• America,  Book Reviews,  Europe,  FOUR STARS ****,  History,  Memoir/Biography,  NON FICTION,  Polar

    The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides **** (of 4)

    In 1776, Great Britain’s King George sent his Navy to put down a rebellion fomented by British colonists on the eastern shore of North America. Simultaneously, he sponsored Captain James Cook to explore the unknown west coast of North America. Great Britain was especially interested in the northern reaches of the continent, hoping Cook could locate the Northwest Passage across the top of Canada. For 300 years explorers had looked from the east. Why they thought a poke from the west would emerge in the Atlantic when no one had located an opening is one of those flaws in logic that comes with a 300-year quest.

    Cook was one of the most famous explorers of his era. He had already completed two global expeditions. His crewmen knew of his fame and kept detailed journals. His own notes were published. For more than two centuries, journalists and authors have chronicled Captain Cook’s life. Hampton Sides does the remarkable. He has read all the accounts and then written this book as if it were being reported in the newspapers. As readers, we live each day’s storms, make first contact with Polynesians, suffer the trials of monotonous food and freezing arctic temperatures, and the relief (if you’re a sailor) of landing on a tropical isle with luscious fruits and curvaceous females. Each event appears to happen in real time

    All the while, Sides overlays a 21st century perspective on the hazards and racism of colonization with the 18th century toughness needed to spend years at sea away from land, family, and home, instead living in tight quarters with the same handful of unwashed crewmen.

  • Asia,  Audio Book,  Book Reviews,  Environment/Nature/Ag,  FICTION,  FOUR STARS ****,  India/Pakistan/Afghanistan,  Uncategorized

    The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese **** (of 4)

    In the fictional riverside town of Parambil, in Kerala, India, 12-year-old Big Ammachi is taken from her home at the beginning of the 20th century to marry a widower. The marriage goes well and Big Ammachi is a protagonist around whom many of the village’s 31 additional characters revolve. Big Ammachi lives into her 70s and through her we observe the integration of rural villagers into the development of modern Indian life.

    Additional stories include a century-long investigation into a mysterious genetic ailment that makes many male descendants of Big Ammachi’s clan fear water and suffer vertigo when their heads are submerged. There is a nearby leper colony whose inhabitants and doctors are fully lovable. A young female artist, Elsie, must fight sexism to practice her artistic gifts. A Scottish physician sent to work in Britain’s colony on the subcontinent serves as an intermediary between British exPats and Indians. The regional environment of canals, forests, tea plantations, rivers, and individual trees are also important characters.

    At times the 775-page book feels like it has no beginning, middle, or end. Though never tedious, it can be as exhausting as it is exhaustive. Still, Verghese, as he says in his afterword, has culled and retold the stories of his ancestors. He has done so in exquisite fashion.

  • Audio Book,  Book Reviews,  FOUR STARS ****,  Judaism/Jewish Culture,  Memoir/Biography,  NON FICTION

    Becoming Eve by Abby Chava Stein **** (of 4)

    If ever there were an experiment, god forbid, that could demonstrate how we are born with inbred sexual identities and sexual predilections, this would be it. Abby Stein was born a boy into an ultra-orthodox Jewish community. Her fundamentalist sect of Judaism is so strict that all members are forbidden to access the internet and are barely taught the fundamentals English, learning Yiddish and Hebrew instead. Young boys are committed to a lifetime of Torah study. They attend Yeshivas (religious schools) 10 hours a day (or more) six days a week and learn no science or social studies and barely any of the other topics required by state curricula. They live the lives of their 18th century ancestors down to the clothes they wear, the language they speak, and the foods they eat, utterly and completely apart from mainstream America.

    And yet from the days of her earliest memories, without any knowledge that homosexuality even existed, no less such a phenomenon as transgenderism, Abby knew without question that she was a girl. She was raised as a boy, had a penis, eventually grew a beard, and fathered a child, and yet she always knew she was a girl. Becoming Eve is an extremely well told story of escaping fundamentalist Judiasm and a male body and the accompanying losses that come with such a transition. It also confronts the notion headon that any amount of grooming of young people might persuade someone to change their gender (take that Ron DeSantis and your fellow Book Banners), nor any degree of counseling could reverse someone’s sexual identity. If you were faced with years of counseling to the contrary, would you change your gender?

