This magnificent collection took 10 years to organize, collecting Madiba’s letters from the many points where they were received, and from the prisons–where many of them were not mailed out, for various technical reasons that were a poor disguise for censorship. The preface suggests that most people will want to flip through it rather than reading it cover-to-cover, but I am a habitual cover-to-cover sort, and so I read the first 50 pages in sequence. And the book’s editor is correct. This is not a cover-to-cover read.
Nevertheless, I am struck immediately by the dignity with which Mandela communicates with his captors. Time and again he writes to them in a courteous, civilized, and highly educated hand about the various ways in which his rights under South African law are being violated and what he is requesting they do to remedy it. He is persistent. He forces them to treat him as a human being. Mandela was an attorney, but he was also possessed of social instincts that nobody can teach anyone. And although I never met him, everything I have read–which is a good deal, where this man is concerned–convinces me that he was also a very nice person.
This is a tome, and it’s a treasure. I am glad I was denied a galley because this is the sort of volume I want as a physical copy. In the end my son purchased it for me for my birthday, and so I thank Benjamin. What a treasure.
If you are looking for just one book about Mandela’s life, read his hefty autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. However, if you are a collector of books about South Africa, or about civil rights in general, or of course, about Nelson Mandela, go out and get this book now.
This is the RBG book I’ve been waiting for. My huge thanks
go to Net Galley and Henry Holt Publishers for the review copy. This book will
be publicly available November 5, 2019.
Justice Ginsburg wants us to know that the sky is not
falling. Though progressive thinkers see great cause for concern, primarily
within the executive branch of the federal government, the U.S. Constitution
hasn’t changed, and the Supreme Court, she insists, is made up entirely of
strong legal minds that revere it. Precedents are still the basis of future
rulings; the overturn of precedent is rare and unusual. But for activists—and she
loves us—she also points out that public opinion is what alters the course of
the law. Congress makes laws based on what their constituency desires. So she
isn’t suggesting we put away our pussy hats and our picket signs; she just
wants us to know that our advocacy works, and she appreciates everything we do
to further women’s rights, civil rights, and gay rights.
Twice previously I read other books about RBG; one is a
popular biography that I enjoyed, but that didn’t go deeply enough into
Ginsburg’s legal ideas, and the second is just dross, minutiae gathered from
her high school year book and whatnot. Whereas part of me just wants her to
write an autobiography, I have to recognize that she is very elderly, has faced
health challenges lately, and to stand a chance of writing any sort of memoir,
she’d probably have to resign from the Court. And goodness knows, I want her to
stay there, ideally forever. Instead, Rosen’s series of interviews with this
feminist icon serves nicely.
Rosen has been friends with Justice Ginsberg for many years;
they were drawn together initially through elevator discussions of opera. His
chapters are brief but meaty, organized around key rulings and topical
interviews. Rosen explains succinctly at the outset how this friendship formed
and grew, but he doesn’t get windy or use the opportunity to aggrandize
himself. He keeps the focus strictly on his subject. The interviews flow in an
agreeable manner that is literate without being verbose or Byzantine.
We live in politically polarized times, and so even when I
am reading about a political figure that I admire, I generally expect my blood
pressure to rise a little, perhaps in passionate agreement. But if anyone in
this nation has the long view of history and the key domestic issues that have
unfolded, particularly with regard to the rights of women, it is RBG. And
although I am not as senior a citizen as Justice Ginsburg, many of the changes
she mentions that have occurred over the decades are ones that I can also
attest to, though I hadn’t thought of them in years. For example, when I came
of age in the 1970s, it was still not unusual to try to enter a bar or club
only to be barred at the doorway because women weren’t allowed inside. (“Gentlemen
only, Ma’am. Sorry.”) I had forgotten about these things; as her recollections
unspool I see that she is right. Change happens, but lasting change happens
slowly. We are getting there, at least with regard to women’s rights and gay
rights. Issues of race and class are something else entirely, and she points up
specific instances where justice has not progressed and change is imperative.
I could say more, but none of it would be as
wise or as articulate as when Ginsburg says it. If you’ve read this far in my
review, you should go ahead and order this excellent book now. I highly
recommend it to all that are interested in social justice, both formal and
informal.
Say this name to schoolteachers and children’s librarians and watch our faces light up, our backs grow a trifle straighter, our steps quicken. Dr. Seuss is the closest thing we have to a patron saint, and when I saw this biography, I wanted it as badly as I’ve wanted any galley. Big thanks go to Net Galley and Penguin Dutton, and many apologies for my tardiness. It’s a strange thing but true: when I must write an unfavorable book review, I know just what to say and can do it the same day I finish reading, but for a momentous work such as this one, I need some time for my thoughts to gel. Brian Jay Jones writes biographies of quirky visionaries such as Washington Irving, George Lucas, and Jim Henson, and he doesn’t cut corners. This biography is highly recommended to adult readers, but don’t go handing it off to your precocious fifth grader until you’ve read it yourself. Geisel’s life held some very deep shadows.
