Book review: "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" by Alfred Lansing

If there was a museum of survival stories, the featured exhibit, without a doubt, would be Ernest Shackleton's failed Antarctic expedition of 1914-1916. No other story comes close to Shackleton's in terms of the number of obstacles overcome, the suffering endured by the people involved, and the group's stubborn determination to survive despite the longest of odds.

I'm a not newbie to the Shackleton-verse. I've read articles and a short book about it, and watched a documentary and a TV mini-series. So I hesitated before starting to read Alfred Lansing's 1959 book, "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage," Would this just be a repeat of what I already knew?

The answer, I'm glad to report, is a resounding "No." Lansing not only covers little-known parts of the story, he tells the tale with riveting page-turning intensity.  I could feel the suffering of Shackleton's men as they persisted through freezing temperatures, miserable condition and sometimes torturous physical strain.

Shackleton and 27 other British men headed to Antarctica in 1914 intending to launch the first-ever crossing of the frozen continent. They never made it. Instead, their ship, the Endurance, became trapped in ice near the Antarctic coast. 

The entire crew was forced to over-winter aboard the ship through the 24-hour darkness of the Antarctic winter. When spring came, the crew hoped to be freed from it's frozen captivity, but instead the ice only squeezed harder. The Endurance was crushed and the men had to abandon her and set up camp on the floating ice.

Lansing is a top-notch writer who has done his homework. For this book, the author said he read the diaries of "virtually every expedition member who kept one." In addition, he tracked down almost all the members of the expedition still alive in the 1950s and interviewed them for "long hours, even days." 

What's impressive is that, even with clearly a wealth of information available, Lansing smartly and selectively chooses the details to include. He knows that he doesn't need to include every fact in his notebook to tell a compelling story. 

For six months, the men lived on the ice, their clothes and sleeping bags constantly wet, their food supplies dwindling. They hoped the currents would take their ice slab to land, but fickle winds kept them at sea. When their ice floe broke up, Shackleton and his men were forced to try to ride their three small boats through stormy seas to land — any land.

It is here where the men suffered the most. For two days, the men fought the seas with crude sails and oars, only to find they had gone 20 miles backward. They fought on for three more days — with almost no sleep and little water, their hands blistered upon the oars, their clothes thoroughly soaked with near-freezing waters. Finally, they arrived at the uninhabited and bleak Elephant Island. The men tossed themselves onto the solid ground as if they had reached Mecca.

As much as I liked this book, it has a weakness. Lansing largely fails to delineate the different men. We get to know Shackleton, of course —  he's a taciturn and sometimes stubborn leader — but aside from a occasional reference to one man being lazy or another grouchy, it is hard for the reader to discern much difference between them.

Still, once you're engaged, you'll find the story compelling.

No one was going to rescue the men from Elephant Island; they needed to go for help. So Shackleton and five others took to one of the boats in a long-shot attempt to reach a whaling station on South Georgia Island.

Many other accounts of the expedition focus only on the boat trip, skipping over the plight of the men left behind on Elephant Island. But Lansing fully describes their marooned lifestyle, a mix of boredom, squalid living conditions, unrelenting cold, and helplessness as they wonder whether Shackleton's boat had made it. Lansing's description of the amputation of one of the men's toes, lost to frostbite, at their primitive camp is one of the more memorable scenes.

On board the ship Caird, Shackleton and the five others fought through high seas. Lansing's account of this trip is riveting:

Here was a patched and battered 22-foot boat, daring to sail alone across the world's most tempestuous sea, her rigging festooned with a threadbare collection of clothing and half-rotten sleeping bags. Her crew consisted of six men whose faces were black with caked soot and half-hidden by matted beards, whose bodies were dead white from constant soaking in salt water. In addition, their faces, and particularly their fingers were marked with ugly round patches of missing skin where frostbites had eaten into their flesh.

Amazingly, they made it, but they arrived on the wrong side of South Georgia Island. The only option was to climb over the rugged and enormous snowy peaks of the island. And that is exactly what Ernest Shackleton, Frank Worsley and Thomas Crean did. They nearly froze to death, and had close calls with steep cliffs and icy crevasses, but they made it to the whaling station.

The three men left on the other side of South Georgia Island were rescued quickly by boat, but the misery of those on Elephant Island would endure for several months more. The first three boats chartered by Shackleton could not reach Elephant Island due to ice or vessel problems. 

Finally, on the fourth attempt, he made it — and found all the men alive. Lansing's description of the island's inhabitants, hearing of an approaching ship, then literally stumbling over each as they burst from their crude quarters, is both funny and touching. 

If you like this sort of book, you might also enjoy "Alone on the Ice," a tale of a different Antarctic expedition, and "The Last Gentleman Adventurer: Coming of Age in the Arctic," a story from the other end of the globe.

Book review: "Treasure Island"

You won't get very far into "Treasure Island" before you start to wonder: Does Duolingo offer lessons in speaking "Pirate"?

That's because "Treasure Island," the 1883 book by Robert Louis Stevenson, contains a lot of piratesque dialogue that is largely indecipherable to the modern English ear. 

