Banjo's non-fiction

I would like to join this group. Usually I read a mix of fiction and non-fiction, but this past year I have been on a fiction-reading orgy. I think it's time to add some non-fiction back in.
I am challenging myself to 12 non-fiction books in 2012.
The last non-fiction I did was a Theodore Roosevelt binge. I loved River of Doubt.
Right now I am interested in reading more about the French Revolution. I just finished Tale of Two Cities and it got me curious. Does anyone have a book on the French Revolution to recommend?

Welcome! You'll find a bunch of people here who've read River of Doubt (and for Theodore Roosevelt binge, see drneutron). Sorry, I know zip about the French Revolution. You might try asking in the Non-Fiction Readers group too.

Yeah, I guess 1800 pages or so of Edmund Morris' TR trilogy counts as a binge! :)

Welcome!

I'm glad there is another TR fan here. He was a fascinating dude. Lots of flaws, but I wish today's presidential candidates were more like him.

Hi banjo123! We have a lot of the same reading interests! I loved River of Doubt as well. I haven't read much about the french revolution yet, but one of my 12 in 12 categories is a france theme. I have a biography called The Giant of the French Revolution: Danton, A Life by David Lawday checked out from the library that I'm hoping to get to in the next month. Ridgewaygirl (she has a 12 in 12 thread) read and recommended it last year. It's not very long for a biography and looks pretty readable.

Thanks japaul22--I will try to get the Danton biography out of the library. The annoying thing is that I used to know quite a bit about the French Revolution, back in college, but I have forgotten it all.

For the French Revolution you can try Simon Schama'sCitizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. I haven't read it yet but it was recommended when I asked a similar question after reading A Tale of Two Cities.

7 - Thanks--I will put it on hold at the library, and hopefully I will have the fortitude to read it when it comes in.

Currently I am working on the Golden Spruce: A true story of myth, madness and greed by John Valliant. Has anyone else read this?

I think that it has a lot of issues intertwined, but so far it's about the destruction of temperate rain forests. Interesting to me because I have done a lot of camping in the Olympic National Park and Forest. (Thank you, Theodore Roosevelt)

The Golden Spruce; a true story of myth, madness and greed by John Valliant

I found this book fascinating and thought provoking. It discusses logging practices in the Pacific Northwest by focusing on Grant Hadwin and the Golden Spruce; a mutant Sitka with great spiritual significance for the Haida people in the Queen Charlotte Islands. Grant struggled with schizophrenia, and with how he could integrate his connection with the old growth forests with his logging past.
This book give a lot of insight into the logging industry; the connection between culture and the environment and the connection between mental illness and spirituality. It’s been compared to Krakeur’s Into the Wild, but I found that Krakeur focuses mostly on the personal, Valliant more on the political and economic.

Golden Spruce sounds very interesting. Thanks for the great comments.

I promise, promise, promise, promise that I am not going to add more books to the physical TBR mountain. (But I added this one to my wishlist on BookMooch),

Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard is a fascinating book. I learned a lot about Garfield (The president, not the cat.)
James Garfield was born in modest circumstance, lost his father at an early age and was raised by a strong mother. He was bright, articulate, well-educated and committed to civil rights.
The book is not a biography, though,but an exploration of the events that surrounded Garfields assasination. There were many memorable characters. ( I was especially interested in Alexander Graham Bell, and would like to read more about him later. ) The book describes the dismal state of American medicine, which ultimately killed Garfield.
The book takes place in an United States where public life was very different than it is today. Garfield had virtually no security, and was very assessible to the public. The book describes a public unity after his shooting and death that is hard to imagine happening today.

Also, on the non- fiction front, read Night by Elie Wiesel to support my daughter who was reading it for high school.

Oh, and finished The Giant of the French Revolution: Danton, a life. Thanks for the recommendation, japaul.

>9 banjo123: I know I'm a little behind here, but I just finished another of Vaillant's books and it reminded me that I must dig The Golden Spruce out of my TBR pile. He is certainly a wonderful writer and I hope he has another coming soon.

I'd never heard of John Vaillant, and now he's all over LT, and on my wishlist.

I enjoyed the Golden Spruce and am looking forward to reading The Tiger.

My latest non-fiction read was Eat, Sleep, Sit: My Year at Japan’s most rigorous zen temple by Kaoru Nonomuru. It describes the writer’s time as trainee monk at Eiheiji, the main temple of Sōtō Zen Buddhism. As an American, I think of Zen as calm and gentle. I knew from past reading that our Western version of Buddism is very different than Eastern Buddhism—this book really reinforced that. Life at Eiheiji is harsh, mean, and based on an obsessive-compulsive system of living, set out by Dogen, who founded the Soto school of Zen in 1200.
The trainee monks are berated, struck, and knocked down the stairs when they don’t follow the intricate rules correctly. They are also basically starved, and many become sick. The author describes in great detail the rules of the monastery. There is a whole chapter devoted to how to use the lavatory. I ended up getting bored, and skipping through many of these details.
The author states that “by allowing no latitude for personal feelings whatever, but forcing us to fit ourselves body and spirit into an unforgiving, constricting mold, the experience obliged us to give up all attachments. “ He sees this as mostly positive, but to me it seems very cult-like.
The thought provoking part of the book for me was the fact that the author clearly gained a lot from this experience. He describes that I have become capable of tears. Once I told someone “A man who can cry is a lucky man”. I never could, before. I used to think what a relief it must be to let yourself go and cry, but I just couldn’t. Now I can cry in great gulping sobs. “
This wasn't a great read for me--I probably would not recommend unless you have a special interest in religion or Zen.

I finished Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, which I highly recommend. It is a non-fiction page-turner: a combination war-story, history lesson, survival story, and inspiration recovery story. Oh and also sports story. The first bit dragged a little for me—but once the plane crashed and they were adrift in the Pacific; attacked by sharks and Japanese bombers, the book had me enthralled.
Along the way, I learned a lot about the war in the Pacific, and also about the resiliency of the human spirit. One fact that interested me--Louis Zamperini learned to skate-board in his 70's!

Now working on Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom and have just started Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo.

Great reading and interesting reviews, banjo. I listened to an audio of Long Walk to Freedom years ago and loved it. Mandela is a fascinating individual. Amazing what he has been able to accomplish in his life.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo is about life in a Mumbai Slum. Children who should be in school support their families by sorting garbage, suicide is common, and justice in non-existent. The book reads like fiction, which is my main problem with it. The story follows different slum residents, narrating their feelings, hopes and dreams. I could not help wondering how accurate these portrayals were, and how the different residents felt about their portrayal in the book.
Boo is a journalist from the US, married to an Indian man, and she spent two years, doing interviews with a translator and researching through the courts, etc. I did feel better about the accuracy of the book after reading the afterward.
The book is depressing, not so much because of the poverty, but because of the rampant corruption. In one chapter they describe how funds for women’s small-scale businesses are diverted. When the foreign donors come to check on the program, Asha, one of the books most interesting characters, gathers local women to her home to smile and look grateful.
It’s clear that there is no way that aid money will help the situation. I think it would take grassroots political action, and it’s hard to see that happening. The slum residents are focused on their own survival, rather than on any kind of political change. Global poverty is a difficult, but important topic. I appreciate that Boo makes this information very accessible to the reader

Nice review, banjo. I'll almost certainly read this later this year.

