Summer Book Binge on Non-fiction Authors

I can't seem to stop seeking books by certain authors...

especially when an author is a pro at non-fiction writing. I just finished Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. I had previously read (and not loved, though respected) Larson's Dead Wake, all about the sinking of the Lusitania, and at the end of this past school year, I read In the Garden of the Beasts, which was all about an ambassador in Hitler's Germany (the early years!).

Larson has an interesting alternating style, by which I mean he likes to switch back and forth, from chapter to chapter, from one "side" of the story to another. This has the potential to enliven the pace, but in the aforementioned books, sometimes this only served to drag out incidents that I thought could have been handled more quickly. Certainly, if I had done a tenth of the research that Larson does when writing his books, I would be loathe to cut anything out, but for the sake of moving the plot along, I wonder if more sacrifices could have been made...

With that said, I REALLY liked The Devil in the White City, which also followed the alternating style, although this generally stuck to two storylines, which I thought tightened the focus and made for a more compelling read. (Now, if I was a historian, I might balk at this, as many critics did, but as someone who appreciates a good story, I liked it!)
The premise is that the story follows the development of two men:

Burnham

architect Daniel Hudson Burnham, the director of the fair and builder of such important structures as Union Station in Washington DC (and, in his lifetime, the tallest building in Chicago), and the serial killer doctor Henry H. Holmes (who had many other aliases), who used the fair to enrich himself and his hunting grounds.

This was also a story anchored to its place, as Chicago plays such an important role, reflecting the insecurities, promise, and growth of the men. I thought the development of the characters, setting, and story arc was such that I didn't want to stop reading, and I found myself learning something new and fascinating on each page.

The "White City" of the Columbian Exposition

Additional factors probably led to my appreciation for this book. First of all, I knew nothing about the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition (i.e. the World's Fair), and I was fascinated by all of the notable people who took part and all of the "inventions" that came of trying to outdo the French, whose previous world fair gave birth to the Eiffel Tower. I also didn't know that the fair built a whole city (painted white, hence the name) within the city, and that these structures, while built by some of the most prominent architects in the USA, were only meant to stand for 6 months! Moreover, I learned a lot about building, business, labor, and medicine at the turn of the century, and how easily standards were set and left unenforced. Finally, in this era of Criminal Minds, its hard not to want to read about serial killers (before people really knew what they were).

Reading this made me want to look up another set of authors I love, Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, who wrote the Freakonomics series. I hadn't read When to Rob a Bank yet, as seemed to be more of a "collection" than a coherent book, and I really wanted more of the interesting narrative that I found in the Freakonomics books. However, in listening to the audiobook in short bursts while gardening and cooking, I found that short, blog-like segments were perfect. (And yes, much of the content came from the blog, so you can read much of this and newer content there).

With that said, I agree with many of the reviewers who skewered the book for being too random. It is. But if you, like me, go into reading with the expectation of a serial genre, then the book is a nice injection of Freakonomics into your day. If you are looking for something you can pick up for a while, read some interesting facts, studies, and anecdotes, and then hear Levitt and Dubner's wry and interesting observations, then this is a good book. And, I'll point out, the original Freakonomics series was still a fairly random collection of chapters (albeit longer, more coherently researched chapters), so I'm not sure I'd be trashing the authors for a lack of coherence.

So if you want an in-depth study of the 1893 World's Fair (or anything else for that matter), pick up an author like Larson. If you want some more RANDOM, but just as fascinating discussions, then pick up Levitt and Dubner.

How many books can you read with a new baby?

A lot.

When you have a Kindle app that allows you to use a black screen and white text in low light, you can turn awful nights up with the baby into secret read-a-thons.

Thank goodness for my local library's participation in Overdrive, which allows me to download (free, borrowed) e-books. Here is a short list of books I e-read since Fiona's birth, up through the late part of summer (hey, I often skipped around). I'm happy to discuss ANY of them beyond my crude rating:

The Martian by Andy Weir
Super-funny and suspenseful sci-fi adventure. I bet the movie is awesome.

