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Andrea Kay's Bookshelf
First Fire: An Algonkian Story
Retold by Joseph Bruchac and James Bruchac
Illustrated by David Kanietakeron Fadden
Wisdom Tales Press
www.wisdomtalespress.com
9781957670225, $19.95, HC, 44pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/First-Fire-Algonkian-Joseph-Bruchac/dp/1957670223
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/first-fire-joseph-bruchac/1148634353
Synopsis: Imagine a time when humans huddled together to keep from freezing in the winters. A time without fire. Fire is one of the most basic needs for survival.
Ancient stories of how it came to us can be found in virtually every human society and the indigenous cultures of North America are no exception.
However, unlike the stories of other continents, Native American traditional tales almost always seek to both entertain and teach. Also they feature a holistic relationship between humans and the natural world is stressed in many ways. The wisdom and the assistance of the animals are often crucial.
"First Fire: An Algonkian Story" is just such a Native American story of how humans received the gift of fire.
Critique: An epic Native American folktale, "First Fire: An Algonkian Story" is about how a boy, with the aid of Fox, stole fire from the deadly monsters who selfishly kept it for themselves. Collaborators Joseph and James Bruchac's fascinating account is brilliantly illustrated throughout with the museum quality artwork of David Kanietakeron Fadden. This superbly produced children's picture book is especially and unreservedly recommended for family, daycare center, preschool, elementary school, and community library Native American Folktale/Mythology collections for children ages 4-8. It should be noted that this hardcover edition of "First Fire: An Algonkian Story" from Wisdom Tales Press is also readily available for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).
Editorial Note #1: Joseph Bruchac is the multiple award-winning author of over 180 books. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in hundreds of publications over the past five decades, from The Paris Review, National Geographic, American Poetry Review, and Smithsonian to Parabola, Akwesasne Notes, Epoch, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He is co-author with Michael Caduto of the million-selling Keepers of the Earth series. An enrolled member of the Nulhegan Abenaki Nation, he and his sons James and Jesse work extensively in programs to preserve and teach Native traditions and language at their Ndakinna Education Center (www.ndakinnacenter.org) in Greenfield Center, New York.
Editorial Note #2: James Bruchac is an award-winning author, traditional storyteller, cultural educator, wilderness expert, and founder and director of the Ndakinna Education Center. James has authored and co-authored over a dozen books for adults and children, including Native American Games and Stories, How Chipmunk Got His Stripes, and The Girl Who Helped Thunder. The oldest son of author and storyteller Joseph Bruchac, James and his family are citizens of the Nulhegan Coosuk Band of the Abenaki Nation. Visit him at http://jamesbruchac.com.
Editorial Note #3: David Kanietakeron Fadden is an Akwesasne Mohawk artist who was born in New York and grew up in Onchiota. David's illustrations have appeared in several books, including Skywoman: Legends of the Iroquois and A Peacemaker for Warring Nations: The Founding of the Iroquois League (with Joseph Bruchac), as well as in the Discovery Channel's, "How the West was Lost: Always the Enemy." His work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian. David lives with his family in Kawenoke, at Akwesasne Mohawk Territory, in Ontario, Canada.
Andrea Kay
Reviewer
Ann Skea's Bookshelf
Fables and Lies
Elisabeth Storrs
https://elisabethstorrs.com
Book Guild Publishing
9781835744086, $41.00 pbk / $6.99 Kindle, 571pp.
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Fables-Lies-Novel-Based-Story/dp/1835744087
'It was another day of perfect Fuhrer weather.'
Clearly, this is Hitler's Berlin. Swastika banners are everywhere but cafes are full of chatter and laughter, Berliners stroll in the golden twilight, couples waltz on open-air dance floors, and theatres and opera are flourishing. However, all is not as rosy as it seems. Hitler salutes are the expected greeting; spies are everywhere, and denunciations for not conforming to the rules of the regime are common. Twenty-one-year-old Freyja arrives back at her family's apartment block to be told by her unpleasant, ever-watchful neighbour, that the Gestapo have just 'roughed up' 17-year-old Dieter Weber for listening to swing music, and have smashed all his records.
She finds Dieter's grandfather cradling the badly injured boy in his arms, but he warns her not to stop and help because the Part Block Warden is watching.
In Freyja's own family, too, there are tensions.
Her father, Conrad Bremer, had fought in the First Word War and has burn scars on his face and one arm amputated at the elbow. He helps out at a church-run Jewish emigration service and was recently arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo for this, but, in spite of promises to his family when he was released, he continues to be involved with the Christian underground network.
Her mother, Elza, praises Hitler for improving German life after the war and the Depression. She mortifies Freyja by publicly boasting of family bloodlines that meet SS standards for marriage. And she approves of her eldest daughter, Volla, who is the mistress of Otto von und zu Erlbach, an aristocratic SS officer, and is proud to 'do [her] duty' and bear his Aryan sons. Otto, whose wife has earned a Silver Mother's Cross for bearing six children, is generous, and buys Volla expensive clothes. He also allows her to keep their son, Siggi, with her family, although illegitimate Aryan children are supposed to be brought up in Lebensborn Foundation Homes.
Freyja is not interested in marriage and she enjoys her work as a secretary at the Pre and Early History Museum. She is determined not to follow Volla's example and become 'a potential SS brood mare', in spite of her mother's hectoring:
To Eliza Brenner, emancipated working women were loose and selfish, and probably communist, too.
So, Freyja is dismayed when Volla tells her that she has arranged a family supper to which Otto will bring an unmarried friend, who is also an SS officer.
'Is he in the Reich Security Service like Otto?' she said, alarmed.
'No, He's an archaeologist with the SS Deutsche Ahnenerbe.' Volla gave a half-smile. 'Believe me. You'll be impressed when you meet him.'
Freyja is intrigued. The Ahnenerbe is an academic institution. But the man is still an SS officer. She doesn't share Volla's admiration for the Fuhrer's elite corps.
In spite of her misgivings, she is impressed by Kasper Voigt, enjoys hearing about his work, and finds him attractive, so she agrees to meet him again. He takes her to dinner at the luxurious Adlon Hotel and is attentive, but she is aware that he is subtly checking her marriage credentials and she challenges him on this, which he accepts with good humour.
Then, at work, Freyja meets Dr Darien Lessing, who appears to be an old and valued pupil of the museum's Direktor, Wilhelm Unverzagt. She is shocked by the impolite familiarity he adopts with the Direktor, but their mutual respect for each other's work is apparent. Lessing has just returned from five years of PhD study in England and is hoping to join an archaeological dig that Unverzagt had been planning, but is dismayed to hear that this has been abandoned. However, the Direktor has received orders that, because of the imminence of war, the museum's treasures must be catalogued and moved to safety. He offers Lessing the job of organising this and, to her amazement and delight, appoints Freyja as his assistant.
Working with Lessing, Freyja finds his rudeness and disrespect for Nazi ideals fascinating and dangerous. But his love of the museum's treasures, especially the Great Treasure of Priam, known as 'The Jewels of Helen of Troy', is clear, and her chance to handle them is thrilling. He, however, starts to tell her things that make her question all she ever learned at school about German history and prehistory, as well as many of the underlying beliefs she has accepted and adopted. This includes the World Ice Theory, which the Fuhrer promotes, and which he believes underpins the superiority of the Aryan race. She has discussed this with Voigt, who is engaged in research to prove that the primordial Aryan ancestors founded a great city in inner Asia after the sinking of Atlantis.
The attraction between Lessing and Freyja grows, and they secretly become lovers, so she decides to stop meeting Voigt. But he uses his SS power and his knowledge of her father's undercover activities to force her to marry him.
So, the essential elements of Elisabeth Storrs' novel are set up. But this is not a simple love story. Over the next few years, as war is declared and British, then also American bombs fall night and day on Berlin, Storrs captures the terror of the people as they cower in air-raid shelters, listening to the explosions and feeling the ground shaking as nearby buildings are destroyed. Freyja continues to work with death and destruction all around her. She learns more of the fables and lies she has been fed, and she experiences Voigt's brutality as a husband, and his ruthlessness in arranging Lessing's arrest and death sentence. She also learns that Direktor Unverzagt, having experienced discrimination in the past that thwarted his career prospects, has decided to adapt, but not abandon, his principles in order to find special favour with influential Nazis. When she asks him to help save Lessing's life, he tells her he cannot do this, nonetheless somehow, Lessing is released - but into service in the army.
She is shocked when Otto decides that Volla must take their two sons to a Lebensborn Foundation Home, and Volla takes menial work there so as to be close to them, but Freya also discovers that her sister is involved in 'retraining' (i.e. Germanising) kidnapped Polish children who look suitably Aryan.
Freyja learns, too, that Lessing's sister, Parisa, is married to a Jewish doctor and they both work at the single hospital allowed for Jewish people. As the arrest and transportation of Jews out of Berlin increases, the hospital is eventually seized and closed, with the patients and staff, including Parisa's husband, still inside. This drives Freyja into dangerous resistance - joining Parisa in a protest outside the hospital and aiding her husband. At the same time, she discovers Voigt's role in one of the SS's darkest research programs.
The horrors in this book are not easy to read, or to read about. But the insight it offers into the lives of ordinary people who have grown up in, and are controlled by, a dictatorship in which they are taught and trained to believe fables and lies raises questions about such control in our own lives and those of others around the world. Freyja is a likeable character, and Elisabeth Storrs lets the reader feel her love, disillusionment, fear and determination; but she would not have been the only one at that time to suffer, to question, and to have to make decisions balancing principles and danger.
In her Author's Note, Storrs outlines her approach to the historical facts included in the book, and her research has been thorough. Her access to Direktor Unverzagt's wartime day-journals, his correspondence, and an article written by his wife, helped her to chronicle his efforts to preserve the museum's treasures. And the Jewels of Helen, discovered by Schliemann and his wife in the way she describes in the book, were indeed, taken by the Russians to Moscow and 'hidden in the Pushkin Museum for more than fifty years'.
Fables and lies are still being told, and, as Storrs writes,
'It is chilling to watch similar preconditions to those arising after WWI occurring across the Western world... social media algorithms isolate people in a continuous loop of skewed views as effectively as Goebbels' Volksemfanger radios. As a result, families and communities are polarised, just as the Bremer family were.'
Elisabeth Storrs' book offers much food for thought.
The Night Parrots
Stephen Orr
Wakefield Press
https://wakefieldpress.com
9781923388673, $35.00 pbk, 413pp.
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Night-Parrots-Stephen-Orr/dp/1923388673
Benjamin Gerlach, at 81, is sat in his small asbestos house in an Adelaide suburb in Australa, surrounded by the paper and artefacts that had belonged to his father, Lutheran Pastor Martin Gerlach:
'Imagine me, (this is only a few months ago) in my trackpants, an old business shirt, a dressing gown. Unshaved, halitosis, yellow teeth, reading the notes Father left: 'Firstly the Kangaroo Song (9 verses), everlasting daisies &c.'...
'Night Parrots speaking, tree tops &c'. Thinking, when I get all this down, when people read it, it'll sell thousands, hundreds of thousands of copies... The world will finally understand what Father did (apart from saving souls). I'll call it The Night Parrots. Something enigmatic, hard to pin down, elusive, real but not real, imagined but physical, factual but spiritual.'
