Category Archives: nonfiction

Lexington, by Kim Wickens****

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Kim Wickens’s book Lexington tells the story, not only of one immensely famous, popular race horse, but of horse racing in general during a bygone era in the U.S. My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

From 1780 to 1860, horse racing was the most popular spectator sport in the United States, and almost a religion in the South. Great fortunes rose and fell with the purchase, training, performing, and procreating of prize horses, and Lexington was the greatest of them all. Kim Wickens has done an astounding amount of research. This is probably the best documented work on equestrian history on the market today. If you love horses, and especially if you love horse racing, then this book is for you.

This reviewer knows little about either subject; I read it because it was different from most history books I’ve seen. My particular interest is the American Civil War; the synopsis mentioned General Grant and Abraham Lincoln, and I was all in. One of Lexington’s progenies was gifted to Grant by a supporter during the war, and he prized it greatly. The horse, Cincinnati, carried its new owner into at least three major battles. Grant allowed no one else to ride it, except, on a single occasion, President Abraham Lincoln.

Sadly for me, that’s about all we see of Lincoln, Grant, or the Union Army. It’s done in about four pages, which left me with 412 other pages. There are additional aspects here that are of interest to me, in particular the role of Lexington and his descendants in the crime spree by a bushwhacker named Sue Mundy, a name the man took on in order to throw lawmen off his trail. In fact, I found the second half of this meaty story to be much more interesting than the first half. Of course, although I like horses well enough from a distance, I have never been a rider or had any active interest in them. I am a city dweller, urban to my bones. For horse lovers, perhaps the first half will be as interesting or even more so.

One thing that I must mention has to do with the difficult material. This is nonfiction, and sometimes Lexington and other horses were mistreated by those responsible for their care. Whereas some race horse owners genuinely loved their steeds, ultimately they were investments. What to do with a horse, whether to race it or rest it, keep it or sell it, was governed mostly by the bottom line. Doubtless they would be appalled, were they alive today, to see the vast amount of coddling and spoiling we in the twenty-first century devote to our various fur babies. If you were to make a Venn diagram between us, about the only item that would occupy the shared bubble in the middle would be that we all own animals. That’s it. Whereas there is never any gratuitous description of the violence and other cruelties visited on the horses Wickens discusses, it’s in there, and if you can’t stand it, don’t read it.

I have rated Lexington four stars for a general readership, but for those with a strong, particular interest in horses, racing, and the history of both, this is most likely a five star read. Wickens is off and running!

The West, by Naoise Mac Sweeney****-*****

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4.5 stars, rounded up.

Those that have taken a course on Western Civilization—as college freshmen or otherwise—are familiar with its framework, that the modern world can attribute its earliest, most progressive, democratic, and technically superior attributes to the dead White European men that came before us. Archeologist and award-winning historian Naoise Mac Sweeney has taken a sledgehammer to this construct, proving that many of the smartest scientists, inventors, and social, military, and political leaders were not White, not European, and not male.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Mac Sweeney demonstrates her thesis by discussing fourteen key figures from the past that don’t fit into the standard framework. She begins with Herodotus and ends with Carrie Lam. Some chapters read like a college text or lecture, one where I know that this information is important, but my mind keeps wandering, and I check to see how much longer the chapter will be. Others woke me up. In chapter seven, she features Safiye Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. She was not legally able to become sultan following her husband’s death, so she saw her son installed, and then “summarily executed” his nineteen younger brothers to prevent anyone from contesting his right to rule. Another that made me sit up and take notice is Njinga of Angola. I was riveted by this one, to the extent that I actually shouted at one point. (It’s all right; I was at home.)  If we judge her work by whether she has proven her thesis, then unquestionably she has done so. 

There are two aspects that I didn’t care for here. The first is a mannerism. The use of the Victorian “we” is grating. “As we shall see…” “We have discussed…” No. She has already seen, and the only one doing the discussing within the pages of this book is the author.  Also, since the title itself identifies this tome as a history book, Carrie Lam of Hong Kong, whose quotes date from 2021 and 2017, has no business being included here. History is defined as what has occurred fifty years or more prior to publication. Mac Sweeney knows this.

In a fit of pique over these two flaws, in addition to the snoozy parts of the narrative, I initially rated this book with four stars, but this is a groundbreaking body of work, and after reflection, I changed my rating to 4.5 stars, rounded up.

Highly recommended to students and to anyone interested in world history.

