• Uncategorized

    Dogland by Tommy Tomlinson *** (of 4)

    January 16, 2025

    Dogland is a lighthearted romp through the world of elite dog shows. As Tomlinson makes clear from the outset, the relationship between dog and human is a companionship born at the dawn of civilization. Beginning with the first wolves hanging about campfires, Dogland looks at the evolution of dog breeding. Dogs have been bred to herd sheep, hunt rats, pull sleds through snow, sit on laps, retrieve hunted waterfowl, and dig up truffles.

    The dogs that go all the way to the Westminster dog show are bred to stand still and look as much as possible like the judges think that a breed should appear. Elite show dogs are bred like elite race horses invested in by multiple owners. Professional trainers might work with more than 20 dogs at a time, often showing multiple dogs (for multiple owners) in a single show.

    Tomlinson asks some important questions. Are show dogs happy be fluffed and combed and poofed and perfumed and eating cheese treats right from their owner’s mouths? Isn’t it important for dogs to be, well, dogs, sniffing butts, chasing tennis balls, and sneaking food from under the table? And what is it about the relationship between dogs and humans that is so unique that we project human feelings onto dogs? They make so many humans happy and what do they get in return?

    The questions are good and having to ponder the nature of an interspecies relationship that for many people is stronger than it is for their own species is valuable. There aren’t many answers in the book, but insofar as a romp on a lawn with a favorite pet is satisfying, so is Dogland.

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  • Book Reviews,  Creative Non-Fiction,  Environment/Nature/Ag,  NON FICTION

    What the Chicken Knows by Sy Montgomery *** (of 4)

    January 16, 2025

    The more I learn about animal cognition, the more I realize how ignorant I have been. (I recently read an article, for example, strongly suggesting that insects feel pain.) So not surprisingly, Sy Montgomery’s exquisite story telling reveals that chickens have personalities. Chickens can be brave, inquisitive, funny, clever, caring, ruthless, foolhardy, sneaky, and thankful. An attentive human can quickly learn to understand chicken and with a little practice talk back.

    Montgomery weaves together anecdotes from flocks she has known and avian science with such ease that you cannot even see her making the transition. She will make you love chickens as companions and yet not shed a tear when she stops keeping chickens after 20 years. Bears, weasels, raccoons, coyotes, and hawks all took advantage of her birds, but as she points out, the return of nearly extirpated predators to the woods of New England is actually cause for celebration.

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  • America,  Book Reviews,  FOUR STARS ****,  History,  NON FICTION,  Politics,  Uncategorized

    Keeping the Faith by Brenda Wineapple **** (of 4)

    January 16, 2025

    What makes this account of the 1925 Scopes trial in Tennessee so compelling–in which a school teacher was arrested for breaking a state law forbidding the teaching of evolution–is its contemporaneity. The trial featured super-attorney Clarence Darrow for the defense versus William Jennings Bryan. Bryan was a populist presidential candidate (three times) whose belief in his own rectitude and the infallibility of the bible was unshakeable. Bryan was a powerful orator with unwavering support from southern, rural Christian nationalists.

    Making the book even more insightful is the effort that Wineapple puts into contextualizing the trial. Fully, the first half of the book is setting the global and national stages. World War I had concluded in unimaginable carnage: more than 20 million dead, largely because of advances in science and technology that increased killing efficiency. Americans fought in Europe and emerged without benefits, feeding isolationism. Tech millionaires on the east coast were making money hand over fist. Elites, intellectuals, and college educated urbanites were condescending and dismissive of rural and southern Americans.

    The trial was a cultural and political clash of unparalleled magnitude pitting the ruthless progress of science and capital against the book-banning, but necessary return to faith of Christians looking for meaning in a world moving beyond their grasp.