Stephen Orr's The Night Parrots is and is not Benjamin 'Benno' Gerlach's book, but elderly Benno's memories are. Orr has based them on the actual 19-day journey across the Australian Western Desert from Hermannsburg to Horseshoe Bend, taken by the Lutheran pastor Carl Strehlow and his family in 1922, and later recorded by Strehlow's son, Theo (Ted). As remembered by Orr's elderly Benno, this journey is 'real but not real', 'imagined' and 'factual'. It is also vivid, immersive storytelling.
In 1998, what Benno wants to record is not just his own memories of that journey - the day-by-day struggle with exhausted horses and donkeys; the broken dray wheel; the boggy sands and the draining heat; the worry - but also his father's ethnographic notes and collection, his dictionary of Aboriginal languages, and the journal he kept as pastor of the Lutheran Mission at Hermannsburg, a settlement in the desert 125 kilometres west of Alice Springs.
Benno has lived a full life, working as a university lecturer, a ranger, a Western Desert Patrol Officer, all the time wanting to record the way his father had done everything in his power to help and protect the Aboriginal people who came to his mission. His memories wander from past to present, often segueing from one to the other, so that a fragment of play with his childhood siblings and friends at Hermannsburg, for example, flows seamlessly into memories of revisiting the mission years later with his first wife and their two children; then of working on specimens with his second wife Kate; and then to a recent memory of telling his young grandson, Tom, the story behind one of the artefacts that had been given to his father by an Aboriginal elder. Sometimes this flow from one place and time to another is confusing, but it soon becomes familiar and easier, and it conveys realistically the ways memory works.
As Tom tells his classmates in a show-and-tell,
'My Grandpop was born on a mission in the desert, and when he was fourteen his dad got sick and they had to get him to this place called Horseshoe Bend, to get help. Right through the desert. Like some film or something. Then when he was older he was a... what was it, Grandpop?'
'A patrol officer.'
Benno remembers playing with his siblings and Aboriginal friends before the family returned briefly to Germany. His brothers and sister are left there with their grandparents when he and his parents return to Hermannsburg. He misses them, hears about them years later, and wonders why he was the only one chosen to return.
'I grew up minus these strangers, these child-ghosts of middle Europe. Sitting with Father beside a creek, notating the language, collecting ephedra for Mother, watching for the night parrot.'
When Martin Gerlach starts to become incapacitated by oedema, and nothing he tries from his Manual for Medical Staff Corps (1883) helps, Aboriginal Ludwig, who works for the pastor on the station, 'runs' all the way to Alice Springs to send a message to the mission authorities asking for a car to take the pastor to a doctor. Telling how he ran and flew and sang, and how his people helped him to get there and back so fast, Ludwig says:
'I got the grass and waved it about like this, like it was the sun, and the sun could stay high in the sky so I could get all the way to Alice. I put it in a tree, in a knot hole, and it stayed there, holding up the sky, and I ran like a rabbit, singing whatever I could think of. "The snake's tail is hissing through the air" or "Jesus loves me".'
The Mission authorities refuse to send a car, so a journey by dray and cart becomes essential. An armchair 'throne' is strapped to the cart for Martin to sit in. He needs help to get up and down, so Ludwig accompanies them. So, too, do Jamy, an Aboriginal boy who had suffered brain damage; and Silas, who had been blinded in a measles outbreak, and who knows the scriptures by heart and will preach them at every possible opportunity (much to Benno's mother's irritation). Both of them have been looked after by Father Martin and love him.
The mission teacher, Ignatz Beck, who no longer believes in his work and is anxious to leave, also travels with them, but Benno has discovered that Beck is a predatory paedophile. Martin refuses to listen to this; Benno's mother, who is acerbic and cold towards Benno, also detests Beck; so his presence is unwelcome and there is constant tension.
Benno, day-by-day remembers the journey - his companions, his earlier memories of them, the way they all help his increasingly immobile father, the beauty and the richness and the dangers of the land they struggle through, and the disasters they have to overcome. He suppresses any thought that his father might die, although he comes to understand that Martin is relying on him to continue his work and keep his records.
There are occasional meetings in the desert with others:
'An hour later, Jack Fountain came along on his camel. Old Jack. Our once-a-week Jack, heading for Hermannsburg on His Majesty's Postal Service. Hooves, blinkers and long lashes; the way his body moved as an extension of Irene's. The two of them, no rush; the various mail bags and pots and pans hanging off the old girls' hump.'
Jack decides he wants to travel on the dray, so Benno must ride the camel.
'Camels are shit. They jag from side to side, up and down, bruise your arse bone. They have one speed, and attitude, and they smell like piss. I felt like I was falling off though I never did. I watched the others comfortable on the dray, and said, 'Does anyone want a go?''
Before Jack leaves them, the camel helps when they get bogged in sand, and again (sort of) when they come to a tricky river crossing, but it is almost disastrous for Benno.
The journey, the land, the people, all of Orr's characters come to life in this book, as do the complexities of what Parson Gerlach was doing in his work at the mission. He is the most complex character in the book, distant from Benno, who longs for closeness with his father.
'He insisted but doubted; worked, but wondered why; converted, but came to see that the people were better off with their own familiar uncertainties.'
The pastor has learned their beliefs and understands them as an alternative, and acceptable, way of explaining the world.
Orr's The Night Parrots is a compelling story, based on fact, and it also reflects the belief and purpose that people like Parson Gerlach lived by, the hardship of their lives, the things that they changed for the good, the things we now think of as bad, and the things that they could not change or, like Martin, did not want to.
In his author's note, Orr is philosophical:
'Many, I guess, will come to this story with doubts... So, perhaps what's described here, as with Carl's attempt to reach Horseshoe Bend, is no more than a journey through inhospitable landscapes... the story of a father and a son.'
It is more than that. It is a story told by a man living his life's memories, personal and often moving. It is a story that tells of Aboriginal life and culture, and how they became woven into Pastor Martin Gerlach's own beliefs. And, as Benno and Tom stand in front of a newly-restored night parrot specimen in an Adelaide museum, arguing about who claimed that the night parrot was 'just a story, a blackfella story', Benno is happy that in the present 'everything just keeps going'
Being
Rachel E. Menzies & Ross G. Menzies
Allen & Unwin
https://www.allenandunwin.com
9781761471438, 36.99 AUD
Allen & Unwin
https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Rachel-E.-Menzies-and-Ross-G.-Menzies-Being-9781761471438
This is an interesting and challenging book.
In their Prologue, father and daughter psychologists Rachel and Ross Menzies explain that:
Between the ages of five and ten years the child will learn that all living objects... are destined to die and disassemble. Nothing is permanent; nothing is safe. Unfortunately, as the child's recognition of death grows, so does the emergence of an 'inner voice' - an internal commentator that can create anxiety and worry even when there are no immediate threats.
They go on to state that in adulthood this inner voice 'savages us with definitive statements' and is 'horrible and mean spirited'.
Do I have an inner voice? Yes, it's busy arguing with the authors throughout this book. Is it 'savage' and 'mean-spirited'? No. It is not telling me I am to blame for disagreeing with experts whose views are based on years of training, research and experience. My inner voice is weighing the evidence and judging the way it is presented - which is authoritative, and uses emotive language in clinical anecdotes and easily digested fragments. I am enjoying myself.
What am I arguing about?
The authors proudly confess to being materialists. In their view 'there is only matter, only brain tissue and nothing more'. And they agree with cognitive scientist Guy Claxton's claim that 'Mind is a designer language for the functions that the brain carries out.'
Fair enough, that is their opinion. But they casually dismiss centuries of learned philosophical argument about what is known as 'the mind/body question'. They describe Descartes Cartesian Dualism (sometimes referred to as 'The Ghost in the Machine' theory of mind) as 'silly'; and Epiphenominalism (another form of dualism) as espousing sensations and ideas that are like 'the steam arising from the steam engine - they don't do anything or have any impact on us'.
They wriggle out of discussing every other mind/body theory by claiming that 'We see it as essential to react to the inner voice as if it were a separate entity to ourselves'; and that 'only by reacting to the voice as if it were another creature can we achieve distance from it'.
We, ourselves, are separate entities, unable to share the experiences of others, 'psychologically and emotionally isolated' from them and unable to 'connect with them in the way we connect with the self'. 'How could we cope with all the daily happenings on this planet if this wasn't the way?' We must remain 'in our own bubble' and 'this terrible existential isolation will challenge us across the entire course of our lives'.
Oh dear! Is life really that bad?
What else do I question?
The clinical studies that the authors quote to support their views are described too briefly for the reader to make a clear assessment of their validity. Six questions about worrying are offered in one example. Individuals are asked to indicate agreement or disagreement, on a scale of 1 to 4, with statements that 'Worrying helps me to': 'avoid problems in the future'; 'remain organised'; 'get things organised in my mind'; 'cope'; 'solve problems'; 'work well'.
Any philosopher will ask, first, for a definition of 'worrying'. This is not supplied. Does worrying imply anxiety? Planning what to cook for dinner tonight might make me choose a 4 (4 = agree very much) for several of these questions, but I am not anxious.
In another chapter, Ross Menzies, who did his PhD on phobias, describes an experiment on 'fear of heights'. Are phobias irrational? Panic on the lowest rungs of a well-fixed ladder may be irrational, but is it caused by our inner voice arguing with us to protect ourselves?
Babies, who according to the authors have not yet developed an inner voice, and cats, who may not have an inner voice at all, have been shown in many experiments to instinctively avoid apparent precipices. Certainly, as adults, we can use avoidance therapy to overcome our phobias, but if we ignore an uncontrolled visceral reaction to heights, spiders, snakes etc., having learned to 'turn off' our inner voice, is that not dangerous? Where does instinct come in all this?
The 'inner voice' underlies everything in this book. It is 'not just loud, dominating our waking moments but it separates us from all others'. It is responsible for our 'existential isolation':
The phenomenologists are as correct today as they were a century ago. It is the nature of being human that we must spend our days detached from everything around us. After all, we are no more that a bunch of sense organs loosely connected to a stick we call the spinal column.
The search for self - 'Who am I?' - is also driven by the inner voice, sometimes pathologically. One hypothetical clinical example offered is the case of 'Scott', whose inner voice constantly tells him he is 'an evil psychopath (albeit a poor excuse for one since he'd never taken an evil action)'. Who was he really, and how could he ever know?
Scott's feelings and actions are vividly described, as are those of others in clinical presentations the authors have come across in their studies. These descriptions are fascinating and make the book interesting reading but the application of clinical presentations to the lives of those who do not seek psychological help is questionable. Sometimes the therapies discussed, often with their historical origins and the results of clinical experience, are generally useful, sometimes not.
A chapter discussing the need for meaning in life begins with a quote from Shakespeare:
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
Macbeth at this moment in his life had a lot to deal with, and few of us will face the horrors he faced. However, we might well conclude, as he does, that life is 'a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury', and we may wonder whether our days of routine, and our world of repeated wars and chaos, have any meaning.
It seems, however, that the most important factor influencing our mental health is the presence of hope, and apparently 'hope is a trainable psychological concept'. It has been found that there are 'many benefits' to 'teaching children about hope in the formative period of adolescence'. Too late for Macbeth, but an encouraging prospect for those seeking to prevent existential angst and depression in later life.
