In what has become a new tradition, a member of the Fonda family was scheduled to make another appearence on our little corner of the web, but I will have to save that for another time. Before we get too far into ye olde new(e) year(e), I have to give some shout outs to things I liked in 2002. Right now I am slogging through James Joyce's "Ulysses" and the requisite annotated companion book, so I reflect rather wistfully when I was able to read more than 20 pages a day [look, I knew that I wasn't picking up a Nick Hornby book, but I just didn't realise that Joyce was trying to synthesis *all* western learning, Irish history and pop culture in one book.. Aye Caramba! (my one and only James Joyce-Simpsons joke..thank you!)] . I can't start a year end list without mentioning Hitler (right?). "Explaining Hitler"
by Ron Rosenbaum (thanks for the recommendation Alex) ponders the imponderable...how did Hitler become Hitler? Rossenbaum looks at all the explanatory schools of thought on Hitler from Claude Lanzmann ("Shoah") who argues that any effort to understand Hitler justifies him to George Steiner, who's novel "The Portage to San Crisobal of A.H," seems to implicate Jews for the Holocaust. What has stayed with me is the image in the book of a pair of blood stained glasses the Gestapo returned to the family of a Munich journalist who was one of the few early brave voices in the wilderness who saw the implications of Hitler and tried to stop him in the early '30's. He saw too much and so, regrettably, have we.

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