Black Mass lays out, in eminently readable and often shocking detail, the incredible story of how Bulger and Steve Flemmi co-opted the Boston FBI, using their role as informants against the Mafia to eliminate their rivals and evade other local and federal law enforcement agencies. They even “tipped off” the Feds to crimes they committed (or ordered), casting suspicion on players they would like out of play. I read the first chapter thinking Black Mass must be a glamorized and highly speculative account — and then I reviewed Lehr and O’Neill’s copious and rigorous notes on their sources, and revised my opinion. (This was a two-bookmark book for me: one for the body of the text, one for the endnotes.) In fact, Lehr and O’Neill, career journalists both, are studiously careful to avoid speculation (or any possible grounds for libel). They stop short, for instance, of suggesting that Bulger and Flemmi’s “handler” at the FBI, John Connolly, or his boss John Morris, might literally be described as gangsters with deep cover as FBI agents. Lehr and O’Neill point out Connolly’s boyhood in Bulger’s turf, and the amazingly paltry quantity of established bribes to Morris, and leave the reader the option to make inferences. (Morris allegedly sold himself out for roughly 7 grand and some wine, which even in 80’s dollars seems awfully cheap.) Lehr and O’Neill are likewise cautious in how they characterize Whitey Bulger’s relationship with his brother, former President of the Massachusetts Senate, William Bulger. But they do ensure that I will never look at the State Street building quite the same way again.

I did form some reservations as I read the book. First, the extent to which Connolly and Morris are demonized tends to largely exonerate others in the FBI. Second, many events presented as fact in the book are primarily sourced by sworn testimony from professional criminals — individuals for whom lying effectively is an essential skill. (Lehr and O’Neill are careful to note when testimony disagrees, in fact, but almost always portray one version as authoritative in the main text. Finally, Lehr and O’Neill’s role in shaping the story clearly renders them very much non-impartial: their own reportage helped focus public opinion and create pressure to prosecute Bulger and to examine his relationship with the FBI. So I’m not inclined to accept absolutely everything at face value; their are clearly agendas at work. But the preponderance of evidence that it’s all mostly true seems overwhelming.

needs more demons? nuh uh.

This seemed like a good reason to learn more, so I decided to read a few of the many books about Google.

I started with Steven Levy’s. It isn’t a corporate puff piece, but with direct participation from key players like founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and longtime CEO Eric Schmidt, it’s the closest thing to an “official” Google book. It’s not entirely uncritical of Google, but it’s tone is generally favorable. It’s divided into eight parts, covering Google’s history, Google’s Internet ad innovations, Google’s culture (including the initial Gmail privacy flap), Google’s physical infrastructure, Android and YouTube, Google’s ethical and privacy dilemmas in dealing with China, Google’s (and more significantly, ex-Googler’s) relationship to domestic politics in general and the Obama campaign/presidency in particular), and Google’s efforts in social media spaces.

It generally seems well-sourced and -supported, with copious footnotes. Levy occasionally speculates on things that are not public knowledge, but in general his guesses seem pretty rational.

Overall I found it credible, readable, and informative, and often engaging and entertaining.

needs more demons? no.

The Secret History of Star Wars is an exhaustive — and sometimes exhausting — investigation into the evolution of George Lucas’s Star Wars saga>, from two primary perspectives.

First, it examines Star Wars‘ influences, with an emphasis on Lucas’ tendency to incorporate aspects of properties that he unsuccessfully tries to license. Much has already been made of Star Wars‘ debt to Joseph Campbell, Flash Gordon, Dune, and The Hidden Fortress (and Samurai culture in general). Kaminsiki goes deeper, asserting the influence of E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen and Edgar Rice Burrough’s swashbuckling sci-fi, among others.

Second, it examines the changes the saga itself has gone through. Practically since the initial release of the first film, Lucas has claimed he had the whole saga worked out. Kaminski demonstrates — citing primary sources like Lucas’ own notes and draft scripts, as well as numerous secondary sources in interviews — that this was true only in the vaguest of terms. He gives particular attention to some of the films’ biggest twists. He makes the claim that when Ben Kenobi said, “a young pupil of mine, Darth Vader . . . betrayed and murdered your father,” in the original film, he was not dissembling, nor speaking metaphorically; in fact he asserts that the merging of “Father Skywalker” and “Darth Vader” happened during the script revision cycle of The Empire Strike Back. Likewise he explains that Luke and Leia did not become brother and sister until Return of the Jedi was written. Kaminski suggests that their siblinghood was introduced explicitly to tie off the loose end of “the other” potential Jedi knight mentioned by Yoda in Empire, and thereby exclude the possibility of sequels. Kaminksi devotes the most time to undermining the revisionist conception of the six films as “The Tragedy of Darth Vader.”

Kaminski provides insight not only into Lucas’ creative process, but his process for getting the films made. I had always assumed that Lucas was financially independent on the strength of Star Wars. (Famously, he had in insanely favorable merchandising deal, since the studio didn’t think the merchandising would be worth anything.) But Kaminski reveals that Lucas more-or-less bet the farm (Skywalker Ranch) on each successive picture.

The Secret History of Star Wars is thoughtfully organized and assembled, but it suffers from redundancy and some clunky phrasing. Kaminski mostly adopts an academic tone, with his sources diligently footnoted, which juxtaposes oddly with his use of geeky terms like “morph” and “port” to describe Lucas’ assorted artistic appropriations. But if you’re the sort of person for whom 600-odd pages about Star Wars sounds like an inducement, you’ll probably overlook its flaws, and — like me — read all the way through the appendices.

I’m enough of a geek myself to point out that Kaminksi makes one minor factual error that I found surprising: the first indication that Star Wars was “Episode IV” was earlier than Kamisnki says — it was first seen in the title crawl for the summer 1978 theatrical re-release, which we fanboys all went to in part for the Empire teaser attached to it.

needs more demons? where is that demon editor?