Perhaps the most contentious chapters in the book are those on 'The Lure of the Gods' and 'The Illusion of Freedom'. Both emphasise the domination of cause and effect on our actions.
The mood of the first can be judged by the statement that:
Religion offers a handy solution to life's forks in the road, telling us how we should think, feel and act. But a strict guideline for all life can just as easily suffocate us.
The claims of the second ignore centuries of learned philosophical debate over cause and effect versus freedom of choice. Science now, it seems, has irrefutably proved that 'you are an electrical machine devoid of free will, playing out your hardware and software. You are no more and no less.' Forget randomness, or the fact that scientific 'truths' are hypothetical and are always open to disproof. 'We are simply "bags of atoms" that must obey the laws of physics' and 'It's our biological nature that ultimately rules out free will.'
A couple of arguments against this view are presented and demolished, but the authors dodge many others by declaring that their intention:
is to explore the problems that seem to arise for some individuals when they face the possibility that they are no more than atoms in action.
They go on to discuss feelings such as anger, hatred, shame, regret, and especially fear of our own death, and to argue that we should understand that we are all 'machines', and therefore such feelings are unnecessary and we should 'smile at the decisions we've made', because 'these were the only paths that we could have chosen'.
It seems that words like 'decisions' and 'chosen' cannot be avoided.
So, what is the biological purpose of feelings, especially those powerful feelings of grief, angst and despair? Why do we have them, and must we abandon biological explanations of evolution and the fight for survival and rely just on physics?
If we have no free will, can we choose to 'conquer' those malevolent voices in our heads? Why are they there? Where do they come from?
What is the purpose of the arguments in this book that we should simply accept 'being', as the Ancient Greek Epicureans and Stoics did, and focus our 'attention and desire squarely on behaviors within our complete control', when we apparently have no choice in the matter?
If we have no agency, then the authors have wasted time and energy trying to convince us to accept (choose?) their view.
'It's harder to be human than to be a hamster or a herring'. This makes a catchy subtitle, but if we are equally animals responding to our preconditioning in our need to stay alive, can this be true? And how could we ever know?
There is much to think about in this book. And much to argue about, too.
Dr Ann Skea, Reviewer
https://ann.skea.com/THHome.htm
Carl Logan's Bookshelf
Crankin!: Power and Resilience in Washington DC's Go-Go Culture
Alona Wartofsky, Charles C. Stephenson Jr., and Kato Hammond
Georgetown University Press
www.press.georgetown.edu
9781647127367, $39.95, PB, 340pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Crankin-Power-Resilience-Washington-Culture/dp/164712736X
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/crankin-alona-wartofsky/1149748032
Synopsis: Go-go is the heart and soul of Washington, DC's African American culture - a source of resilience for the community and a way to celebrate Black lives. As the soundtrack of the District since the mid-1970s, go-go was designated the official music of Washington in 2020, and it has been incorporated into music genres such as hip-hop and R&B for decades.
Crankin! offers a rich narrative packed with photos that highlight go-go's key figures, bands, and moments - spanning fifty years from its beginnings all the way to its central role in the #BLM protests in 2020 and the #DontMuteDC and Moechella movements. This sweeping history of go-go music culture details the life of Chuck Brown, the "godfather of go-go," and documents the history of the genre's early pioneers, Trouble Funk, Rare Essence, and Experience Unlimited (EU). The book also covers EU's 1988 number one hit, "Da Butt," go-go's gospel and grown 'n' sexy subgenres, go-go's international impact, the bouncebeat sound, go-go lifestyles, activism, and, finally, the homecoming as go-go artists brought Chuck Brown's African-inspired beat to Africa.
Crankin! will entertain and inform fans of go-go as well as African American and American-created music; musicologists; scholars of American culture and subcultures; and readers interested in DC history.
Critique: Go-go music is subgenre of funk music. Collaboratively co-authored by the team of Alona Wartofsky, Charles Stephenson Jr., and Kato Hammond, and published by the Georgetown University Press, "Crankin!: Power and Resilience in Washington DC's Go-Go Culture" is a definitive and illustrated history of go-go music and culture. Of special and particular value to readers with an interest in Washington, DC's African American music culture (along side Hip-Hop and R&B), this large format (8.5 x 11) paperback edition of "Crankin!" is a fascinating and informative cultural history that is a unique and unreservedly recommended pick for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Contemporary African-American Music/Culture collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "Crankin!" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $39.95).
Editorial Note #1: Alona Wartofsky is a former culture editor and reporter for The Washington Post. She has been reporting about go-go since the mid-'80s, and her stories about go-go culture have appeared in The Washington Post, Washington City Paper, the Village Voice, Spin magazine, and LA Weekly.
Editorial Note #2: Charles C. Stephenson Jr. is the co-author of The Beat: Go-Go Music from Washington, DC, the original manager for Experience Unlimited, and former chairman of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
Editorial Note #3: Kato Hammond is a go-go musician, author, publisher, and journalist. He is the owner and creator of Take Me Out To The Go-Go, Inc. (TMOTTGoGo) -- the first website, magazine, and online radio station covering the go-go music culture.
Carl Logan
Reviewer
Clint Travis' Bookshelf
Heaven
Katie Skelly
Fantagraphics
www.fantagraphics.com
9798875002243, $19.99, HC, 100pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Katie-Skelly/dp/B0FWHR5Q9H
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/heaven-katie-skelly/1148540919
Synopsis: Out past the edge of town, there exists a strip club called Heaven that only some can find. Some say it's a mirage. Others say you can't miss the giant neon heels lighting up the desert night skies.
Dolly can't find a place to belong. After losing her identity as a gymnast and navigating family turbulence, she's adrift from school and friends. When a mysterious presence beckons her to Heaven, she wonders if she may just have found her place -- but just what does it want in return?
Critique: Four young women investigate a vanishing strip club in this supernatural, surreal graphic novel in "Heaven", author/illustrator Katie Skelly's first graphic novel since her acclaimed "Maids", published in 2020. "Heaven" reveals what happens when quintessential cool girl characters let their guards down and let the world in. With a supernatural strip club backdrop and an eye-popping sense of color, this graphic novel edition of "Heaven" from Fantagraphics reinforces Skelly's place as one of the most distinctive voices working in contemporary comics today. While highly recommended for a mature readership, it should be noted that this hardcover graphic novel edition of "Heaven" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.99).
Editorial Note: Katie Skelly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Skelly) is a Los Angeles-based cartoonist whose books include My Pretty Vampire (2017), Maids (2020), and The Agency (2023). She is the co-host of the comics podcast Thick Lines, editor of the Viscere horror comics anthology series, and creator of the Bad Girl Tarot and Oracle decks. She holds a B.A. in Art History from Syracuse University and was awarded the Emerging Artist Prize at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus in 2015.
Clint Travis
Reviewer
Debra Gaynor's Bookshelf
Echo of Atlantis: The Umdedu Codex
KP Gillen
https://echoatlantis.com
Inkquest Publishing
https://inkquest.store
9798240968211, $24.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Echo-Atlantis-%C5%AAmd%C3%ABd%C5%AD-KP-Gillen-ebook/dp/B0GX2YHJ8W
I receiver an ARC of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
I'm unsure where to start. This book has great potential but needs a lot of tweaking. The plot is interesting and unique. This book needs more than tweaking it needs editing, a lot of editing. To the author: this is your book. I'm sure you could see the characters climb off the page and play the scenes in front of you. Unfortunately, you have to share that with the reader for the reader cannot see those scenes unless you share them. The reader is dependent on you to allow the book to tell the story. Allow the characters to jump off the page and act out their role. There are missing sentences. Let's call it missing links. The plot jumps from one scene to another, and the reader cannot figure out how they got there. There are times when the author could have built up the momentum but didn't... that is a lost opportunity. Build momentum to make an event more meaningful. Make the event stick with the reader. Give the reader a WOW so he/she can give you a WOW. Let's look at the ending... what a perfect time for a cliffhanger. Write something that will keep readers excited. Write something that will have readers begging for the next book in the series.
I must point out the POVs. They switch too quickly and you have no idea who's POV it was. I prefer books with 2 points of view. The rapid switch is confusing.
Summary:
Living among mere mortals, the descendants of Atlantis have been hiding for thousands of years. They have hidden their skills, ancient knowledge. They have been waiting until the time is right.
There is a special school located in the American Southwest, Kachina Academy for the Gifted and Talented. This isn't a conventional school. This is a school where those with special powers/gifts learn how to use them and how to shield them. This is a school where those with kinetic abilities, the ability to use their power of their thoughts, to move matter. Those with telepathic minds learn how to use their skill and when to use it. Those with the ability to manipulate dreams and visions. Deep within the Academy lies something older, something evil, and it is waking up.
In this tale we learn of an ancient prophecy concerning Isabella and 3 other teenagers. We know an evil spirit is working on Isabella. The spirit plans to use her to release a gang of old, trapped, spirits that have been ensnared between realms. Elijah suspects (this happened in the past) Maximillian was led by an evil spirit to do bad things; The evil spirit bugging Isabella is leading her to commit the same infractions. Elijah comes to suspect; Maximillian might not have been acting on his own. Maximillian's daughter is attempting to continue what her father failed to accomplish.
Debra Gaynor, Reviewer
www.hancockclarion.com
https://www.facebook.com/book.reviews.by.debra.2025
Fred Siegmund's Bookshelf
The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America
Ira Shapiro
Rowman & Littlefield
c/o Bloomsbury
https://www.bloomsbury.com
9781538163979, $29.95 hc / $19.75 Kindle, 241 pages
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-McConnell-Republicans-Abandoned-America/dp/1538163977
In the first sentence of his preface author Ira Shapiro declares The Betrayal as "the most catastrophic failure of government in American History." A brief discussion of constitutional checks and balances reminds readers our Constitution should be able to prevent autocratic takeover of government. There follows a summary listing of failures of government with Mitch McConnell directing the Republicans and the U.S. Senate, along with a reminder that Trump needed McConnell more than McConnell needed Trump.
The book has eleven chapters and a brief epilogue. The first chapter reviews some Senate history from not that long ago when Mike Mansfield managed the Senate and persuaded Republicans and Democrats to respect each other and their constitutional duties. The second chapter reviews the career and work of Mitch McConnell before Trump took office; especially during the Obama administration.
The remainder of the book covers the period from Trump's 2016 election to the end of 2021. The chapters recount Mitch McConnell managing his political agenda and on multiple occasions managing Trump during Trump's first term. McConnell worked hard to repeal Obama Care but fell short, his only personal failure. Next, Shapiro narrates the maneuvers that put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. There follows the story of saving Brett Kavanaugh for another Supreme Court seat.
After the Democrats took charge of the House following the mid-term elections, McConnell announced his return to obstructing Democrats and Congress in any way possible. The House voted to impeach Trump after his attempt to extort political favors from Ukraine officials, which McConnell predictably opposed and defeated. Shapiro narrates McConnell's strategy for a Senate trial with its foregone conclusion.
By now in early 2020 with the Covid-19 Pandemic under way, Shapiro tells the story of Trump at his "super spreader" worst with McConnell "curiously disengaged" while occasionally maneuvering between common sense and partisan politics as suited his personal agenda. Then RGB dies and McConnell swings into action to get Amy Coney Barrett, a Scalia protege, onto the Supreme Court before the 2020 election.