Can you figure out this sentence, for example: "This crew don't vally bullying a marlinspike"? 

Or how about: "I'll gammon that doctor, if I have to ile his boots with brandy'?

Or what about "foc's'le hands," "gibbet," "pieces of eight," or "you're in a clove's hitch"? 

True, you could probably figure out some of those words and phrases if you read the passage multiple times, checked for context clues, and got help from Google. But if you did that every time you were stumped in "Treasure Island," you'd never finish the book.

Here's the thing: The language of "Treasure Island" can be puzzling, but it's also kind of fun. There's a playful rhythm and tone to the pirate talk, especially if you say it out loud. Even trying to decipher it is part of the fun.

Consider this quote from one character: "It's because I thinks gold dust of you — gold dust, and you may lay to that! If I hadn't took to you like pitch, do you think I'd have been here a-warning of you? All's up —  you can't make nor mend; it's to save your neck that I'm a-speaking,"

With a second read and the help of some context, you can figure out that this pirate is saying, "I like you and I want to help you." 

It mostly works. "Treasure Island" is a fast-paced and fun story of adventure and suspense. The roller-coaster of a story revolves around a boy named Jim Hawkins. His exact age is never made clear but he seems to be around 14 or 15.

At the outset of the book, Jim lives a relatively mundane existence helping his mother run the family inn in a seaside town. The arrival of an irascible old pirate known as The Captain as a guest at the inn stirs things up. When The Captain suddenly dies Jim finds a treasure map in in his belongings.

Soon, Jim and a few men from his town are boarding a ship to seek that treasure. The hired crew is a motley crew of greedy pirates that soon plots a mutiny. Jim and his allies fight back, and before long the two sides are squaring off on a mysterious tropical island that contains a few surprises of its own. Eventually —  and inevitably—  the story leads to a treasure hunt.

There is plenty of double-crossing, trickery, and fighting, as well as lessons about loyalty. bravery, and trust. Jim is a bit of a frustrating character because he twice abandons his allies to sneak off, but his bold actions prove important to his group's survival and keep the story exciting. One dramatic scene has him fighting a pirate while clinging high to the sails of the ship.

While the pirate talk can be frustrating at times, it also makes this book distinctive.  And how can you dislike a book that has character names like Black Dog, Billy Bones and, of course, the one-legged Long-John Silver?

Speaking of Long-John Silver, here's how he describes the life of pirates (try reading this aloud and imagine you're enjoying a drink of sweet rum in ye olde grog shop):

"Here it is about gentlemen of fortune. They lives rough, and they risk swinging, but they eat and drink like fightingcocks, and when a cruise is done, why, it's hundreds of pounds instead of hundreds of farthings in their pockets." 

Book review: "Prisoners of Geography"

"Prisoners of Geography," a 2015 book by British journalist Tim Marshall, is unlike any work I've ever read. It's a book that looks at the world from high above — the metaphorical view from 30,000 feet — to show you how the Earth's physical characteristics help determine the strength and weakness of nations and help define the political battlegrounds of today.

This is a book about countries and regions. Hardly any people are even mentioned by name. Marshall looks at the world like a global chess match between countries, which may seem cold, but is actually fascinating. 

As Marshall shows, geography defines what a nation is capable of accomplishing, long before it's even built a military or launched an economic policy. The United States, he notes, is geographically blessed, with easy access to two oceans (plus the Arctic Ocean, though not so easily), a large network of navigable rivers, good agricultural land and natural deep-water ports. 

On the other hand is s a country like Brazil, which despite its large size, lost in the geographic lottery, Marshall says. Its ports are small and insufficient, and its landscape so rugged and dense with forest and swampland that it makes it difficult to build highways and train routes. As a result, the vast majority of the population clings to the coast in crowded and poverty-ridden cities.

The book has weaknesses —  which I'll get to —  but it is worth reading if only for Chapter One, where Marshall explains why Russia desperately wants to hang on to Ukraine.

You might think that this book, written well before the Russia-Ukraine war, would be completely outdated on the topic. But Marshall shows that the history and geography of this part of the world is still relevant today. The author explains that Vladimir Putin needs Ukraine to be a buffer between Russia and its enemies in Western Europe. 

"Russia has never been conquered from this direction partially due to its strategic depth. By the time an army approaches Moscow it already has unsustainably long supply lines, a mistake that Napoleon made in 1812, and that Hitler repeated in 1941," Marshall writes. 

Marshall divides his book into 10 chapter dedicated to different parts of the world: Russia and Eastern Europe, the United States, Africa, Latin America, Western Europe, the Middle East, the Arctic, India and Pakistan, China, and Korea and Japan. You could easily read the chapters in any order, or only read the ones that interested you.

I didn't read this book quickly, but that's not a criticism. Each section of the book is so full of interesting facts that it takes time to digest.

Marshall identifies some of the most critical geographic conflicts of today as brewing in the the South China Sea, where China is attempting claim control of that body of water, riling its neighbors in the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia. 

"Every one of the hundreds of disputed atolls, and sometimes just rock poking out of the water, could be turned into a diplomatic crisis, as surrounding each rock is a potential dispute about fishing zones, exploration rights, and sovereignty."

