I love good military history, and so when I saw this title I
requested and received a review copy, thanks to Net Galley and Scribner. It’s
for sale now, but I can’t recommend it to you.
One of the first things I do when I read a new author in
this genre is to check notes and sources.
A first rate military historian will have multiple sources for each fact
cited, and a reasonably good one will have a variety of sources, primary
sources being most desirable.
Fenelon doesn’t do this. Much of his information hangs on a single source, and often these are not well integrated. This is the first time I have seen military history published by a major house, that uses Wikipedia as a source. All of the history teachers I know send their students back to do a rewrite if they hinge their citations on Wiki, and if teenagers aren’t allowed to do it, I cannot think why Scribner permitted it.
What drew me to the book is the paratroopers. There seems to
be a spate of these coming out right now, and I find it fascinating subject
material. There’s also a trend, of which this book is also an example, of
embracing the brave German troops against whom American forces fought, and not
unnecessarily, either. I could get behind this trend more easily were it more
universal, but somehow U.S. historians are quick to recognize the shared
humanity of former enemies that are Caucasian, and others, not so much. If I
could see one, just ONE WWII history that recounts kind of brave actions on the
part of the Japanese during this conflict, I would be a good deal less cranky.
Be that as it may, this book is inadequately researched and
inadequately documented. It’s not professionally rendered, so if you want to
read it, do so critically and evaluate as you read. Get it free or cheaply; don’t
pay full price.
The Spanish-American War sparked the earliest fire of U.S.
imperialism, and the eccentric rich man that pushed it forward, Theodore Roosevelt,
was at its center. Risen provides a contemporary view of this badly managed
chapter in American history, dispelling longstanding myths and examining the
long term effect of the conflict on the U.S. military. My thanks go to Net
Galley and Scribner for the review copy, which I read free in exchange for this
honest review. This book is for sale now.
Roosevelt was challenged with a number of health problems as
a youngster, but instead of embracing his sedentary, privileged existence, he
embarked on a series of physically demanding adventures in order to strengthen
his constitution and affirm his masculinity.
When Cuban nationalists sought independence from Spain,
Teddy began campaigning for American intervention. Men of his generation was
had not known the destruction of lives and property that touched every part of
this nation during the American Civil War, and like most young people, they
were unwilling to listen to their elders. Roosevelt believed that war was a
splendid thing, and that in facing death, men were elevated to a higher level.
He joined his voice to those in the press advocating military aid to Cuba, and
after tapping every powerful connection his wealthy family could access, he was
successful.
His own unit—all volunteers—were
dubbed the “Rough Riders.” Most had no military training of any kind; the
mighty Union Army had been all but disbanded once the nation was reunited.
Though they were promoted as cowboys, the rugged individuals of the Wild West,
a goodly number hailed from Wall Street and Harvard. In addition to being able
to fund their own wartime excursion, they were noteworthy in their riding
capability.
There was no San Juan Hill. There was a series of them.
The American invasion of Cuba cast a spotlight on its
unpreparedness. Transporting troops, beasts and equipment across the Atlantic
was a debacle of the worst order. There weren’t even close to enough seaworthy
vessels, and because of this, most of the so-called cowboys fought on foot the
entire time; horses and mules were stuck back in Tampa waiting to sail. There
wasn’t enough food, potable water, or appropriate clothing for most of the men;
the wealthiest among them fared best, but there were many occasions when there
wasn’t any food to be bought at any price. There had been no reconnaissance and
so they went in blind; the heat and disease killed more Americans than the
Spaniards did. Vultures and immense land crabs that measured 2 feet across and
traveled by the thousands made short work of the dead when not buried
immediately. American losses were nearly triple those of the Spanish, and when
the war ended there were no hospitals or sanitation ready to receive the
legions of sick and wounded when they returned from the Caribbean.
Roosevelt used the occasion to point to the need for a
standing army and U.S. readiness, and ultimately this was his one useful
contribution. In other regards, the man was an ass hat. His bald-faced racism,
though not unusual at the time, went over badly with the Cuban freedom fighters
that were supposed to benefit from their presence. He crowed to his friends
about how much he enjoyed shooting an enemy soldier from just a few feet away “like
a jackrabbit,” and called his 45 days of combat the ultimate hunting trip. Mark
Twain hated the guy, and it’s not hard to see why.
