Human smoke

History

First published: 2008
Print length: 800 pagesSimon & Schuster, 2008

Description

Human Smoke revisits the origins of World War II through a chronological accumulation of government transcripts, newspaper reports, speeches, and other contemporary documents. Nicholson Baker supplies limited commentary, allowing public statements and recorded decisions to confront one another across the years before the United States entered the conflict. The documentary arrangement challenges the familiar account of reluctant Allied governments forced into war solely by Hitler’s aggression. Instead, it raises questions about the motives, calculations, and conduct of American and British leaders as violence widened. Readers encounter history as a collage of voices rather than a seamless retrospective explanation, with the meaning emerging from the proximity of political rhetoric, policy choices, and reported events.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Direct · Fragmentary · Journalistic

Pace

Measured

Tone

Cerebral · Dark · Detached · Unsettling

Structure

Argumentative · Chronological nonfiction · Fragmented

Focus

Argument · Ideas · Information

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 4 / 5
Background knowledge: 3 / 5

Themes

Knowledge and truthMoralityPolitics and ideologyPowerWar

About Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker is an American novelist and essayist whose work ranges from microscopic studies of consciousness to erotic fantasy and documentary history. He often reduces outward action so that attention itself becomes the organizing force. Objects, bodily habits, memories, and stray facts generate digressions, while unusual structures expose how narrators arrange or excuse their own thoughts. In The Mezzanine, an escalator ride back from lunch expands through long footnotes and chains of association into an inquiry about shoelaces, straws, hand dryers, and other overlooked designs. His interest in desire can take a more troubling form. The Fermata gives its secretive protagonist the power to stop time, then lets his confessional narration reveal the evasions with which he defends invasions of women’s privacy. Baker’s nonfiction applies the same concern with arrangement to public records. Human Smoke builds its account of the origins of World War II from chronologically ordered speeches, reports, and transcripts, using limited commentary and close juxtaposition rather than a continuous retrospective argument.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Language: English
ISBN: 9781416567844

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