Dead Wake by Erik Larson
I never knew it could take so long for a damn boat to sink. Some facts were cool, but otherwise my nonfavorite nonfiction.

American Jezebel by Eve LaPlante
Nonfiction: The trial transcripts were the best part. Anne Hutchinson kicked butt. The author less so.

Irena's Children by Tilar J. Mazzeo
Totally true story. Called the female Oskar Schindler, but she was much more of a boss. She didn't have money, and she withstood torture to protect her children and families from the Nazis. Then the Nazis tried to blow up Warsaw. Very cool, well-researched story.

One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
Such a guilty pleasure novel. This is based on a real offer to make peace, during which a Native Chief offered to trade horses for 1000 white women (as wives) to help bring a new generation peacefully into the white man's world. What if some crazy women really did it? I bet it would go down like this. (Oh, and there's a sequel coming soon!!)

The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic by Hazel Ganor
Loved how the narratives came together. I could see a movie version of this someday. And who doesn't like Titanic stories?

The Lunching: The Epic Courtroom Battle that Brought Down the Klan by Laurence Leamer
I learned a lot about the Klan, and how hard it is to overcome racism in America.

The Bees by Laline Paull
This was sold to me as a dystopia...and it is, but it is LITERALLY about bees. I'd love a science teacher to weigh in on the science in the book (fictionalized, as the bees are sentient), but other than that, I was a little bugged out.

Last Train to Istanbul by Ayse Kulin
A holocaust novel with a unique twist, as a Turkish family deals with prejudice inside their family and country while trying to save Jews from Hitler's reach. (Rumors there is a movie...?)

Broken Angels by Gemma Liviero
A novel that weaves together the story of a Jewish woman, reluctant Nazi, and Polish child. Very cool.

Elsewhere by Richard Russo
The author's memoir focused on his mother, who you get the sense was both wonderful and not quite right....who'da thought a Pulitzer winner comes from such interesting people ;)

Kindred by Octavia Butler
Sci-fi time traveler meets Roots. How would a woman of the 1970s handle going back to slave-state Maryland to save her white slave-owning ancestor? This book offers no easy answers. Oh, and that mystery of how her arm gets stuck in the wall? SOOO cool, and it came with a critical essay at the end that made me want to reread the whole novel to appreciate it even more.

Freakonomics by Steven B. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
LOVED this book. You will never look at data the same way!

SuperFreakonomics by Steven B. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
LOVED this book. Where else will you find out how a street prostitute is like a mall Santa?

Think Like a Freak  by Steven B. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
 Can you tell I loved the series so much that I gobbled all three of these?


Happy reading!

EDIT: I completely forgot to include the hard copy books I managed to read!

A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs
Not as good as Running with Scissors, but this is an interesting story of growing up with a (likely sociopathic) distant father. As a teacher, I squirmed when I read about how his mother took him out of school to hide from his father on several occasions, and I worry about how many stories that might require similar intervention are likewise hidden behind seemingly free-spirited parents.
I also wondered at the relationship between Burroughs' father and mother. Granted, much of their origin story is second-hand and skewed through the eyes of Augusten, but it made me wonder how someone could be so deceived as to the nature of another. If you like watching Criminal Minds, you might find this story psychologically intriguing.
 
The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens

I'm not a big "mystery" reader--in the sense of a genre-specific book--but I really liked this story of a college kid who procrastinates until he goes to a nursing home out of desperation to find an interview subject--and finds more than he bargained for. The characters and conflicts felt real, and even the protagonist's quest to find out the truth felt authentic (until about 3/4 of the way through the book, by which point I didn't care). Joe Talbert is a protagonist you can't help but root for, especially with his troubled family life, and Carl Iverson is a fascinating character of focus, accused of a horrible murder and claiming he wants to tell "the truth"--which isn't a simple case of innocent or guilty-- before the end of his life.
And, unlike many mysteries/thrillers, this story wasn't super predictable (until the very end, but again, I didn't care by then). This was a great beach read, but also an inspiring read in general.

