Big Long Books I Never Finish

Who has time to even read the newspaper anymore.  These are too big to take on my travels - the sort of books you'd need to devote a few weeks to really get through and understand them.  I catch them in snippets, ten free minutes before dinner, or just after the kids have gone to bed.  But they're great, and at some point I will spend more time with them:


Malory:  The Knight Who Became King Arthur's Chronicler (link)

Seven bucks, 672 pages.  A comprehensive and imaginative biography of the man who wrote Le Morte D'Arthur, from his childhood, to his service in the Hundred Years' War, to the War of the Roses and years of imprisonment (a good review is here).  In this biography Christina Hardyment is really taking on two subjects - the idea of chivalry in England at that time, and the related but crucially distinct medieval dreamscape that some adolescent boys seem to inhabit more or less continuously.  As Malory is the maker of that dreamscape, it is fair to ask what, or who, made him.  Hardyment pulls no punches:

These were dangerous times.  Rumour had it that if Richard II had not already been murdered in his Pontefract Castle prison, he soon would be.  But his cousin the usurping Duke of Lancaster, though crowned Henry IV in October 1399, did not yet feel secure on the throne.  Hard-faced, hard-riding bands of armed men were scouring the shires for 'traitors'.

Pathfinders:  A Global History of Exploration (link)

Only 428 pages, and I cannot get through it.  It's too good.  I read three pages and put the book down and stare off into space.  Sometimes I don't even make it into the text - the maps, hand-drawn by this guy, are marvels in themselves.  But it's worth actually reading it:  Historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto has written a history of exploration from a global perspective, one smart enough to draw parallels among Polynesians, Vikings, and Spaniards without overstating (or over-believing) them (a good review is here).  This is not to say that he has no big points to make, however:

We think of European culture, such as it is, as formed by movements that have unfolded from west to east:  Charlemagne's Drang nach Osten and those that followed it; a renaissance or three; the scientific and industrial 'revolutions'...  But for most of prehistory and antiquity, the formative movements were exercised in the opposite direction:  the spread of farming and metallurgy; the transmission of Indo-European languages; the migrations of Phoenicians, Greeks, and Jews...  Most of these movements generated refuse and refugees who ended up on the Atlantic rim, where they stayed, surprisingly immobile, as if pinioned by the westerlies that blew onto their shores.  I hope I can be excused for returning to this point with insistence that allows no escape.  Westerners' long passivity is more remarkable than their eventual awakening.  Now Western civilization is identified with enterprise.  Yet for millenia Westerner stared inertly at the sea.

The Pursuit of Victory:  The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson (link)

Your $18 gets you the definitive scholarly biography of the real life Ender, scrupulously researched and well-written.  Knight's clearheaded skepticism is a breath of fresh air (he dismisses the endlessly-repeated tale that Nelson held his telescope to his blind eye at Copenhagen).  What emerges is the terrifying reality of a brilliant and almost suicidally brave flag officer - the first to board an enemy ship in battle since 1513.  The book is also full of useful supplementary material, e.g., 'Nelson's Ships:  Size, Armament, Complements and a Full Listing of Officers', biographical sketches of a few leading figures in the Royal Navy, and a brief but very useful glossary.  A good review is here.  Excerpt:

Yet again Nelson's career had been on a knife-edge.  In the matter of appointments the easygoing first lord was led by the two naval members of the board, Hood and Commodore Alan Gardner...  The King too would have had an influence on the appointment of officers.  The change of heart [in 1792] can only be explained by the French threat.  Hood could also see that this crisis was one in which risks had to be taken.  The mobilizations of 1790 and 1791 had been against Spain and Russia; this one was against a France in possession of the Low Countries, and every statement coming out of Paris suggested the situation was extremely dangerous.  Aggressive young captains with war experience were needed now.  Hood had been consistent in saying nearly five years before that 'should a disturbance take place [Nelson] need not fear having a good ship'...  Except for only two brief pauses, Nelson would now be on active service until his death twelve years later.