The Forgotten Girls, by Monica Potts***

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My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House for inviting me to read and review The Forgotten Girls, by Monica Potts. I generally enjoy reading books that focus on the working class, and so I thought this would be a good fit. And it might have been, had it been better written.

In broad contours, it’s a memoir that examines the lives of Potts and her best friend, Darci, both of whom grow up in a tiny, isolated town in the Ozark Mountains. The community is long on religion and red hats, and short on jobs, opportunity, ambition, and encouragement for girls to make something of themselves. Nevertheless, Monica, whose mother has raised her with the expectation that she complete her high school education, go to college, and then live somewhere else where there are more possibilities, has done all of those things, while Darci, who is every bit as talented and has just as much potential, is raised by a dithering mother that lets her do whatever she chooses because she dislikes conflict, and who has no expectation that her daughter will make a better life for herself, since she herself did not.

Okay.

Potts wonders why she made it out of there and Darci didn’t, and yet I’m not seeing the mystery, nor anything that’s all that different from what’s happening all over the country. And indeed, part of the time, Potts discusses this fact, that it is happening in many places that lack resources and that don’t prioritize education. And so, sometimes the story seems to be a sociological study that uses Monica and Darci as examples, and at other times there is so much anguished self-flagellation that I find myself wondering why she thinks the public needs to hear about her friend’s failure to thrive, and whether this isn’t mostly therapeutic writing for the author’s own benefit.

In other words, the book seems like a lengthy treatise in search of a thesis. We wander in and out of both girls’ lives, with a good deal of attention paid to the death of Potts’s sister, but there’s no real direction or clear purpose that I can find.

In the back of my mind, I can hear choruses of other readers asking whether this situation is considered special because it’s about white girls. Nobody makes a fuss when girls in rural areas that are Black or of Latinx heritage fall through the cracks; hell, it’s been happening for more than a hundred years.

Many other reviewers seem to find merit here, but I confess I don’t see much. If you choose to read this one, I suggest getting it free or cheap.

If It Sounds Like a Quack, by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling*****

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Pulitzer Prize finalist Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling takes on the weird world of alternative medicine and the medical freedom movement in his new book, If It Sounds Like a Quack. My thanks go to Net Galley and PublicAffairs for the review copy. This book is available to the public right now.

The fact is, I have—or I had—no particular interest in alternative medicine, but I had read Hongoltz-Hetling’s last book, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear, which was well researched, well written, and most importantly, completely hilarious. I have reviewed over 800 books, but the number of those that I later purchased is smaller than 10; yet I bought that book to give as a Christmas gift. So when I saw that he had another book available, I didn’t hesitate. And I wasn’t disappointed.

The book describes the bizarre programs and treatments espoused by six individuals: Larry Lytle, Toby McAdam, Robert O. Young, Alicja Kolyszko, Dale and Leilani Neumann, and The Alien. The seventh player in each section is America, and that’s where we see what U.S. laws say, and what enforcement, if any, comes down on these snake oil salesmen.

The opening section, the first of four, introduces each of these players and explains what led to them going into the businesses they have chosen. Among the various One True Cures are a laser salesman, a leech peddler, faith healers, a supplement seller, and a Mormon missionary that resurrects a long-dead theory about germs. There’s also a pair that develops a health drink; one of them is human, and one is not.

The author suggests that the success of these characters—and some of them have become wealthy beyond belief—has a good deal to do with the state of standard medical care in America. Nobody trusts Big Pharma. The disparity of what treatments we can expect is so great that in one New York hospital, there’s a wait time in the ER of nearly 6 hours for most people, whereas the wealthy can get a private room with high thread count sheets and a butler. One can see why many people conclude that anything must be better than this; yet, they are mistaken.

Apart from his sterling research and documentation, and his clear, conversational tone that at times caused me to forget, momentarily, that I was reading nonfiction, the thing that sets Hongoltz-Hetling apart from others is his ability to shift seamlessly from prose that is falling-down-funny, to that which is not only serious, but tragic, without ever breaking the boundaries of good taste. Because he did it so brilliantly in his last book, I watched for it this time—and I still couldn’t catch the segue way from one to the other.

Because I had fallen behind in my nonfiction reviews, I checked out the audio version from Seattle Bibliocommons and listened to it while I watered my plants. It is very well done, and I had no problem following the thread. The only downside is that the printed version has some humorous puns by way of spelling that the listener misses.

