Deadly Scholarship

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Henceforth, these NONFICTION book reports will be a time-saving device. You need not read entire books anymore. Read these condensed versions instead. You'll have that much more time for your own blog.

Today I read "Deadly Scholarship" by Edwin Chen, published in 1995.

In 1985, Lu Gang, loner, exam high-scorer from a family of peasant farmers in China, arrived in America to start his graduate school career at the University of Iowa.

As a physics PhD candidate, he became increasingly frustrated with the elitism at the school. The finals straws came in 1991 when he perceived he was receiving unfair treatment with regard to defense of his dissertation, and his failure to be nominated for a certain physics award.

A fellow student, Shan Linhua, also Chinese, presented a better quality dissertation, was nominated for, and won the said award. Lu Gang complained bitterly and persistently to the University administration about the award.

In three days' time, Gang was granted a gun license in summer of 1991. He bought two guns over the next few months. By late October, his attempts to resolve the award issue in his favor were going nowhere. You can guess what happened next. On November 1, 1991, he went on a shooting rampage, killing the rival student and the professors and administrators whom he thought had wronged him, and wounding an innocent by-standing secretary, paralyzing her from the neck down; six people in all. Then he killed himself.

As a result, gun-control laws in Iowa were stiffened to include a five-day waiting period and background check. It is unknown whether such measures would have prevented the above tragedy, but there have been no killing sprees at the University since.

Kidnapped in Yemen

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Henceforth, these NONFICTION book reports will be a time-saving device. You need not read entire books anymore. Read these condensed versions instead. You'll have that much more time for your own blog.

Today I read "Kidnapped in Yemen" by Mary Quin, published in 2005.

Mary Quin, citizen of both New Zealand (her birthplace) and the United States (her residence), was an executive at Xerox who enjoyed travel. She knew it was risky to vacation in Yemen, but being an adventuress, she went there anyway. Her tour group was kidnapped by approximately eighteen terrorists while traveling in a caravan in the middle of the desert.

The approximately sixteen tourist-hostages were treated well for a while (about one day), until the Yemeni government sent armed officers to rescue them. Quin later theorized that this was an opportunity for the government to kill the fanatical Muslim kidnapper-terrorists, and at the same time, show the world they cared about the tourists, who were from Great Britain, Australia and the United States.

The government claimed the lead kidnapper had threatened to kill the hostages if numerous political demands were not met. The main demand was to release jailed prisoners who were accused of plotting terror attacks in Yemen. When the kidnappers saw the rescuers approaching, they engaged them in a firefight.

Amid a hail of bullets from both sides, a terrorist put an AK-47 in Quin's back. Miraculously, he was hit by a bullet, but she was not. He went down. She had no clue what to do, but decided to try to wrest the gun from his hands. Still alive, he gripped it tightly. She stood on his head and succeeded in pulling it away from him. She had no experience using such a weapon, so after some yards walking in the sand toward she knew not where, she dropped it. She climbed over a wall, and luckily, into the vicinity of the rescuers.

Four of the hostages were killed by terrorist bullets. Two others were wounded. A few terrorists died or were taken into custody. Most fled. Quin was questioned by the FBI and Scotland Yard.

Quin's instinctive survival skills allowed her to emerge from this traumatic experience without any physical injury. She came home, and went back to work. However, it changed her life. The fact that life is short, actually sunk in for Quin. It was not just an idle cliche anymore. Her high-level job became trivial, considering she had cheated death.

From out of the blue, a stranger emailed her and said he wanted to meet her. They met and later, she moved in with him. She became fascinated with how and why the kidnapping occurred. She did extensive research. She quit her job and became a political activist for Muslim women.

She returned to Yemen and met with government officials, the prisoners accused of the terrorist plotting, and even a Muslim cleric with terrorist ties. Her information-gathering allowed her to obtain closure on the kidnapping incident.

She now lives in Anchorage, Alaska with her partner and his two daughters.

The Heart is the Teacher

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Henceforth, these book reports will be a time-saving device. You need not read entire books anymore. Read these condensed versions instead. You'll have that much more time for your own blog.

Today I read "The Heart is the Teacher" by Leonard Covello, published in 1958.

Covello's family came to East Harlem from Italy at the turn of the 20th century. Born in 1891, he spent his first nine years in Italy, where parents, teachers and religious leaders were martinets who believed in physical punishment. The parents wanted their children to have better lives than they themselves did, and they thought education was a way out of poverty. Nevertheless, children of poor families often quit grade school, never to return, because they were needed as wage earners on the farm.

Covello was fortunate to have good influences around him, including a female missionary who taught the young people of his East Harlem neighborhood Protestant values. Although she was not Catholic, his father thought her teachings were good for him anyway.

Covello's mother died when he was a teenager. Being the oldest boy in a poor family of seven children, he felt compelled to quit high school and earn money so the family could eat. He did quit school for a year, but then returned. He was not planning on college. His next door neighbor, who was sort of a big sister figure to him (whom he later married), and his friend, convinced him to apply for a scholarship to Columbia University. His neighbor had the teaching bug, and gave him confidence. He won the scholarship, and graduated college. However, he found the University lacking in lively debate and truly scholarly teaching. It was too easy. It was lame. He volunteered for the army in WWI, thinking he needed to prove that he did not deserve any special privileges just because he was an educated person.

Covello went to work at an American Express office, but was bored, when a friend of his asked him for a favor. The friend asked him to fill in for him for the remainder of the academic year, teaching unruly middle-schoolers in the inner city. Burnt out, the friend was transferring to a job teaching college students. Covello found he loved teaching.

His expressed his attitude thusly:

"I am the teacher. I am older, presumably wiser than you, the pupils. I am in possession of knowledge which you don't have. It is my function to transfer this knowledge from my mind to yours... certain ground rules must be set up and adhered to. I talk. You listen. I give. You take. Yes, we will be friends, we will share, we will discuss, we will have open sessions for healthy disagreement-- but only within the context of the relationship I have described, and the respect for my position as teacher which must go with it."

Covello became a teacher at DeWitt Clinton High School on the Upper West Side, and eventually, principal of the newly built Benjamin Franklin High School in the East Harlem section of New York City. He taught French, then Spanish, and finally, after he kept pushing for it, Italian. The school had not previously offered Italian. He truly believed in what Ben Franklin wrote, "If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."

Covello was passionate not only about teaching, but about helping his East Harlem community dispel its reputation for poorly educated, criminal immigrants. He co-founded a branch of YMCA, and implemented new programs to educate the local young people, and lower the crime rate. One such program was that the school served not just as a school, but a community center. It was open 24/7, so anyone could use its resources to spend his time constructively.

From the 1920's through the time of his mandatory retirement in the 1950's, Covello devoted almost his entire existence to the cause. Some people have the passion for teaching and leadership, and some people don't. This guy had it.