Risen has an engaging writing style, and he uses lots of
well-chosen quotations. His research is excellent as are his sources. I would
have liked to see more of a breakdown along the lines of social class and other
demographics, but this war did not yield a rich archival treasury like the one
that came from the Civil War, so this may not be possible.
All told, this history is a find. Right now it seems that
every second historian on the planet is writing about World War II, whereas
this cringeworthy but significant chapter of American history has been largely
left by the wayside. I highly recommend
this book.
I read this biography free and early thanks to Net Galley
and Hachette Books.
I have enjoyed Streep’s movies and her feminist moxie since
the first time I saw her, and so I figured this would be a good fit for me.
Sadly, there’s nothing new here at all. There’s no depth of analysis, no stories
of inner struggle or insight into her development. The overall tone is
uniformly adulatory, which is fine as far as it goes; I don’t enjoy seeing a
journalist do a hatchet job on a performer, so if she has to lean in one
direction or another, I’m glad it’s on the positive side. But once again—I have
seen every single thing in this book somewhere else already. I knew about the
friction between Streep and Dustin Hoffman (who is also a great favorite of
mine,) and I knew she takes roles that show strong women. I knew she wanted to
sing, and she did it in Mama Mia. Readers that have followed this actor’s
career over the decades with a magazine article here and there can’t expect to
cover new ground. It’s shallow and superficial for the most part, and for me,
the only good thing is that I didn’t pay for this book.
Streep’s fans that haven’t followed her career in the press
may find more joy than I do here; nevertheless, my advice is to read it free or
cheap if you decide you want it. It will be available to the public September
24, 2019.
It’s almost as if two crimes are committed inside these
pages: the first is the premeditated murder of Sherri Rasmussen, and the second
is this atrocious book. How many writers
can take a compelling story—that of a cop killing her romantic rival, and her
arrest and conviction—and make it this dull? So I still thank Net Galley and
Henry Holt for the review copy, but nothing and nobody can make me read
anything written by this author again. It appears that very few reviewers even
forced themselves to finish it; those of us that soldiered on till the end
either deserve commendations for our determination, or a mental health referral
for not cutting our losses.
The book’s beginning comes the closest to competent writing
as any part of this thing. We get background information about Sherri and John’s
courtship and marriage, as well as John’s relationship with the murdering woman
he scorned, Stephanie Lazarus. Don’t get me wrong; I am not saying this part is
well written. Even here, there are serious issues with organization and focus,
yet I continue, believing that when we get to the meat of the story where the
truth is revealed and the killer arrested, tried and convicted, it will be
worth the wait. In that, I am mistaken.
The author wanders anywhere and everywhere, apparently
unwilling or unable to exclude one single fact about anyone, even those
tangentially involved. Why do we need pages and more pages devoted to the life
and times of people the victim barely knew? To add insult to injury, many of
the facts he’s uncovered are inserted into multiple places in the narrative in
a way that emphasis doesn’t justify. It
appears as if he is attempting to reveal a cop cover-up, but his inner attorney
forces him to equivocate, hinting throughout without ever reaching the
punchline. He infers that maybe Sherri’s husband John knows more than he’s
saying, but again we see innuendo everywhere without an accusation being made
outright. The writing is riddled with clichés. In many places he tells us how
one character or another feels, or what they are thinking, and yet there are no
citations anywhere for anything; this is a cardinal sin in writing nonfiction.
I go to check the notes at the end of the book and there are none. The copious
gushing over Sherri’s excellent character and intelligence, while it sounds
warranted, is salted so liberally over 597 interminable pages makes me wonder
if there is a connection between the author and the victim’s family, but again,
if it’s true, he doesn’t say so. All told, it’s a very unprofessional piece of…writing.
