Tom ZoellnerRecensioni

Engaging and informative on a topic of crucial importance - a top notch book! Zoellner goes to visit mines, enrichment facilities, and waste dumps. This book is about the stuff, the material, uranium as mineral and metal. It's not about nuclear physics. Of course he touches on the nuclear physics, but ... well, I studied physics in school... electromagnetic forces want to tear the nucleus apart, it's the strong force that glues things together... but these little slip-ups are minor noise. I learned a tremendous amount here about where and how uranium has been discovered and dug up etc.

This review originally appeared on my blog at www.gimmethatbook.com.

I picked up this book while on vacation in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, during a visit to the Railroad Museum of PA. My father was a freight conductor for Penn Central/Conrail for 40 years, and I always loved spending time with him as we visited Waverly Yard in Newark, NJ where he worked. I took unsanctioned rides with him in the engine many times, and we were always given the best treatment when we visited other railroad yards or took touristy train trips out of state. All he had to do was show his union card and we were instant VIPs!

TRAIN is full of tiny bits of information that will make you stop and think. The creation of multiple railways was key to the growth of the United States. Fresh fruit, meat, equipment, and of course, passengers, were able to move effortlessly from one side of the country to another. People were frightened of trains initially, as they were behemoths, making otherworldly sights and sounds as the steam puffed out of their smokestacks, the boilers devoured their coal, and giant pistons pumped up and down, turning the wheels around and around.

When crowds gathered in 1825 to watch the debut of the world’s first real railroad – the Stockton & Darlington of northern Britain – the correspondent from the Morning Herald reported that multiple spectators “fled in affright” from the locomotive and others looked at the train with a “vacant stare” as if in a trance.

I loved this book for all its bits of trivia and history. One of my favorite snippets was the section in the chapter Bound for Glory that noted the multiple songs that have been written either with a train mentioned in the lyrics or having a beat that mimics the hypnotic “click-clack” one hears while on board. Artists such as Kenny Rogers, Berlin, Gladys Knight, Sheena Easton, and Soul Asylum all reference trains in their lyrics. And who can forget the Doobie Brothers classic “Long Train Running”?

Zoellner also goes into detail about how railroads have been running at a deficit for years, what happens when someone commits suicide by train, how Disneyland was created out of the animator’s obsession with trains, and the excruciating monotony during the ride on the Trans-Siberian railway.

The Trans-Siberian is 5,772 miles long and spans eight time zones. As you will find out, it is not the romantic journey that the name invokes. History and literature are cited in the chapter Blood on the Tracks, and it is quite a dark chapter.

The author’s writing style is both simple and grandiose at times, as rarely used words (such as echt or obsequious) pop up where a simpler synonym could be used. This is not a terrible thing. I absolutely love reading books that force me to look up definitions, thus expanding my vocabulary. It is a rare book that does this, as my vocabulary is quite comprehensive, and I thoroughly love adding words to my collection.

Zoellner’s love for trains shines through in every sentence and it’s quite heartwarming for a train lover like me. I’m so glad I stumbled upon this wonderful book during my vacation. The feelings invoked within me were poignant, as my father is no longer with me, and I miss him. TRAIN gave me the opportunity to revisit memories while learning new things about these magnificent machines that we both held very dear.

I was drawn to this because The Heartless Stone is one of the best books I've ever read. I couldn't get into it, but I'll try it again later.

Extremely interesting account of the effect of uranium on man and history. Fascinating historical tidbits as well as scary doomsday thoughts.

I tend to finish whatever books I start, but every once in a while I give up and put a book aside, never to be picked up again. "A Safeway in Arizona" became perilously close to being one of those, but once I got over one-third into it, it became more interesting. After the initial description of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and those around her by a mentally ill shooter, the book seemed to evolve into a mini biography of the author's life in Arizona, and then to a rambling history of the State and its general characteristics.

But Zoellner soon got into more relevant topics relating to the senseless shooting, including gun control issues, conservative talk radio, Arizona's treatment of individuals with mental illness, etc.

Zoellner ultimately draws vrey loose links between the culture of Arizona, it's gun laws, lack of adequate mental health treatment, etc., and the Laughner shooting.