I've seen so many good reviews of Destiny of the Republic. I really hope I can get to it soon, but I'm so bogged down and easily distracted!

Also, I read Night when I was in high school...I have to say that book really stuck with me through the years. I often don't approve of books chosen for students to read, but this one definitely gets a thumbs up! I think kids should have to read more memoirs and such during history classes instead of focusing on those boring history textbooks. I hated history when I was in school! The textbooks are so droll!

Hibernator--Destiny of the Republic is good--and also the audio version is easy to listen to, if you like audio books. I was lucky enough to get both paper and audio out of the library at the same time, so I did a combination.

Some time ago, I was reading The Open Road by Pico Iyer which is about the Dalai Lama. As it happened, I found the Dalai Lama kind of boring (although admirable) and never finished the book. But in part of it the Dalai Lama was touring with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Tutu came across as a very real person, with a sense of humor. I then read Rabblerouser for Peace to learn more about him--and really enjoyed that book.
I am interested in restorative justice, and wanted to find out more about how it worked in South Africa.
So this year I decided to read something by Desmond Tutu.
It wasn't my favorite, though it would be a good book for someone else. The title of the book is GOD has a dream, so I should have figured out that it would be too religious for me.
This is a selection of interconnected sermons, pretty easy to read, and would be a good choice for someone who wanted to read about radical Christianity. Tutu has a very clever, and deceptively simple way of interpreting the bible.
For example, (and this is the part of the book that sticks with me), he describes how man was created in God's image, with the ability to choose between good and evil. He goes on to explain that "It is this fact that we were created to be free that is the reason that all oppression must ultimately fail. Our freedom does not come from any human being--our freedom comes from God. "

I was going to go audio for Destiny of the Republic since I can get it from my library easily enough. I've never tried doing both at the same time. Seems to me it'd be a lot of fast-forwarding and rewinding to search for the right section. :)

I like to do audio and print at the same time. I find audio frustrating at times, because I miss things when I drive (maybe that's good for other people on the road) and also, if the book is interesting, audio can be too slow. I never have much trouble finding my place, and having a print version means I can go back and check on things I missed, or read ahead if it's too thrilling to wait until my next commute.

Audio and print together is an approach I never thought of, but maybe should try, as I find my mind often drifts with audio. I would probably try it only with free versions in the public domain, as I certainly wouldn't want to buy both, and our library dropped audio books when they began offering e-books. Insufficient funds, I guess. Thanks for the suggestion, banjo.

What a bummer to have audio books dropped! What do people do if they have visual impairments?

That's a very good point, banjo. I think they still have CD versions, just not downloadable ones. Absent that, I think they could pay a small membership fee to join a library that does offer audio books. Finances are a big issue for our library. Inter-library loan is the saving grace for the book selection.

I finished Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela, a very inspiring book. I especially liked the prison sections of the book, and loved how he took the experience of a 27 year imprisonment, and made it work for him instead of for his oppressors.
This is a good book for activists. Lots of details, and helps show why Mandela was such an amazing leader. Also, plenty of information about the price he paid in his personal life for his devotion to the ANC.

Nice comments about Long Walk to Freedom. It's been on my wish list for awhile, so I'll look for it in the near future.

I read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman after reading an excellent review by Brenzi. The book explores a culture clash between Hmong refugees and traditional Western medicine in Merced California in the early 80's. Fadiman alternates chapters between the story of Lia Lee and her family with background about the Hmong in Indo-China and the US.
Fadiman has great sympathy both for the Hmong family, and for the Western doctors, all of whom are trying to do their best for this little girl, but coming from different world views. It's a tragic story with no villians and no path to a good outcome.

If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name by Heather Lende
This is a series of essays about life in small town Alaska. Of course, there are many stories of neighbors banding together to help each other out; spaghetti feeds, canning salmon, etc. It could be way too cutesy—but it isn’t. Lende is honest, and self-reflective. I was going to rate this 3 or 3 ½ stars, based on the writing, but in the end, I enjoyed reading the book so much I am moving it up to 4 stars.
I was intrigued by this description of a way of life so different than mine. I love the outdoors—but at heart I am a city girl. Haines is a town of 2400 in a remote location in the inner passage. Drop-dead gorgeous-- and with lots of perils. One of the most harrowing parts of the book is a description of a 5-6 hour drive to Whitehorse, through a snowstorm, with Lende’s son who had acute appendicitis. (They made it in the nick of time.)
From reading this book, life in Haines is super-dangerous. Maybe it’s because Lende is an obituary writer, but there is death after death, many of them deaths of young people engaged in outdoor pursuits. Yet Lende still allowed her own daughters to work in a fishing boat, because she wanted them to be a part of the place. I admire Lende for this, but I don’t understand it.
Another strong part of the book is her description of living in a small town, where everyone is like family, and you have to get along, despite strong differences of opinion. This is so different than my life—I live in an especially liberal part of Portland, Oregon, so seldom encounter any non-tree-huggers. In one chapter, Lende describes trying, unsuccessfully, to put together an anti-homophobia workshop after a bullying incident at the local high school. Lende was frustrated, but I was heartened by her brave attempts to engage her conservative neighbors in this fight.

Boyhood, Scenes from a Provincial Life by JM Coetzee
Memoirs about childhood have a tendency to be overly precocious and self involved. Coetzee doesn’t completely dodge this tendency; but is saved by the beauty of his writing and the insightfulness of his observations. Coetzee shows himself as a child within a troubled family situation and a troubled country.
His family is quite dysfunctional, and Coetzee shows the dynamics from a child’s perspective. As a parent, it’s a good reminder about how children pick up on their parent’s inconsistencies and hypocrisies. His descriptions of racism in South Africa from the perspective of a white child are interesting. He is uncomfortable with racism, but doesn’t know how to deal with his discomfort.
In one event, he is eating pastries with friends in a sweets shop. Some colored children come by and are looking in the window. This spoils his appetite, and makes him angry and unhappy. He could shoo the children away—as a white he has that power---but even if he does so, his appetite will still be spoiled.

The Country of my Skull: Guilt, Sorrow and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa by Antjie Krog.
Krog is a poet and journalist and this book is about her coverage of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings. It's a difficult book. The topic is difficult--one horrible human rights violation after another, and horrors on both side. Also, I would need more knowledge of South African history to truly understand this book.
However, I am glad that I did read the book, as the topic interests me. I also found the book gave me a better background for understanding the events in other South African books I read this year, especially Coetzee's Disgrace.

>33 banjo123:-36 A whole series of interesting reviews, Rhonda. I have read Long Walk to Freedom, as well as quite a bit of fiction by South African authors, including Coetzee, Gordimer and Brink among others, and found it fascinating. The Country of My Skull is going immediately to my wishlist.

. 37. Thanks! There is an index of names at the back of THe Country of My Skull--I didn't see until I was finished. It might be helpful.

