Carl Deuker -- Books, Movies, TV

No surprises. Dental insurance is common in middle and upper middle class  families. Fewer Black and Hispanic dentists, etc. One detail.  Native Alaskans chew their food for their very young children--a sign of love.  Now, with untreated dental decay rampant, this spreads disease to toddlers.

Continuing saga . . . poor people need dental care. (This time she discusses Native Americans). Hygienists coulddo more Dental therapists could fill the gap. Dentists object citing the danger that non-dentists could make irreversible mistakes.  Is the dentists' argument self-serving or valid . . . or a bit of both?  New to me:  I hadn't thought that rural people drink well water that is not fluoridated.

Excellent.  Reminds me of All the President's Men and Spotlight.  Elizabeth Holmes, he suggests at the end, might have psychopathic personality.  Before reading the book, from news account, that would have seemed a stretch.  Now .  . . plausible. Her success. Ambition, charisma, brains, talent abetted by a desire on the part of Silicon Valley and politicians to have a "female Steve Jobs" to champion. The list of pols clamoring to be associated include:  Obama, Clinton, Biden. Kissinger, Schultz, Mattis joined her Board of Directors for reasons which are less understandable.  Could it be as simple as that they were flattered by her attention.  (Tyler Schultz, George Schultz's grandson, emerges as one of the true heroes of the story.) Downfall. Lying.  About the Theranos machine, about the results, about the money, about the lab, about absolutely everything. Intimidation:  Culture kept workers from discussing projects with one a...

It's starting to unravel. Carreyou gets a tip from Alan B. (ethical lab director who quits) that things aren't right. Alan is afraid to take on E.H.  He doesn't have the money and he's turned over all his files the Theranos.  But he talks.  Carreyou is intrigued. He goes to Phoenix to talk to doctors. The more he digs, the more he discovers that the wonder invention isn't so wonderful after all.  Feels a little like All the President's Men or Spotlight now.  Very exciting.

Elizabeth Holmes is faking it.  She and Sonny are using their force of personality (aka bullying) to keep employees in line. Employees who leave (Tyler Schultz, grandson on George Schultz, for example) are bullied into signing non-disclosure documents and into turning over all emails, documents etc. under threat of lawsuit. How they expected to keep doing this, with the continued inadequacy of their devices, is mysterious.

Story of Theranos, the "blood test miracle" and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes. Great idea, but Holmes consistently and continually oversells, misleads, and outright lies to make the company seem as if it is on the verge of a major medical and amazingly lucrative breakthrough. She presents herself as the next Steve Jobs and convinces an array of intelligent people. Author attributes her early success to FOMO--fear of missing out.  Probably very accurate in that assessment. It's the early, heady days.  Those who object to her methods or question her results are steam rolled.

MC wrote some westerns early in his career. The end of this has a Western shoot-out feeling.  All the violence turns on Russian sables.  Nice touch with that at the very end.  Arkady returns to Russia (he is Russian with a capital R) while his girlfriend stays in America.  I read/listend to this over three weeks on airplanes and in two different cities.  It's obviously well-written.  Maybe it's a great spy book--I just struggled to follow the plot for the first 250 pages, probably my fault. Note:  in the interview that accompanies the book, MC describes writing for FOR MEN ONLY, an early men's magazine that was less racy than Playboy (skimpy bikinis, no nudity.)  He was one of two people who put the magazine out every month, writing numerous articles under numerous pseudonyms.  Early on, he sold Gorky Park. When he wanted to switch the detective from an American visiting Russia to a Russian, his publisher was tepid.  He eventually bo...

I started this in Seattle on tape; read some on the plane; some in SF on vacation; more airplane; tape again . . . Tough, particularly because the plot is complicated (other than Arkady, no one is who they seem).  What I'll remember most are the descriptions of the Alice-in-Wonderland nature of daily life in Soviet-era Russia.