  • African American Literature,  America,  Book Reviews,  FICTION,  FOUR STARS ****,  Prize Winner,  Speculative Fiction

    Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah **** (of 4)

    Loretta Thurwar and Hurricane Staxxx are two of the greatest all-star fighters in history. Each woman has risen through the ranks of prisoners competing for their freedom. They have signed contracts to be contestants in for-profit showdowns arranged for regular broadcasts. Fans wear uniforms with their idol’s names. They follow every social media posting and watch special profiles of their heroes. They send fan mail and scream their heads off during matches. They weep over losses and glumly trudge to work when their heroes fail them. Televised fighting matches end when an opponent is killed.

    Adjei-Brenyah holds tight reins on prose that indicts America’s system of incarceration and its failed acts of correction. He brings to light a system that overwhelmingly and disproportionately jails people of color. He never excuses criminal behavior, but also clarifies that solitary confinement, tasing, and beatings by guards does not repair broken individuals, nor do the slightest toward preventing future crimes. He does it all by humanizing all-star fighters like Loretta and Hurricane who are dehumanized by their required acquiescence to their guards every request and who must live every moment under watch.

    Chain Gang is also an indictment of American football without once mentioning the sport. America’s most popular sport is akin to gladiatorial combat in Ancient Rome’s coliseum. A majority of players are black. All will be injured. Many will suffer irreversible brain injury and die early. The harder they hit one another the louder we scream in ecstasy. Chain Gang is an important read.

  • Book Reviews,  Europe,  FICTION,  FOUR STARS ****,  Suspense

    Agent Running in the Field by John LeCarre **** (of 4)

    Nat, a middle-aged British spy, is called home from his duties running agents on the continent of Europe. Reunited with his wife Prue and about to be put out to pasture by the agency, Nat is at loose ends when he is befriended by Ed Shanahan. Ed is young, idealistic, and seeks out Nat at his club in order to challenge Nat, the club’s reigning badminton champ.

    Adding to Nat’s malaise and reinforced by Ed’s tirades, Britain is careening toward Brexit and America is reeling under Trump’s anti-Europeanism. Nat and Ed, serving as spokesmen for LeCarre, the aged Europeanist,let loose on the state of affairs. Britain’s foreign secretary is described as a “fucking Etonian narcissistic elitist without a decent conviction in his body bar his own advancement”. Trump is “Putin’s shithouse cleaner.”

    In vintage LeCarre, agents cross, double cross, and triple cross one another. Ascribing veracity is a agent runner’s most difficult task. The agencies that run spies (German, Russian, British) are all bureaucratic hell-holes. Can Nat sort out one more case of covert actions that threaten to undermine Europe’s post Cold War alliances? If you have a chance to listen, LeCarre is an expert reader of his own audiobooks. Published when LeCarre was 88-years-old, this was his last book.

  • America,  Book Reviews,  Europe,  FICTION,  FOUR STARS ****,  History,  World War II

    Goodnight Irene, by Luis Alberto Urrea **** (of 4)

    Based on accounts from the author’s mother, Luis Alberto Urrea has created a fictional account of two young women who volunteer for the Red Cross in WW II. They are assigned to trucks outfitted to make donuts and sent off to the war. The two women serve GIs a taste of home: fresh donuts, hot coffee, and some healthy flirting with young female servers. As one commander says about his soldiers fighting Nazis from the beaches of Normandy toward Germany, “My soldiers know who they are fighting against, but the Donut Dollies (“STOP calling me, Dolly!” is recurring refrain) is reminder of what they are fighting for.”