By the time I consider abandoning this thing, I have put in
the time required to read over a hundred pages, and so I see it through. I skip
the section about the murder of someone else; had it shown up before I was
completely disgusted, I’d read it in case it provides strong evidence to back
up what the author is inferring but not saying, but as it is, I just want to
get to the meat of the matter and be done with this thing.
Imagine my surprise when the Rasmussen murder case is not
reopened, and Lazarus is not investigated, arrested, tried and convicted until…the epilogue.
There is not one redeeming feature of this book. It’s a train wreck from the start to the blessed ending. If I feel this way after reading it free, how might you feel if you paid money for it?
Guisewite began publishing the comic strip “Cathy” in 1976,
the year that I graduated high school. It was a time of high expectations for
women, and the unrealistic suggestion that we would be able to “bring home the
bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you’re a man,” as Madison
Avenue decreed, was daunting. Through
her sharply perceptive humor, Guisewite let her peers know that it wasn’t just
us; we were judging ourselves with an unfair yardstick. She kept it real, and
in doing so, kept us sane.
My thanks go to Net Galley and G.P. Putnam for the review
copy.
So how does cartooning translate to prose? Whereas the cute, punchy single-page entries
and single sentence proclamations—and the lists—are her most familiar territory,
my favorite parts of this memoir are the least cartoonish ones. Yes, I love the
way she takes down the women’s fashion industry and the unhealthy way it
affects our body images. She was good at
it forty years ago, and she’s good at it now. But the passages that drew me in
and let me get lost in her story are the more vulnerable, deeply perceptive
parts of the narrative, her fears for her aging parents; the struggle and
triumph of raising a daughter, one with special needs, alone; and the failure
of her marriage. I am in awe of the fact that she and her ex made each other
laugh until the tears came as they planned their divorce. Who does that? And of
course, she made me laugh too.
Guisewite stays inside her usual parameters, never veering
outside of the middle class Caucasian realm with which she has experience.
Younger women won’t get much joy out of this memoir; women that came of age
between 1965 and 1985 are right in her sweet spot, and it is to them that I
recommend this book. It’s available now.
Purely by serendipity, Backman’s collection of essays came
out in the US as my own son is initiated into fatherhood. My thanks go to Atria
Books for the review copy; it’s for sale today.
Backman is known to me as a fiction writer, and I have read
most of his novels, which are beloved worldwide. Here he delivers nonfiction
with the same gently philosophical voice. Despite the title, the essays are written for
adults; this is not a children’s book.
Backman waxes eloquent on diverse topics, and it sounds
sweetest—as always—when he focuses on what real men do. For example, all his
life, he says he has been told to stand up like a man, but he wants his son to
know that a real man should also know how to “stay seated, shut up and listen.” Women the world over, myself among them,
cheer this, and in saying it Backman helps make the world a better place. Other
parts are funny as heck, as when he describes trying to change a diaper on an
airplane.
The book’s only weakness is the overuse of the words “stuff”
and “crap,” throughout the text, and knowing the author’s signature style, I
suspect that this began as deliberate repetition for emphasis and as a form of
figurative language that somehow didn’t translate effectively.
That said, it’s a sweet little book and a good read, and its
timing begs for it to be a reverse-Father’s Day gift in the US, from fathers –or
better still, grandfathers—to sons.
Author Anna Quindlen is queen of all things warm and wise,
and so it’s not surprising that her ode to grandmothering hits just the right note. I was lucky and read it free and early,
thanks to Random House and Net Galley, but it would have been worth the
purchase price had it come down to it. This friendly little book is available
to the public now.
Quindlen’s memoir can double as a primer for her peers that
are new grandparents also, but that’s not where its greatest strength is found.
The most resonant aspect is that common chord, the eloquence with which she
gives voice to our common experience. It makes me feel as if she and I are
sitting together with our baby pictures—the grandbabies and our children that
created them—and as she speaks, I am saying, “I know, right?” I chuckle as she
recounts trends in the advice given by experts to new parents: when our first babies were born, we were told
to put them to bed on their stomachs so they wouldn’t spit up and choke to
death on it; then later children slept on their sides, which seems like a safe
bet either way, but babies don’t stay on their sides very long; and now babies
are supposed to be safer on their backs. And she voices so well the pride we
feel when an adult that we have parented turns into a wonderful parent in his
own right. And I nod in agreement as she says of her toddler grandson, “No one
else has sounded that happy to see me in many, many years.”