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  • Book Reviews,  Europe,  FICTION,  History,  Humor

    Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon *** (of 4)

    January 3, 2025

    Athenian soldiers attacked ancient Syracuse (Sicily) in 414 BCE, expecting a quick victory. They lost. Athenian soldiers were captured and held in a quarry on starvation rations. Two wine-swilling, Irish-slanged friends and gabbers since childhood decide they are going to use Athenian prisoners to stage two of Euripides plays. Gelon and the irreverent and irrepressible Lampo smuggle food into the quarry and offer morsels in exchange for any prisoners that can recall Euripides’ lines. An epic quest ensues, both hilarious and painful, to hold auditions, practice scenes, acquire costumes, learn dances and songs, and enlist an audience. Gelon and Lampo, who now consider themselves Directors. The Athenians lucky enough to recall Euripides’ plays try not to starve to death.

    Ferdia Lennon’s decision to trade-in stilted ancient look-alike language for the cheeky gab of an Irish bar is brilliant. The two friends decide to stage the two plays back to back–The Trojan Women begins immediately after Madea. Similarly, Lennon’s book has two unrelated components: the twin performances and a mad escape with smuggled prisoners across Sicily. The book cannot quite decide whether it is a comedy or tragedy, and Lennon ‘s indecisiveness puts a gentle damper on the outcome. I suppose Lennon might be saying that life, like great theater, is both tragedy and comedy. Glorious Exploits is a first novel. A good one, but not quite a great one.

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  • Book Reviews,  Europe,  History,  NON FICTION,  Suspense,  Uncategorized

    The Wager by David Grann *** (of 4)

    December 18, 2024

    The Wager is the name of a ship launched by the British Navy in 1742. It was part of a small fleet sent to the southern seas to chase down a Spanish galleon loaded with plundered riches. Aside: it is difficult to know for whom to root in a situation where two colonial powers pillage indigenous populations and then attack one another’s ships in a game of never-ending one-upmanship (one-upmanships?).

    The Wager was poorly built, led by inexperienced captains, and crewed by criminals and sailors who could not escape press-gangs. Scurvy destroyed many and the weather was horrible. Rounding the dangerous seas south of Cape Horn, the ship foundered. What was left of the crew washed up on an isolated island off the coast of Chile. For weeks and then months, surviving crewmen starved, froze and and turned upon one another, weapons drawn.

    Remarkably, a small handful of survivors cobbled together a boat and floated to safety 1,500 miles up the Atlantic coast of South America. An opposing set of survivors floated up the west coast of South America. Enough documents of the captain and crew were carried back to England that a court martial was engaged to determine whether the captain had failed his crew or the crew had committed the most heinous of crimes: mutiny. A decent adventure, but missing some of the edge since we learn about the outcome in the opening pages.

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  • Sourdoughs and SCOBYs,  The Perfect Loaf

    Farm to Loaf: A Road Trip Through a Short Commodity Chain

    December 15, 2024

    By Eric Pallant

    I admit that I am envious of bakers who make their loaves using fresh, locally raised grains. It sounds like the ideal—for flavor, for community, for the environment. But I am also a little skeptical. Is local flour really any better than flour made with grain from far away? What are my options if I want heirloom wheat or ancient grains to bake with and they aren’t grown anywhere near me? What if I want to buy organic grains but my local farmers say that organic certification is not worth the cost? Should I just trust their practices because I like them? Is it even worth the extra cost to pay for local or organic?

    Read more at The Perfect Loaf.

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  • America,  Audio Book,  Book Reviews,  Environment/Nature/Ag,  FOUR STARS ****,  History,  Memoir/Biography,  NON FICTION

    A Childhood by Harry Crews **** (of 4)

    December 15, 2024

    Published in 1978 and reissued in 2022, Harry Crews, an American novelist recounts the first five years of his life. He grew up in south Georgia, the son of dirt-poor sharecroppers in the 1930s. Stories flow from the pages (listen to the audiobook to get the full impact) like a stream meandering in the gulley at the edge of a sparse cotton field. One room shacks become theaters for orators and minstrels, itinerant salesmen and magical healers. Upstanding Black neighbors care for Harry while his family disintegrates, and a formerly enslaved Grandmother imparts the wisdom of a century (or however old she might be, she doesn’t know.) Pigs are slaughtered, hams are stolen from smokehouses by hungry neighbors, and broken down mules pull plows through exhausted soil. All before Harry turns five.