I am almost done with The Quiet World by Douglas Brinkley. But it will probably be a couple of weeks before I can review it.

I read The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom 1879-1960 by Douglas Brinkley in preparation for an Alaskan vacation (which was fabulous). It turns out, however, that this book is not really about Alaska. I spoke to a bookseller in Ketchikan, who agreed. He shelves it in history.
This is the second book in Brinkley’s planned Wilderness Cycle. The first was Wilderness Warrior, which centered on Theodore Roosevelt’s role in the conservation movement in the US. I loved that book, and now drive my family crazy by giving mini-lectures about TR whenever we approach a National Park or Wilderness area.
The Quiet World continues the story of the US’s conservation history. It has dozens of fascinating side characters, but lacks a major focal character, such as Roosevelt, and isn’t as good a book as Wilderness Warrior. Still, I really enjoyed the book, and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in environmentalism,
One of Brinkley’s weaknesses as a writer is a tendency to go off on tangents. He knows a lot of fascinating facts, and can’t resist sharing them. I didn’t mind, because I was usually intrigued myself, but I’m not clear that readers of this book really needed a history of William O. Douglas’s personal life or the section on Allen Ginsberg. We are also regaled by stories of dozens of camping trips, only some of which took place in Alaska. We hear about TR’s camping at the Grand Canyon, even though TR never set foot in Alaska.
The strength of the book is it description of how many people worked hard to preserve wilderness in Alaska. I enjoyed reading about these characters: Roosevelt, Muir, Gifford Pinchot, Aldo Leopold, Robert Marshal, Mardy and Olaus Murie,William O. Douglas, etc. Mardy Murie is a new heroine for me.
The reading, combined with my Alaskan vacation, made me feel more committed to preserving the Artic National Wildlife Refuge. I support Obama, but I do wish we had a president who was more committed to the outdoors---someone like Theodore Roosevelt, who loved to camp.

King David: The Real life of the Man Who Ruled Israel by Jonathan Kirsch
Kirsch sets up to provide a counter-point to the idea we have of David as an innocent shepherd lad, up against Goliath with a slingshot. The real David was a bloody tribal leader. Or was he? It also turns out that there is no real evidence, outside of the bible, that David existed at all. None of the other contemporary writings in the region mention him.
This book is good for a layperson who wants to know more about how the bible was written and overwritten. The different books in the bible give different accounts of David and his life. There are, I think, three different accounts of how David met Saul. Kirsch’s book gives a pretty simplified version of biblical scholarship, but for me, that’s perfect because I don’t have the patience for a lot more.
I ended up deciding that there was a real David, and that Leonard Cohen is the one who got him right in his song, Hallelujah. Not so much because of the secret chord that pleased the lord, though that seems to be true, but because it ends with a “cold and broken hallelujah.”

Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks is a so-so book. It describes her childhood in Sydney, and her attempts to reach outside of what she perceived as a provincial childhood through a series of pen-pals. In the later part of the book, she visits with the pen-pals as grown men and women.
An interesting premise, but I didn't feel that Brooks went deep enough to be truly insightful. A book with a smaller scope and greater depth (for example about her conversion to Judaism, and how that related to her childhood in Sydney) would have been more interesting.
However, it is interesting to see how, as a child, she viewed being Australian as second-rate and provinical and how that view kept her from seeing the richness of the country around her.

Morning Yet on Creation Day by Chinua Achebe is a collection of essays published in 1975. I read it for background on Half of a Yellow Sun which I intend to read soon.
This book is sometimes dated, and I found Achebe's voice pompous at times. This might be his reaction to having to continually defend the value of African-based writing to a western audience. However, I noticed the same thing earlier this year when I read Things Fall Apart. At the time, I attributed this to Achebe using a story-telling technique derived from an oral tradition. However, now I wonder if it was just his personality.
The book was probably good for background on African literature. The last essay "Chi in Igbo Cosmology' was very interesting.
I was struck by the following passage when Achebe talks about recovering oral traditions. "There is of course the 'scientific' way as well--the tape-recorded interview with old people. Unfortunately it is often more impressive than useful. The old people who have the information we seek will not often bare their hearts to any passer-by. They will give answers, and true answers to. But there is truth and there is truth."

Finished The Beautiful and The Damned: A Portrait of the New India.
I had read Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, and picked up The Beautiful and the Damned because I wanted to also get a view of modern India that was more comprehensive, and that came from a writer native to India. Siddhartha Deb was born in India, but lives in New York City, and writes for a variety of magazines.
Boo’s book was more compelling read, but covered only a very small slice of India. Deb covers the diversity of life in India by providing five essays that cover different aspects of Indian life. He also, I think, provides a more two-dimensional portrait of his characters.
Both books cover the problems of rampant corruption in government and business. After reading Boo’s book, I felt hopeless because it seemed that the characters all accepted the status quo and were merely trying to change their own position in a corrupt system. In Deb’s essays, there is a deeper understanding of the roots of the corruption. I also learned about activists trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to change the situation. There are even Maoists in the countryside.
I think that my favorite chapter was the one on agriculture “Red Sorghum: Farmers in the Free Market.” The interactions between farmers, agri-business, and the government were interesting and reminded me of similar issues in the US.

In 1906, Mohandas Gandhi looked like this:



In 1931,he was Mahatma Gandhi and this is how he looked:


Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle with India by Joseph Lelyveld tells the story of this transformation. It’s fascinating.

Ake by Wole Soyinka is a memoir of Soyinka's first 11 years.
This isn't one of my favorite books, but did add another dimension to my Nigerian reading. Soyinka's parents were Christian, fairly affuent. His father was headmaster in a school. Soyinka was born in 1934, so this is colonial Nigeria during WWII.
His parents were strict--lots of corporal punishment, which Soyinka views as wrong-headed. His parents were also loving and interesting.
Soyinka was a lively boy, always questioning adults. One of my favorite scenes was when young Wole, age 3 1/2, decided it was time to go to school, and managed it by showing up in the classroom and taking a seat at a desk, with a collection of books taken from his father's study.

I read My Place by Sally Morgan. She is an Australian woman who fond out as a teen/young adult, that her grandmother was Aboriginal. Her family had kept that knowledge from the children, because there was so much stigma and prejudice against the Aboriginal.
She researched and found out more about the past and did oral histories with her grandmother, great-uncle and mother.
The writing is pedestrian, but the story is interesting and I enjoyed the book.

Also, In the Name of Sorrow and Hope by Rabin's granddaughter Noa Ben Artzi-Pelossof. This was s sweet book--touching both on family closeness and on her hopes for peace. The sentence that stuck with me; she quoted her grandfather as saying, you don't negotiate for peace with your friend, but with your enemies.

I read Kenneally's A Commonwealth of Thieves. I know very little about Australian history, so this was a good way to get some background. My main take-away--the British were pretty creepy at this time.
The book tells about the fleets of convicts sent to Australia from England under utterly horrid conditions. Many died on the way. The English used this method to empty prisons, which were full to bursting with people whose main crimes was being poor. The enclosure laws had created a society in which many poor people had no choice but to turn to petty crime in order to survive.

Kenneally does a good job of describing this process and the people involved. Also gives good information about the effect of the new-comers on the Aboriginal people living in the area.