Among Marshall's surprising assertions is that Indonesia and Malaysia could be a key players in world politics because they control the Strait of Malacca, a passage through which Chinese ships must pass to reach the oil-rich nations of the Middle East.

"It has always been a choke point — and the Chinese remain vulnerable to being choked."

Many of the problems of the Middle East can be traced to the rivalries between feuding Muslim groups, Marshall says. It's not just Israel vs the Arabs, as some would have you believe  "The problems of the region do not come down to the existence of Israel. That was a lie peddled by the Arab dictators as they sought to defect attention from their own brutality." 

Latin American is full of feuds I was unaware of. Bolivia has been peeved at Chile since an 1879 war. Guatemala claims Belize as its own territory. Venezuela believes half of Guiana belongs to it. Ecuador has historical claims on Peru. Chile and Argentina bicker over a water passage at the southern tip of the continent

Rivers can be a source of trouble. Egypt is afraid that a new dam in Ethiopia will threaten its Nile River water supply. Meanwhile, with global warming, Marshall warns that Turkey could take more water from the Euphrates River, sparking a conflict with Iraq and Syria.

Marshall helps me understand the importance of Cuba. The United States is fortunate to have no enemies on its borders, but Cuba is not exactly a friend either. The U.S. fears that a power like China could exert its influence in Cuba, and we'd suddenly have this rival at our doorstep. 

"Economically the United States will also compete with China throughout Latin America for influence, but only in Cuba would Washington pull out all the stops to ensure it dominates the post-Castro/Communist era."

Marshall points to the Arctic as an emerging battleground as sea ice melts from climate change, exposing new sea routes. This clearly benefits Russia — they have the most ports on the Arctic Ocean and the most icebreakers. 

Marshall does not pause to quote experts. He cites few reference works. This gives the book a smooth, streamlined pace, though occasionally I would have liked more explanation on some of his assertions.

For all its attributes, the book has some notable weaknesses. The biggest is that it doesn't have enough maps. 

The book's subtitle is "Ten Maps that Explain Everything about the World," and indeed each chapter begins with a broad map of the region discussed. There are also some smaller maps sprinkled around.

But it's not nearly enough. This kind of  book should have LOTS and LOTS of maps. Every page features a discussion of something geographic. I spent a lot of time flipping pages back to the maps, but in many cases they didn't help. Periodically, I had to look up maps online to understand Marshall's points.

The other basic issue with the book is that it is growing more outdated every day. True, the geography doesn't change and the history remains the same, but Marshall also ties those elements to the current events of 2014 and 2015, when the book was being finished. 

Much has changed since then: Wars in Ukraine and Russia, a coup in Niger, China saber-rattling over Taiwan, tensions over control of the Black Sea.  And much more.

I would love to see an updated version of the book. We need Tim Marshall to tell us what it all means.

Book review: "Don't Print That" by Donna C. Myrow

"Don't Print That" is a collection of stories about L.A. Youth, a Los Angeles newspaper written by teens that existed from 1988 to 2013.

Author Donna C. Myrow, who founded and ran the newspaper from its start to to its finish, takes us behind the journalism to give us glimpses into the lives of the teens that worked on the paper. As Myrow describes them, many are poor and many are struggling with problems at home and at school.

Myrow encouraged the teens to write about issues important to them. That meant L.A. Youth, unlike typical high school newspapers, ran edgy articles about dating, drugs, school, crime, homelessness, perceptions of racism, sex, teen pregnancy, and other serious topics.

In "Don't Print That," Myrow offers up a cornucopia of interesting stories, most of them only a page or two long.

There was the girl who wrote a first-person story about being labeled by therapists as "emotionally disturbed" and "out of control." Another teen wrote about the complications of being half-Chinese and half-Jewish. Another wrote about how the cafeteria at his school was effectively segregated — different racial groups isolated themselves in different parts of the space.

Through such stories, "Don't Print That" offers a window into a world most of us don't see. 

The one weakness in the book is that Myrow's short stories are unable to take us very deep into the teens' lives. The reason: Teens cycled in and out of the newspaper program rapidly, rarely staying for very long. Myrow would just be starting to get to know them when they'd move on.

The only continuing character is Myrow herself. She describes the non-stop challenges of running this shoestring operation that was constantly in need of money and staff, and frequently battered by criticism from parents or teachers over a story someone found offensive. It's amazing she did this for 25 years.

While stories of the teens dominate the book, I did enjoy Myrow's chapter on the complications of fundraising. One takeaway: Even in Los Angeles, you can't count on celebrities to show up to a fundraiser.

"Generally speaking, they (celebrities) are self-centered, make costly demands, and prove to be utterly unreliable," Myrow writes. "If an actor agrees to be the honoree and promises there's nothing on his schedule around the time of the event, don't believe him." 

Given the heavy material that fills much of the book, I liked one lighter moment when Myrow steps away from a fundraiser in a hotel and inadvertently crashes a different event — where she won two free dinners to a Beverly Hills restaurant in a raffle.

Book review: "American Muckracker" by James O'Keefe

When I started reading the 2022 book "American Muckracker," I was hoping to get the inside scoop.  But author James O'Keefe instead serves up a plateful of bitterness.

