Brokaw urges people to make a difference

The Time of Our Lives: A Conversation About America
By Tom Brokaw
(Random House)
Just in time for the 2012 general election, Tom Brokaw has written a book that begins with the sentence: “What happened to the America I thought I knew?” It’s easy to imagine Republicans and Democrats flipping through it for ideas on how to avoid another debt ceiling debate, improve educational opportunities for all, or pursue green energy initiatives.

But Brokaw didn’t write the book for the politicians he spent decades covering at NBC News. He seems to have written it mostly for his grandchildren, inspired by a reporting assignment in 2009 when he traveled across the U.S. on Highway 50 to show viewers the changing American character.

Each chapter of “The Time of Our Lives” begins with a box divided into two sections, FACT and QUESTION. Some sample facts:

-- Independent voters make up about 30 percent of the American electorate.

-- In 1999, 1.2 percent of home loans were in foreclosure.

-- Daily newspapers penetrate less than 33 percent of the population 18 to 34 years of age.

The corresponding questions frame the stories to come: When was the last time you voted a straight party line? Could you be just as happy in a smaller home? Are you more or less inclined to believe what you read on the Internet than what you pick up from elsewhere?

All those facts and questions make for an occasionally wonky book, but Brokaw’s journalism background is evident. He’s quick to focus on individual stories and characters to make his points. In the chapter about national service we meet Corey Briest, a National Guardsman from Yankton, South Dakota., who suffered a traumatic brain injury in Baghdad and was able to return home and lead a new life only after his friends and neighbors banded together to offer financial and moral support. You’ll want to thank the next man or woman in uniform you see after reading it.

Brokaw sprinkles in quite a few personal stories as well, writing about his early years as a reporter in Los Angeles and buying his first house for $42,500 in the San Fernando Valley. We meet his parents, their parents and the same on his wife Meredith’s side of the family. All the biographical details serve a large purpose: to inspire today’s generation to make a difference and actively work to solve problems in the U.S.

And while he still works plenty for NBC News, Brokaw seems to enjoy speaking his mind in print. Decades behind the anchor desk and he never really had a “Walter Cronkite moment” when he told the millions watching at home what he really thought about Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The Time of Our Lives” affords Brokaw ample opportunity to share his views on topics ranging from elder care to the Chinese economy. It’s a valuable contribution to the national discourse and may just inspire some readers to go out and make a difference. (AP)


Not your typical ghost stories

Chinese Ghost Stories: Curious Tales of the Supernatural
By Lafcadio Hearn
(Tuttle Publishing, North Clarendon)


“Chinese Ghost Stories” will broaden your appreciation of the supernatural.

Lafcadio Hearn was a Victorian-era writer who, after a long colorful life, ended up in Asia, spending the last 14 years in Japan. An Irishman, he was a journalist, fiction writer and poet with a taste for the eerie.

Working off various translations from the Chinese, he wrote ghost stories that are very different from the European or American variety.

Instead of terrifying ghosts who bedevil their victims, Hearn’s spirits are more aligned with Asian culture, with an emphasis on filial piety, self-sacrifice and death.

In “The Legend of Zhi Nu,” a young man Dong sells himself into slavery so that he can afford to bury his father with the appropriate rituals. Several years later, he falls ill and is healed by beautiful woman named Zhi who appears out of nowhere. They marry, have children, and one day she buys his freedom by selling the scarves that she weaves on a daily basis.

“For as she wove, the silk flowed from the loom with a slow current of glossy gold, bearing upon its undulations strange forms of violet and crimson and jewel-green shapes of ghostly horsemen riding on horses, and of phantom chariots dragon-drawn and of standards of trailing cloud.”

In the end she leaves. “Know, my beloved that I was sent to thee even by the Master of Heaven, in reward of thy filial piety, and that I must now return to the glory of His house: I am the goddess Zhi Nu.”

A more traditional ghost story to Western eyes is “The Story of Ming Yi” where a young up-and-coming scholar becomes a tutor for a noble family. On a trip back to his home, he falls in love with a beautiful woman living at a country estate named Xie. Their dalliance leads to the first lie: he says to his employer that his mother requests that he go home each night. This allows Ming Yi spend each night with Xie.

Sooner or later his family and employer figure this out, accost him, and he explains. Doing a little research they find out that the beauteous Xie was a famous courtesan who had died centuries before.

Unlike in most Western tradition, the boy doesn’t pine or waste away. Ming Yi becomes a family man, and rises to a high position of power. But his heart always belonged to his first love, Xie, every time he looks at gifts she gave him -- a centuries-old lion carved of yellow jade and “a brush-case of carven agate.”

Victoria Cass, a scholar who works in the field of traditional Chinese culture and myths, wrote the introduction to “Chinese Ghost Stories” and points out that “four of his Chinese ghost stories detail personal sacrifice and the deep sense of pious awe for ancestors, family and emperor.” Hearn himself worked off earlier translations from the Chinese by others. His slightly florid writing style is that of Yates, Shelley and Bram Stoker, famous for writing “Dracula.”

So broaden your supernatural horizon. Boo! 

(MCT)