Next comes the 2020 presidential election in a chapter entitled appropriately "The Big Lie." McConnell refused to condemn Trump for this election denial, which he described as "a few legal inquiries." When McConnell belated realized that Trump's misconduct had ended his run as majority leader, he finally got angry enough to speak against him and defend the election in a Senate speech Shapiro quotes in its entirety. Unfortunately for McConnell his speech was delivered on the morning of January 6.
Shapiro recounts daily events leading up to the attack and then a concise discussion of the January 6 events. The attack was so violent and so obviously planned by Trump that the House Democratic majority had enough votes to bring another impeachment. The account of the impeachment and trial follows where Shapiro provides the evidence that McConnell could have delivered the Senate votes to convict but found an excuse to vote in Trump's favor.
The book winds down considering the prospects for President Joe Biden in a Senate with a 50-50 split that included erratic allies like Joe Manchin and opponents like Mitch McConnell. A foul mouthed and disruptive ex-president, still a profitable topic for media coverage, attacked every Biden effort.
The stories narrated through the book come peppered with the conduct and quoted views of many people. Of course, there is Trump, but other names come up many times such as dithering Susan Collins, the amoral Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander, Amy Klobachar, Charles Grassley, Joe Manchin, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Rudy Giuliani. Still the book remains primarily about the political misconduct of Mitch McConnell and his legacy. Shapiro suggests a legacy for McConnell, but given the brevity of his comments he appears more inclined to be let McConnell's record speak for itself.
While the record is clear, Shapiro uses his final pages to remind us McConnell served as majority leader longer than anyone while suggesting a broader and more damaging legacy than what he did to remake the Supreme Court and save Trump from his various follies. While these make up the primary topics of the book, Shapiro mentions McConnell's work cutting taxes for the rich, deregulating corporate America, and his fight to end Biden Administration efforts to address climate change, an especially unconscionable misconduct for an 80 year old who will not live to bear the consequences of his work. In summary conclusion, "McConnell has ultimately come down on the side of polarization and disunion rather than compromise and reconciliation." From McConnell's published memoir, he comments "there is not a page in it that shows concern about the people of Kentucky."
The book ended without exploring polarization and disunion in more detail or how much McConnell has pursued the corporate agenda like a devoted follower and paid employee. Corporate America promotes and benefits from the racial and ethnic hatreds that divides the electorate. Division turns the working class into warring factions and keeps them in feeble disarray while allowing corporate America to take their wealth by intentionally impoverishing the working class.
The book reads easily as well organized and well documented journalism. There are 30 pages of notes and a four page essay on sources that serves as a bibliography for any interested readers. Betrayal serves as another book on the continuing decline of the United States. Remember the book's publication date of 2022; well before the second term. Maybe disunion should be replaced by disintegration
Fred Siegmund, Reviewer
www.Americanjobmarket.blogspot.com
Jack Mason's Bookshelf
Forest First: Timber Building
Kiel Moe
Actar D
c/o Actar Publishers
https://actar.com
9781638402015, $39.95, PB, 288pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Forest-First-Building-Kiel-Moe/dp/1638402019
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/forest-first-kiel-moe/1147293402
Synopsis: The specificity of regional forests suggests much about the current and future prospects of non-extractive building design: building that tends and mends its terrestrial basis rather than takes, makes, and breaks it. How might we design and build in a non-extractive manner?
To address that evolutionary question "Forest First: Timber Building" by American architect Kiel Moe considers the recursive relationship between forests and timber building. This exceptional study puts the forest first and offers a detailed immersion into forest history, forest stand dynamics, forest ecology, forest-building carbon dynamics, and possible future forest trajectories as the pretext for thinking about timber building technics.
The specificity of regional forests suggests much about the prospect of non-extractive building design: building that tends and mends its terrestrial basis rather than takes, makes, and breaks it. Building activity can augment and improve forest conditions as an instance of regenerative design and as a path towards reconciliation, but only if conceived, valued, and practiced in ways distinct from normative design and construction practices.
The future should no longer be a colony of present design practices that treat building as an art and science of extraction. By putting the forest first its conception of timber building technics, "Forest First: Timber Building" develops a more regenerative approach to the terrestrial relations of forest-building.
Critique: Of special and particular interest to timber utilizing architects and forest timber managers, "Forest First: Timber Building" by academician and architect Kiel Kenneth Moe must be considered as essential reading. Informatively enhanced for the reader's benefit with the inclusion of a two page Forest Foreword by Dr. John Kush, a fourteen page Introduction (From Taking-and Making to Tending-and-Mending), a number of illustrated charts and images. "Forest First: Timber Building" is comprised of individual chapters on the subjects of forest themed values, geology, northeast history, adaptations, carbon, and forest-building. Exceptionally 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation, "Forest First: Timber Building" is a unique and unreservedly recommended pick for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Forest Management & Architecture collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.
Editorial Note: Kiel Kenneth Moe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiel_Moe) is a registered practicing American architect. Moe has taught architecture and energy at University of Illinois at Chicago, Syracuse University, Northeastern University and Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Jack Mason
Reviewer
John Burroughs' Bookshelf
Jazzed: Jack Cole and Twentieth-Century American Dance
Debra Levine
The University Press of Kentucky
www.kentuckypress.com
9781985904552, $40.00, HC, 384pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Jazzed-Twentieth-Century-American-Screen-Classics/dp/1985904551
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/jazzed-debra-levine/1148283846
Synopsis: Renowned dancer and choreographer Jack Cole (1911-1974), whose birth name was John Ewing Richter, was a one-of-a-kind artist who initiated a gripping style of theatrical jazz dance that forever vanquished the vaudeville kickline. Cole's distinctive four-decade career choreographing for stage, screen, and his iconic nightclub act began during the Great Depression. He transformed early modern dance by injecting angularity, syncopation, and body isolations derived from Indian, Latin American, African, and Caribbean dance forms.
At the forefront of Broadway innovation, Cole worked on shows like Ziegfeld Follies of 1943, Kismet (1953), and Man of La Mancha (1965). But his greater renown came as a film choreographer, with quintessential contributions to Gilda (1946), There's No Business LikeShow Business (1954), Les Girls (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959), and Let's Make Love (1960). In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Cole shepherded Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, who were considered nondancing movie stars, through an array of eye-catching production numbers. His work on Monroe's exceptional performance in "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" helped catapult Monroe to superstardom.
Cole also collaborated with Gwen Verdon, Mitzi Gaynor, Rita Hayworth, and Chita Rivera. He influenced Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, Gene Kelly, and Michael Bennett. Yet Cole's impact on American dance has long been overlooked.
With lucid prose and unmatched research pulled from film and art archives, public events, memoirs, and interviews, "Jazzed: Jack Cole and Twentieth-Century American Dance" by Debra Levine takes readers on a journey through Cole's professional and personal transitions.
Levine not only focuses on Cole's choreography career at MGM, Columbia Pictures, and Twentieth Century-Fox but also uncovers details of his obsessive training, his struggles with depression and alcoholism, his proclivity for violence, and his encounters with homophobia. Levine winnows fact from fiction to deliver an insightful, entertaining biography of the dance renegade whose unique brand of theatrical jazz dance still resonates in nightclubs, music videos, and musicals today.
Critique: "Jazzed: Jack Cole and Twentieth-Century American Dance" by Debra Levine is a deftly crafted, informative, detailed, insightful, and compelling biography that effectively lifts dance and choreographer Jack Cole out of an undeserved obscurity and documents his place in the 20th Century history of American dance. Informative enhanced for the reader's benefit with the inclusion of an eight page Bibliography, forty-six pages of Notes, and a fourteen page Index, "Jazzed: Jack Cole and Twentieth-Century American Dance" is an unreservedly recommended pick for personal, professional, community, and college/university library American Dance History/Biography collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for readers with an interest in choreography/choreographers in general, and Jazz Dancing in particular that this hardcover edition of "Jazzed: Jack Cole and Twentieth-Century American Dance" from the University of Kentucky Press is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $38.00).
Editorial Note: Debra Levine is a Hollywood-fascinated dance critic whose discovery of Jack Cole turned her aesthetic world on its head. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Dance Magazine, HuffingtonPost, and more. She is the founder of artsmeme, a fine arts blog at https://artsmeme.com/.
John Burroughs
Reviewer
Julie Summers' Bookshelf
Amarisa's Cooking Pot: Tales of Life in All Its Wonders
Desiree Zamorano
University of Nevada Press
www.unpress.nevada.edu
9781647792411, $26.95, PB, 232pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Amarisas-Cooking-Pot-Tales-Wonders/dp/164779241X
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/amarisas-cooking-pot-desiree-zamorano/1147512042
Synopsis: "Amarisa's Cooking Pot: Tales of Life in All Its Wonders" is a riveting collection of short stories whose worlds collide and connect between the fantastic and the ordinary. Startling in their breadth and depth, these 21 stories comprising Desiree Zamorano's short story collection, "Amarisa's Cooking Pot", range from the quietly desperate to the gloriously fantastical, representing Mexican American culture among the characters who are guided by gifts of enchantment or confronted with illusory events shaped by deeply human and enlightening emotions.
Each individual story is dedicated to capturing something ineffable, an emotional truth, a moment of beauty or realization, a moment of calm, or a spark of fury. What does it mean to be alive in a capricious world? Of special note is how, as an author, Desiree Zamorano allows her readers to explore this question beautifully, and memorably, long after the last page is turned.
Critique: Original, exceptional, deftly crafted, and a fun, fascinating, memorable read from start to finish, "Amarisa's Cooking Pot: Tales of Life in All Its Wonders" by Desiree Zamorano is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended pick for personal, community, and college/university library Contemporary American Literary Fiction collections and college/university library supplemental Creative Writing/Literary Fiction curriculum studies lists. It should be noted that his paperback edition of "Amarisa's Cooking Pot: Tales of Life in All Its Wonders" from the University of Nevada Press is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $21.45).
Editorial Note: There is an online listing of books by Desiree Zamorano at FantasticFiction: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/z/desiree-zamorano
Julie Summers
Reviewer
Margaret Lane's Bookshelf
Topless
Jill Hoffman
Box Turtle Press
c/o Attitude Art, Incorporated
https://mudfish.org
9781893654419, $29.00, PB, 234pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Topless-Jill-Hoffman/dp/1893654419
Synopsis: "Topless" is a fascinating novel by Jill Hoffman that begins with Bliss Barnes opening her antique kimono and examining her breasts in the mirror. A banker is on the phone who wants her to describe them to him. From this low point in her life she embarks on a series of blind dates and surgeries.
The horrors of each medical procedure (core biopsy, wired mammogram, chemo itself, Upper G.I series with small bowel follow-through, plastic surgery) compete with sad date after date.
After an operation, her breast is balled like a man's sock that just came out of the dryer. She was taught that it is a woman's job to be beautiful. A divorced woman, a poet and painter, with two grown children, she longs for love and sexual fulfillment. Her battle to achieve the latter, and her desire for her breasts to remain matching, is the backdrop to a moving and amusing story of motherhood and modern life.
Even her Shih Tzu, Sachi, whose name means Bliss in Japanese, is an ambiguous source of comfort and threat.