O'Keefe is is the founder of Project Veritas, a band of right-wing gadflies that has produced various investigative reports using hidden cameras and microphones to "expose" supposed misdeeds of the media or organizations favored by liberals.

While some conservatives love Project Veritas, its work has largely been ridiculed as one-sided, incomplete and inaccurate. 

I was hoping to sidestep the politics, because I was interested in something different: The mechanics. How do you film or record people without them knowing? How do you approach those people in the first place and how do you hide the recording devices? And what do you do when — inevitably — things don't go the way you expected?

In short, I was hoping "American Muckrucker" would take us behind the scenes of Project Veritas' investigations.

Alas, that's not what's in this book.

Rather, "American Muckracker" is a forum for O'Keefe to air gripes, grievance and grudges. In his view, the media, big tech companies, and much of the world are all lined up against him. So, as you can imagine, he's got a lot of ranting to do.

O'Keefe skitters around numerous topics like a hyperactive child, tossing out bits and pieces of unfinished thoughts, and never referring to himself in the first-person. He is, instead, "The muckracker."

Like a college sophomore who has just learned how to add footnotes to his paper, O'Keefe tries in vain to give his incoherent message credibility by tossing in random quotes from authors Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Alexis de Toqueville.

At one point, he likens himself likens himself to an "allied commander" fighting a war with the help of "guerilla fighters" — aka whistleblowers

If all this sounds like the ramblings of a paranoid man, you've got the right idea.

Book review: "Tiger in the Sea"

As a professional researcher, I love a well-researched book. That's why I respect author Eric Linder's work on "Tiger in the Sea," a deeply documented book about a U.S. military plane that went down in the Atlantic Ocean in 1962.

Linder says he did 1,700 interviews for the book, 94 of them in-person. He also dug through government documents, news articles and the personal memoirs of survivors. Though there were setbacks — in one chapter, he recalls his stunning discovery that records of the crash were missing from the National Archives — his persistence helped him assemble this detailed 2021 book.

Still, it take more than research to make a good book. You also need smart storytelling, thoughtful organization and the restraint to avoid cluttering the book with excessive detail. Unfortunately, "Tiger in the Sea" falls short on all those measures.

To be sure, the tale of Flying Tiger Flight 923 is a gripping story. The plane lost three of its four engines while flying over the Atlantic, forcing the pilot to land in the frigid ocean in the dark of night. All 76 aboard survived the ditching, but in the chaotic evacuation from the plane, lifeboats were lost, and many passengers ended up in the sea. 

After a harrowing eight hours, and an intense rescue effort by several nations, survivors were brought aboard a Swiss merchant ship. A total of 48 people survived, 28 died. 

The best part of the book is Linder's account of the passengers' frantic survival efforts in the wake of the ditching. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be caught in such a situation, Linder puts you there.

He captures the terror and confusion, from multiple perspectives, of people struggling to put on life vests, swim through gasoline-choked waves, and find a lifeboat amid the inky blackness of the night. The lifeboat brought little solace: 51 soaked people end up crowded onto an upside-down inflatable that was only built for half that many.

But aside from that dramatic section, much of the book is bloated and overstuffed with information. At the onset of the book Linder, like too many authors, makes the mistake of dumping a crate of character background on the reader all at one. The problem with this approach is that  early in the book readers lack the context to understand why each person is important to the story.

The next section describes the plane's engine troubles and gradual descent into the sea. This should be a tense and suspenseful read, but Linder describes every instant from multiple perspectives, drawing out the scene into the most slow-motion crash ever. 

The post-crash portions are similarly bloated. Rather than trying to make a readable story, Linder seems to be attempting to create a Flight 923 reference book by pulling every detail from his notebooks, citing every wrinkle in the government crash investigations, and going into far too much detail on the survivors' post-crash lives.

Linder also fails on a basic issue of transparency.

The central character in the book is pilot John Murray. Linder portray Murrays as keeping a cool head in the cockpit as the plane was plummeting toward the sea, and skillfully putting the plane down in a manner that kept it from breaking up upon impact. He also notes that Murray's last-minute decision to retrieve a flashlight from the cockpit before evacuating was crucial to the eventual rescue.

In the post-crash investigation some questioned Murray's actions, but Linder is quick to shut those doubts down, quoting survivors and experts praising Murray. In short, Linder portrays Murray as a hero.

It's not until near the end of the book that Linder reveals an important fact: Murray is his father-in-law. I'm not here to question whether Murray was indeed a hero, but this revelation makes me wonder how unbiased Linder's account is. The author should have revealed the familial connection earlier in the book.

Finally, for all of Linder's deep research, the book largely ignores one important group in the story: The dead. The author has talked extensively to survivors and their families, but he only barely mentions a handful of people who ended up dead. Given the many interviews Linder did, why weren't more of them with the families of those who died? Might some of them question whether Murray was a hero? 

"Tiger in the Sea" isn't a bad book; I just wish it were better. Those with a deep interest in Flight 923 may get a lot out of it. More casual readers should focus mostly on the ditching and rescue, while skimming the rest.