Other points which Zoellner raises includes the lack of a Federal ban on arms length magazines holding 33 bullets, how partisan talk radio is not a genuine public policy forum, but a money oriented business meant to excite and create an audience through gross exaggerations and invented grievances, and how the staff and administrators at Loughner's local Community college did a good job protecting Laughner's rights as a student, but failed society when they failed to refer him for evaluation when his disruptive actions clearly indicated his increasing mental illness.

A story about Uranium, more from a historical viewpoint than an engineering / scientific standpoint. Discusses its discovery, how various countries found and mined it, and of course how it ended up being weaponized. Easily understood, and an interesting story.

“All that country means all that driving. Horizon plus time: an exultant combination.” (Page 38)

Tom Zoellner is a wanderer, a man who has spent countless hours wandering the backroads of America making note of what he discovers at each stop along the way. Zoellner has been wandering long enough now to have reached some conclusions about America and her people, and he shares those experiences (and conclusions) with the rest of us in The National Road: Dispatches from a Changing America, a collection of fourteen essays he’s written over the years. I do wish the book had been written more in the “road trip” style than it was, but that did not keep me from finding most of the essays fascinating.

It was in the collection’s third essay, “Drive,” that I confirmed that Tom Zoellner is a man who sees being on the open road — with no real destination in mind — exactly how I’ve viewed it all my life:

“Into the car and away — away to the next valley over the ridge, away to the next town, the next exit, the unknown lump of color around the turn in the road just out of sight, leading and receding. Into the car, into the country. Here is where I feel most at ease and have since the age of majority: propped upright and relaxed at the wheel, the country spinning along outside the windows.”

There is little I love more than the spell of motorized land journey, a languorous day, a vague forward-looking destination in mind and a full tank of gas. If there is an opportunity to fly, I will not take it…” (Page 37)

I so totally identify with those two little paragraphs that I could have written them myself — and that glorious feeling is one of the main things that 2020’s pandemic has stolen from the rest of us for way too long.

Other essays in the book include mini-histories of the State of Nevada and Las Vegas, the Mormon faith and its sacred sites that can be found all over America, the corrupt towns that spring up in the shadow of places like St. Louis, and the exploitation of America’s indigenous tribes by New England’s earliest settlers. Another of the more road-trip-like essays recounts Zoellner’s attempt to set foot on the point of highest elevation all 48 contiguous states, a feat he is remarkably close to having achieved.

The National Road, however, is not a particularly optimistic book at all when it comes to the changes Zoellner has observed over the years. He is correctly dismayed by the divisions he sees along the lines of politics, religion, and economic opportunities — divisions that run so deeply that they are evident these days to far more casual observers than Zoellner. Something is terribly wrong when a country so casually “writes off” entire portions of the country as not worth saving. To his credit, the author recognizes that those places are “primarily rural” and located “in politically conservative regions.” When so many Americans are “shut out from their own country,” bad things happen. And they don’t happen only in the exclusion zones.

Bottom Line: Tom Zoellner has learned much from all those hours behind the wheel, and what he has to say about America in The National Road needs to be heard, especially by those who may be able to do something about the spread of the country’s “exclusion zones.” I suspect, however, that because the political splits run so deeply now, those are the people least likely to get the message.

The title was, to me, offputting initially. It seemed like false modesty. "Oh, but I'm just an ordinary man...". But I changed my mind after listening.

Rusesabagina saved over a twelve hundred people from death during the short massacre in Rwanda in 1994. He calculated that he saved a matter of a few hours' worth of deaths, based on the rate of killing in those few months, a rate unsurpassed by any other genocide in recorded history.

How did he do it? And why?

He gives us quite a clue when he tells us about his childhood. His father was a leader in his village, and he was not afraid of death. He hid people during an earlier attempt at genocide, in the 1950s. He also provided Paul with an example of a person untainted by the absurd prejudices of the time.

Through this volume we become familiar with the history of Rwanda. Simply put, it was white conquerers, particularly Belgian, who set the hutus against the tutsis by defining the different groups prejudicially: the tutsis were the refined, intelligent leaders, while the hutus were only suitable for slave labor, essentially. This distinction served the Belgians well but in no way reflected reality. In fact, the two groups had been mixed for many years, to the point where almost everyone was really neither one or the other, and the two were never that different in the first place.