Geisel grew up with comfort and privilege as the heir to a
family beer making business; the slings and arrows that came his family’s way
during Prohibition taught him that small minds can do ugly things. Still, his
youth was mostly untroubled; he attended Dartmouth , where he was voted Least
Likely to Succeed, and then Oxford, where his studies in Medieval German
floundered, his attention drifting to the margins of his notebook, where he
drew fanciful creatures and turreted buildings that would later become iconic. It
was Helen, his sweetheart, who suggested he follow his heart and pursue art for
a living. His early success came in advertising for Flit bug spray. Once he and his bride became financially
stable enough to move out of their low rent neighborhood and into a tonier
area, he discovered he had no use at all for pretension, and he wrote:
“Mrs. Van Bleck
Of the Newport Van Blecks
Is so goddamn rich
She has gold-plated sex
Whereas Miggles and Mitzi
And Bitzi and Sue
Have the commonplace thing
And it just has to do.”
He served in the military during World War II with Francis
Ford Coppola making propaganda and training films. His pro-intervention
cartoons are surprisingly hawkish—I have the collection titled Dr. Seuss Goes to War on my shelves—but
he later realized that it was wrongheaded to demand the internment of Japanese
Americans, and in some bizarre way, he intended Horton Hears a Who to be his apology for it.
His family was not Jewish, but his surname confused some
people, and he received some anti-Semitic shade that inspired him to stand up
for the rights of Jewish Americans.
Jones deserves credit for confronting the anti-Japanese
racism and xenophobia in this author’s early years; he doesn’t gloss over it,
and he doesn’t turn it into something prurient either. He lays it straight out,
along with Ted’s more enlightened thinking in his later years, and it strikes
exactly the right tone. This isn’t comfortable material, but then it shouldn’t
be.
The most amazing thing is to learn that Seuss—known to
family and friends as Ted—wasn’t a successful author until well into middle
age. He vacillated between advertising and “brat books” but hit it big when he
submitted How the Grinch Stole Christmas to
Bennett Cerf at Random House, which would be his second home for many years.
Though he and his wife moved to Southern California and much of his work was
mailed in, he became known for coming to read his book to the Random House
staff in person when it was publication time.
(He was also known for being difficult at times, micromanaging the
publication of his work, and this may be part of the reason he wasn’t urged to
attend business in person on a more regular basis.)
Ted and Helen were unable to have children, a painful fact
that they chose not to share with the public. When asked during publicity tours
why a man with such a great heart for children had none himself, Ted deflected
it by saying others should have the children and he would write for them.
Helen’s illnesses and Ted’s infidelity were aspects of this
author’s life I knew nothing about. It’s
hard to read about, but again, Jones includes these things in the narrative not
to shock us, but because they have to be there.
He was widely known and revered for his insistence that
books should be fun for children to read and should not preach or moralize, but
instead, should respect the readers. He
was a pioneer in this regard, and I owe him a great debt for teaching me to
love literature as a preschooler, and for providing such wonderful books for my
own children and students later in my life. It is this legacy that remains when
the rest falls away, that reading should open new worlds for its young readers;
it should not trick or manipulate its audience, but instead should speak to
children with respect using language they can understand.
Sarah Valentine was raised to believe that she was white, and that her dark complexion was the product of her Greek ancestors. But whereas she does have Greek ancestry in her DNA, Sarah is also of African descent. This strange but compelling, searingly honest memoir came to me courtesy of Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press; it will be available to the public tomorrow, August 6, 2019.
Valentine is an excellent writer, and she spins us back in
time to her childhood, spent in a private school, a Catholic upper middle class
family, celebrating European cultural events. She is the only African-American
or mixed race student at her school, and every now and then, someone there will
make a remark that infers she is Black. This puzzles her. Her own mother makes
remarks bordering on White Supremacy, assumptions about the habits and
character of Black people; of course, none of this should apply to Sarah, in
her view, because she insists that Sarah is Greek and Irish, and Irish, and
Irish.
Reading of her experiences, I am initially surprised that
such culturally clueless, entirely white parents would be permitted to adopt a
Black child; but here’s the thing. She isn’t adopted. She is her mother’s
biological child, and to talk about who her biological father is, is to
recognize that her mother was not always faithful to her father. It’s a keg of
dynamite, one that her parents carefully navigate around. Not only have they
not spoken about this to Sarah; they have not spoken about it to each other. It
is a fiction that holds their marriage together; toss a tablecloth over that
keg of TNT there and for goodness sake, don’t bump it.
I came away feeling sorry for her father.
There’s a lot more going on between Sarah and her parents,
particularly her mother, a talented but not entirely stable parent who assigns
impossible standards to her daughter. Meanwhile, as Sarah grows up and leaves
for college, the fiction of her heritage is uncovered, first as a mere suspicion,
then later as fact.
This isn’t an easy read or a fun one. It can’t be. Sarah’s
pain bleeds through the pages as we see the toxic ingredients and outcomes in
her story; her mother’s mental health and her own, as well as eating disorders
and the implosion of her parents’ marriage. The particulars of her lifelong
struggle make it impossible to draw a larger lesson in terms of civil rights
issues; there are some salient points that will speak to women that grew up in
the mid-20th century as Sarah’s mother did, and as I did. And here
we find one small spark of optimism, the fact that when women are raped,
whether at college or elsewhere, we stand a greater chance of being believed
than we did in the past. Still, it’s a grim tale overall, and I don’t think
there’s any other way Sarah could honestly have told it.
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.
Seattle Book Mama 