Book review: "Wild Life" by Keena Roberts

In an era when most American parents are afraid to let their children walk to a neighbor's house alone, Keena Roberts' mother and father took a different approach. 

Roberts' parents raised her largely in Botswana's vast Okavango Delta, where they were doing research on baboons. The family lived in a camp hours away from the nearest town, leaving Keena, even at a young age, to go off alone and explore an expanse dotted with hippopotamuses, elephants, water buffalo, lions and jaguars. 

This is the focus of Roberts' excellent 2019 autobiography, smartly titled "Wild Life." 

"Wild Life" brings together many of the best ingredients of  a great book. Ordinary people in unusual situations.  Exotic locales. Danger. Humans you can relate to. And, above all, clear, evocative writing that places you in the scene.  

Was living in the African wild really dangerous? Yes, it was, Roberts notes (and there is a jaguar attack in the book to emphasize the point), but she learned to reduce the risk by being keenly aware of her surroundings. She describes how smells, sounds, animal tracks, ripples in the water, and even specific calls of baboons and birds were all clues to the presence of dangerous animals. 

The book is not all about Roberts' life in Africa. She also describes her "alternate life" near Philadelphia, where she attended school off and on when her family wasn't in Africa.

Life in America was in many ways more difficult than it was in Botswana. You feel for her as she struggles to adapt to American teenager culture, her African life leaving her socially clumsy, and stumbles through the dynamics of "mean girl" encounters.

Roberts is an excellent writer that places you there. When she talks of the oppressive heat of Botswana's dry season, you feel it. When she is charged by a lion and prepares to die, your heartbeat rises too. When a snooty high school girl mocks her hairstyle, you can't help but get angry. 

For example, she describes her routine upon awakening at Baboon Camp:

I lay completely still for a minute or two, sniffing the air to see if I smelled elephants or buffalo among the scents of dry dust and sage bushes outside the tent. Smelling only the earth and hearing only the birds scratching on the ground, I sat up slowly. ... I slid out from under the heavy blankets piled on my cot and pulled on shorts, a T-shirt, and my purple Patagonia jacket. I was supposed to wear shoes so I didn't rack dirt into the tent, but I rarely followed this rule — I liked to feel the ground under my feet, the way the dust pooled between my toes and puffed up around my ankles.

My favorite scene from the book is where 10-year-old Keena is called upon, because of an urgent situation, to pilot one of the family's boats on a two-hour drive through the crocodile and hippo-infested swamps, her younger sister the only passenger. Though she was a capable boat driver even at that age, she had never done this kind of trip,. She is honest about her fears and I turned the pages rapidly to find out how the trip would turn out. 

My least favorite part of the book is where she is accepted into Harvard. I feel bad saying that, because this was obviously a big achievement for Roberts. But up until then, she had been largely an underdog — a child trying to fit in awkwardly in two worlds, troubled by so many of the anxieties we all face at that age —  and it was easy to root for her.

Her acceptance into Harvard abruptly elevated her to another level — an American success story. It didn't seem to fit, and for a little while it bothered me. 

But you know what? Roberts is so likeable that I soon got over it. 

Arriving at Puerto Vallarta airport

One of the most anxiety-inducing parts of travel is arriving at a new destination — especially a foreign destination. There are so many unknowns: What will I need in order to get through immigration? Will  customs search my luggage?  How will I get local currency? How will I get to my destination? 

That's why, as my wife's and my recent trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, approached, I haunted the travel forum pages at TripAdvisor and other websites searching for information about the airport there and the arrival process

It worked —  mostly. I learned enough to reduce the number of unknowns and ease the anxiety just slightly. But there were still surprises awaiting us. 

To pay this forward, I thought it might be helpful to other travelers to share our experience from our arrival in Puerto Vallarta on April 18, 2023.

We arrived at PVR (aka Licenciado Gustavo Díaz Ordaz International Airport) at 5:15 p.m., about an hour late, and the crew encouraged us to move speedily through the facility as Customs closed at 6 p.m. This was both worrisome and comical (what happens if you don't get there until 6:01? Are you locked in the airport?). No matter, we fully intended to get through the airport as quickly as possible. 

We got off the plane and there was a long walk to our first checkpoint — immigration.  This was a large room and it wasn't immediately clear where to go, but a worker directed us to one of the stations where an immigration officer sat at a booth.

We only waited briefly before stepping up to the officer and presenting our passports. The officer asked me to remove my hat (there was a camera there, so maybe we were being photographed), but otherwise quickly stamped our passports and we were on our way.

We proceeded into the next room, a large space that houses baggage claim and customs. We only had carry-on bags, so we had no luggage to retrieve, but we did need to fill out a customs form.

In some cases, your airline may hand out customs forms to fill out on the plane, but our Southwest flight crew said they were out of them. There is also, supposedly, a way to fill out an online form ahead of time and pre-print it, but when I tried that before our flight it didn't include Puerto Vallarta as an option for the arriving airport (weird), so I gave up.

You'd think there would be plenty of customs forms in the customs hall, but at first we saw none. We found a few people filling out the form and I asked one of them where he got his. He pointed to a nearby counter. 