Paul had a Tutsi mother and a Hutu father. In Rwanda, this meant he was Tutsi. Yet one of his close friends from childhood, with a Tutsi father and Hutu mother, was defined as Hutu and was forced to leave school.

In the early 1990s a civilian radio station came on the air. At first it was all fun and provided a pleasant contrast to the government-run stations. But gradually it used its power to reach people to spread a message of hatred against the Tutsis. Paul placed the blame for the genocide primarily at the feet of this station, which, it turns out, actually was government-run after all.

But back to Paul and how he was able to be effective in his role as hotel manager. He was detail-oriented and fit the job of hotel manager very well. The French owners of the Hotel Mille Collines recognized his talent and sent him to hotel school and later placed him as manager. This was quite a coup for a black man working in a luxury hotel in Rwanda. Paul did not let the owners down. He was meticulous and careful and used his position to get to know the regulars, including many in the military and government. He was later able to use these connections to good effect.

It is hard to imagine a world where you wake up one morning and find that one of your neighbors is attacking another with a machete. Yet this is the world Paul did wake to, and strived to understand. In this memoir he does an excellent job of explaining the basis for the race hatred, the not-so-subtle propaganda, and the genocide. It is difficult to understand a situation where friends suddenly become enemies, where children are slaughtered along with their parents. Paul provides an explanation that we should pay attention to.

Train: Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World -- From the Trans-Siberian to the Southwest Chief by Tom Zoellner is an account of the author’s travel on some of the historic rail lines from across the globe. Zoellner earned his B.A. in History and English from Lawrence University and his M.A. from Dartmouth. He has reported for several newspapers and has published several nonfiction books on a variety of subjects: from uranium to diamonds. He has also been a speechwriter for Gabrielle Giffords which prompted him to write A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us About the Grand Canyon State and Life in America after the tragic shooting in 2011.

Train starts in England as Zoellner rides across the country visiting places of interest from the world’s first railway, to where the steam engine was invented, improved, and eventually made into a train. He ties aspects of the region, coal for example, from the dangerous work in the mines to Thatcher’s effective shutdown of coal mining when breaking the miners union in 1984. England is the heart of railroad history. Trains were needed to move raw materials to factories and finished goods back to port. In India, the railroads claim to be the biggest employer in the world, not true, but nonetheless and very impressive sized employer. The British brought railroads to India for their economic benefit, but in the long run the railways united the formerly fragmented Indian people and perhaps helped India on its way to independence.

Some countries see rail as the future. China’s centralized government is spending an incredible sum of money building a rail infrastructure. People will need to move in the future and a train is far more efficient energy-wise and far more affordable for the people than automobiles. Peru is in a financial do or die railroad project. Trains, although costing more initially, will move the country’s raw materials far more efficiently than an army of trucks. China is also exporting its rail building expertise throughout the world, including the United States.

I once heard a commentator say that the United States has a rail system that would embarrass Bulgaria; I don’t think he was lying. Zoellner covers the rise and tragic fall of the American rail system from settling the west and unifying the country to state governments refusing to allow high speed rail to be built in their states. As someone who prefers to travel by train, anywhere that is too far to bicycle to, I see the same sad system. Amtrak estimated that over 95% of Americans have never been on a train.

Perhaps the most unexpected thing in the book is the Tran-Siberian Railroad. Zoellner is quick to explain that this is not the Orient Express. In fact, when he tells Russian passengers that he plans to ride all the way to Vladivostok, they look at him in horror. Why would anyone want to travel voluntarily across Siberia is a mystery to a Russian. For days on end the landscape is unchanging. Russians ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad only because they have to. It is more of an engineering marvel for the Czar Nicholas II to brag about to his European counterparts than it was ever for comfortable train travel.

Train is an exciting look at some of the world’s historic and greatest railways. Zoellner adds history and ancillary stories to the these important railways. It is not just trains, but politics that create and kill railways. It is also about planning the future infrastructure of rising nations and watching the failure of up until now successful nations. Railways were and still are a sign of power and pride in many nations. Zoellner’s first hand accounts, interviews, and related history make this a great book.