Masha Gessen's A Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin was a very good read. Gessen is a good writer, and gives a detailed picture of life in the former Soviet union. Putin is a rat, and his place in Soviet politics is interesting. The book as a whole reminds one of how fragile democracy can be.

I have finished 2 memoirs--Change by Mo Yan, which is short, funny and gives background on life in communist China, especially the educational system. Also, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Living to Tell the Tale, which I thought was helpful for understanding his novels.'

I am now reading The Blue Bear by Lynn Schooler. So far, it's pretty interesting.

I finished The Blue Bear: A True Story of Friendship and Discovery in the Alaskan Wild by Lynn Schooler. This was recommended to me by a book seller in Ketchikan when I asked about local literature. The story is interesting and Lynn presents an accurate picture of Alaskan life. I do wish that he were a little better writer.
Lynn Schooler lives in Juneau and earns his living as a guide to Alaskan wild places. He's a guy with rough edges: a loner, whose spine is twisted by scoliosis. THe book chronicles his friendship with Michio Hoshino a wildlife photographer from Japan. In contrast to the author, Michio is a warm and open person who makes friends easily.
Together, Lynn and Michio search for the rare blue bear in remote Alaska. This gives an opportunity to explore the natural history and Alaskan history and culture. Lynn is very knowledgable and it's a fascinating subject.
Sadly, Michio was killed in a bear attack while on a photo shoot in Russia. The book gives a review of the risks and rewards of wilderness activities.

First Book for 2013:

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

In 1995, Cheryl Strayed was a hot mess. 26 years old, she was dealing from her mother's death, a recent divorce and a little problem with heroin. So she decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, from the Mohave Desert to Washington state. She had never backpacked before, her pack was twice as heavy as it should have been and her shoes too tight.
Really she should have turned around within 20 minutes. I would have. Cheryl Strayed, however, is tough--tougher than me. She spent three months on the trail and in the process transformed her self.
This is a compelling read. Strayed has a breezy, self-deprecating style. It's funny, sad and touching. I laughed and cried.
Strayed really covers the ways in which wilderness (and duct tape) can save a person. It makes me want to do more backpacking (though nothing quite so adventurous.)

52: What would we do without duct tape?

Indeed, we'd be lost without Duct Tape. I see I haven't finished much non-fiction so far in 2013. Partly that's due to my being stuck in Mazower's The Dark Continent, which I find very informative, but slow going.

However, in the meantime, I did finish an interesting, and easy to read non-fiction book.

Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight: Cassius Clay vs. The United States of America by Howard Bingham

This book is written with a very large pro-Ali and very liberal slant. (Which I share, so that didn't bother me.) The writing is fine, but not great. I really enjoyed the book for the detailed look at race and politics during a specific historical period, and for the research regarding the political and legal shenanigans surrounding Ali's court case. The most inspiring thing about the book was watching Ali grow as a moral leader as a result of his anti-war stance. And he had such a great summary of his views:

"I ain't got no quarrel with them Vietcong"

100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared by Kim Stafford

Kim Stafford is a second generation poet and essayist. He is the son of William Stafford, Oregon Poet Laureate and pacifist. William Stafford was a conscientious objector during WWII. He and his wife raised their four children in a loving, bookish principled home, mostly in Lake Oswego Oregon. The two boys, Kim and Bret, were close in age, almost twins. In this book, Kim Stafford attempts to come to terms with Bret’s suicide in 1988 at age 40.

Told in a series of 100 vignettes; this book is beautifully written. There is a wonderful sense of place. The Staffords loved the outdoors, and I loved reading a book set in my own, wonderfully lush, Pacific Northwest. “I have realized only recently that in my childhood we were poor. Maybe we felt rich because we lived with bountiful stories, ideas, places. Abundance was everywhere—the sky, rivers with their infinitely changing ways, mornings in summer that lasted longer than a life.”

The book is sad. Stafford searches through his memories of his childhood and his brother, looking for the reasons behind his brother’s depression and suicide. Bret was the good brother, Kim more the troublemaker. Kim wonders if this is what doomed Bret. Kim’s survivor’s guilt is palpable.

At times I wanted to shake Kim and tell him, maybe it isn’t about anything you or your family did or didn’t do. Maybe it was just lousy brain chemistry. Kim knows this at one level, but at another level can’t keep himself from looking for answers to the unanswerable.

I have finally finished Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century by Mark Mazower. It really highlighted for me that I know very little about European History. My take-away for the book, is that Europe looks all cultured and evolved; but in fact is as much a mess as any part of the developing world. I am not really up to a book review, but the dust jacket explains it "Instead of seeing Europe as the natural home of freedom and democracy, Mazower argues that it was a frequently nightmarish laboratory for social and political engineering, inventing and reinventing itself through war, revolution, and ideological competition."

This is a good book, but I found it a slow read; I don't think I was quite enough of a historian for it.

Joseph Anton by Salmon Rushdie

The title of the book, a memoir about Rushdie’s years under Fatwa, is taken from the alternate identity he developed while in hiding. Joseph Anton represents the first names of two of Rushdie’s favorite writers—Conrad and Chekov. The British Secret Service called him ‘Joe”, which he didn’t particularly like.

The book highlights how hard it would be to be in hiding; not able to use your own name; not able to run simple errands on your own, and having to sneak around to visit with your 9 year old son. The difficulties are compounded by fearing for your life and the lives of those close to you. Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of the Satanic Verses, was stabbed to death on 11 July 1991. It was also hard that Rushdie faced criticism from a number of sources who felt that he should no have insulted Islam.

Clearly, Rushdie’s intent was not to insult. As a secular Muslim, he was using his own stories, the stories from his culture, to create a work of art.

The book, all 600 plus pages, is written in third person. I particularly enjoyed the first half which provides a lot of context to Rushdie’s novels, and which feels intense and suspenseful. There is also lots of information and gossip about Rushdie’s wives, friends, and fellow literary figures. The second half drags a bit, as I believe that living in hiding dragged for Rushdie.

I love Rushdie’s view of literature and it’s role in society: “Literature tried to open the universe, to increase, even if only slightly, the sum total of what was possible for human beings to perceive, understand, and so, finally, to be. Great literature went to the edges of the known and pushed against the boundaries of language, form and possibility, to make the world feel larger, wider, than before. Yet this was an age in which men and women were being pushed toward ever-narrower definitions of themselves, encouraged to call themselves just one thing, Serb or Croat or Israeli or Palestinian or Hindu or Muslim of Christian or Baha’i or Jew, and the narrower their identities became, the greater was the likelihood of conflict between them. Literature’s view of human nature encouraged understanding, sympathy, and identification with people not like oneself, but the world was pushing everyone in the opposite direction, toward narrowness, bigotry, tribalism, cultism and war. There were plenty of people who didn’t want the universe opened, who would, in fact, prefer it to be shut down quite a bit, and so when artists went to the frontier and pushed they often found powerful forces pushing back.”