The men she meets, Mr. Looseleaf, Mr. Bike, Older is Better, the vulture from Sylvia Plath's poem, "Death & Co," the "Philip Roth-flavored math professor", with whom she and her friend Hedda form a triangle, provide distraction from trauma for Bliss and dark humor for the reader.
There are many triangles. Bliss lives in Tribeca. She paints herself nude and one such suitor points to the triangle on the canvas between her legs and calls it her signature: "the triangle beneath Canal Street" he says. "Why are there two of everything?" he asks. "I like to try again", Bliss says. "Maybe there's a second man, too," he says, looking around.
Author Jill Hoffman keeps the reader keeps looking for the right man too, until the last chapter.
Critique: Original, exceptional, deftly crafted, and recommended for mature readers, "Topless" by Jill Hoffman is an extraordinary novel about breast cancer and dating that will have a unique resonance with readers having an interest in a 'women's medical and social issues' themed story. "Topless" is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended pick for personal reading lists, as well as community, and college/university library Contemporary American Literary Fiction collections.
Editorial Note: Jill Hoffman has a BA from Bennington, a Master's degree from Columbia, and a Ph.D from Cornell. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974 - 1975. She has taught at Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Bard, The University of North Carolina, and The New School. Presently, she teaches a Mudfish Writing Workshop on Zoom from her Tribeca studio. She is also a painter and has shown in Theta Gallery. She has also painted the covers for many of the Box Turtle Press books.
Hoffman's first novel Jilted was published by Simon & Schuster in 1993. Her second novel, Stoned, was Mudfish Fiction Series #1. Kimono with Young Girl Sleeves, is Mudfish Individual Poet Series #20. Before that, Box Turtle Press published her collection, black diaries, poems, in 2000, and The Gates of Pearl, a hybrid book-length poem in 2018. Hoffman founded Box Turtle Press in 1983 which has since published 3 novels, 25 issues of Mudfish, and 21 Mudfish Individual Poet Series.
Margaret Lane
Reviewer
Mark Walker's Bookshelf
Six Who Stopped the Steal
Nancy Hicks Marshall
Nugget Press LLC
https://nuggetpress.com
9798993901213, $18.95 pbk / $5.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Stopped-Steal-Nancy-Hicks-Marshall/dp/B0GSTZBV43
I met the author at a conference of Arizona Professional Writers. Over lunch, we recognized our common interest in immigration politics, but we also have common interests in social justice and democratic institutions - my focus was on Guatemala, and hers was on Arizona. Her latest book, Six Who Stopped the Steal, arrives at a moment when American democracy feels both fragile and fiercely contested. With mid-term elections looming and public trust in institutions strained, Marshall offers a timely, deeply researched, and morally anchored account of six elected officials - Republicans and Democrats - who refused to bend to pressure, conspiracy, or partisan intimidation during the 2020 election certification process. Her central argument is simple but profound: integrity is still possible in American politics, and courage is not the exclusive domain of any one party.
Marshall writes with a clear commitment to justice and democratic norms. She does not hide her belief that truth matters, that elections matter, and that public servants have a duty to uphold the Constitution even when doing so carries personal or political cost. What distinguishes her approach is that she does not romanticize these six officials. Instead, she presents them as ordinary people who made extraordinary choices that, in her view, helped prevent a constitutional crisis. Her Christian worldview, shared in varying degrees by the six officials she profiles, becomes a quiet but steady through-line: a belief in moral accountability, in the dignity of every person, and in the idea that public service is a calling rather than a career ladder.
One of the most compelling elements of the book is Marshall's account of how difficult it was to secure interviews with these officials. Many had been threatened, vilified, or politically isolated after refusing to endorse false claims about the election. Marshall described the painstaking process of identifying areas of commonality, faith, family, shared civic values - that helped build trust. Her persistence reflects both journalistic discipline and pastoral sensitivity. She approaches each official not as a partisan symbol but as a human being navigating fear, duty, and uncertainty. This relational groundwork becomes part of the story itself, revealing how fragile and personal the work of democracy can be.
A standout chapter, "Monsters," explores how cognitive dissonance can become a catalyst for growth rather than denial. Marshall argues that when individuals confront information that contradicts their beliefs, they face a choice: retreat into comforting falsehoods or step toward truth, however unsettling. The six officials she profiles chose the latter. Marshall uses the metaphor of "monsters" to describe the internal and external forces - fear, tribalism, misinformation - that must be faced down. Her treatment of cognitive dissonance is unusually hopeful: she suggests that the ability to learn new things and to revise one's understanding is not a weakness but a democratic virtue.
The book's 150 footnotes are not just for show; they reflect a serious commitment to documentation, transparency, and intellectual honesty. Marshall draws from public records, legislative transcripts, interviews, and media accounts to reconstruct the pressures these officials faced. In an era when political writing often substitutes opinion for evidence, her meticulous sourcing strengthens the book's credibility and underscores her belief that facts still matter. This scholarly rigor is one reason Six Who Stopped the Steal is poised to strengthen civic institutions: it models how to engage with political controversy without distortion.
With mid-term elections approaching, Marshall's book serves as both a warning and an invitation. The warning is clear: democratic institutions depend on individuals willing to uphold them, even when doing so is costly. The invitation is equally important: citizens, too, can choose integrity over outrage, discernment over conspiracy, and courage over cynicism. Marshall's profiles remind readers that democracy is not self-executing. It requires vigilance, humility, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths.
This book reminded me of Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy and Ted Sorensen, which celebrated eight U.S. senators who defied their own parties for the sake of conscience. Marshall's contribution is a contemporary counterpart, showing that the same moral steel can still be found in the twenty-first century.
Like Kennedy and Sorensen, Marshall is interested in the moral psychology of political courage. But where Profiles focused on senators operating within the insulated world of mid-century Washington, Marshall's subjects face a far more volatile environment - one shaped by social media, disinformation, and the erosion of shared civic narratives. Her book suggests that courage today requires not only defying one's party but resisting entire ecosystems of pressure. In that sense, Six Who Stopped the Steal may be even more relevant to contemporary readers than its predecessor.
The author's experience in faith-based leadership, her work in civic education and community engagement, and her personal commitment to reconciliation and dialogue enabled her to write a book that is both morally serious and narratively compelling.
About the Author:
Nancy Marshall is the award-winning author of both a children's book, A Rattler's Tale (2021), and an award from NFPW for children's fiction, 2022, and for A Dry Hate (2023), after First Place for fiction from NFPW (2024) and First Place for fiction, Arizona Authors Association (2024)
Marshall was born in New York, graduated from Smith College (MA), earned a master's in teaching from Wesleyan (CT), and obtained her law degree from Rutgers University (Newark, NJ). She spent several years teaching high school history and political science and also served as a field officer with the New York State Division of Civil Rights.
Upon completing her JD at Rutgers University (Newark, NJ), Marshall moved to Arizona, where she served for almost five years as Executive Director of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union.
Mark D. Walker, Reviewer
www.MillionMileWalker.com
Michael Carson's Bookshelf
Revenge is the Best Revenge
James A. Scott
Dunn G.O.A.
9798999255242, $29.99, HC, 394pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Revenge-Best-James-Scott/dp/B0HF7LY5VS
Synopsis: On the day (9/11) that the World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists, and many Americans lost colleagues, friends, and family. Later, terrorist lost their caliphate and their leaders. But neither side lost its thirst for revenge.
On the eve of Ramadan, thieves steal a U.S. nuclear device. Was it stolen by home-grown terrorists bent on setting the Middle East ablaze, or is it in the possession of Middle East terrorists who intend to detonate it on U.S. soil?
A Pentagon colonel with the answer is found dead in a sleazy Washington motel. Max Geller, now a consultant to the DC Metro police, and Greta Von Wiles, an Army intelligence officer, are assigned to investigate the colonel's death. Their investigation takes them from New York City to a secret base in California and across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean, and into the Middle East.
As they get closer to the thieves and uncover a plot to trigger a White House coup, the two become targets of a CIA hit team and an arms dealer. The surprises never stop.
Critique: Original, deftly crafted, and a riveting read for fans of contemporary action/adventure suspense thrillers involving political corruption, black-market arms dealers, and the unexpected. Showcasing author James A. Scott's genuine and impressive flair for the kind of character and narrative driven storytelling style that is ideal for the genre, this hardcover edition of "Revenge is the Best Revenge" from Dunn G.O.A. is especially and unreservedly recommended for both personal reading lists and community library collections.
Editorial Note: James A. Scott (https: //JamesScottNovels.com) has Pentagon experience in oversight of Army intelligence, and as a paratrooper, battalion commander, and combat veteran. He lived and worked in Europe for 20 years and traveled from Ireland to North Africa, to the Baltic nations, Asia, and Australia. His novels reflect those travels.
Michael J. Carson
Reviewer
Robin Friedman's Bookshelf
John Dewey's Human Nature and Conduct: A Centennial Handbook
Leonard J. Waks and Andrea R. English, editors
Cambridge University Press
https://www.cambridge.org
9781009446396, $45.00 pbk / $42.75 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/John-Deweys-Human-Nature-Conduct/dp/1009446398
A Guide To Dewey's Human Nature And Conduct
John Dewey (1859- 1952) was an American pragmatist and naturalist philosopher whose influence has increased greatly in recent years. To mark the centennial of Dewey's 1916 book, "Democracy and Education", the philosophers Leonard J. Waks and Andrea R. English edited a volume "John Dewey and Education: A Centennial Handbook" which I have reviewed here. Waks and English have collaborated again as editors in this new volume of essays, "John Dewey's Human Nature and Conduct: A Centennial Handbook" (2026) to celebrate the centennial of Dewey's 1922 book, "Human Nature and Conduct" (HNC). The "Handbook" is a guide to Dewey's great book which aims to show how the many issues Dewey addressed remain important today.
In 1918, Dewey delivered three lectures at Stanford University which became the basis for "Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology." The book is a melding of philosophy and psychology written at a time when the disciplines had only recently been separated. In the Introduction, Dewey summarizes the aim of the book as "seriously setting forth a belief that the understanding of habit and of different types of habit is the key to social psychology, while the operation of impulse and intelligence gives the key to individualized mental activity. But they are secondary to habit so that mind can be understood in the concrete only as a system of beliefs, desires and purposes which are formed in the interaction of biological aptitudes with a social environment."
Dewey aims to "reconstruct" or to turn philosophical and ethical thinking on its head. His primary claim is that ethical thinking needs to be based upon human nature and that prior thinkers, both religious and secular, have failed to do this. Dewey sees a continuity between human nature and experience, the world of nature and the natural sciences, and wants particularly to resist a transcendental explanation for ethics (morals) and to allow for the importance of change and particularity.
The Handbook offers a guide to HNC both in breadth and in its specifics with 28 essays by a range of scholars. The book opens with a Foreword by Elizabeth Anderson which, unlike most of the essays in the volume, stresses the Hegelian roots of Dewey's thought. This is followed by an excellent overview of HNC by Waks and English.
The book is divided into three broad parts, each with a perceptive, stage-setting introduction. Part I "Ethical Theory" is introduced in an essay by Waks, "Dewey's Moral Psychology and Ethics." This Part consists of two Sections, "Dewey and Ethical Theory" (four essays) and "Main Concepts in Human Nature and Conduct" (five essays). These essays offer an overview of the breadth of HNC.
