I have always wanted to see important trade stops on the ancient Silk Road, and observe firsthand how a Former Soviet Republic is finding its way. When I saw how bread bakers in Uzbekistan dived headfirst into their tandoors to bake their bread, I had reason to learn as much as I could (during a 12-day visit) about the breads of Uzbekistan. The rest of the story…
An expertly crafted introduction to the people that swim laps with the author. Lap swimmers, she makes clear, forego daylight and nature in exchange for the seclusion and focus of repeating passes over an unwavering black line. Yet, there are personalities. Speedsters. Lane hogs. Dawdlers. Aggressive competitors. Friendly acquaintances. Reliable supporters. In short, our friends.
The book is written in a series of laps. A short description. Reach the wall. Turn around and start a new lap. One of the regulars in the pool, about a third of the way through the narrative, becomes the primary subject of the book, about whom I can say no more without spoiling. The story of the central character is captivating and as meditative as any long-distance exertion.
There is no shortage of books describing the horrors of war, which makes this novel of World War II refugees so remarkable for its riveting description of refugees seeking escape from vengeful Russians overtaking Germany. Sepetys follows the plight of a young Lithuanian nurse, a 15-year old Polish girl, a six-year-old German boy, an old German shoemaker, a blind German girl, a woman who is an annoying German battle-axe, and a young German man with shrapnel in his side, a mysterious knapsack, and civilian clothes, when he should have been conscripted. With Russian soldier hot on their heels, seeking revenge for German atrocities, the main characters flee through woods, on back roads, and along throughways crowded with thousands of additional refugees heading for ports on the Baltic Sea.
The cleverness of the book, in addition to its unnerving suspense, is to bring lives and backgrounds of a few real people caught up in a war not of their making. As readers we feel sympathy for the Pole and the blind girl, because if they are caught by Nazis they face execution for being inferior to the master race. But we also feel bad for Germans who are neither in favor of Nazism or warfare in general.
It is a major feat to engender sympathy for Germans in World War II. It is also a very difficult book to read with the plight of so many Gazan refugees hanging in the balance. Warfare is a horrible way to make policy.
The remarkably prolific Irish writer, John Banville, gives his take on Jews in Ireland soon after the end of WW II. Rosa Jacobs is a doctoral student in Dublin and a firebrand supporting long-shot progressive causes like a woman’s right to abortion. Not going to happen in Ireland in that century. Until, that is, Rosa is found asphyxiated in her own car in a locked garage. A hose from the exhaust to the front window suggests suicide.
Rosa’s older sister is dubious that her sister was suicidal. The coroner suspects foul play. One of Rosa’s friends was a recently arrived German “industrialist” with a hidden past. By the time the German’s ties to Israel’s secret attempts to construct a nuclear weapon emerge, the credulity of the novel exceed its author’s tenuous hold on either plot or characters.
Banville has won a Booker prize and in some years has published as many as five books. I presume some of his other books are better.
Jamaica Kincaid’s second book (1988) expands the vision of a theoretical tourist vacationing in Antigua. The tourist soaks up deliciously sunny skies, gazes at unbelievably blue seas, and walks along silky white sand beaches. Kincaid, residing invisibly alongside her created tourist, points out what else needs to be seen.
Why are the natives all Black, and under what conditions did colonial masters purchase them and put them to work as slaves? Why did British colonists leave a recently independent island nation with such a corrupt government? How come there are no working sewers, no library, and the island’s only hospital is filthy, crumbling, and occupied by three incompetent doctors? What right do the islands tiny minority of whites and middle easterners have to their exclusive clubs, gated mansions, and subservient (Black) servants.
Nearly 40 years on, Kincaid’s strong voice, points a lasting indictment at colonialism, tourism, and corruption.
Clay Risen’s thorough recounting of the Red Scare, which began well before Joseph McCarthy’s rise to infamy, makes clear that right wing opposition to progressive politics has always been part of American politics. White, male, heterosexual, Christian capitalists have long held that the United States should be free from wealth sharing or government restrictions. The spoils of business, as well as the story of the country’s history, should be theirs alone.
The late 19th century closed with capitalists triumphant, amassing unseemly quantities of wealth among Rockefellers, Fricks, Carnegies, and Vanderbilts. When, in the early 20th century, communist ideology suggested that workers deserved reasonable hours and greater income–essentially more equality–interest in communism came from obvious quarters: African Americans, Jews, women, LGBTQ+, east coast liberals. The New Deal of FDR went a long way toward improving the lot of the underclasses, but it also enraged Republicans who gnashed their teeth at having to share.