I learned many things, not least of which is that HBO’s polygamous-Mormon-centered soap Big Love, the third season of which we lately finished watching, isn’t nearly as far-fetched as I might have thought. As a proponent of gay marriage, before reading this book I had thought a good place to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable partnerships might be to allow any combination of adult consenting humans, so a marriage of, say, three women and four men might be fine. But after reading Under the Banner of Heaven I’m forced to conclude that raising children in a polygamous culture — particularly one that prioritizes procreation, devalues external education, and requires unquestioning obedience — creates a situation in which “consent” may be a practical impossibility.

Standage with opens Herschel’s discovery of Uranus by way of background, pays some attention to the contention-fraught business of planet naming, discusses “Bode’s law” and the “missing” planet between Mars and Jupiter, and goes beyond Neptune to Pluto and other similar objects that were never called planets — and even beyond that to extrasolar planets, which take the radical idea to its ultimate conclusion: since planets around other stars are too distant to observe directly with an optical telescope, the only way to find them is through the pertuberances of orbits. (Strictly speaking, the planets of the solar system don’t actually orbit the sun; the sun and the planets orbit their mutual center of gravity. Since the sun is far more massive than the sum of the planets, this basically means the sun wobbles a little bit, and through similar wobbles the presence of planets around other stars can be detected.)

The previous two books of Standage’s that I read, The Victorian Internet and The Turk were so lively and well-written that I recommended them to pretty much anyone, not just those with an interest in history. The Neptune File perhaps has less sizzle. I wouldn’t push it on someone with no interest whatsoever in astronomy, or someone with no tolerance for history. But if the phrase “astronomical history” makes your eyes light up a little (instead of glaze over…) this is a definite must-read.

needs more demons? no.

The Ghost Map is smart and ambitious, but it’s also remarkably accessible and readable, even gripping. Johnson impressively juggles human and intellectual interest throughout.

My only real criticism is that I wish the endnotes were footnoted in the text. Since they’re not, reading The Ghost Map required two bookmarks, one for my place in the text, and the other to for my place in the endnotes. You will note the underlying implication: even the endnotes were (often) interesting.

needs more demons? not a bit of it.

Basically, I loved The Turk so much I’m going to read everything by Standage I can get my hands on. This book explores the meteoric rise (and precipitous decline) of the telegraph from the historical perspective. pretty much, of Web 1.0 (the copyright date is 1998).

Standage’s capable hands bring to life the colorful personalities of the architects of the “Victorian Internet” — not only Samuel Morse and Thomas Edison, but also Claude Chappe, one of the developers of the pre-electric telegraphs; William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, the rivalry-locked British counterparts of Morse, and the hapless Dr. Edward Orange Wildman Whitehouse, who played a ill-starred role in the struggle to lay transatlantic cables.

Along the way, Standage provides ample evidence to support his titular conceit: that the impact of the telegraph on the late 19th century was remarkably like the impact of the Internet on the late 20th century. He provides numerous examples of how technological change caused social change in ways that will seem familiar to modern readers: increasing the pace of business, advancing egalitarianism, online dating, online scamming, government attempts to regulate cryptography with limited success, and so forth.

Standage’s balance of human interest with history and science is, for my taste, just about perfect. He provides enough technical perspective on the electricity that makes the telegraph possible that the book doesn’t feel glib or lightweight, but the narrative is fast-paced and engaging throughout.

needs more demons? Nope.

The Turk recounts the amazing true story of a machine that purported to play chess, and which was seldom beaten except by the top players of its era. “The Turk” and its operators enjoyed a long and colorful career that intersected (and sometimes inspired) the lives of political and scientific figures including Joseph Marie Jacquard, Charles Babbage, Ben Franklin, Napoleon, and Edgar Allen Poe.

From its inception many understood that it had to be a trick, with a human being guiding the machine somehow. But, ironically, no one fully divined “The Turk”’s secrets until the age of machines that actually can play chess.

Standage opens with some background on other automata of the era, including Vaucanson’s amazing creations, and wraps up his book with some interesting perspectives on “Deep Blue,” IBM’s chess-playing super-computer that defeated champion Gary Kasparov, and our evolving attitudes toward “intelligent machines” in general.

Standage’s style is lively and engaging. I try to balance (somewhat) “for fun” books and “good for me” books, and this one truly succeeds on both levels. Highly recommended.

needs more demons? Not a bit of it. Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, in particular, has plenty.

The reaction puzzled me. Before I started the book, I already knew some intriguing facts about salt, for instance that the English word “salary” derives from the use of salt to pay Roman soldiers. I knew vaguely that salt had been important in the preservation of food before refrigeration. What I didn’t know about salt would fill a book, and fortunately Mark Kurlansky has written it. Kurlansky is also the author of books about cod, the Caribbean, and the Basque — all subjects, it turns out, with close ties to salt. (Perhaps a book about cheese, which depends far more on salt than I had known, will be next?) It’s a tribute to how consistently fascinating I found Salt that I want to read them all.

I may take a good while to read them all, as I took a long time to read Salt. The book moves roughly from ancient to modern times and individual chapters often have a geographic focus. Sometimes I got a little overwhelmed trying to keep track of which culture had used which evaporation techniques, and I enjoyed the book most a chapter or so at a time.

But it was chock-a-block with amazing tidbits. Among my favorites were accounts of the disastrous consequences of state-controlled salt monopolies (vigorous black markets; sparking one of Mahatma Ghandi’s early acts of defiance), the Chinese deep-bore mines, and salt-mine tourism at Wieliczka and Dürnberg.

Needs More Demons? Nope.