    Without electricity, and therefore without a television, radio, or addicting cellphone, Harry grew up with an extraordinarily creative imagination for play. His acumen as a storyteller is so confoundingly good, it is impossible to find the seams between the end of one tale and the beginning of the next.

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  • Book Reviews,  Environment/Nature/Ag,  FICTION,  Mystery,  Philosophy

    Creation Lake ** (of 4) by Rachel Kushner

    December 13, 2024

    A left-wing philosopher advocates that it is time for humanity to return to nature, but sends his diatribes via e-mail. Acolytes reading his emails in France form a commune and strive to live pure lives. They exclude people who are not sufficiently indoctrinated with the existential crisis that Homo sapiens has brought upon themselves. The superior humanity of Neanderthals (now sadly extinct) fill lengthy electronic missives.

    The commune is suspected of sabotaging a big geo-engineering project that will destroy the water table in the Central Massif. It will also ruin the lives of very-pure peasants (who the commune has excused for taking on modern agricultural techniques even though they might be advancing neo-liberalist agendas and the success of Capitalism with a capital C!)

    Sadie has been hired by some agency (we aren’t exactly sure which) to infiltrate the commune and entrap them into doing something illegal, thereby proving the commune-ists were responsible for the initial sabotage. Sadie (in a book written by a woman) seems quite preoccupied with the size of her breasts, and has no compunctions about deceiving people into doing illegal acts they might not otherwise have undertaken.

    This book made so many critic’s must-read lists. Seriously? Feh. Read it if you want to meet characters with no moral centers and read a lot about a nihilistic crackpot of a cult leader.

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  • America,  Book Reviews,  FICTION,  Suspense

    The Coldest Warrior by Paul Vidich *** (of 4)

    December 13, 2024

    In the late 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, an American scientist, Charles Wilson, was working on chemical weapons in service to the CIA when he “jumped or fell” from an upper story hotel window. After the so-called “accident” the scientist’s family was compensated handsomely and quickly, but given few details. The body of the suicide victim was so mangled, they were told, they could not view it before its hasty burial. The Coldest Warrior does its best to put flesh on the bones of a skeletally true story by fictionalizing the CIA operatives most likely to have encouraged Wilson through the hotel window.

    Was Wilson a risk to counter espionage because he had been unknowingly given LSD by the CIA and had become mentally unstable? Was he having second thoughts about the validity of chemical weapons? Did the CIA do the right thing in covering up the story to maintain its advantage in the Cold War when communist aggression felt like it was spreading around the glove like an unstoppable infection? Or were the CIA’s actions, in the end, not very different than Soviet tactics involving sending exiles to Siberia?

    Paragraphs with scenery, weather, and outfits appear as stand-alones. Characters and their motives are a little difficult to keep track of. Nevertheless, there’s just enough action to provide inertia.

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  • Sourdoughs and SCOBYs

    My Sourdough Starters are on Five Continents

    November 25, 2024

    Every sourdough baker recalls who gave them their starter, or how they made their own. I have made it a practice to share My Three Starters (for those of you of a certain age, I apologize for putting the insipid jingle for My Three Sons in your head), though I sell them now, mostly so I am not inundated by too many requests.

    Now that one of my longest-running sourdough friends moved with her Cripple Creek starter from Germany to Australia, I can now say that sourdough starters I bake with are alive and leavening loafs on every continent except Antarctica.

    You’ll have to read Sourdough Culture: The History of Breadmaking from Ancient to Modern Bakers to learn whether sourdough cultures morph when they move to a new home. While you are reading, you will learn whether old sourdough cultures, like wines, improve with age.

    The sourdough map is constantly being updated and you can see who is baking with which starter on the live view of the sourdough map.

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