Human Smoke

Nicholson Baker's book Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (Simon & Schuster, 2008) has gotten very bad press.

The angry reviews are defensive. Anne Applebaum in The New Republic writes

"And the reader, both of The Da Vinci Code and Human Smoke, is duly flattered. Read Brown's book and you, all by yourself, can decide whether Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene! Read Baker's book and you, all by yourself, can decide whether World War II was worth fighting! You too can get the facts and make up your mind! And never mind that the facts have been chosen selectively, even randomly, by writers who do not understand the context in which they originally appeared, and indeed have deliberately tried not to understand it. Brown and Baker are not "experts," after all. They are, to put it politely, artistes."

I really don't understand the cult of the expert any more than I do the newer cult of the amateur. But as a college graduate, I am offended by the notion that I am not qualified to decide all by myself, if the Second World War was good or Jesus was married. The latter question is meaningless, but the moral status of war, and of any particular war, is something about which every American voter should have an opinion. An informed opinion.

Nicholson Baker didn't supply me with my opinion, but he did inform. Thanks.

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