Quindlen speaks well to the ambivalent moments as well, to
the need to hold our tongues when we want to offer advice that hasn’t been
requested; at the same time, there’s the relief that comes of not being in
charge of all the big decisions. And I
echo the outrage that she feels when some ignorant asshole suggests that our
biracial grandchild is not part of our blood and bones. (A jerk in Baby Gap
wants to know where she got him; she replies that she found him at Whole
Foods.)
Unequivocally joyful is the legacy grandchildren present. “I am building a memory out of spare parts…someday that memory will be all that’s left of me.”
And then, there are the books:
“’In the great green room…’
“’Mouse,’ Arthur says.
“’There is a mouse,’ I say…falling down the well of memory
as I speak, other children, other chairs.”
Go ahead. Read it with dry eyes. I dare you.
Quindlen is writing for her peers. If you aren’t a
grandparent and don’t expect to become one anytime soon (or perhaps at all,)
then this memoir will probably not be a magical experience for you. But the
title and book jacket make it clear exactly where she is going, and I am
delighted to go with her.
Highly recommended to grandparents, and to those on the
cusp.
Helen Ellis makes me laugh out loud. If you can use some of
that, you may want to read this book. Thanks go to Doubleday and Net Galley for
the review copy.
Southern Lady Code is a title that carries a code of its own. Some people use the word “lady” to describe
European royalty; some to describe a courteous woman, which is what I
anticipated here; and some use it to describe a well-mannered woman with a very
comfortable income, which appears to be the author’s operating definition. In
terms of the “code,” I thought I’d be reading straight satire, but discovered
that she has provided a combination of self-help tips and searing, sometimes
raucous humor. It works surprisingly well.
I have never made a cheese log before or wanted one, but
Ellis’s recipe sounds so persuasively delicious that I may try it. That said,
my favorite essays were short on advice and long on humor. I nearly hurt myself
laughing over the construction man she found masturbating in her bedroom—did I
mention that she gets a little edgy here?
And “The Ghost Experience” is massively entertaining. There’s a lot of good material here. Though at times her outlook is a little more
conservative than my own, I like the things she says in support of gay and
trans friends.
Ultimately, I suspect that I am not the target audience for
Ellis, who in her middle-aged years is dispensing life skills wrapped in
bountiful amounts of humorous anecdotes. She is writing to her peers and to
those women younger than herself. I am
ten or twenty years older than this woman, but I still came away impressed. So,
ladies and women, if you can look past the assumption of a greater-than-average
income, you’ll have a good time here, and if you can’t, try to get this
collection at the library and read selectively, because more of these essays will
resonate than not, for all of us.
I rate this book four giggles, and it will be available to
the public tomorrow, April 16, 2019.
3.5 rounded up. I received this book free and early thanks to Net Galley and Bloomsbury in exchange for this honest review, and I am sorry to be late providing it. The truth is, I couldn’t decide what to do with it. There was a tremendous amount of buzz in advance, and indeed, Madden is a talented word smith. This is also one of the strangest books I have ever read.
In a series of essays, Madden discusses her childhood and adolescence, growing up as an heir to the Madden shoe empire, provided with every material advantage, but also strangely unwelcome in her own home. It’s the ultimate story of alienation, one in which her father’s primary goal as a parent seems to be to pretend she isn’t there—until he goes to jail, anyway.
Kids that are ignored by their parents act out to get their attention. This is true across all social classes, though the form of the acting out varies. Kira isn’t invited to accompany her father anywhere, and he doesn’t talk to her when he’s home. He and her mother have frightening drug and alcohol addictions that increase the lack of contact and the dearth of affection their daughter receives. She can’t make friends and bring them home. So here’s this rich girl with money, unlimited time to burn, a house full of drugs and booze, internet access, and a head full of resentment. What could possibly go wrong?