Darwin’s Ghost by Steve Jones

Once, when my daughter was 5, she asked me “Mama, how was the first person born?” So I tried to explain evolution and failed miserably. My daughter kept saying: “So the first person was born from an animal?” I would say, “Not exactly, it was over a really, really long period of time.” I think that I also tossed in a description of the Voyage of the Beagle, which didn’t help matters. Finally my daughter asked “Mama, do you even KNOW?”
I was stung, and realized that I needed a better grasp of evolutionary biology. I got a little book out of the library that was, I think, intended for middle school readers. I found out that, actually, evolution IS hard to grasp because it is difficult for the human mind to comprehend the vast period of time involved. Also there is the whole bit about primordial soup, which I find difficult to picture.
Since then, I’ve tried to review my knowledge of evolution from time to time, in case I am called on for another impromptu explanation. Thus I picked up Darwin’s Ghost which follows the outline of Origin of Species and supplements Darwin’s original discussions with more recent discoveries. There is no description of primordial soup, as this wasn’t in the original. However, lots of opportunity to reflect on the extended time periods involved.
This probably isn’t the best lay person’s book on evolution. Jones sticks to the structure of Darwin’s original work, and for this 21st century reader it seemed a bit arbitrary. However, there was a lot to ponder and I do feel more on top of the topic.
My main take away was the phrase “descent with modifications. This helped to think of evolution as messy and various with lots of dead ends. There is a tendency to think of evolution as an upward spiral: sort of like a giant wedding cake with single celled organisms at the bottom and a human male and female on top. In reality, we are a byproduct of evolution, not it’s purpose.

The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe is a very sweet book, about Will Schawlbe's mother and her death from pancreatic cancer. Mary Ann Schwalbe was clearly an amazing woman, among her many accomplishments she was a leader in international aide work with refugees and in her dying days focused on the need to establish a library in Afghanistan. During the two years between diagnosis and death, when going thorough chemo and other cancer treatments, she and Will had a 'two person book club' in which they read and discussed books together.
Schwalbe writes about the books they read and his relationship with his mother. I should love this book. It's a book about books, which I love, and it's about a strong older woman. But I didn't love it.
I think my main problem with the book was that Mary Ann was so GOOD. She did noble work, cared about others and took care of her family. I guess I like my main characters to have more of a dark side.
I suspect that she actually did have a dark side, but her son was shy about revealing it. I can't entirely blame him, I would be uncomfortable writing a book about my mother's flaws as well.
One point Schwalbe made, which I found interesting, is that it is very rare to have books about the mother son relationship. There are a lot of books about father son relationships, but it is considered somewhat unmasculine for men to write about their mothers.
I checked on LT and found that the tag "mother and son" is used 153 times, mainly for children's books. "father and son" has 486 uses.

And as for mothers with dark sides,I read Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

This was not a winner. I read Fun House years ago and thought it was brilliant. This is not nearly as good. The story seems self-involved, and doesn't really go anywhere.

This is too bad, as it's very creatively done, interspersing conversations, Bechdel's childhood diaries, Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse and various pieces of psychoanalytic literature into Bechdel's drawings.

Color Me English by Caryl Phillips is a book about layer's of identity. Phillips, born in St. Kitts, moved to England as a baby. As an adult he has lived all over the world, settling in New York City. That was interesting as another book I recently read (Rushdie's Joseph Anton) also featured an immigrant writer who ends up in New York.

This is a book of essays on a variety of topics around migration and identity. He is a good writer, and I enjoyed most of the essays. I especially enjoyed the essays on Chinua Achebe and James Baldwin. It was interesting to read on the historical and cultural differences between Africans, African Caribbeans, and African Americans.

I didn't enjoy Are You My Mother? much either. Partly because it calls on all the types of psychology that I really dislike, and yes, because it was so narrow. I know it couldn't entirely focus on their relationship, given that Bechdel didn't seem to have much relationship with her for a long time. The only thing I really took away was the great moment where she realizes that she has to stop expecting and needing things that her mother is just never going to be able to give.

Yes, I am afraid that part way through the book I said that "This woman just had too much therapy."

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

This is an important book about the racial caste system in the US. I highly recommend the book, but with a couple of reservations. The first is stylistic. Alexander’s style is highly polemical, which I found annoying. I wish she would have trusted the reader enough to just lay out the facts; and not spent so much effort telling us how to interpret them. I agree with her interpretation, but resent being led to the conclusion quite so blatantly.

I also wish that Alexander had given a broader perspective on the history of prisons and social control. It would have been interesting to compare prison and social control across cultures and time. She makes broad statements, for example stating that we have “a penal system unprecedented in world history” without, I felt, enough discussion to prove those points.

However, these are minor quibbles. Alexander does do a good job of describing the current state of the US criminal system. It’s pretty ugly. Some facts:

Reagan announced the “War on Drugs” in 1982. At that time, less than 2% of the public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the nation. Many local law enforcement agencies were reluctant to participate in the drug war, until they were given economic incentives to do so.

Drug use is quite common in the US. African Americans are, actually, less likely than whites to use drugs, but are 13 times more likely to be arrested and imprisoned for this. One in 9 black men between the ages of 20 and 35 was behind bars in 2006.

Changes in sentencing guidelines have increased the prison population, although the crime rate has not really increased.

It is very difficult for convicted criminals to obtain housing and jobs, making it more and more likely that they will re-offend.

The US strips voting rights for ex-felons in huge numbers. This isn’t the case in other countries.

The high incarceration rate for black men is a prime reason for the much-lamented failure of black men to meet their parenting responsibilities.

I thought The New Jim Crow was probably the most important book I read last year: shocking, horrifying, and well researched. It made me ashamed for my country.

The New Jim Crow will definitely be my next read. Equally or nearly as important, I think, is Sister Citizen by Melissa Harris-Perry. Lately I've been feeling that if you're not reading something (book or articles or whatever) every month that makes you ashamed for your country then you're far too tuned out.

>64 mabith:

Is EVERYONE on here Chechen?

#64 I'm a fan of Melissa Harris-Perry, so I'll look for that.

#65 ?

Rebecca, I agree--I am hoping more people will read The New Jim Crow. I have done a fair amount of reading on the prison system, and work in social services, so I was familiar with most of the information, but it is put together in a very compelling fashion.

Meredith--thanks for the recommendation--I have put Sister Citizen right on my reading list.

Al--you have given me my biggest belly laugh of the day, so far. Thanks!

The discussion reminded me of our dinner table talk the other night. My daughter is taking High School US History this year. The other night she was saying that she didn't like the US, the more she learned about our involvement in the world and various wars. I tried to defend the US -- I explained that we were on the right side of WW2, but that didn't have much impact on her, I am afraid it was too long ago to sway her. I couldn't really come up with any other really good foreign involvement.

>67 banjo123: Well let's not forget the US stalled on even joining in WWII until the very end, and really did quite little. I'm surprised she's actually learning anything negative in a high school history class, that's generally completely whitewashed in order to make good little patriots. But good for her, the US has done massive amounts of atrocious things, and it's about time young people started being aware of this, so they can hopefully help to make a positive change in the future.

Definitely better to learn some negative things in high school, rather than getting constant shocks in college history courses! Supposedly that U-turn is part of what turns a lot of young people off of studying history.