When FDR died, and Stalin’s insane use of communist ideology, set off a post WWII Cold War, right wing politicians used aggressive tactics to hunt down anyone who ever had any affiliation with communism. Hollywood moguls, writers, and actors were targeted and blacklisted. Professors lost their jobs. Workers who had supported communism in principle during the thirties were tossed from their jobs 20 years later. Government employees and military personnel whose ideologies were not pro-white, pro-business, and pro-Red Scare were let go.
The techniques should sound familiar. Accuse first, find evidence later. Invent accusations, even false ones. Launch conspiracy theories and float them in the (social) media. Use government agencies to attack and intimidate opponents. Bring anyone whose free speech fails to toe the government line to a congressional shakedown or to court. Bully.
After a decade of blacklists and Cold War scare mongering, McCarthyism (like American communism) slowly ran out of steam. What Risen makes clear is that even after the Red Scare abated, more than a third of Americans still believed untrue conspiracies. The far right has always been part of America (the far left, too, no doubt) and always will be.
The Museum of Food and Culture Launches Virtual Exhibit on Eating Invasive Weeds and Food Sovereignty
Katherine Hoehl and I worked on this exhibit for more than a year. It’s amazingly informative. Full Press Release with links to the exhibit can be found here.
This is Kate Atkinson’s sixth in her series of Jackson Brody novels. Brody is former British police, now private investigator, called upon to look for a stolen painting: Lady with a Weasel. The question of who stole the renaissance oil painting is secondary. Front and center is Atkinson’s delightful send-up of two of Britain’s most hallowed traditions. In one part of her farce, a lunatic of a family live in a Downtown Abbey-like mansion called Burton Makepeace. While Atkinson destroys the obsession with old money and crazy old Ladies of the house, she also dismantles the British preoccupation with murder mysteries. A bedraggled, over-the-top, full-of-itself, not-very-talented, understaffed troupe of actors host a murder-mystery dinner in Burton Makepeace mansion. In a nod to Agatha Christie, all of the main characters find themselves trapped in a single location (a vicious snowstorm makes travel impossible) to solve a real crime, while Jackson Brody tries to make sense of it all. A fine escapist read for troubling times.
A much needed, and enthusiastically rendered account of the history of Africa as seen through the eyes of Africans. Badawi, a native of Sudan, and now a renowned British journalist, visited more than 30 countries and spoke to experts of history in each of them. Unsurprisingly, there are kingdoms and nations and developments that are shockingly extensive and successful. Many of them thrived while Europeans slogged through the thousand years of the Dark Ages. It is a lovely flip on which continent is the Dark one.
The book opens with the archaeological evidence demonstrating that all humans are immigrants from Africa. Unfortunately, to cover hundreds of thousands of years of history, Badawi relies primarily on the tried and true formula of recounting the names of leaders, their dates of leadership, extent of their kingdoms, and visits to their largest and most impressive extant buildings. One example, to put things into perspective, are the pyramids and rulers of Ancient Egypt. Egypt, Badawi wants to be certain her readers know, is in Africa.
Unfortunately, lauded thought the book is, and deserves to be for its anti-colonial perspective, it is my least favorite kind of approach to history: names and dates. Eventually, I fell victim to Africa’s TseTse flies, bearers of sleeping sickness.
A young adult award winning (Newberry Honor, Sibert Medal) account of the making of the world’s first nuclear bomb and attempts by the Russians to steal the secret. As an overview of people and events, the book is a quick and easy starting point. Robert Oppenheimer, man-genius, with perhaps communist leanings, is aware that the Nazis are striving to build an atomic bomb of their own. Unable to discover how far along the Germans have gotten, American scientists in a frenzy of patriotism rush to aid Oppenheimer. Either the U.S. figures out to how build an atomic bomb first, or the Germans will win World War II.
Concurrently, Russia is an American ally, and American spies sympathetic to communism’s promise of equality for all smuggle inside information from Los Alamos to Soviet handlers. Bomb delivers all the important names, dates, motivations, and more than a little suspense. What it leaves largely unasked are several questions of morality. Why were Americans, especially a disproportionate number of Jewish Americans, so willing to ascribe to communist ideologies? Was the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan necessary? When WW II ended, was it justifiable to import former Nazi scientists to the United States so the Russians could not access them? How did the Cold War that followed immediately on the heels of WWII lead to anti-communist witch-hunts in the U.S. and are we once again heading toward a government led by anti-constitutional leaders willing to deport or black-list anyone they consider enemies?
