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Weekend Butler: “They came to California to ruin a man. Not to kill him, not literally. But the next best thing.” Aubrey Plaza’s new movie. Best snarky email. Best sincere Tweet. Addictive music. A simple recipe from Le Bernardin with… what????
By
Published: Mar 01, 2023
Category:
Weekend
DANIEL ELLSBERG (1931 – )
“They came to California to ruin a man. Not to kill him, not literally. But the next best thing.”
What kind of book begins like this? A thriller. In this case, a political thriller.
Who is the intended reader? The publisher categorizes “Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War” as a Young Adult book, suitable for students as young as 13. And it has been highly praised in that category. It won the 2016 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction. It was a National Book Award finalist and a finalist for the 2015 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature. And it was selected a National Book Award finalist.
I read these 324 pages on 2.5 hours, stopping only to get up and walk around. I needed to walk around because the subject of this book is government lies — decades of them. These lies caused the deaths of 58,000 Americans and more than 2 million Asians. They bled our economy and debased our psychic currency. Villains? There are plenty: Eisenhower, Johnson, McNamara, Nixon and Kissinger, for openers. Heroes? They start with Daniel Ellsberg. And his discovery of the truth about the war. This book is a thriller that’s full of those facts. [To read more of those facts in my review, click here. To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
Why write about 91-year-old Daniel Ellsberg now? Because on February 17, he was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer on the basis of a CT scan and an MRI. (As is usual with pancreatic cancer– which has no early symptoms — it was found while looking for something else, relatively minor.) “I have chosen not to do chemotherapy, which offers no promise,” Ellsberg has said, “and I have assurance of great hospice care when needed.”
MY FAVORITE EMAIL OF THE WEEK
In my piece about the Academy Awards, I wrote that I declined to watch the likely Best Picture winner, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” after watching the trailer, and that I hadn’t seen — because it’s not streaming yet — “Living,” which I expected would be my favorite film of 2022. One of my most valuable reader/critics wrote me: “So I am clear…you hated the movie you didn’t see and picked as the best…another movie you didn’t see? Did I get that right?” Yes. Guilty as charged.
MY FAVORITE POST ON TWITTER THIS WEEK
from Timothy Snyder, Yale Professor and author of Bloodlands and On Tyranny: “My then nine-year-old daughter donated her entire life savings to Ukrainian humanitarian causes. That was one year ago. Enough with the incrementalism. Give the Ukrainians all that they need.”.
OPENING THIS WEEKEND: AUBREY PLAZA’S NEW MOVIE
She was the walk-off star of “White Lotus.” If you watched “Emily the Criminal” — and if you haven’t, watch the preview and stream it on Amazon Prime ASAP — you will be pleased to learn that she’s killingly appealing in “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre,” which opens in theaters this weekend. Violent? Put it this way: There are critics who think she should be the next James Bond. Here’s the preview.
MUSIC IN HEAVY ROTATION
Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler, “All the Roadrunning”
Why? Just watch this.
THE WEEKEND RECIPE
Le Bernardin’s Crispy-Skinned Fish
The “secret” to Le Bernardin’s crispy fish is… Wondra, an instant flour commonly used for clump-free gravies.
Serves 4
1 tablespoon canola oil (enough to coat the bottom of the pan
four 6-ounce skin-on fish fillets (like striped bass or salmon)
1 dash fine sea salt
1 dash freshly ground white pepper (black is fine too, if you don’t mind the speckles)
1 handful Wondra flour for dusting
Heat the oven to 400°F. Heat the oil in a large, oven- and flame-proof sauté pan on the stovetop until the oil is very hot, but not smoking.
Season the fish on both sides with salt and pepper and dust with Wondra flour. Blow off excess.
Put the fish in the pan, skin side down, and press down on the fish with a spatula. (The skin immediately contracts and buckles, but you want to keep it all in contact with the pan for maximum crisping.) Sear on the stovetop over medium heat until golden brown on the bottom, about 3 minutes.
Turn the fish over, put the pan in the oven, and cook another 2 to 3 minutes, until a metal skewer can be easily inserted into the center of the fillet and, if left for 5 seconds, feels just warm when touched to your lip. Serve immediately.