What most impressed me about this book is the matter-of-fact way in which Rusesabagina narrates the desperation of Rwandans during their holocaust, and his own brave decisions and actions.

In 1994, the African country of Rwanda saw a brutal, bloody genocide as the majority Hutu population incited fear and violence all across the country, resulting in the murder of a staggering 800,000 of the Tutsi minority. Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu hotel manager in the capital city of Kigali aghast at what he was witnessing around him and risking his own life, sheltered more than 1,000 of the persecuted inside his hotel.

I'm always curious, when reading an autobiography that is co-written, about just how much of the writing is genuinely that of the individual in question, and how much has been "tidied up" by the more experienced author. In this case the prose and turns of phrase were distinct enough that I feel optimistic that the integrity of Rusesabagina's true voice has been preserved. How awe-inspiringly brave Paul Rusesabagina was amid such horrifying circumstances, and yet how fortunate he was to be in the unique position to assist in the manner he did. There is a lot of food for thought in this slim volume, not least the embarrassing level of inaction and seeming indifference by the UN and United States in response.

Interesting history of uranium. Well written an easy read. I reviewed it at http://sciencetechbooks.suite101.com/article.cfm/uranium_book_review

Marvelous and highly informative. Enjoyable from the first page to the last.

This was an interesting review of the history of man's journey with a very peculiar rock. Fairly well written, though, at times, the author seemed to get a bit far afield of the topic.½

If you love trains and/or are fascinated about them, you'll enjoy this book that reviews a brief history of the development of trains in Europe, South America, India, China, Russia, and the U.S. Some great discussion of the collapse of trains (for passenger travel) in the U.S., the weak support for Amtrak, and the lack of development of high-speed train travel -- unlike in other countries in which governments have made huge investments in bullet trains. A fun and informative ride... err, read.½

An exceptional memoir by a humanitarian hero and eyewitness to the Rwandan genocide in which 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days. Rusesabagina, a hotel manager, sheltered over 1,200 people and saved their lives. Nothing ordinary about him.

A very pleasant re-reading of a charmer of a book. It felt like the author and I - the reader - were undertaking the journeys together. Great, readable prose- this is what books are supposed to do!

Do find it and enjoy it!

After his girlfriend broke off their engagement and he got the ring, Zoellner went on a journey to find out where diamonds come from. The resulting book is boring and materialistic; the author needs to get over his ex. There are many more informative books on diamond mining that don't have a self-centred author bleating about his broken relationship. He claims the diamond industry will always thrive because a diamond "is the only luxury thing everybody has to buy". Really??

I'm giving this a generous two stars.

Some interesting highlights but nothing astounding.

I thororoughly enjoyed this book. Like Theroux, Zoellner takes a series of train rides around the world. He engages with his fellow travellers, but unlike Theroux he goes deeper into the egineering and development of railroads. The writing is top notch. There is a significant editing glitch. On a southwestern train ride to LA, Zoellner wakes up in the San Bernardino train station, and then proceeds over the Cajon Summit to LA. In fact San Bernardino is below thw Cajon summit. This is a surprising error given that Zoellner teaches in LA.

Very informative book that covered the history, uses, and present status of uranium. Some of the information seemed on the borderline of classified. It is also concerning that there is such a significant amount of enriched u-235, which is sometimes not well guarded or accounted for. I recommend the book for a better understanding of our current status and how we got here.

This is the memoir of Paul Ruseabagina, a hotel manager in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. With "a cooler of beer, a leather binder, and a hidden phone" he saved 1,268 people. This is the story of how he used those tools to schmooze and persuade and bribe and conjole to keep the killers from murdering those under his protection. He dealt with some odious people, but as he put it in his concluding chapter, "[e]xcept in extreme circumstances it very rarely pays to show hostility to the people in your orbit." He was able to save those people because he was willing and able to sit down with killers, ply them with cognac and not flinch. That leather binder was filled with high-level contacts he had made in years of treating VIP hotel guests graciously. He wrote that no one is completely good or evil, and what he looked for was not the good or evil side but rather the "soft" versus the "hard" side. Sometimes that meant appealing to self-interest, greed or vanity--not just moral qualms. His approach and outlook on people reminded me of a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that "the line separating good and evil passes... right through every human heart." Ruseabagina calls this memoir "an ordinary man" and in the introduction insists he's no hero.