I hurried over there, just in time to see someone else snatch up the last of the forms on that counter. As I continued to search, another traveler handed me a form —  she had accidentally grabbed two. I was glad to have a form but couldn't help wondering what the other hundred or so people in the hall were going to do.

The form was pretty easy (you only need one for you and your family members traveling with you), but I did mess up my birthdate, reversing the month and day. Spoiler: It didn't matter.

There are numerous stations to exit the customs area. Some people report that they had to press a button and if you get a green light, you just leave, but if you get a red light, they search your luggage. 

That didn't happen with us though. We were directed into a line and then told to put our luggage through an X-ray machine. We did so, but it didn't appear that anyone was even looking at the X-ray screen. As our luggage came out on the other side, no one gave us any instructions, so we simply picked up our bags and left.

As you exit Customs, you enter the "Shark Tank." This is a hallway crowded with people, almost all men, offering to help you get a taxi or van. Some have on official-looking badges, but there's nothing "official" about them. By all accounts, if you decide to employ one of them for your ride, you will be charged much more — sometimes double — the prices of other options. The best advice is just to look straight ahead and keep going.

After the Shark Tank, you enter the main airport hall. Immediately on the right are five or six ATMs.  I pulled over to one to get some pesos. You, of course, want to be knowledgeable about fees anytime you are using an ATM not affiliated with your bank. Some U.S. banks will have partnerships with foreign banks, which may help you avoid some fees, but your best tactic is to get a Charles Schwab checking account and debit card. With the Schwab card, which I have, you pay zero ATM fees anywhere in the world.

I entered my Schwab card, and followed the prompts. There is one important step here: You need to say "No" when the machine offers to convert your dollars to pesos. If you say "Yes," you will be charged a much worse conversion rate than you would if you just said "No" and left the process to your bank. I knew to do this, but I almost fell for their trap.

Here's why: You have to accept the ATM fees (even though, with the Schwab card, I wouldn't end up paying pays them), so you click on "accept." On the very next screen is the conversion question, and it looks almost identical to the ATM fee question, so it was very tempting just to say "accept" again. Fortunately, I realized what they were asking and declined. Be wary! 

Pesos now in hand, we went in search of an Uber. We opted for Uber because by all accounts, Uber is something like half the price of taxis in the airport. Fortunately, there are numerous articles and videos online about catching an Uber at PVR, because it would be difficult to figure out how to get one on your own. 

Here's what to do: Exit the front of the airport and turn left — again, you will have to dodge numerous people offering you a taxi. Go to the end of the building and turn left again. You will see a footbridge that will take you over an adjacent road (the bridge has a ramp, so you can roll your luggage). Go up the footbridge and to the other side where you can catch an Uber. They're not allowed to pick up in the airport.

This might sound confusing if you've never tried it it but it turned out to be really quite simple.

The only thing that's not obvious is where exactly you catch the Uber. There's a bus stop, a small restaurant and some shops in that area, and quite a few people milling about —  including even more people trying to offer us a ride. 

I opened the Uber app and it first asked where exactly we wanted pickup — "Restaurant" or "Footbridge." Since we were standing right next to the footbridge, I almost clicked on that, but looking closer at app map, I realized that that location was the other side of the street (and seemed impossible to use). "Restaurant" was the right choice.

We were close to making our full escape from the airport, but there was more hitch ahead. When I tried to reserve an Uber, my Bank of America credit card was declined. Freakin' Bank of America. They specifically tell you that you don't have to warn them about foreign travel because they have "advanced" fraud detection in place. But when I tried to use the card in Mexico for this Uber ride, they detected that as suspicious and blocked the transaction. This was the second time B of A had unnecessarily blocked my card due when I was in a foreign country.  Grrrrr.

Fortunately, I had a back-up payment option in the Uber app and activated that. The lesson: Don't use Bank of America cards in foreign countries, and always have a backup payment source in your Uber app.

On second try, my ride request went through. And in just two minutes, our driver arrived at the footbridge and we were on our way to our destination.

Book review: "Lies Across America" by James W. Lowewen

The cabin where Abraham Lincoln was supposedly born isn't genuine. The quotations on the walls of Jefferson Memorial aren't accurate. And the oft-described harsh winter that American troops endured at Valley Forge in 1775-76 really wasn't that bad. 

These are just a few of the startling facts described by James W. Loewen in his 1999 book "Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong."  

This compendium lists nearly 100 sites across the United States where, according to Loewen, the history presented to the public is wrong. It's not just a game of "Gotcha!" — he's trying to make a deeper point: Much of the way history is presented in this country is twisted, or even flipped, to fit political or religious agendas. The achievements of white European men are emphasized, their mistakes ignored, while the contributions of women, blacks, and Indians, are omitted or minimized.

Loewen is a thorough researcher, but "Lies Across America" is a poor title.  Most of the flaws he finds are not "lies" or even inaccuracies, but omissions or simple differences of interpretation. Throughout much of the book, he seems peeved that history is not presented exactly the way he would like it to be. Maybe it should have been called "Hidden American History" or similar.