>69 mabith: That, plus the fact that whitewashed history is completely and utterly dull & boring, it's horrible. So first people have zero interest in it because nothing happens (it does, but they're not taught that!), and then they go and find out they've been lied to all these years, and that's even more off-putting. It's a really terrible situation.

>68 .Monkey.: You are right, of course, but I am not sure that the US is really any worse (or better) than any other country. However when I argued that at dinner the counter-argument was that we were worse, because we are more powerful.

>68 .Monkey.: and 69 She has a fabulous teacher and obviously natural brilliance. But they are studying the AP US History curriculum, which ought to be pretty standard. So maybe there is hope for the future.

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe by Anne Applebaum

This is very well-researched and readable non-fiction. Applebaum gives a really comprehensive description of how the communist regimes of Easter Europe were created, and what daily life under Stalinism was like. This book, as it has given me better insight into some of the Eastern European and Soviet literature, which I’ve recently read.

Applebaum is director of political studies at the Legatum Institute. Her neo-conservative leanings are apparent in parts of the book, particularly the chapter on the economic systems. I don’t, for the most part, agree with her political views. However, her research is top-notch, and the Soviets really were hideous.

Applebaum’s descriptions of Soviet control help explain some of the characteristics of Eastern European culture which I’d previously found a little baffling. Her chapters on Reluctant Collaborators and Passive Opponents were quite insightful.

The scope of the book is limited, covering the period from 1944 to 56. These limits give the book a nice focus, but leave me wondering about the history leading up to communism in Europe.

I'm interested in your perspective on Applebaum's politics. I thought Iron Curtain was weaker than her superb Gulag, and I felt she definitely picked and chose what to include, but I'm not sure I perceived politics behind this.

A book that is often irritating but that gives some perspective on what led up to the Russian Revolution is To the Finland Station. Wilson is much too adoring of Lenin, but his introduction to the edition I read shows that he thought better of it later. And an amazing book about the revolution and how it betrayed itself is Memoirs of a Revolutionary by Victor Serge. I read both in NYRB editions; for Serge's book, it is the first complete translation.

Thanks for the book suggestions Rebecca. I will definitely have to read Gulag, and now I am on the look-out for Serge's book.

There was a really interesting review of Iron Curtain by Anatol Lieven in the Guardian. here is a link.

The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang

This is an incredibly disturbing book. It details the mass murder and war raped that occurred following the Japanese capture of Nanking in 1937. The death toll is estimated at 250,000 to 350,000 people. Rape was also widespread. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated that 20,000 women were raped, including infants and the elderly. A large portion of these rapes were systematized in a process where soldiers would search door-to-door for young girls, with many women taken captive and gang raped. The women were often killed immediately after being raped.

The extent of the atrocities by the Japanese army has not been widely publicized in the west, and Japan has not be held accountable for these atrocities to the extent that Germany was. Iris Chang was Chinese-American, had heard about the Rape of Nanking from her parents. In researching and writing this book, Chang wanted to draw attention to a forgotten holocaust.

She paid a high price for her work. Iris Chang suffered from a reactive depression and took her own life in 2004.

I became interested in learning more about the Japanese side of WWII after reading Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken last year. I can’t exactly say I am glad to have read this book, because it’s just so horrible. There were pictures, which I did not even look at, because I figured it would be too much for me. However, I do think that it is important to know about the past in order to understand the present. I am still interested in reading more on the topic, because I’d like to understand better why it is that the Japanese were so brutal during WWII.

I read The Rape of Nanking some years ago, and yes, it's especially important to know about these atrocities when the county has never been held accountable. And of course it's also important in the context of understanding the ingrained animosity the Chinese (and Koreans) hold towards Japan, and how that affects international relations. I wasn't aware that Chang had taken her own life, that's such a tragedy.

Very sad. Chang committed suicide in 2004. Her mother Ying Ying Chang, wrote a book about Iris Chang, The Woman Who Could Not Forget. I started to read it, but I'm afraid it wasn't well-written enough for me to finish.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

This is a really good non-fiction book that makes you think about a wide range of topics: medical research, racism, poverty, cervical cancer, privacy. I am not going to spend much time reviewing this, as it's been amply reviewed elsewhere.

I enjoyed the way Skloot included herself as a character and a part of the story. I liked the way she let Henrietta Lacks' descendents tell their own stories. I thought the focus on the human side of medical research was good, but wished that the attention spent on explaining the scientific side of the story had been stronger.

Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin is a very nice book about evolution. It's easy to read with a lot of anecdotes, and not too long, so it was a real success for this non-scientist reader. Shubin is a paleontologist and professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago. In this book, Shubin describes fossils, anatomy and DNA; showing how we are related to other beings on the planet. He also shares his passion for the topic, and for science, in a way that is very accessible.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
A great non-fiction read., I was a little reluctant to read this as I previously had struggled with Egan's The Big Burn. This turned out to be more accessible.
Egan mixed personal stories, science, policy and social history in a way that made the Dust Bowl seem both a personal and national tragedy. I also appreciated that he included discussion of the racism and anti-semitism of the time and place.
I knew not very much about the dust bowl. The book corrected that and also helped me understand the role of this environmental catastrophe in the Great Depression and in the development of agricultural policies in this country.

> 79

When I took physical anthropology, that was one of the books we could read for our book report. I chose Jane Goodall's In The Shadow of Man, but now I'm tempted toward that one too...

Hi Jonathan, I found Shubin really interesting. Maybe I will try the Goodall book as well.

When Everything Changed by Gail Collins is a history of the women’s movement and of women’s place in the US. It’s well-written and full of interesting details. Collins covers issues of class, race and sexual orientation as they relate to women’s roles, so the book is quite comprehensive. It’s broad, rather than deep, but well worth reading.

I was impressed at how far we have come since the early 60’s when women were marginalized and accepted the marginalization. The story that resonated with me was an anecdote about JFK. Katharine Graham told how the president wanted to know why Adlai Stevenson, balding and chubby, was regarded as so attractive by his many female friends. Told that it was because Stevenson actually listened with interest to what women had to say, the president responded “Well, I don’t say you’re wrong, but I’m not sure I can go to those lengths. “

#75 banjo123 > Your question about the brutality of the Japanese in WWII is very profound. It is very difficult to find anything written now about the character of the Japanese soldier that isn't colored by their experience of defeat and our experience of horror at the atrocities they inflicted. At various times it has been explained (away) as a result of blind obedience to the Emperor, or to a religion that sees life as transient, or to the samurai 'cult' of bushido (essentially holding that the defeated deserve to die), or to the brutalisation of the average soldier by their superiors. On balance I'm inclined to discount everything here as 'myth' except the brutalisation. The Japanese Army had expanded with tremendous speed after 1900 or so, and created a lot of this 'mythology' on the hop to bind together its people and its organisation. But whatever the designers try to do to create a tradition and character for a military force, it is actually the pre-existing relationship between those who lead it and those who serve in it that defines it's character. In the case of Japan the pre-existing relationship between those who came to lead the army (the minor aristocracy and upper middle class) and those who were later recruited into it (the peasantry and lower classes) was one of utter contempt. There's some truth in the notion that the bullied become even worse bullies, and the common Japanese soldier was very badly treated by their own Officers. It is less surprising then, that they were very easily led to commit the atrocities in Nanking and elsewhere.