Part II is called "Education" and ties the themes of HNC in with Dewey's earlier work "Democracy and Education" and with the broad themes of morals, growth, and democracy. English introduces this part with her essay, "Education in a Changing World" followed by two lengthy sections of essays, "Education Habit and Growth" (seven essays) and "Education, Crisis and Possible Futures" (five essays).
Part III of the Handbook, "Contemporary Issues and Applications" begins with an Introduction by Waks, "Applied Ethics and Religious Reconstruction" followed by seven essays which explore the possible influence of HNC on serveral issues including environmental ethics, facing death, and sexual conduct. The final two essays offer reflections on HNC and religious themes.
This Handbook does justice to the richness and complexity of themes in Dewey's book. It shows how HNC is a work that rewards reading and study. The book encouraged me to revist and think again about HNC, and it has helped me understand the work. This is an excellent scholarly book that will help newcomers to HNC and to Dewey as well as readers familiar with Dewey's thought.
Hegel, Dewey, Democracy
Terry Pinkard
Cambridge University Press
https://www.cambridge.org
9781009555180, $23.75 pbk / $25.00 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Elements-Philosophy-Wilhelm-Friedrich/dp/1009555189
Hegel, Dewey, And Democracy
This short book is part of a series of "Elements" from Cambridge University Press each of which provides insight into the philosophy of Hegel and to philosophical trends before, during, and after his time. Sebastian Stein, Research Associate at Ruprecht-Karls- Universität Heidelberg and Joshua Wretzel, Assistant Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University are the editors of this series. The renowned Hegel scholar Terry Pinkard is the author of this Element, "Hegel, Dewey, Democracy". It is a rare privilege to have the benefit of Pinkard's thoughts in this book.
The German idealist Hegel (1770-1831) and the American pragmatist/ naturalist John Dewey (1859-1952) have a long, complex relationship. Both Hegel and Dewey were systematic philosophers in the sense that they wrote about a broad range of philosophical questions, including logic, metaphysics, ethics, social philosophy, aesthetics, and more and tried to integrate them. Dewey began his philosophical career as a Hegelian, adhering to a form of Hegel's Absolute Idealism. Dewey gradually abandoned Hegelianism, according to many scholars and to himself, at the beginning of the 20th century under the influence of the psychology of William James and of evolutionary theory. There has always been controversy about the Hegelian influence or "residue" in the latter thought of Dewey. That influence, on Dewey's social philosophy and philosophy of democracy, is according to Pinkard strong indeed. Pinkard's book develops Hegel's and Dewey's thought focusing on Democracy to show their relationship.
The book is short and extensively documented in the works of Hegel, Dewey, and secondary sources.The thought and writing of both Hegel and Dewey is notoriously difficult. Pinkard argues that by the elusive term "Geist" in his thought, Hegel meant "self-conscious life." Human life involves Geist both individually and collectively. For Hegel, Geist moves and progresses from one period to another. In his era, Hegel saw Geist as leading to a concept of Freedom through a concept of the good life, individually and collectively led. He captured his concept of the good life in the term "Stiilichkeit". With the change in time between Hegel and Dewey, especially with the growth of the industrial revolution, Dewey replaced Hegel's Sittlichkeit, according to Pinkard, with a robust conception of Democracy, not only as a form of government but more importantly as a way of life.
Pinkard develops his argument in the three short parts of this dense book. In the first part, Pinkard develops Hegel's understanding of Geist, of ethical life consisting of living together in the world as we find it, and of freedom.
In the second part, Pinkard begins with the division into "right Hegelians" and "left Hegelians" upon the master's death, discusses some forms of left Hegelianism, and works to place Dewey's thought in the tradition of left Hegelianism. He argues that Dewey "naturalized" Hegel's metaphysics to focus on experience, a notoriously elusive term, rather than logic or concepts. He shared with Hegel placing ethics and social philosophy in a social context or "being together" rather than in rampant individualism or collectivism. In the body of his study, Pinkard traces Dewey's understanding of freedom, the state, the nature of the public, to develop a broad concept of social democracy. The impetus for this development was the change in society from Hegel's day. The former philosopher envisioned a society of farmers, craftsmen and intellectuals (somewhat similar to Thomas Jefferson) but this vision was belied by the development of large corporations and the wage poverty of much of the population. The change in industrialization required a new social vision which Dewey saw as the development of Democracy in which everyone participated and had their voices heard. Other left Hegelians, such as Karl Marx, went in a different direction. Pinkard's study of Dewey draws on many works of this prolific philosopher, including the texts of lectures in China that Dewey gave from 1919-1921. These lectures have only recently been made available.
In the final part of his study, Pinkard ties Dewey's work into left Hegelianism, thus establishing a stronger connection between the two than is common in the literature. He finds that Dewey's thought opens the way to a concept that would have seemed almost contradictory to many philosophers, a concept of "Hegelian Democracy" in our difficult times. The book closes with a reference to the great American poet Walt Whitman who said ""I rate Hegel as Humanity's chiefest teacher and the choicest loved physician of my mind and soul," and "Only Hegel is fit for America - is large enough and free enough."
This challenging difficult book offers insights into both Hegel and Dewey and their relationship. It suggests how Dewey's vision of Democracy has strong Hegelian roots and suggests further how this vision may help in the understanding of our own difficult, changing time.
Chicago: A Novel
David Mamet
Mariner Books
c/o HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com
9780062797193, $26.99 hc / $7.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Thriller-Gangsters-Revenge-Mobbed-Up/dp/0062797190
City Of The Big Shoulders
Carl Sandburg's 1914 poem "Chicago" described its subject as the "City of the Big Shoulders." He wrote of Chicago, "They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys./ And they tell me you are crooked and I answer Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again." Yet, Sandburg praises his city: "Come and show me another city with lifted head so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning." He describes Chicago as "proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation". The poem suggests that Chicago, and perhaps the United States by extension, are to be loved, warts and all, for themselves and for what they are.
Poems are more concrete than novels, and I thought the theme of Sandburg's tribute to his city applied as well to the sprawling novel by David Mamet. Chicago is the central character in Mamet's 2018 novel. The novel uses Sandburg's nickname, "City of the Big Shoulders" and alludes throughout to the characteristics of Chicago in Sandburg's poem, especially its wickedness, gangsters, and its vibrancy and love of life. His book reminded me of Sandburg's poem as well as of novels set in Chicago by Nelson Algren, James Farrell and Saul Bellow. The book has a sharp ear for dialogue, for the profanity of the city, and for a sense of city streets, brothels, newsrooms, speakeasies, Irish, Italian, and Jewish gangs, waterfronts, and streetcars. David Manet is a prolific author of films, plays, and books. "Chicago: A Novel" was my first experience with his writing.
"Chicago" is set in the 1920s in the time of prohibition and of gang warfare between Al Capone in south Chicago and Dean O'Banion in north Chicago. The novel has a complex, involuted plot. In addition to the city, the primary character is Mark Hodge, a newspaper man and a veteran pilot of WWI. Hodge is tough, cynical with a philosophical and reflective streak. He is also a romantic as he falls in love with a young woman, Annie Walsh, whose father owns a flower shop that caters to the Irish underworld.
The story meanders and is slow to gain intensity. Midway in the novel, Annie is killed in Mark's presence by goons. After more meandering, Mark vows to track down and take revenge on the killers. His efforts to do this occupy the second half of the novel.
The story is much less important than the journey through the streets and people of 1920s Chicago. Mark's story is intertwined with gangland figures, including a cameo appearance by Al Capone himself, with killers, petty crooks, prostitutes singers, strippers, reporters and those trying to have a life for themselves in the city. The Leopold-Loeb murder case and Clarence Darrow's defense of the two young men also figure in the story. A main character in the story is Peekaboo, an African American madam of a high class brothel with whom Mark has many reflective conversations. Historical events from 1920s Chicago and from WW I are melded together in a melange, often with little concern for accuracy. But the book captures a tough, hard American city.
The book is less a story of gangsters than the broad story of its title city and its many facets. The dialogue is sharp and realistic with liberal use of the f-word and its variants and derogatory terms for virtually every ethnic group. It is pungent and funny. The book also includes outstanding descriptive passages. The book also wanders substantially and might have been better if it were shorter and tighter. Still, I was absorbed with this book and fascinated by its portrayal of American urban life, its crudity and its promise, in the City of the Big Shoulders.
Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy
Isaac Bashevis Singer, author
Antonio Frasconi, illustrator
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
9780374293475, $155.14 hc / $49.98 pbk
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Yentl-Yeshiva-Isaac-Bashevis-Singer/dp/0374293473
Archive.org
https://archive.org/details/bwb_P8-ADQ-461
The Story Of Yentl
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903 -- 1991) was a Polish born writer raised in a strict Jewish home who immigrated to the United States in 1935. He was a prolific writer in Yiddish of stories and novels. Singer received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978.
In 1962, Singer wrote a short story called, "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy". This story became one of his best-known works when it was made into a stage musical and then into a film "Yentl" (1983) starring and directed by Barbara Streisand. I have read a great deal of Singer, but hadn't read "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" until I saw the film a few days ago. A profound, magical writer, Singer has somewhat fallen out of favor in recent years.
"Yentl" in both film and story tells of a young Jewish girl in Poland, the daughter of a rabbi, who has a consuming desire to study the Jewish texts in a way at that time and place only open to men. Her father teaches her in secret. Yentl shows no interest in, and substantial disdain for, what are viewed at the time and place as women's roles. She doesn't want to marry. When her father dies, Yentl cuts her hair, disguises herself as a man, and leaves her town for a larger town to study at a place of serious Jewish learning, known as a yeshiva. She takes the male name Anshel. Her study partner at the Yeshiva is a man named Avigdor who has been engaged to a young woman Hadass, which Hadass's father has broken off. Feeling strong sexual urges, Avigdor is to marry a widow named Peshe.
A strong friendship develops between Avigdor and Anshel (Yentl) with hints at the outset of an erotic undertone. When Avigdor's engagement to Hadass is broken, he encourages Anshel to pursue and marry her, and Ahshel/Yentel does so. This seeming marriage results in scenes and in a story which is both comic and tragic.
I enjoyed both the film and the book. The film tells Yentl's story from the standpoint of feminism and Yentl's love of learning. Singer's story is much more nuanced and will provoke thought. On January 29, 1984, Singer published a self-interview in the "New York Times", "I.B. Singer talks to I.B. Singer about the Movie Yentl." Singer was highly critical of the film.
Singer's story, while recognizing Yentl's plight, is much less devoted than the film to the cause of ardent feminism. The story discusses the cultural issues of the day involving the understanding of Jewish law, the pervasive importance of male-female sexuality, and the needs of the commuity that the film elides over in favor of Yentl's love of study. In the story, Yentl's attempt to pass as a man and to study is viewed as a deception and as a violation of the law which Yentl professes to love which brings sadness to the characters in the story and to Yentl herself. Still Yentl is determined to stay with her chosen path parting with Avigdor and saying "I'll live out my time as I am." The film's ending is more upbeat.
There is a lot of sadness in life and choices must be made. I got a sense of feminism and the individual from the film of Yentl but a sense of mystery and greater understanding from I.B. Singer's story.
The 1983 edition of "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" includes beautiful woodcut illustrations by Antonio Frasconi.