Omissions can certainly be important, such as on the marker of the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah that fails to mention who committed the slaughter of 120 people traveling in a westward-bound caravan in 1857 (spoiler: It was Mormons, not Indians). Kudos to Loewen for this section's great title: "Bad Things Happen in the Passive Voice."

But in other spots Loewen seems to be reaching for things to get upset about. He calls out a small marker in Nebraska praising author Willa Cather for not saying that she was a lesbian — but c'mon, how common is it for a historical marker to note the sexual orientation of any figure?

He's peeved that Virginia has no historical markers honoring Abraham Lincoln and there are no plaques mentioning slavery in Richmond, Virginia, He chides Indiana for having "only" one plaque mentioning the Ku Klux Klan, even though he notes that there are only four such markers in the entire U.S. He's miffed that a marker in Nevada describing nuclear tests, while not inaccurate, doesn't include the information he would like it to have.

To be clear, the book has some great stories, He describes the bizarre history of how a fake cabin ended up at the Lincoln birthplace in Kentucky to represent the birthplace of our 16th president. He outlines how Thomas Jefferson's quotes are mangled on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial to the extent that the meaning is distorted. And he cites George Washington for fueling the false idea that American soldiers were "naked and starving" at Valley Forge.

He finds some fascinating lesser-known stories, too, such as the tale of how Alaska's Mt. McKinley got that name due to a squabble over whether the U.S. dollar should be on the gold standard. Two good chapters are from the Civil War, one detailing the life of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union spy living in the Confederate capital during Civil War, the other a description of Abraham's Lincoln's walk through Richmond, Virginia, at the end of the conflict. 

Still, Loewen seems too eager to hear himself talk, repeating the same points about historical injustices too many times. The 50-page opening to the book could be about half that long.

Too often, he comes off as an irritating know-it-all scold. He seems like the kind of guy who would say, just as you're about to dig into some ice cream, "Do you know how much fat is in that?"

For all his historical knowledge, Loewen overreaches when he says, without the slightest qualifier, that President James Buchanan was homosexual. This was eye-opening to me; I'd never heard this. So I dug deeper and found that the scholars who know most about Buchanan's relationships (such as Thomas Balcerski, who wrote a whole book on this question) have concluded that he was not gay. This is just one mistake in a book full of footnoted facts, but it's enough to make the reader wonder what else here is untrue. 

"Lies Across America" could be a decent reference book to look at just before you visit a historical site. But I would not recommend reading it all at once, or you'll just end up irritated by the author rather than absorbing the history

Book review: "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors"

When a flotilla of 12 U.S. Navy ships was suddenly confronted with an approaching fleet of 23 Japanese warships east of the Philippines during World War II, the situation looked bleak.

Not only were the Americans outnumbered, they were outgunned. The U.S. group was mainly smaller ships designed to support combat operations, while the Japanese had their largest battleships and most powerful cruisers. 

This was the start of the "Battle off Samar," a 1944 confrontation in which five U.S. ships were sunk, seven others damaged, and over a thousand Americans died.

Yet, largely due to heroic efforts of men aboard ships the Americans called "tin cans," it ended as an improbable U.S. victory.

I knew almost nothing about the Battle off Samar before I started James D. Hornfisher's 2004 book "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors." I know a lot more now, and if you like war stories, I can assure you this is a good one. 

The Battle off Samar was a key part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, a four-day clash between U.S. and Japan fleets.

The book focuses on a nearly disastrous day for the Americans. A clever Japanese ruse combined with questionable decisions by a Navy admiral left a sizable hole in the U.S. armada.

Into that gap slipped a large contingent of Japanese ships. In their path was a group of U.S. ships known as "Taffy 3" that was mostly responsible for supporting troops on land — not for fighting sea battles.

Much of the credit for the American victory, Hornfisher explains, goes to the sailors of the ships Hoel, Johnston, Heermann and Samuel B. Roberts, which made pretty much suicidal runs at the Japanese to buy time for the other U.S. ships to get further away. By the end of the battle, the Hoel, Johnston and Roberts were at the bottom of the ocean.

As a researcher, Hornfisher gets an A++. The bibliography alone is 21 (!) pages. He interviewed 52 survivors of the battles, reviewed private letters, notes and writings that family members shared with him, and assembled facts, names, figures, from copious other sources. Besides the battle itself, the author demonstrates thorough knowledge of the ships, weapons, naval training and military strategies.

 "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" will certainly go down as the most comprehensive history of the Battle off Samar.

As a writer, Hornfisher gets a B+. The book starts slowly and at times goes into excessive detail, but it gets better as it goes on and eventually becomes a compelling page-turner.

The 130-page introductory section, while nicely setting the stage for the battle, spends too much time telling back stories of the many figures from the battle. I know Hornfisher wants to humanize the cold business of warfare, but this is not the kind of book where the reader follows a small number of characters.

There are scores of men who play key roles in the story — far too many for the reader to keep track of. Plus, the back stories are so far removed from the action in this 425-page book, it's difficult to connect a character to his later significance. 

Hornfisher also sometimes uses simplistic caricatures, as when he described one sailor this way: "The boyish twenty-four-year-old with the lantern jaw and quiet manner watched over the kids on the Johnston's deck like a father. The kids who swabbed and painted and scraped and loaded supplies and took on fuel loved him like one."