I beg to differ.

Along the way the book examines the nature of genocide and what caused it to break out in Rwanda, what different infamous 20th century genocides share, and what could have prevented it. A lot went into the toxic cocktail. A legacy of European "divide and conquer" colonialism in Rwanda that ingrained and further stratified what were only (somewhat fluid) class divisions into racial divisions between the Tutsi and the Hutus. Preferential racial policies requiring racial registration and identification and which group was in favor swung back and forth between them depending on who was in power. One big contributor that surprised me was the poisonous role of talk radio that whipped up and organized the murderous hatred, calling Tutsi "cockroaches" and even giving out names and locations of people to murder.

Those were some of the internal factors. Ruseabagina also points outward to world indifference--particularly blaming the United Nations and the United States. I have to admit to feeling ambivalent about that as an American. I don't believe we should be the world's 911--and we get in trouble when we try. But I can't imagine saying that to Rusabagina's face without flinching--800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered right in front of the eyes of the world in around three months. It's hard not to respond to his plea that we mean it when we say "never again" and do better in the future in preventing genocide than the ineffectual UN efforts that stood by as so many were slaughtered. And actually maybe that's part of why Ruseabagina called this book An Ordinary Man--because he wants to emphasize what he did was nothing extraordinary, nothing beyond the reach of an ordinary person--in other words, no we do not get off the hook. At the very least, the book makes you think--it's a gripping quick read and very informative.½

Diamonds are an illusion. Tom Zoellner proves this in his engaging account about the diamond trade. The book’s chapters are divided by geographical location. This format helps make each chapter stand on its own, like a series of essays. But, Zoellner ties the narrative together by talking about his engagement and break up with Anne, his former fiancee. It is through describing the joy that Zoellner and his erstwhile fiancee experienced when the diamond was first given that he frames the insanity and obsession that diamonds can elicit. In the chapters exploring the seedier side of the business, the stories shift to the when relationship begins experiencing turbulence and its ultimate breakup. Zoellner finally conducts his own post mortem on it in the chapters talking about the rise of synthetic diamonds, a perceived challenger to the DeBeers hegemony. These personal anecdotes give the already interesting narrative a glue that really ties everything together.

The main character of this book is the DeBeers cartel. Like the Smoke Monster in Lost, DeBeers permeates every facet of the business, exerting a grip that is total and astonishing in its casual brutality. DeBeers dispatches agents wherever diamonds are found. The beginning of the book shows how certain countries have buckled, the middle shows how other countries are cautiously trying to branch out from DeBeers’ control, and the last few chapters profile the mavericks who are attempting to spectacularly break free and bring some transparency to the industry. That DeBeers has been able to operate a worldwide monopoly and pumped up the value of a gem that is not all that rare through the creation of artificial scarcity and bully tactics is breathtaking to behold. I don’t think we’ll see another company ever control an industry like DeBeers, and that is a good thing.

I highly recommend the book. It is eminently readable and moves along at a fast clip. There are no dead spots within. If you’re looking to buy a diamond ring, read this book before wasting your money on a diamond. If you’ve already made that mistake, then pick this book up to read about the insidious effect that marketing and advertising has had in creating the cultural need to express love with diamonds and diamonds alone. Hell, if you have any interest at all in world affairs, read this book.

This book is surprisingly light on the science of uranium or radioactivity, covering the necessary basics as quickly as possible with the help of a few uninspired metaphors. I found that a little disappointing, although I suspect that for many readers it's likely to be a point in favor. Mostly it covers the global political and economic impact of uranium, and of the bombs and power plants it's used for. The result is a little unfocused, drifting around from topic to topic, and there are certainly better and more thorough treatments of subjects like the the Manhattan Project. But it does also cover a lot of ground that was both interesting and new to me, including considerable (and often rather shocking) details about uranium mining, which ultimately made it a worthwhile read.

This short memoir by a man who saved over a thousand people from genocide in Rwanda in 1994 is cautionary,moving, witty and wise. Quite a window into the personality of Paul Rusesabagina, whose story was dramatized several years ago in the film "Hotel Rwanda."