I lost count

The title implied that there were six, but it felt like more...

At least the authors were thorough, giving not only the details of the spies themselves but of the people who worked with and around them. In George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution, Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger gave a detailed accounting of the actions of the New York "Culper" ring of spies, as well as the details of other related actions.

I confess I didn't know much about Benedict Arnold before reading this book, and this gave me a much clearer picture of who he was and why he did what he did. I also learned more about Nathan Hale, who is much honored in CT, though the way the authors tell it, he seemed like a poor choice for a spy who was destined to be caught.

Anyway, if you thought spying was all James Bond, this book puts those notions to rest. These great spies in American history were great precisely because they were relatively ordinary men (and one mystery woman) who lived pretty ordinary lives, except for the fact that they were sharing everything they took care to overhear with the revolutionaries at great expense to their personal safety. 

Few people think of there being spies during "old" wars, but it was apparently common. In fact, I was surprised by how quickly the British spies confessed to spying, with the understanding that typically they would be returned in trade for someone from the other side. (That is how one famous British spy lost his life.) In fact, the British said they lost because they were outspied!

It was interesting to see how important intelligence was to America winning the war for independence, and while it was great to see so many excerpts from real letters, my only complaint was that sometimes these letters and profuse details slowed the "story" down. However, given that these were real people, this book does a great job providing a basis for its assumptions about their feelings at the time by supporting the narrative with such evidence. I also liked the epilogue, which elaborated on the theories of who the mystery female agent was since the original publication of the book.

So, if you are interested in the American Revolution, spying, historical research, or even how invisible ink came to be, then this is a great book for you.

Happy reading!

It's Between Me and...

If you haven't heard of Between the World and Me,

then you need to enter the conversation.

Ta-Nehisi Coates memoirish book is only about 150 pages, but it took me a good week to read. It is dense, and often it is raw, and it raises questions and truths about America that make all of us uncomfortable. It is heavy reading, but the way the author intertwines the personal with the abstract keeps this book from feeling overly academic or preachy.

The author and his son, as a baby.

The book is written as a letter to his son, though the open nature of the letter means that everything he says is between the world and him. (I know kids, duh!) The title also clearly references prominent African American author Richard Wright ("And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting themselves between the world and me"), and in many ways echoes Wright's Black Boy, revealing what it means to grow up black in America...but including the diversity of the experience as well as the unfortunate unity that comes from race.

Richard Wright

And what I found interesting is that the author calls into question this whole idea of race. Throughout the book, he both explicitly and implicitly argues that race is a construct, an invention of those who would be part of the "white" race to grant and deny power. The combination of narrative, history, and current events makes this argument persuasive.

Being what many people would consider a white woman, I felt profoundly conflicted about the novel. I can never truly empathize with the author or his experience, but I feel guilt and shame on behalf of the system that privileges me. I felt guilt about how I benefit from the perverse race situation in America, and then I felt almost angry that the author wasn't providing answers, but seemingly only blame. But then, as I finished the book, it became clear that HE didn't have the answers. The point of writing this as a letter was to share his frustration, his struggle, and his wisdom as he searched for the best answers he could.

So, as I'm at a loss for words trying to better describe this book, let me share with you some of the passages that stuck out/stuck with me.

 "The point of this langauge of "intention" and "personal responsibility" is broad exoneration. Mistakes were made. Bodies were broken. People were enslaved. We meant well. We tried our best. "Good intention" is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream."

"At the onset of the Civil War, our stolen bodies were worth four billion dollars, more than all of American industry, all of American railroads, workshops, and factories combined, and the prime product rendered by our stolen bodies--cotton--was America's primary export. [...]Here is the motive for the great war. It's not a secret."

"The killing fields of Chicago, of Baltimore, of Detroit were created by the policy of Dreamers, but their weight, their shame, rests solely upon those who are dying in them. There is great deception in this. To yell "black-on-black crime" is to shoot a man and then shame him for bleeding."