Charles Ives: A Life with Music
Jan Swafford
W.W. Norton & Company
https://www.wwnorton.com
9780393038934, $34.85 hc
9780393317190, $32.99 pbk
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Charles-Ives-Music-Jan-Swafford/dp/0393317196
A Great American Composer Brought To Life
Charles Ives (1874-1954)was the first, and still probably the greatest, composer of a distinctly American art ("classical") music. His relationship to American music seems to me roughly parallel to Walt Whitman's relationship to American poetry and to Charles Peirce's relationship to American philosophy. Like Peirce, Ives was little-known during his lifetime. Furthermore, while many people may be aware of Peirce and of Ives, a much smaller number have much acquaintance with their works.
Ives was born in Danbury, Connecticut and remained throughout his life attached to his vision of the post-Civil War small-town New England of his childhood. His father, George Ives, was a bandmaster and the greatest influence on Ives's life. Ives was a musical prodigy who began composing at an early age, quickly picking up experimental styles. He showed great proficiency at the piano and organ. (Through young manhood, he worked Sundays as a church organist.) He studied music at Yale where his teacher was Horatio Parker, a then famous American who was trained in the music of German Romanticism. As a college student, Ives wrote music played for the inauguration of President William McKinley.
After graduation from Yale, Ives became a millionaire in the insurance industry where he pioneered many marketing techniques. He also became increasingly Progressive and politically active and actually proposed a constitutional amendment which would increase the power of the democracy in government decision-making. At the age of 32, he married Harmony Twitchell who, after his father, was the greatest influence on his life.
Ives wrote music in the midst of an extraordinarily busy life. Most people think of Ives as a trailblazer and iconoclast. He was indeed, but may of his earlier works, such as the Second and the Third Symphonies are easily accessible and have a feel of America about them similar to the feelings Aaron Copland evoked some three decades later.
Jan Swafford's biography movingly and eloquently describes the life of Charles Ives. He offers a reflective, thoughtful discussion of Ives, his America, his music, and its reception. In addition to a thorough treatment of Ives' life and works, Swafford has three chapters which he titles "Entra'acets" which consist of broad-based reflections on Ives's music and its significance. Swafford's entire book is full of ideas which are intriguing in themselves. Of Ives's work, Swafford gives his most extended treatment to the Fourth Symphony (he sees Ives as essentially a symphonist) and to the Concord piano Sonata. But many works are discussed in detail which will be accessible to the non-musician. The book has copious and highly substantive footnotes and an extensive bibliography.
Ives's Americanness, humor, romanticism, modernism, optimism, and generosity ( Ives gave large amounts of money to his family and to musicians and music publications. He also paid for the publication of several of his important works when commercial publishers showed no interest in them.) come through well. Swafford sees Ives as the last American transcendentalist in the tradition of Emerson. At the conclusion of his book, Swafford writes of Ives
" [I]n his music and his life he embodied a genuine pluralism, a wholeness beneath diversity, that in itself is a beacon for democracy and its art. Aesthetically he is an alternative to Modernism, an exploratory road without the darkness and despair of the twentieth century. In spirit he handed us a baton and calls on us to carry it further. He suggests a way out of despair, but leaves it to us to find the route for ourselves. If we are alone with ourselves today, Ives speaks incomparably to that condition."
This book made me want to learn more about and to hear the music of Charles Ives. In its own right, it is a joy and an inspiration to read.
Robin Friedman
Reviewer
Sajid Khan's Bookshelf
The Silent Patient
Alex Michaelides
Celadon Books
https://celadonbooks.com
9781250301703, $17.99 pbk / $2.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Patient-Alex-Michaelides/dp/125030170X
Psychological Thriller
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides is a gripping psychological thriller that instantly hooks the reader with its intriguing premise and dark atmosphere. The story follows Alicia Berenson, a famous painter who shoots her husband five times and then never speaks another word. Enter Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist obsessed with uncovering the motive behind her silence.
Michaelides masterfully crafts a tense, fast-paced narrative filled with unreliable narration and psychological depth. The exploration of childhood trauma and its long-lasting effects adds a layer of emotional resonance to the characters. While some clues hint at the direction of the plot, the final twist is genuinely shocking and completely recontextualizes the events of the novel. The prose is clean, accessible, and engaging, making it a compelling read from start to finish.
Overall, this is a brilliantly structured debut that will appeal to fans of complex mysteries and deep character studies.
Sajid Khan
Reviewer
Suanne Schafer's Bookshelf
The Berrybender Narratives
Larry McMurtry
Simon & Schuster
https://www.simonandschuster.com
9781451611786, $37.50 hc / $18.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Larry-McMurtrys-Berrybender-Narratives-McMurtry-ebook/dp/B003ODJ1AA
I have been slowly working my way through Larry McMurtry's oeuvre. The Berrybender Narratives brings together the four volumes of the epic story of the American West: Sin Killer, The Wandering Hill, Sorrow's River, and Folly and Glory. In these books, he sets the fictional English aristocratic family, the Berrybenders, against the American frontier of the early 19th century, beginning in the year of Our Lord 1803. Lord Albany Berrybender comes to America to do some big game hunting (bison and grizzlies). He brings with him his wife, five of his fourteen children, a staghound, a parrot, a tutor for the children, a valet/gun bearer, a gunsmith, a carriage maker (along with a wagon, carriage, and horses), a stable boy, a cellist, a ladies' maid, a kitchen maid, a cook, and a laundress and hires a steamship to move his family up the Missouri.
The family is certainly idiosyncratic with their excesses standing in sharp contrast to the harshness of American life along the great river. That said, they all live and breathe as fully developed characters. McMurtry writes women particularly well, and Tasmin, Lord Berrybender's oldest daughter, is no exception. Like Lorena in Lonesome Dove and Nellie Courtnight in Telegraph Days, Tasmin is a gritty, self-determining character who holds her own with - and often against - the men in the books. The Berrybenders interact with almost every well-known explorer from the early days of America's western expansion, including Toissant Charbonneau (of Sacagawea fame) and his son Pomp; mountain men Jim Bridger and Kit Carson; plus countless Native Americans and Mexicans. Lord Berrybender's folly leads to the demise of much of his family and worsening of his own health. Tasmin, now married to the fictional Jim Snow, a tough frontiersman and ferocious Indian fighter, rises to the occasion and dictates the family's course, moving them into Texas to intersect with Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie.
These books are spiked with adventures, shoot-outs, battles, disease, and other dangers along with fascinating characters (real and fictional) who display humor and endure love and loss. Another McMurtry tour-de-force.
Whistler
Ann Patchett
Harper
c/o HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com
9780063511651, $14.99 print / $14.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Whistler-Novel-Ann-Patchett-ebook/dp/B0FVSXG3Z6
As I have been with so many other authors, I am slowly working my way through Ann Patchett's oeuvre, starting years ago with Bel Canto. Whistler ties with Tom Lake as my - so far - all-time favorites of her works. Tom Lake is a quiet story. Whistler tells of a family fractured by divorce and somehow winds its way into being uplifting and healing while incorporating the story of a woman and her horse.
Middle-aged Daphne and her much-older spouse, Jonathan, visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New Work when her husband notes an older man stalking them. When approached, he turns out to be Eddie, Daphne's stepfather (for all of a year) when she was nine years old. Though the two were exceptionally close at the time, she hasn't seen him since the divorce. Immediately, they restart their interrupted relationship, becoming close again. As they do so, they slowly explore choices they made - or were made for them, especially in the case of the young Daphne - and the consequences of those choices.
The book, with the exception of the story of the horse and its owner and a life-threatening adventure which both Daphne and Eddie go through, is full of quiet yet consequential moments. It's a seemingly simple novel about love, loss, bravery, endurance, and survival. It's truly a lovely book that will move readers to tears.
(Despite the horse on the cover, this is not a Western, and the horse's tale encompasses very few pages in the novel).
There Are Rivers in the Sky
Elif Shafak
Vintage
https://knopfdoubleday.com/imprint/vintage
9780593801727, $19.00 pbk / $11.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/There-Are-Rivers-Sky-novel-ebook/dp/B0CNRBBL1R
I LOVE Elif Shafak's work and am working my way through her twelve novels. With every read I find a new favorite, but There Are Rivers in the Sky is my all-time favorite so far.
The book opens in 630 BCE, in Ninevah, the capital of the ancient Assyrian Empire along the Tigris River and home of the library of Ashurbanipal, a king known for his erudition as well as his cruelty. A "a single drop of rain - no bigger than a bean and lighter than a chickpea" hangs from a storm cloud above. This single raindrop unites the novel. Other themes are set out in this chapter that echo throughout the novel.
The second chapter moves from Ninevah to the structure of water, H-O-H, which also is carried through the novel. From there, the novel follows three characters, Arthur, Zaleekah, and Narin in time frames from the mid-to-late 19th century and contemporary. Chapters are labeled O (Arthur) and H (Zaleekah and Narin), reinforcing the theme of water as Zaleekah and Narin's lives are inextricably bound to Arthur's. He is a poverty-stricken but brilliant boy who learns to read cuneiform tablets and becomes obsessed with the Epic of Gilgamesh and Ninevah. Zaleekah is a water ecologist living in London obsessed with water and the damage humans have done to the earth through pollution. Narin is a young Yazidi girl who lives in southeastern Turkey along the banks of the Tigris and experiences first-hand the devastation polluted waters causes and the ultimate expression of prejudice.
Shafak reveals the epic in the tiny details such as the drop of water. Her novels frequently deal with immigrants and the prejudices they face. There Are Rivers in the Sky is no exception. Though the book deals with tough subject matter such as genocide and racism, at heart, it is a book about redemption. It is resplendent and poetic. A FABULOUS book.
Cleopatra: A Life
Stacy Schiff
Little, Brown and Company
c/o Hachette Book Group
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com
9780316121804, $21.99 pbk / $11.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Cleopatra-Life-Stacy-Schiff-ebook/dp/B003YFIVHW
Cleopatra does a remarkable job piecing together the story of a woman from the first century BCE about whom very little is actually known. Schiff pulls together many early sources, extrapolates as many facts as she possibly can, then pieces them into a coherent vision of a magnificent queen. Many of Schiff's thoughts are based on what we know of Egyptian culture, particularly that of the city of Alexandria with its great library.
From there, Schiff rescues the queen's reputation from the vituperative men - usually Romans - who write about her often centuries later. All either erase her accomplishments and/or sully her reputation by attributing her deeds to an exorbitant ambition and hypersexuality which she notoriously uses to ensnare Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony.
Because of the intertwining of these three lives, Schiff spends a lot of time on the lives of the two men and their intersection with Cleopatra. Schiff also delves into the political scene in Rome and the Middle East at that time, giving a rich tapestry of the times.
Cleopatra is unabashedly a feminist book and, as such, is highly relevant to today's woman. Much of our current culture defines the value of women by their youth, their preferably nubile bodies, and their ability to have children. They are denied sexuality and are inherently defined as sinful. Women like Cleopatra (well-educated, influential, and competent) are feared and demeaned. We need more authors willing to blast the past to smithereens.