Meanwhile (in those pre-war years) the upper levels of the military were engaged in constant infighting (literally), jostling for position and looking for conflicts in which to prove themselves. If the Army had been longer established the traditions (and the institution) might have been more powerful than the individuals, but in the pre-WWII period the senior leadership of the Army was not providing any sort of ethical or moral leadership for its men. If anything the lesson the men would see their leaders prove was that greed and ruthlessness is the 'way to succeed'. And of course there was also a couple of thousand years of Chinese superiority in just about everything that rankled with some in the Japanese Army leadership - which the Chinese were not backward in reminding them constantly. That said, there were some very noble characters in Japan at the time (in politics and the Navy in particular), including quite a few who struggled to prevent the war, and predicted disaster for Japan if they entered it. Possibly the best book about this, although it is a little disjointed, is Kurt Singer's 'Mirror, Sword and Jewel'. John Toland's Pullitzer Prize winning 'The Rising Sun' gives a good account of the resistance in Japan to the path to war, and is in fact one of the finest histories of the entire conflict from the Japanese perspective. Best regards, Nd

When I was reading a lot of Japanese literature last year for the Author Theme Reads group's focus on Japanese writers, I read some books that touched on Japanese atrocities during the war, including the brilliant and chilling The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo. Mo Yan's Red Sorghum depicts Japanese atrocities in China of an earlier era, from the Chinese perspective, of course.

> Hi Nandadevi. Thanks for the thoughts. I think that I will try to read The Rising Sun. It will be a few months though, I have several books stacked up to read at present.

> Rebecca, somehow I never joined the author themed read, but I did a read a fair amount of Japanese literature last year, as well. I didn't read any Endo, however. I am going to try and read it later. Mo Yan, I think, is not for me. I read Life and Death are Wearing Me OUt and I think that I am now done with Yan.

Well, Life and Death are Wearing Me Out wore me out, but I thought Red Sorghum was much better. Of course, I realize I've been talking about fiction in your nonfiction thread!

I don't mind mixing fiction and non-fiction, especially if the themes work together. I think I might just watch the movie of Red Sorghum. I sort of think that I did see it, years ago, but maybe I am confusing it with Raise the Red Lantern.

I think you would remember the movie of Red Sorghum if you saw it. I haven't seen it, but if it's anything like the book there would be a lot of violence that would be hard to forget.

Rebecca, it's amazing what I can forget in 25 years! I looked at the description of Red Sorghum, and I think I DID see it. Are there tents in the story? I seem to remember tents. But obviously, I could watch it again and it would probably feel brand new. I think it's actually a very good movie.

Hmm, not sure I remember tents from the novel, but that doesn't mean there weren't any! And it's amazing what I can forget too!

King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild

This is exactly the kind of non-fiction that I like to read. It’s definitely got some meat to it, but is written for a popular audience. Facts and history are wrapped into character-driven story. Hochschild explains his references well enough that I didn’t have to keep running to Wikipedia. The book is gossipy and engaging. I felt that by reading this book, I got a better picture of what colonialism did to the African continent. I was surprised to find out how much I didn’t know about this topic. King Leopold’s rule led to the death of half the population of the Congo—about 10 million people.

Colonialism, I am afraid was just horrible. In Congo, there was a lot of money to be made out of harvesting rubber. All of that money went to the King Leopold and his companies, none of it stayed in Africa. Harvesting rubber is labor intensive. For other kinds of work in the Congo, Europeans had been easily able to enslave Africans, as porters, etc. For rubber harvesting, it was a little trickier as the laborers needed to go into the forest to tap the rubber trees. They were able to coerce Congolese labor by kidnapping the women, and not releasing them unless the workers brought in the rubber. The women, of course, were kept in very poor conditions and many of them died.

When I mentioned this book to my daughter, she said “Oh that’s where they had the severed hands.” Apparently, they actually are teaching something in public schools these days. The Force Publique, a local military force led and paid by the Belgians were required to provide a hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting food. Sometimes hands were severed from still-living victims.

King Leopold’s rule was so grisly that it actually led to the first human rights campaign in Europe. Many prominent people, including Mark Twain and A. Conan Doyle joined the The British Congo Reform Association founded by Edmund Morel and Roger Casement. This did lead eventually to some change in the Congo, although this movement was still Euro-centric.

One would hope that Colonialism was not as bloody in other parts of Africa. However, Hochschild tells us that there was less difference between the Congo and other African Colonies than the British reformers liked to believe.

One of the weaknesses of this book is that the voices are pretty much all European whites, as the Congo did not have literature and so Congolese were not able to leave a written legacy. And with the extent of the cultural destruction, oral histories would also be disrupted. Hochschild is very aware of this issue and discusses it in depth.

I am very glad that I read this book and hope that it will help me to have a better understanding of modern Africa.

I will certainly have to look for King Leopold's Ghost. There are definitely too many holes in my education when it comes to Africa. I think they sort of told us about the atrocities there when I was in middle school, because obviously you have to talk about harsh colonialism at some point and you definitely don't want to talk about your own government's crimes...

I'll be interested to see what you think of The Guns of August, by the by. It's one of my favorite history books.

Thanks Mabith! I am almost done with The Guns of August, so I am hoping to finish it this weekend. It is very well written, but I am afraid that a bunch is going over my head. I seem to have a mental block against understanding battle strategy. It's been a problem with a number of my history reads.

I sometimes have that issue as well, but I think I'd finally hit the threshold of reading enough about WWI by then. Though The Guns of August what I really loved was the deeper political background to the conflict and the interactions between the commanders and other less battle-specific issues.

Mabith--I think I have a worse battlefield dyslexia than most people. Here's my review of the book:

Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

This wasn’t my favorite read, to be honest. But if I was talking to Barbara Tuchman I’d say “It’s not you, it’s me.” The book is well written and researched. I like the way that Tuchman lets the facts tell the story, rather than hitting us over the head with her opinions.

My problem is that I have a mental block when it comes to understanding war strategy and battles, and when I try reading about them, my brain glazes over. This has happened before with books that I otherwise liked, such as Team of Rivals and Where Men Meet Glory. In Guns of August battle strategy was a very large part of the book and my focus was poor.

My take-aways from the book:

(1) Top military strategists and planners often don’t know what they are doing. They were optimistic about a quick war and underestimated the enemy. It seems like this hasn’t changed much in the last century.

(2) I now have an understanding of the Alsace-Lorraine and how it fits into the military history of Europe.

(3) I still don’t understand why we have war. It seems stupid. No matter how well the war goes, it’s going to result in the loss of life and damage to economic structures (bridges, etc.) As a parent, it seems like very poor planning to put all this energy and effort into raising children, feeding, clothing, and loving them; only to send them away to be killed when they reach the age of 18.

> 96

I went to the library to read The Guns of August and came away with much the same impression re: military strategy. I'd much prefer a book on daily life in the trenches, the experience of fighting in WWI, and the kind of literature and reflection on the human condition such a devastating and pointless war wrought.

