Washington Post Book Reviews
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Sunday April 10, 2011
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HENRY'S DEMONS: Living with Schizophrenia, a Father and Son's Story
Patrick Cockburn and Henry Cockburn
Scribner
ISBN 978-1439154700
238 pages
$25
Reviewed by Sarah Halzack
For parents, nothing is more important than their children's well-being. So when, in 2002, journalist Patrick Cockburn called his wife, Jan, from Afghanistan and learned about an accident suffered by their 20-year-old son, Henry, it was a devastating blow.
Patrick discovered that Henry had wandered into the sea on a cold February night and came close to drowning before fishermen plucked him out. Patrick rushed home to England to be with his son, who, doctors said, might be suicidal. After further observation, however, they concluded that Henry was schizophrenic.
"Henry's Demons," a memoir written by both father and son, chronicles their eight-year struggle with the mental disorder.
The bulk of the book is written by Patrick, who provides an honest and at times wrenching account of Henry's treatment, his progress and setbacks, and the deep toll his condition and behavior have taken on the rest of the family. Henry's chapters describe his experiences from his point of view, affording rare and vivid insights into a mind in the throes of illness. (Most unsettling, perhaps, is Henry's repeatedly stated opinion that nothing is wrong with him.)
This dual-voiced setup works best when Patrick and Henry recount the same episode from their very different perspectives.
For instance, Henry's propensity to escape from hospitals is a nightmare for Patrick. "I was terrified every time Henry ran away," he writes. "Jan and I came to dread the ringing of the phone at unlikely times because it might be the hospital or the police saying he had disappeared again. When he did so, I would doze on the sofa by the door late into the night, hoping I would hear his footfalls in the street."
For Henry, these jaunts were an enchanting opportunity to commune with nature. "I remember walking through a cornfield where there was a huge spiderweb. I jumped over it, and the spider looked crossly at me as if I should have walked through his web. I went by the railway line and took my shoes off. The tree talked to me in a sort of Shakespearian rhyme."
This heartbreaking disparity between concerned parent and oblivious child casts light on the chasm between a healthy mind and a disturbed one.
The Cockburn family endured, however, held together by unconditional and reciprocal love. Though Henry disagreed with his parents' decision to institutionalize him, he cherished the time they spent together. And while Henry's behavior discouraged his parents, never once did they stop caring and advocating for their son.
Sarah Halzack can be reached at halzacks(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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HOW TO RUN THE WORLD: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance
HOW TO RUN THE WORLD: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance Parag Khanna
Random House
ISBN 978-1400068272
256 pages
$26
THE FUTURE OF POWER Joseph S. Nye J.r
PublicAffairs
ISBN 978-1586488918
300 pages
$27.99
Reviewed by Ian Morris
"The state is not 'abolished,'" Friedrich Engels insisted back in 1878. "It withers away."
Engels was mistaken about a lot of things, but he may have got this one right. For 5,000 years, states have been the most powerful organizations on earth, but they are now being challenged from every direction. Governments that go to war without United Nations resolutions are branded criminals; states that ignore the bond markets or George Soros go bust; and regardless of what they do, politicians are named and shamed by WikiLeaks.
We could all use a roadmap to this complicated new world. Now, thanks, to two insightful, readable and very different books, we are almost spoiled for choice.
Parag Khanna, a 30-something journalist and rising star in the world of think tanks, makes the case in "How to Run the World" for what he calls "Generation Y geopolitics." He describes the 21st century as "neo-medieval," because now, as in the Middle Ages, "rising powers, multinational corporations, powerful families, humanitarians, religious radicals, universities and mercenaries are all part of the diplomatic landscape." Because states no longer matter much, he says, we should dump old-style diplomacy, with its "stiff waltz of rituals and protocols among states alone," for "mega-diplomacy ... a jazzy dance among coalitions of ministries, companies, churches, foundations, universities, activists, and other willful, enterprising individuals who cooperate to achieve specific goals."
"Generation Y," he promises, "will own mega-diplomacy." The result will be a new renaissance, like the one that ended the original Middle Ages.
Joseph S. Nye, by contrast, is a 70-something professor at Harvard and former dean of its Kennedy School of Government. As he sees it in "The Future of Power," the old, stiff waltz is not over yet. "Today," he suggests, "power in the world ... resembles a complex three-dimensional chess game."
On the top of the board is military power, where states still reign supreme; in the middle is economic power, where states and nonstate actors share the play; and only on the bottom do we find something like Khanna's Generation Y geopolitics.
In a series of earlier books, Nye drew a massively influential contrast between "hard power" (being able to coerce others) and "soft power" (being able to co-opt others). Real power, he insists, has to be "'smart power' ... the combining of hard and soft power into successful strategies." His latest book is written to clarify these distinctions for critics (including perhaps Khanna, who dismisses soft and smart power as "vague concepts") and to explain what they mean for the United States in the 2010s.
Nye recognizes that "on an increasing number of issues in the 21st century, war is not the ultimate arbiter" and that "outcomes are shaped not merely by whose army wins but also by whose story wins." But he is not ready to cede the dance floor to the NGOs, hacktivists and celebrities just yet. "Military power," he observes, "provides a degree of security that is to order as oxygen is to breathing: little noticed until it begins to become scarce."
Nye is surely right that "two great power shifts are occurring in this century: a power transition among states and a power diffusion away from all states to nonstate actors."
Khanna's case for Generation Y is always interesting but often overstated. The state has not yet withered away, and Khanna's recurring image of the 21st century as "neo-medieval" soon becomes strained. It has its uses (Nye, in fact, makes a similar comparison at one point), but the Byzantine Empire is a very odd analogy for contemporary America; comparing gated communities in Miami with Carolingian warbands seems unhelpful; and just what it is that modern companies should be learning from medieval guilds remains obscure.
Nye's argument is just as interesting as Khanna's and just as rich in clever one-liners and felicitous phrases. But it is also more judicious, more carefully presented, better referenced and, in the end, more compelling. Nye is a master of his field at the height of his powers.
Both these books repay careful reading and reflection, but Nye's three-dimensional chess game is the better model for a world in which the state withers but refuses to go away.
Ian Morris teaches at Stanford University and is the author of "Why the West Rules -- For Now: The Patterns of History, and What they Reveal About the Future."
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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