    The idea of serving fresh donuts to raise the morale of troops, in hindsight, feels as quaint as a Bob Hope variety show. Urrea has set himself a difficult task of justifying another book about World War II, this one about donuts. He succeeds marvelously by painting a rich picture of Irene Woodward, a scion of New York socialites, and Dorothy Dunford, a strapping midwestern farm girl, as they descend into the dangers of wartime duties. Irene and Dorothy ask themselves repeatedly, “Is serving donuts really helping to win the war? What are we doing here?” It all matters. Keeping up morale is as important as supplying ammunition or shipping the right number of warm socks in the right sizes to soldiers on the front lines.

  • Book Reviews,  Europe,  FICTION,  FOUR STARS ****,  History,  Middle Ages

    Essex Dogs by Dan Jones **** (of 4)

    In July of 1346, King Edward crossed the English Channel to reclaim territory taken by his independently-minded cousin, King Phillipe. Thousands of troops land on the beaches of Normandy, but we follow 10 peasants who fight together and call themselves the Essex Dogs. They have made their livings as soldiers-for-hire during summer fighting season and have gotten good at their craft. They are a Band of Brothers.

    The ten men are real people. The de facto leader of the Dogs, Loveday FitzTalbot, is questioning whether he still has the drive to kill and pillage indiscriminately. After many seasons in the field, his belly is bigger than it is used to be, running uphill winds him, and he recognizes the villagers he is terrorizing as being not unlike himself. It is hard to swing an axe effectively when your mind is questioning your motives. Their youngest recruit, Romford, overcomes hazing because what he has left behind is worse than becoming a warrior. He also has an appetite for drugs and during the heat of battle disappears to ransack apothecaries. There are a pair of expert archers from Wales who speak no English, but can shoot an arrow through the peak of your hat from a galloping horse, and a former priest, called Father, who has become a bloodthirsty madman.

    Then there are the film-clear descriptions of life on the march. Soldiers wait in long lines in the French sun while engineers repair river crossings destroyed by retreating Frenchmen. Insects swarm them. They have not washed in weeks. The food is wretched. Their leather shoes have holes. Water is often unpalatable. They get the runs. Small cuts get infected. They have been promised pay only if they complete the campaign. And they can all see that not only are knights and lords sleeping on soft beds in tents attended to by servants and squires, but that other soldiers appear to be receiving special treatment. There is a lot of well-earned grumbling.

    If you have a chance, listen to the audiobook. Not only does the reader keep all the accents straight, but he sings the abusive curses of captains handing out orders with alacrity and minces the words of King Edward’s teenage brat of a son with comedic perfection.

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

    The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory by Tim Alberta **** (of 4)

    Tim Alberta is a Christian evangelical and an accomplished journalist describing what he sees as a growing division inside America’s evangelical churches. He visits and describes events within congregations of numerous mega-churches across the country. A vocal minority (he describes them as a minority, but I’m not sure anyone is counting) of right-wing nationalists have transferred their faith from Jesus Christ to Donald Trump. They are led by like-minded Republicans and by pastors praying for their presidential protector of beleaguered and oppressed Christians in America.

    Alberta does not challenge evangelism’s core conservative principles: opposition to abortion, anti-LGBQTIA+ sentiments, Christianity’s promise of a heavenly Kingdom to come, and the necessity of bringing the word of Christ to unbelievers. But he is unstinting in his questioning of how personal conservative beliefs have become militant rallying cries that, in his words, violate the spirit of Christ.

    Yet he wonders, how have Christ’s teachings to love your enemies, to welcome the stranger, and to care for the downtrodden turned into a winner-take-all political battle? Why have evangelicals been among the country’s leaders in turning away immigrants, trolling public health advocates promoting Covid vaccines, and on the front lines of the January 6th uprising?

    Enthusiastic supporters greet Donald Trump at a rally of more than 30,000 in Mobile, Ala., in August.

    The book suggests that the problem is misguided spirituality and he does his best to quote scripture back at those he perceives to be fanatics. But he also describes a movement that is constructed to absorb what it is told on faith. So when congregants get all of their information from charismatic preachers and an endless supply of right-wing, and deeply conspiratorial news sources — Covid was created by cabals to control churches; elections are fixed by “woke” Democrats and the Deep State — there is not much congregational initiative to question.