"She alluded to 12 Years a Slave. 'There he was,' she said, speaking of Solomon Northup. 'He had means. He had a family. He was living like a human being. And one racist act took him back. And the same is true of me. I spent years developing a career, acquiring assets, engaging responsibilities. And one racist act. It's all it takes.'" 

If you search the internet, you will find it abounds with quotations from this book; it is that poignant. (You can also find a lot of videos of interviews with and talks by the author.)

This is a book I would recommend to many people (whether they want to read it or not). I think to conversations I've had with students about race in our little part of Connecticut, and this book really helped me think differently about the words I use when talking about "race" with students. It made me think about how I might inadvertently be reinforcing corruption in the name of keeping things civil...it just made me think.

So, if you are interested in "race" in America, if you have ever felt powerless, if you are a person who likes to be challenged, and if you want to read quality writing, then this nonfiction book is for you.

Happy reading!

Burned!

Binge reading! The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America

Even the title sounds cool, right? When I saw this as a $2 Kindle book deal, I knew I had to read it. I had been binging on books (hence the quick succession of blog posts), and I thought I would take a chance on something I wouldn't normally read. (And, as seems to fit a developing theme in the books I've chosen this summer, I learned after reading that there is a PBS documentary about this event, inspired in large part by the book.)

The subject of Timothy Egan's book is the Big Burn, also known as the Great Fire of 1910, which burned a swath of forest the size of my home state of Connecticut out west in Washington, Idaho, and Montana. It is said to be the largest wildfire in US history. However, the subject was really also the events that led to the creation of and "saving" of the national forests and US forest service. Ironically, the fire that destroyed so much national land was what rescued the conservation movement in America from a quick death because of special interests cutting funding and using loopholes in the law to log, mine, and otherwise pillage the land for profit.

So as interesting as the details of the fire and the people who both lived through it and tried to fight it

are, it is just as interesting to hear about the politics behind the event and the creation of the National Forests. I'm not a political buff, so I wasn't sure how I would like this book, but I was stunned by how much 1910 sounded like 2016. Reading about the games that the senators were playing, the big money of big energy buying off politicians, and the way rich men ran the nation (even if they seemed well-intentioned, as the author paints Teddy Roosevelt), I couldn't help but think about how little politics seems to have changed...well, except that our congress "acts" by not acting.

There were details Egan pulls together that stirred my conscience. For example, when Ed Pulaski, one of the forest rangers who saved many men--who was being denied pay because Congress was refusing to release money--asked for compensation because of the extent of the burns he suffered fighting the fire as ordered, I wanted to jump through the page and slap some of those men in power. Egan definitely rooted for the "little guys" in this, which was funny, as many of these little guys had grown up privileged and attended Yale. But anyway, the injustices that abounded before and after this event are not sugar-coated, and this makes the book both infuriating and satisfying.

Another notable detail that I enjoyed was the unit of "Buffalo Soldiers" who served more than honorably to save citizens and fight the fire. In the accounts Egan digs up, the reader hears about the prejudice these men face and how honorably they serve despite it all. Given that many of the white people living on the "frontier" at that point had not really seen black people, they only had prejudice to guide them. Satisfyingly, in the accounts following the fire, the white citizens acknowledge their bravery and their sacrifice. I really appreciated the inclusion of their story--and their heroism.

I only wish this book had a bit more to say about the negative side of Roosevelt. Its not to say I don't like the man--in fact, I knew so little about him that this book was a treat in that respect--but given the well-rounded portrait Egan paints of most of the men in the book, I felt the absence of "skeletons" in Teddy's closet to be notable. Likely it was simply beyond the scope of the book, but these missing details made it feel a bit one-sided.

I think the author did a nice job balancing the politics with the action; nonfiction can easily become as dry as the forests of the book if put in the wrong hands, but Egan was able to balance the banal with the unique and the sentimental. If someone is interested in learning about how wildfires work (and how to fight a fire), how the forest service started, how Teddy Roosevelt rose to power, or even how many people in power back in the day thought they could speak to ghosts, this book is for you. This is one of those books that you don't know you are interested in until you give it a shot, and I recommend you do just that.