But after the unhurried start, the book hits its stride. The battle chapters are exciting and vividly described.

Hornfisher's meticulousness helps fill the story with subtle details. For instance, one sailor by the name of Bob Rutter was knocked down when an enemy shell hit his ship, and he believed the sticky stuff on his face was blood and mangled flesh. "After a terrified pause, Rutter realized he was all right, and lucky too. The mess that covered him was navy beans, cooked in storage by the blast of the shell, steamed by the sudden heat, and blown through the uptake, blasting him with a blast of paste."

Another example: An enemy shell hit the destroyer Hoel's safe, which held cash to pay the crew, sent money fluttering into the air. As the author described it, "The fifty-dollar bills settled and stuck fast on the deck, the gruesome windfall drifting with the flow of blood down the bilges."

Hornfisher does not sanitize the horrors of war. He documents the brutal destruction of ships, describing men who were decapitated, had limbs blown off, or were severely burned from fire and explosions.

Still, the author should learn that not every fact needs to go into the book. The blood-and-guts scenes are so numerous they eventually become repetitive and blur together. Highlighting some key moments and summarizing others could have helped. Sometimes less is more.

The final section detailing the miseries of the surviving sailors stranded for two days in the water awaiting rescue is Hornfisher's best writing, even if the content can be painful to read.  In the epilogue, he notes how Navy politics kept the heroism of the Battle off Samar from receiving much attention over the years (maybe this is one reason I knew little of this episode).

For all the death and destruction of the battle, Hornfisher eloquently describes how the ephemeral nature of naval warfare can leave little trace beyond memories: 

“When a ship sinks, the battlefield goes away. Currents move, thermal layers mix, and by the time the surveyors and rescuers arrive, the water that more witness to the slaughter is nowhere to be found. The dead disappear, carried under with their ruined vehicles. No wreckage remains for tacticians to study. There are no corpses for stretcher bearers to spirit away, no remains to shovel, bad, and bury. On the sea there is no place to anchor a memorial flagpole or headstone. It is a vanishing graveyard.”

One night at Ralphs

I went to my local Ralphs supermarket to buy diet soda last night. I've done this scores of times, but this time things went awry. 

I buy Ralphs-brand soda largely because of the price. Up until about six months ago, a two-liter bottle cost just 79 cents (plus recycling fees). Then the price went up to 99 cents. I wasn't thrilled, but hey — inflation — I get it. 

But last night I was stunned to see the price was now $1.49 per two-liter bottle. In other words, over six months, the price rose from 79 cents to $1.49 -- an 88% increase. That's a helluva lot more than can be blamed on inflation.

Looking at the shelves for alternatives, I saw that Diet Pepsi was just $1.29 — with a "digital coupon." I wasn't quite sure what a digital coupon was, but I was willing to give it a try.

The tag on the shelf said to scan the QR code to get the coupon. I took out my phone and did so, but it only brought me to the Ralphs website, not a coupon. Looking closer, it said to "log in" to get the coupon. Hmmm. I didn't have an account to log in to, so I stood in the aisle creating one — enter email, make password, accept terms and conditions.

That done, I logged in — and it still didn't show me the coupon. In my "cart," I found the coupon listed but no bar code or QR code I could use. 

Puzzled, I headed to the checkstand. I found a cashier with no one in line. Perfect. Or so I thought.

As I placed my items on the checkout belt, I asked her how I was supposed to use this online coupon. She took my phone in her hands and started tapping and swiping. I stood there waiting. And waiting. Another customer came up behind me and placed her items on the belt.

The cashier kept staring at my phone, tapping occasionally. Another customer got into line. To say this was awkward would be an understatement. To the other customers, it probably looked like the cashier was simply playing on her phone and I was letting her.

I gingerly tried to suggest moving on: "I guess it's not that easy," I said with a weak chuckle. Then a bagger came along and started chatting with the cashier. "The binder is broken," she said, inviting the cashier to look at a broken binder that was relevant to nothing going on at that moment. The cashier, rather than saying "I'm busy," turned from the phone, looked at the binder and talked briefly with the bagger.

The line of customers behind me grew longer. By this point, I just wanted to get my phone back and leave. Again, gingerly, I said, "If this is too hard, I can just..." Finally the cashier gave me my phone and said, "You need to enter your phone number."

Briefly, I was relieved. I'll just enter my phone number and all will be good. But instead, I got the message, "That number does not work." I checked the number; it was correct. Sigh. I told the cashier and she started tapping again on my phone. I could sense the frustration of everyone watching.

Then she said, "You need to enter a code" and handed me my phone back. What code? I didn't have any code (and never got one). She then said she would enter the discount manually this time.

She had to enter the discount one at a time for each of five bottles. With so many eyes staring at us, it seemed to take forever. 

Leaving the store, I made a count of how many grocery stores are closer to my home that this one: The total is four (Target, Vons, Lazy Acres, Trader Joe's). There's also Big Lots, which sells soda. I have options.

I don't need to go back to Ralphs and I won't.