From This Valley

By Pete Steiner

As we near the end of our second pandemic year, we have more people working from home, more sidewalk cafes, more stress on our health system, more stress on society in general, more potential treatments for COVID, more people glad they invested in Moderna, and, for those of us who venture out less frequently these days, more time to read.

For whatever reason, in our modern era of short attention spans, I’ve nevertheless recently taken to tackling monster books, in the 200,000 and up word count range: “Crime and Punishment,” “Gulag Archipelago,” and yes, “Infinite Jest” (only slightly shorter than “War and Peace”).

I patted myself on the back after checking “hookedtobooks-dot-com” for having attempted four of their Ten Most Difficult — “Jest” and “Naked Lunch” and “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Moby Dick.” I wonder if I have enough years left to get to several others in this queue: “Pillars of the Earth,” Don DeLillo’s “Underworld” and “Raintree County.”

I mention all this as preface to my major reading accomplishment this past year: completing Steve Coll’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning “Ghost Wars.”

For years, the 250,000-word tome had seemingly glared at me from between bookends. Occasionally I would slide it out, flip through a few pages, then put it back. It was mere coincidence that I chose the year of our country’s inglorious exit from Afghanistan to finally read it; it took me all year.

“Ghost Wars” recounts in immense detail “the secret history of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet invasion to Sept. 10, 2001.” That is, the first 20 years of 40 years of war, so far, for that “unlucky country.”

Incredibly well-researched and documented (75 pages of footnotes), the book analyzes the 20 years of faltering foreign policy that failed to stunt the advance of militant Islam while simultaneously laying the shaky foundation that led to our recently failed 20-year war effort.

In 1997, new CIA director, George Tenet had declared that terrorists, not another nation, had become the most likely source to deliver a devastating shock to the U.S. Yet many highranking and experienced government officials remained surprisingly naïve about al-Qaida.

And for various reasons elaborated in the book, we also underestimated the Afghan Taliban, while failing to form potentially beneficial ties with the so-called Northern Alliance until after Sept. 11.

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In a year that saw the conviction of Derek Chauvin for murdering George Floyd, I actually read a relevant bestseller (I typically wait until they fall from the lists): Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad.”

Mixing fiction with historical fact through compelling characters, it shines an unflinching light on the horrors of “the peculiar institution” –slavery, our nation’s original sin. The reader feels he is journeying with the heroine, the escaped slave Cora, on her harrowing and uplifting odyssey to flee her cruel plantation master and the ruthless slave catchers he sends to try to recapture her.

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“Bookshelf” has become a two-way street, as I got some good feedback on last year’s column (pete@ktoe.com).

Nancy, a longtime friend who lives in New York and reads Mankato Magazine, suggested I would enjoy “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell. It is subtitled “a novel of the Plague,” so it seems timely I have begun reading it as I write this. I also have started “Caste,” Isabel Wilkerson’s acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winner.

Amazingly, I found a hardcover copy in one of those Little Free Libraries outside a day care center in the Twin Cities. In her chapter “The Euphoria of Hate,” about Hitler’s ascent in Germany, Wilkerson writes: “Who has the courage to stand up to the multitudes in the face of a charismatic demigod who makes you feel better about yourself …?”

Speaking of Hitler … His Nazis burned books in 1933 Germany; the demagogue Savonarola did the same in the original “Bonfire of the Vanities” in 15th century Florence. Thus it was distressing to learn about a central Minnesota school district whose librarian received a request to “investigate” 800 books. Eighthundred! Reading is really dangerous!

Meanwhile two Virginia school board members recently called for an actual book burning of Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and Harper Lee’s masterpiece, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

I remember loving the short Steinbeck classic; I’m due for a reprise on “Mockingbird”; and while it’s still available, I’ve picked up a copy of “Bluest Eye” and put that on top of my pile.

Reading may be the cheapest and easiest equalizer among humans. Even a hardcover at full price is $30 or less. And who knows what you might find in the used bookstore or borrow from the public library or grab from one of those little free libraries?

Is anything more inspiring than a bookshelf? Longtime radio guy Pete Steiner is now a free lance writer in Mankato.

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