Happy reading!

Lies, all lies!

So, I think a teacher reading Lies My Teacher Told Me borders on irony....

 But sorry kids, it doesn't fit the definition.

Anyway, I had a great time reading this nonfiction book (except maybe at the end, but I'll get to that). I knew many of the "lies" in the book, but there were some new facts I was unaware of (courtesy of the back cover: Woodrow Wilson was a white supremacist) and some really interesting analysis of history, which I've already established is a big interest of mine.

However, I wasn't always interested in history...well, in school history. As the first sentence of the introduction states,

"High school students hate history."

I know that many of the students at the school I teach at love history, and I think for that a lot of credit goes to the teachers. However, this book is not so much about teachers but about the "lies" in the textbooks students use in history, specifically United States History. In fact, I remember I really only liked history when I went to museums or when my teachers went "off script" and really tried to show the connections between events. This is the premise of Lies My Teacher Told Me.

I loved how this book began with "the process of hero-making," pointing out that many of the "lies" in textbooks are the result of people trying to make archetypal heroes out of historical figures, especially when their "real" story is either really "villainous" or still so admirable that you could overlook the very human flaws of the heroes (and just about every type of literary hero has flaws!). For example, little is written about Helen Keller after she was a child, and that is because she became a socialist and was a champion for the rights of the disenfranchised. I was fascinated to read about how in her work advocating for the blind, she was horrified by how many were blind because of their poverty (i.e. they had accidents in dangerous workplaces, couldn't afford medical care, etc.) and took radical positions to champion causes like women's suffrage, civil rights, and other quests for civil liberties. I also appreciated the discussion of how the media turned against her, as the once courageous symbol of overcoming adversity to earn a college degree was converted to one who was bamboozled and handicapped by "the limitations of her development."

As an example of those "villains" of history, I knew Columbus was in fact a pretty bad dude (who did not "discover" America), but I didn't realize the extent of the atrocities he committed against the native population, mutilating and enslaving them to the point that the 8 million native Haitians (Arawaks) around before Columbus had dwindled to 12,000 by 1516! Columbus initiated trafficking in humans across the Atlantic, and those that followed unleashed a torrent of diseases, rape, and abuse that decimated native American populations

I also knew about the history of slavery among the founding fathers (thanks in large part to DNA proving that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with his slaves), but I didn't know that Patrick Henry, giver of the famous "Give me liberty or give me death" speech of so much study was in fact a slave holder! Talk about contradictions...

However, I also liked how the author brought all of this up as it

mattered in the context of the time, and discussed how we can reconcile things like the "good pilgrims" robbing Native American graves if we view through the lens of history (i.e. economic interest and treating "others" as less than human to justify taking what one wants...you know, like the underpants gnomes did!). In fact, as the author points out, it doesn't make our country any less great to acknowledge the mistakes of the past; rather, it helps us understand our present.

This comes up in the chapter "The Land of Opportunity," which points out that economics is rarely a point of discussion in social studies. The author says that consequently, students "have no understanding of the ways that opportunity is not equal in America, and no notion that social structure pushes people around, influencing the ideas they hold and the lives they fashion." If students were to study the rise of unions and anti-trust legislation and consider the impact of these events today (think "the 1%"), they would likely develop strong opinions that at the very least would keep them engaged in history. It would also do justice to students who come from economically or racially oppressed backgrounds to acknowledge that the deck is stacked against them, rather than imply that "bad fortune" is the reason things are so hard.

But as much as I liked this book, but Chapter 10 I grew a bit tired of the author's assault on textbooks. While warranted, I was much more interested in the impact of the "lies" on students than looking for culprits, and that's just me. However, I think if someone is truly interested in knowing the "truth" about famous events in history, the relationship between power and how stories are told, or in learning to think about and QUESTION the "facts" of history as they are presented, then this is a fantastic book.

I think this is an important book, especially when one considers the many ways those in power manipulate history to suit their purposes. 

Happy reading!