In many ways, Kira’s writing breaks up stereotypes right and left, and her prose is crystalline and heartbreakingly, brutally frank. There’s so much that is good here. At the same time, I have to say that being neglected while rich is nowhere near as bad as being neglected while poor. It sounds cold, but there it is.
T. Kira Madden has lit up the literary world with her debut, and it will be interesting to see what comes next.
“Oh, Mrs. Churchill, do come over. Someone has killed Father.”
Lizzie Borden is the subject of one of America’s most
enduring legends, and Robertson is a towering legal scholar, educated at
Harvard and Oxford, and then at Stanford Law. She’s participated in an international
tribunal dealing with war crimes, and has been researching the Borden case for
twenty years. Here she lays it out for us, separating fact from innuendo, and
known from unknown. My thanks go to Simon and Schuster and Net Galley for the
review copy. This book is for sale now.
The Borden family lived in the heart of Fall River, and it consisted of Andrew, father of two grown but unmarried daughters Emma and Lizzie, still in residence, and his second wife, Abby. Their mother had died when Lizzie was tiny; Andrew had remarried a woman named Abby, whom Emma never accepted as a parent, but whom Lizzie called her mother until a short time before her grizzly death. Until this time the Borden household was well respected; Andrew was possibly the wealthiest individual in this Massachusetts town, but he was a tightfisted old scoundrel, and his refusal to relocate the family to the fashionable neighborhood on the hill where well-to-do citizens lived made his daughters bitter, as appropriate suitors would not call on them in their current home. Both had passed the age when respectable young women were expected to have married; they held that their father’s greed had ruined their chance at marriage and families of their own. Things had come to a head when Borden was persuaded to purchase the home in which Abby’s sister lived in order to prevent her from being cast out on the street. Emma and Lizzie were angry enough that they wouldn’t go downstairs when the parents were there, and poor Bridget, the servant, had to serve dinner twice to accommodate them. Everyone locked their bedroom doors against the others. Andrew had belatedly tried to smooth his stormy home life by purchasing a comparable house for each of his daughters, but the damage was done.
The story of Lizzie Borden is not a new one, but what sets
Robertson’s telling apart from the rest—apart from the meticulous research and
clarity of sourcing—is her explanation of how the cultural assumptions and
expectations of 1893 New England differed from ours today, and how these
nuances affected the trial. They lived in a time and place in which it was
assumed that women were ruled far more by their hormones and ovulation than by
intellect and reason. In fact:
“Experts like the influential Austrian criminal psychologist
Hans Gross contended that menstruation lowered women’s resistance to forbidden
impulses, opening the floodgates to a range of criminal behaviors…Menstruation
may bring women to the most terrible crimes.”
Had Lizzie confessed to the killings, she might very well
have been judged not guilty; her monthly cycle would have been said to have
made her violent and there was nothing to be done about it, rather like a moose
when rutting.
Criminal behavior was believed to be inherent in some people
and not in others, and this counted in Lizzie’s favor. The Bordens were seen as
a good family, and a girl from a good family doesn’t plot brutal murders. It
isn’t in her. This sort of thing, experts said, was more likely to be done by a
transient or a member of the working class. The women of Fall River were
polarized around this case, and though women from comfortable homes were all
certain that poor Lizzie was being railroaded, working class women weren’t as charitable
in their assessments.
There was a ton of evidence against her, most of it
circumstantial; the most damning aspects of the case against her were ruled inadmissible,
and the jury never got to hear them.
Robertson is a fine storyteller, and her narrative lays it
out for us so clearly. There is occasional gallows humor, as well as amusing
bits of setting not seen in cities of any size today, such as the neighborhood
cow that mooed near the courtroom window at inauspicious moments while
testimony was being given. However, the first half of the book is more compelling
than the second half, because prosecutors and attorneys must repeat things,
sometimes many times and in many ways, in order to convince judges and juries,
and since this book is about the trial, Robertson must do the same. Still it is
fascinating to see how the whole trial shook out.
Those interested in the Borden case, or in true crime
stories in general, should read this book. It’s the clearest, most complete
recounting and analysis available to the public today, written by a legal
scholar that has done the work and cut no corners. `
Seattle Book Mama 