July - Summer Edition - CI Investments

Book reviews
The best book I’ve read in the past year
Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley
Twelve, 251 pages
Gerry Coleman
Chief Investment Officer
Harbour Advisors
What I plan to read this summer
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and
Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
Random House, 473 pages
Unbroken is the story of Louis Zamperini. Born in 1917, Louis
was an Olympic distance runner, World War II prisoner of
war and inspirational speaker. The book is billed as a World
War II story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Laura
Hillenbrand is the best selling author of Seabiscuit: An
American Legend.
Laura Hillenbrand reached Louis
Zamperini just in the nick of time – he
was in his mid-80s when she found
him, and 93 now – and it’s an excellent
thing, for his is surely one of the most
extraordinary war stories of all.
In late May 1943, the B-24 carrying the 26-year-old
Zamperini went down over the Pacific. For nearly seven
weeks – longer, Hillenbrand believes, than any other
such instance in recorded history – Zamperini and his
pilot managed to survive on a fragile raft. They traveled
2,000 miles, only to land in a series of Japanese prison
camps, where, for the next two years, Zamperini
underwent a whole new set of tortures. His is one of the
most spectacular odysseys of this or any other war, and
“odyssey” is the right word, for with its tempests and
furies and monsters, many of them human, Zamperini’s
saga is something out of Greek mythology.
– New York Times
A book that I really enjoyed this past year was Losing Mum
and Pup by Christopher Buckley, son of William F. and
Patricia Buckley. Bill Buckley was, of course, the father of the
modern conservative movement. Bill had a terrific intellect
and razor sharp wit, which was on display in the many books
he wrote, as well as TV appearances. The tragicomic true
story traces the year in which both of Chris’s parents died.
The book is a highly entertaining read. Christopher Buckley
is an award-winning author in his own right.
The younger Buckley’s new memoir,
Losing Mum and Pup – about seeing
both his parents die within less than 11
months of each other in 2007 and 2008
– is sure to cause a few moments of
further discomfort in the temple of American conservatism,
where except for Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Bill and Pat
Buckley will always be the First Couple.
The author explains that he’d “pretty much resolved not to
write a book" about his famous parents until he realized
that “when the universe hands you material like this, not
writing about it seems either a waste or a conscious act of
evasion.” Buckley makes clear that the primary “material”
he’s speaking of is the grim business of losing two parents
in such a short span, but he is also well aware that the
elder Buckleys were material, pure and simple.
Well, anything but simple. Each was, it might be said,
a piece of work, in both the Shakespearean sense of
something wondrous to behold and the more current one
of being, shall we say, a handful. The memoir provoked by
their lives and deaths is loving, exasperated and very funny.
In its moments of real ambivalence, Losing Mum and Pup is
surprisingly strong drink.
– New York Times
12 SUMMER 2011 PERSPECTIVE AS AT JUNE 30, 2011