The great thing is that, by and large, the book makes all these potentially hokey themes convincing, even to decadent Europeans with no knowledge of baseball.
In other words, don't expect a convincing return to the theme of the people versus the powerful in campaign 2012, even though Romney, if the nominee, would be particularly vulnerable to that line of attack.
Saab's concept car at the show presented a convincing adaptation of syling themes seen on the much-praised Aero X show car to a smaller vehicle.
Paul Helbers, the director of the men's studio at Louis Vuitton, did a convincing job with a travel theme.
Strangely, it's an urge that often just leads us to try and create more convincing virtual realities: better-designed theme parks, flashier movie effects, online "communities" that have all of the comforts of the real thing and none of the dangers.
The humdrum mystery plot doesn't leave room for the love story, and Fernandez and Irons are even less convincing than the CGI wolf and the theme-park medieval village.
He has the luck of a more convincing part in which he explores a tormenting theme familiar from the diaries: writer's vanity.
He lays out the history in a convincing and non-partisan fashion, shows the recurrent themes and the equally recurrent misunderstandings, and provides a convincing path to making actual progress on some of the world's most intractable problems.
He makes a convincing case that prefabricated housing was both a central theme of Modernist history and a dream that remains very much alive today.