    Alberta points an enraged finger at the Falwells, the Moral Majority, Liberty University, The Southern Baptist Convention, scores of preachers who have sexually abused their congregants, and hucksters who raised millions of dollars preaching hatred to evangelicals terrified that they are losing their God-anointed Christian country.

    Near the end of his book, he does his best to point to a resurgence of what he considers sane-minded evangelical Christians. He predicts a forthcoming split of nationalistic churches from those who are Jesus-centered. A schism is the most optimistic outcome he can point to.

  • America,  Environment/Nature/Ag,  FOUR STARS ****,  History,  NON FICTION,  Prize Winner,  Science

    Fire Weather by John Vaillant **** (of 4)

    Just as every year is now the hottest on record, so too the number and intensity of wildfires across the planet break annual records for temperature, acreage burned, and never-before-seen fire behavior. A warming climate, low atmospheric humidity, pre-dried forests, and human habitations in previously uninhabited ecosystems are all tinder waiting for an inevitable spark.

    What makes this book so insightful is its focus on fires in 2016 that demolished the city of Fort McMurry in Alberta, Canada. Fort McMurry is the home to Canada’s bitumen deposits of tar sands, the worlds least efficient and, after coal, most carbon intensive fuel. In essence, the oil extraction industry warmed the planet enough that it set itself afire.

    Further, human habitations, now interspersed in forested and tree-lined communities everywhere, are constructed with fuel for fires. House fires can be contained if a single home goes up, but are uncontrollable when a wall of intense heat flows toward a neighborhood. Homes are fabricated with kiln-dried wood and filled with wooden furniture and cabinetry. The number of household items made of oil-based synthetic products is surprising: vinyl siding, carpets, sofas, pillows, clothing, electronics. To a raging fire, it is all just fuel. Then add the propane tank for the outdoor grill, the gas tank for the SUV, and cans of sprays and paints in the basement and homes tend to explode before a fire even reaches them.

    Interspersed with the minute by minute account of the explosive growth of the Fort McMurry fire is a detailed, and unequivocal litany of warning about human induced climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The evidence and scientific proof has been around for more than 100 years, albeit in some marginal locations. Still, by the 1950s and definitely by the 1980s, there was widespread agreement that burning fossil fuels would cause the climate to change. I was explaining this in lectures already in 1987.

    What kind of evil is embodied in corporations and individuals whose internal memos acknowledge the repercussions continued fossil fuel extraction would have on the livability of our planet? Favoring profit or people, Vaillant leaves no doubt that they paid obfuscators to confuse the public and protect their profits.

    This book, a National Book Award finalist, should be required reading, but it should also be read only on the first floor. At the end when the reader jumps out the window she can live to recommend the book to someone else.

  • Africa,  Book Reviews,  FICTION,  FOUR STARS ****,  History,  Islam,  Prize Winner

    Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah **** (of 4)

    Gurnah won the 2022 Nobel Prize for literature and it is evident why in Afterlives, a vision of life on the ground in East Africa under German occupation. As the 19th century was drawing to a close, the eastern seaboard of the continent was carved up and ingested by Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and France. Before swallowing they chewed up natives in ground wars that rolled across towns, ports, and villages.

    Gurnah follows a family of Indian muslims and a couple of indigenous Tanzanians who we get to know on an individual basis as they go about their daily business. They get jobs, some learn to read and write, they pray in the mosque if they are religious, they have marriages (good and bad), sometimes join the Germans in their war making, and sometimes do their best to escape the dehumanization of German attacks on resistant villagers and their chiefs.

    Gurnah delivers exquisitely close attention to details: the warmth of the Indian Ocean on an evening walk, the fear of isolation when a child must sleep on a dirt floor knowing that in the morning an uncaring guardian will again demand a full day of exhausting chores, and the satisfaction of finally consummating a marriage after a painfully long delay. An era, a location, and a melange of complicated people are all painted in vivid color. A leaf doesn’t fall whose importance Gurnah fails to notice and yet he never includes like a single word more than is needed.