My grandpa died last year at 98. Born in 1913, he lived through every American war of the past century. He told me that nobody really wins a war.

97 - Yeah, if you're looking for personal stories/daily life that's definitely not the right book. If you want a good book about the Gallipoli trenches I highly recommend To Hell and Back by Sydney Loch.

Rhonda, I have that dyslexia pretty badly for the US Civil War, though I never feel too bad when I find myself spacing out on some of those details). It is incredible how wars start and why, and why some leaders will keep at a struggle when it's obvious to everyone else that it's folly (another topic Tuchman ventured into!). I think it's part of why I don't like a lot of science-fiction and fantasy writing - if I'm going to read about war/revolution I'm going to read about the real ones at least.

97> Another more personal experience of life in the trenches might be They called it Passchendaele It's personal testimony of one location through the course of the war. So not an individual's story, more stories of those who passed through the place. Sobering.

I'm tempted by The guns of August though. We covered WW1 in history, but that was some number of years ago now, and while I can remember some of it, I'm sure I've forgotten the ins and outs.

I really enjoyed The Guns of August when I read it more than 20 years ago. But I do like military strategy in small, well written doses.

97 - Your grandfather sounds like a smart man.

98 - I wish that I could understand military strategy--I often find it annoying when I space out. I guess that's why I keep trying. Now, I do read a little SF and fantasy, and, come to think about it, I space out sometimes in that as well, but I don't mind when I do.

99 - You should try Guns of AUgust. It really is an interesting book, and lots of people totally love it.

100 - Tuchman's writing is interesting, and I like the way she bridges scholarly and popular.

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor

I highly recommend this book, even though I think it’s good that Sotomayar is a Supreme Court Justice, rather than a writer. Her prose is serviceable, but seldom lyrical. Also, she is somewhat circumspect in wrting this book, and some topics (for example her marriage and divorce) are told in 2-D, rather than in full living color.

However, her story is interesting and pulled me right along. Sonia Sotomayar grew up in the South Bronx; Spanish was her first language; her father was an alcoholic who died when she was young; she developed juvenile diabetes at a time when that was considered a death sentence. She also had support from a loving extended family and an amazing amount of grit. She is a poster child for affirmative action, having gone to Princeton and the Yale Law School.

I often find Sotomayar irritating politically, but this book gave me admiration for her integrity and spunk. I also liked the way she identified the strengths she received from her family, especially her mother and grandmother, as assets that helped her in her law career. She has a nuanced understanding of her family dynamics. An example from the book, she is reflecting on life after the death of her father:

“A hug from Papi would have been nice just then. I couldn’t deny that our life was so much better now, but I did miss him. For all the misery he caused, I knew with certainty that he loved us. Those aren’t things you can measure or weigh. You can’t say: This much love is worth this much misery. They’re not opposites that cancel each other out; they’re both true at the same time. “

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

I wanted to read this after having finished The Orphan Master's Son for a non-fiction look at North Korea. This is a well-written book that follows the personal narratives of 6 people who defected from North Korea. Demick does a good job, and I found myself engrossed in the lives of these individuals.

North Korea is just so weird. It really is like 1984 except with famine added. Really, really horrible. But the book does end on an uplifting note--the resilience of the defectors is quite amazing.

The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Luis Alejandro Velasco was a Colombian sailor who, in 1955, survived 10 days at sea on a raft after an accident, caused by naval negligence, which killed 8 others. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a young newspaper reporter, and published Velasco’s story in installments to great public interest. I can see why—it’s a gripping story and written in Garcia-Marquez’ beautiful prose.

Marie Curie and Her Daughters by Shelley Emling

I read Eve Curie’s biography of her mother back when I was a teenager, and was fascinated by it. Curie had such an interesting life on multiple levels; personally, politically and professionally. (The first woman to win a Nobel prize, she won Nobel prizes in both Physics and Chemistry. Her older daughter followed her into the field of science, and was also a Nobel Prize winner.)

This book filled in some things that Eve left out; for instance Marie’s affair with a married man. The book is pretty specific about the ways that Marie was sometimes neglectful of her daughters due to her obsession with science. However, her parenting seemed to work out overall; she was close to both daughters, who were both interesting and dynamic women.

This book cover’s Curie’s later life and her relationship with her daughters; as well as her daughter’s subsequent careers. I would have preferred a more comprehensive book, as Curie’s early life in Poland and her relationship with her husband, Pierre Curie, are also really interesting.

The book is solidly written and worth reading especially if you are interested in the history of women in science. It also covers the relationship of the scientists to the political/historical climate. However, I did feel that the author suffered from more hero-worship than makes for a really good non-fiction book.

105: I saw this over on Mabith's thread, and rushed it to the wishlist. I get your point about hero-worship, but I imagine it'd be hard not to: she was quite an impressive person. Radioactive devotes several pages to the affair too, and it seems the families remained entangled, since her granddaughter married his grandson.

105 - This definitely did make me want to go find a full biography of Marie, but of course the snapshot was all it really set out to do. I was just so excited that almost everything in the book was new information for me. I just saw a set of postcards of early feminists that included Marie and have been so tempted to tell them that really they should feature Irene...

With the hero worship, I have a feeling Emling has that in general for early female scientists. In a way, it helped to bring home just what a cult was built around Curie at one time. It would certainly be more of a problem with a full, in-depth biography but I kind of imagine that there weren't that many negative things to get out.

Hi Qebo and Mabith! I have wish-listed Radioactive which looks really intriguing. I may also dig out Eve Curie's biography. From Emling's description, it probably is as good as I remember and I think it's one of the few childhood books that managed to survive my childhood.

One of the things that's interesting about Curie's life is the intersections between science and politics. Emling does a good job of covering both world wars, and with a nod to the cold war. I think that the book could have been more enhanced with information about how Marie's upbringing in Russian-controlled Poland effected her outlook. But then, if I had my way, the book would be 500-600 pages, and with lots more pictures and maps.

Mabith, do you think that the association with the Communist Party is one of the reason's that Irene doesn't get more recognition?

You are right that Emling does do what she set out to do; so perhaps it's unfair to want more. I think there are some other Curie biographies, and perhaps I should look for one of them,

I can't think about Marie Curie without remembering Adrienne Rich's poem about her. Here it is:

POWER

Living in the earth-depositis of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power

Thank you for posting the poem! I don't think I've ever read it before. I'm certainly going out for a proper biography of her soon, and a rewatch of the old movie. I'm sure I watched it once when I was a kid, but now I must see what Greer Garson did with her.

I'd say it's down to the communism, but at least in the feminist movement I think that's less of an issue (in part because it's somewhat common in a certain era of feminists). I think it's just down to being over-shadowed by Marie. You grow up knowing what the mother did, so why bother to find out if the daughters did anything (or the biographies don't really talk about them as adults).

I will be curious to see which biography you pick up, and how you like it.

I completed In the Shadow of Wounded Knee by Roger DiSilvestro for the group read. This is a good book: but I did wish that it was longer and more comprehensive. I am planning to read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee soon.