Wisdom Corner
David Heska Wanbli Weiden
Ecco
c/o HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com
9780062969002, $30.00 hc / $14.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Corner-David-Wanbli-Weiden-ebook/dp/B0FV3B6VGG
Wisdom Corner is the second in the Virgil Wounded Horse mystery series. Like its predecessor, Winter Counts, it is set on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and picks up where that novel left off. Virgil has become an "enforcer," administering justice when the federal government and Bureau of Indian Affairs refuse to take on cases. Under the influence of his girlfriend, Marie Short Bear, Though he is moving toward a more balanced life (giving up the enforcement, quitting smoking, cutting back on his drinking, and taking in his orphaned nephew to raise) he remains a deeply flawed but admirable character..
The Virgil Wounded Horse mystery series, like Tony and Anne Hillerman's Navajo mysteries, gives readers an accurate photograph of contemporary life on the reservation while deftly handling historical themes such as genocide, land reclamation, and boarding schools. One of the most moving scenes in Wisdom Corner is when Virgil, in an attempt to find the grave of an aunt, reads the names off the gravestones at the school, some with as little information as female child, male child, or infant. These remains were never returned to their families after the children's deaths. Weiden combines a hard-biting thriller with social commentary in a way few authors are able. I'll definitely continue reading this series as more are released.
All Who Wander
Joe Clifford
https://joeclifford.com
Square Tire Books
9781960725066, $29.99 hc / $4.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C6HK79FV
All Who Wander is a fascinating look at the long-term effects of insufficient love, emotional and physical abuse, as well as poor choices in relationships and life in general. Brooke, trapped in a broken family (one that's missing a mother but has an added stepbrother and an emotionally absent father) and an abusive relationship with her boyfriend, hates her life. When she realizes her lover is likely to kill her, she disappears without a trace. That action colors the lives of her stepbrother, her ex, and her best friend for years to come.
In this introspective domestic psychological suspense with a "true crime" feel, author Clifford peels back layers of the psyches of tortured characters who must deal with not only their personal demons but those left by Brooke's disappearance. The story is told in alternating points of view between Brooke and her stepbrother Robert Kirby and alternating time lines between the past and the present. Some characters try to overcome past trauma to live a better life "in the sun" while others fall to the dark side.
Though there are some very dark moments in All Who Wander, the book also has some heart-warming scenes in which Robert tries to avoid repeating the child-rearing mistakes his stepfather made. Clifford, as evidenced by this book and by his A Moth to Flame, writes women very well.
All Who Wander is a book you won't be able to put down.
Ransom: A Novel
Daniel Silva
Harper
c/o HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com
9780063384262, $32.00 hc / $14.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FW51VCS3
Ransom: A Novel is the 26th (so far) in Daniel Silva's spy series starring the legendary Israeli spy and art restorer, Gabriel Allon. I fell in love with the series years ago because Silva so successfully melds art, art history, and thrillers and because, unlike other spy heroes such as James Bond, Allon has a strong moral compass and is not a serial philanderer. The series follows Allon in his role as a spy for decades, culminating in his assumption of the head of the Israeli spy system and, ultimately, his retirement five years later. He moves to Italy with his wife and twin children and resumes art restoration and finds a new career as an art forger. The novels after Allon's retirement are more art-related and deal with him finding stolen art works while calling in favors from the Italian carabinieri and other former colleagues. Ransom moves a bit backwards in that it doesn't deal with art except peripherally when billionaire Edward Knight begs Allon to find his kidnapped wife, Alice Winter.
Once again, Allon calls in favors from his former colleagues to solve the disappearance. In doing so, he finds Alice is not who she appears to be but rather a woman with secrets. Nor is Edward. This is a typical Daniel Silva novel in that it is full of twists, turns, red herrings, and copious international corruption.
I have read all 26 in this series (and everything else Silva has written) and heartily recommend them if you're into international thrillers, suspense, and intrigue and a hero that has more depth than those of the usual thrillers.
Ariadne Unraveled
Zenobia Neil
https://www.zenobianeil.com
Hypatia Books
9798515884208, $16.99 pbk / $4.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09647R6CF
Ariadne Unraveled is a retelling of the lives of Ariadne, the woman who gave Theseus a ball of yarn to guide him through the Minotaur's lair, and Dionysus, a relatively new god of fertility and wine, so new he doesn't have a seat on Mount Olympus. Typically I enjoy a good myth retelling from nearly any culture, but I found Ariadne Unraveled rather flat.
This is essentially a love-at-first sight romance with an abundance of soft porn sex scenes throughout. A lack of emotional depth marked their sexual encounters, so I found it difficult to feel their love for each other. Dionysus has an innate ability to charm people and arouse their lust. He freely has sex with them, male or female, but the question remains is this ability the Greek myth equivalent of a "date rape" drug? Can Ariadne (or any other of Dionysus's many lovers) give actual consent under those circumstances?
Additionally Ariadne has a "friendship" with her lover, the slave Thalia, but it doesn't appear to be a bona fide friendship as Thalia must always please Ariadne and rarely receives substantive appreciation.
Overall, I found the characters somewhat unappealing and one-dimensional with a scant character arc for Ariadne. Dionysus at least struggles to become the kind of god he wants to be and to earn his own seat on Mount Olympus. Even Thalia has more of a character arc than Ariadne, as the slave becomes a shape-shifting leopard capable of defending Ariadne and Dionysus. Though billed as a "feminist" retelling, I didn't find it particularly feminist as Ariadne seemed to entirely lack her own agency. Additionally, the prose was a bit sophomoric and lacked the myth-evoking grace and grandeur of Madeline Miller's books, Circe and The Song of Achilles or Natalie Haynes's A Thousand Ships, Stone Blind, or Divine Might (nonfiction).
Suanne Schafer, Reviewer
www.SuanneSchaferAuthor.com
Susan Bethany's Bookshelf
The Goddess That Failed
Janice Fiamengo
World Encounter Institute
c/o New English Review Press
https://www.newenglishreview.org
9781966833130, $39.99, HC, 216pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Goddess-That-Failed-Feminisms-Civilization/dp/196683313X
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-goddess-that-failed-janice-fiamengo/1150193401
Synopsis: Janice Fiamengo was once a true believer, completing a PhD with specialization in feminist literature and theory. Her reading as a university student convinced her that women had been unjustly oppressed for centuries, and that empowered women would lead their societies into a better future.
Then she confronted the reality of female rage, false claims, the denial of merit, shattered families, and heartbroken fathers. She saw young men blatantly discriminated against in academic hiring. She came to see that feminism is a false god that leads women to hate by telling them that they are victims. She has spent the past decade alerting men and women to its dangers.
In the richly-supported chapters comprising "The Goddess That Failed: Feminism's Unending War against Men, Families, and Civilization Itself ", Fiamengo shows why feminism has nothing to do with gender equality. It is a radical ideology that seeks sexual license, unearned economic privileges, and freedom from adult accountability for women. It enforces economic servitude, shame, and legal disempowerment for men. It impugns male goodness while excusing female wrongdoing; even worse, it encourages women to be their worst selves while telling men that they can never be good enough.
Feminism thus destroys the very thing it claims to seek: true reciprocity between the sexes.
Critique: Original, articulate, deftly crafted, iconoclastic, "The Goddess That Failed: Feminism's Unending War against Men, Families, and Civilization Itself" is an extraordinary contribution to our on-going national dialog about the role, rights, and obligations of women in our contemporary society. It will be of immense relevance and interest to readers with concerns about Feminist Theory, Marriage & Family, Women's Rights, and the Social Psychology of Gender. While an extraordinary, timely, and unreservedly recommended pick for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Contemporary Feminism collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists, it should be noted for students, academia, political activists, and non-specialists with an interest in the subject that this hardcover edition of "The Goddess That Failed" from World Encounter Institute is also readily available from the New English Review Press in paperback (9781966833147, $24.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).
Editorial Note: Janice Fiamengo (https://grokipedia.com/page/Janice_Fiamengo) earned her doctorate from the University of British Columbia in 1996. She retired in 2019 from her position as Professor of English at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada. She is the author of The Woman's Page: Journalism and Rhetoric in Early Canada (2008) as well as many peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on women's writing. In 2015, she began The Fiamengo File, a YouTube series and later Substack newsletter showcasing the dark side of feminism. She edited Sons of Feminism: Men Have Their Say, a collection of essays about men's experiences, in 2017.
Susan Bethany
Reviewer
Willis Buhle's Bookshelf
Phenomenology and the Painted Vase
Danielle Smotherman Bennett, Guy Hedreen, SeungJung Kim, and Carolyn Laferriere, editors
University of Wisconsin Press
https://uwpress.wisc.edu
9780299355708, $119.95, HC, 340pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Phenomenology-Painted-Vase-Warren-Archaeology/dp/0299355705
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/phenomenology-and-the-painted-vase-danielle-smotherman-bennett/1148226710
University of Wisconsin Press
https://uwpress.wisc.edu/Books/P/Phenomenology-and-the-Painted-Vase
Synopsis: Phenomenology is the system of Husserl and his followers stressing the description of phenomena.
Most people today encounter ancient Greek vases as static, untouchable artifacts safely out of reach behind glass, in the quiet of a museum gallery.
Once, however, these vessels were also useful objects, made to be held, filled, and generally used in a variety of settings, from the ritual to the quotidian.
"Phenomenology and the Painted Vase" considers these ancient vases together with the theoretical frameworks developed by pioneers of phenomenology such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Edmund Husserl, helping us encounter Greek vases as they once were.
The principles of phenomenology require that we understand objects as active participants in shaping the manner in which humans experience the world. A phenomenological perspective allows us to see how the function and use of Greek vases shaped both their visual appearance and the perceptual experience of them (as well as our continued understanding of them today) while taking into account multisensory perspectives.
With this alternative approach to the study of classical pottery, the contributors offer new and illuminating insights not just into the objects in question but also into ancient Greek culture and life more broadly.
Critique: Beautifully illustrated with impressively informative commentary, "Phenomenology and the Painted Vase" is part of The Warren Moon Series in Art and Archaeology from the Wisconsin University Press. Deftly co-authored by the editorial team of Danielle Smotherman Bennett, Guy Hedreen, Seung Jung Kim, and Carolyn Laferriere, this large format (8 x 1 x 10 inches, 1 pound) hardcover edition of "Phenomenology and the Painted Vase" is informatively enhanced for the reader's benefit with the inclusion of an eighteen page Introduction (Experiencing Vases), a thirty page listing of References, a four page listing of the contributors and their credentials, and an eleven page Index. A seminal and groundbreaking work of original and meticulous scholarship throughout, "Phenomenology and the Painted Vase" is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended acquisition for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Art & Archaeology collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.
Editorial Note #1: Danielle Smotherman Bennett is an assistant research curator at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, with a focus on provenance research.
Editorial Note #2: Guy Hedreen is the J. Kirk T. Varnedoe '67 Professor of Art at Williams College. He is the author of The Image of the Artist in Archaic and Classical Greece: Art, Poetry, and Subjectivity; Capturing Troy: The Narrative Function of Landscape in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Art; and Silens in Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painting: Myth and Performance.
Editorial Note #3: Seung Jung Kim is an associate professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Temporal Revolution in GreekArt.
Editorial Note #4: Carolyn Laferriere is the curator of ancient Mediterranean art at the Princeton University Art Museum. She is the author of Divine Music in Archaic and Classical Greek Art: Seeing the Songs of the Gods.
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer
James A. Cox
Editor-in-Chief
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