out there that are geared to make you smarter and more brilliant for either a low or no cost. Here are just 25 such sites that may just make you more clever than ever before.
This isn’t the first time I’ve recommended this language-teaching website (and app), and it certainly won’t be the last. Duolingo is a free version of Rosetta-Stone that delivers the same results: teaching you another language. Regular use of the site can have you speaking and writing Spanish, English, German, French, Portuguese and Italian in a matter of months depending on the diligence you put into it. Hopefully, even more languages will become available soon.
Have you ever wanted to pick up a subject you’re not well-versed in, but you didn’t have the money to invest in a college course? Khan Academy aims to provide education at the collegiate level for anyone who wants it. They provide resources for learning pretty much every subject out there, including math, science, history and more. As you learn, the platform will even assess your progress and help you gauge what you’ve learned.
Guitar is one of the few instruments out there that’s actually pretty easy to learn if you’re a little older, making it one of the most accessible instruments. Still, learning how to play still takes some direction, at least for most people, so a guy named Justin decided he was going to help out. His website provides hundreds of free guitar lessons that range in different styles, depending on how you want to play. His schedule for learning is pretty easy to follow, and the site is a great stepping stone for people wanting to pick the instrument up.
Founded by Michael Chu, Cooking for Engineers goes further than just providing recipes. The site is a blog that is geared toward making your food taste good. Additionally, his analytical take on ingredients and cooking recipes is interesting and will likely change the way you approach cuisine.
Or Nick the Dating Specialist is a website that wants to help guys be better dates. The site is full of advice on how to approach social situations and flirt successfully with different types of people. Nick even offers personal coaching at your request, so he can help your specific situation or hurdle to successful dating.
When we think of exercising and gym techniques, we typically think of bodybuilders and jocks from high school. Nerd Fitness aims to provide resources for getting in shape from a nerd’s point of view. All of the guides, blogs and fitness tips on this site have a geek flavor that is intended to make anyone who feels uncomfortable at the gym feel right at home here.
As much as I would love an education at MIT, that isn’t really in the cards. Thankfully, the educators at the Massachusetts Institue of Technology decided to give out information for tons of courses online through Open Courseware. Hundreds of millions of people have benefitted from the information that they can learn from these courses, starting a trend for other sites to offer free courses as well.
I don’t like to admit it, but my lack of a business degree tends to make me feel easily intimidated when a conversation starts taking a turn for the financial. To solve this, Investopedia was born to provide a news blog that makes it easy to digest and really understand the financial markets. There are tons of resources like tutorials and videos that will help you keep up with the ever-changing world of money, and the news stories will keep you coming back for more.
Have you ever wanted to ask someone famous a question, but you suffer from never having the chance? Thanks to Quora, you can read the opinions and answers of fascinating (and varied) questions from the leading experts in pretty much everything. You can answer questions too and get feedback from numerous others who share your love for a given topic.
I love reading, but sometimes a visual demonstration just makes information come alive. Hence, Information is Beautiful is a platform that uses gorgeous visuals to impart data. For example, if you want to find out how much money individual organizations have lost from data breaches, you can view an action visual that shows bubbles that are labeled and sized accordingly, giving you an in-depth, but easy to digest overview of the data.
According to Spreeder, a lot of us have trouble reading quickly because we can only read as fast as our “inner voice” can. Spreeder’s solution is to teach you to read without an inner voice, boosting reading speed and comprehension immensely. The best part? It’s totally free.
Imagine a library with tons of free books that you can keep for the rest of your life. Actually, you don’t have to imagine that because Project Gutenberg gives you the ability to download thousands of free e-books, and it’s completely legal.
If you haven’t noticed by now, the Internet has pretty much taken over everything, which means the skill of coding and developing websites is in higher demand than ever, and that’s not likely to change. With Codeacademy, you can use free tutorials that teach you the basics of coding with interactive and handy tools for helping you become an expert.
Imagine if Google Earth and Wikipedia decided to make it official and have a child. That would be GeographyIQ. Using the world map, you can select any country and access virtually every facet of useful information there is about that country, including history, currency, population and more.
It’s no secret that the key to memorizing information is mastering recall. With flashcards, you can recall things faster, making Anki an ideal resource for using flashcards online. Unlike other sites that use flashcards, Anki allows you embed more than just text. You can use video, audio and images to help you start studying faster and smarter.
Using games to learn is something I’ve treasured since Kindergarten, making Lumosity a trusted resource for me and countless others. Using a daily schedule of games, Lumosity is literally designed to make you more clever. As you progress, the software figures out what your strengths and weaknesses (such as memory or math skills) and assigns you games accordingly. The best part is that the games are actually addicting and fun to look forward to!
Ideal for high school and college students, Cliffsnotes provides valuable resources like study guides and test prep for standard books and subjects you’ll have to read anyway. The site also provides resources for math and science, giving you the chance to finally master the dark arts of homework.
For years, people have been benefitting from TED talks that provide free insights from the world’s smartest people. TED provides the value and learning growth of a seminar, but without the exorbitant costs and travel expenses, by providing visitors with tons of free video lectures. The app is also great for catching up on the latest talks, and you can even download some on iTunes.
Need to memorize a lengthy number? Pinfruit analyzes the number and provides all of the options you could want as a mnemonic device. That’s all there is to it, since (unfortunately) they only provide this for numbers and not words.
There are countless blogs that you can enjoy for being interesting and mildly useful, but how many of them actually help you with your career? Mindtools is a blog that teaches you what they call “practical career skills” that you can apply at your job. This is a great daily read for entry-level workers who want to make a great impression, and the variety of topics and advice provided make this is a fantastic bookmark for anyone wanting to excel.
Want to take your coding skills to the next level? Learn Street helps teach you how to use advanced coding scripts such as JavaScript, Python and Ruby without making your head explode. It even provides a service for helping you teach advanced code to others.
There are things we want to know about, and then there are things we didn’t know we wanted to know about. HowStuffWorks addresses the latter by providing information on a variety of topics and eye-opening facts that will broaden your horizons.
Finding a great dictionary is not a difficult task in a world full of search engines, but it can be tricky to define more complicated words and phrases that most dictionaries (besides UrbanDictionary) don’t attempt to define. With OneLook, you can find multiple definitions from numerous dictionaries in one place, even if you’re looking up a phrase that is obscure or too specific for normal dictionaries to help you out with.
Did you know that the CIA has information on pretty much everything in the world? Okay, but did you know that they make a ton of this information open to the public? The World Factbook is your godsend for research, allowing you to cite facts and details that pertain to a seemingly endless amount of information from reputable sources.
Don’t let the name fool you, as Couchsurfing is far from a website that will make you lazy. Couchsurfing lets you connect with travelers all over the world and is the ultimate resource for experiencing other cultures. Put simply, you can use the social network to meet locals in a new community you are visiting. You can also open up your home to fellow couchsurfers, giving you the chance to make new experiences and memories with fascinating people from all over the globe.
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Over these last weeks, it's been a constant point here that – as the head of the Gang of Eight subsequently put it – the Synod of Bishops "will be transformed"... and that said evolution could prove the linchpin of the Franciscan reform of the church's universal governance.