One way or the other, get this book and read it, even if the topic isn’t inside your usual field of interest. Highly recommended to everyone.

Deliver Me from Nowhere, by Warren Zanes*****

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I’m a diehard Springsteen fan and also loved Zanes’s biography of Tom Petty, and so when I saw this book, I was all in. My thanks go to Net Galley and Crown Books for the review copy; this book is for sale now.

Springsteen, yes; but why Nebraska, of all albums? Nebraska just may be the one song that leaves me cold. In the early portion of this story, I wasn’t as enthused as I expected to be, but as the narrative moved forward, I totally got it. Nebraska was written and performed during a crisis period in Bruce’s life. He had grown up in horrible, grinding poverty, and now suddenly he had all this fame and money. On the outside, his life was looking mighty good, but inside, the walls were crumbling. He was clinically depressed, sometimes suicidal, having never dealt with the traumas of his formative years. He rented himself a farmhouse and went there by himself to write songs and tape some demos. He took no friends or family, nor his band; he took one guy along to see to his creature comforts, and that guy’s second job was to be invisible. For most of the book I was convinced that the farmhouse was in Nebraska; nope. New Jersey. And it seems that my lack of enthusiasm for this music was not atypical:

“Nebraska was going to ask a lot of the listeners. If they loved Springsteen for the sliver of hope and possibility of redemption his songs offered, they were out of luck with Nebraska. If they loved the sound of the E Street Band and the way Springsteen led the group, that, too, was gone. If they loved the way he produced and arranged the songs into recordings rich in dynamics, nope, it wasn’t there in the same way…This was the sound of a man forcing out songs while held under water, a rough hand on his neck.”  

The album’s structured to tell the story of murderer Charles Starkweather and his accomplice, Caril Fulgate. He tells the story without judgment, and considers the characters to be a pivotal part of his work.

Here’s the fun part. As Springsteen wrote and recorded the songs, one after another, right there in the master bedroom of the house he was renting, he didn’t worry about any of the finer points of recording, because these were essentially supposed to be demos. For musicians that don’t read or write music in the formal manner, the demos are critical. How will you remember the song you came up with when it’s time to put the album together? You need a recording. So there was Bruce, perched on the end of the bed, with the water damaged Panasonic boom box nearby. He pops in a cassette and commences recording. He writes prolifically, practically vomiting up song, after song, after song. Sometimes you can’t feel better until you get it all out of your system, right?  

But later on, when it’s time to do the mixing and whatever technical processes usually go into a professional recording—which Zanes describes in an easy to follow manner—nothing works. After trying every imaginable method, they end up publishing the music on the cassette, exactly as he recorded it.

Those that want the full story of Springsteen’s life should read his autobiography, Born to Run, which is excellent. But there’s a lot to recommend this smaller little slice of the least known part of this rock and roll icon’s life. For those that love Springsteen’s music, and for those interested in rock music in general, or the technical side of recording, this book is highly recommended.

Biting the Hand, by Julia Lee****

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Julia Lee is not amused, and she’s decided to say the things nobody else is saying. In this deeply analytical, provocative memoir, she tells us about her own experiences growing up, and the issues faced by Asian immigrants and Asian Americans in the United States, where “we are critical to the pyramid scheme of the American Dream.”

My thanks go to Net Galley, Henry Holt Publishers, and Macmillan Audio for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

In some ways, I feel as though I am reading someone else’s mail as I read this, because it is clearly intended for an audience of people of color. However, I did read it, and I’m going to review it.

When the discussion of race in the U.S. comes about, it is, as Lee states, almost always a conversation about Black people and Caucasians. Those that don’t fit into either group are sidelined. Perhaps more harmful is the way that people of Asian descent are presumed to be sympathetic to the status quo. Ever since a major news periodical dubbed Asians as “the model minority” back in the early 1960s, expectations and assumptions have leaned in that direction. And the roots of this division—Black versus Asian—make this a particularly thorny assumption to untangle. After all, a large percentage of African-Americans can trace their lineage to slavery; their ancestors weren’t born in the States, nor did they choose to come here, but were kidnapped and brought by force. Angry? You bet! But Asian immigrants came of their own accord, oftentimes fleeing untenable circumstances in their countries of origin. And so, their children, and those that have come after, have largely been indoctrinated to be appreciative. If things don’t go well, they tell them, then we must work harder!

This Caucasian reviewer comes to you without the Asian background, appearance, or experience that Lee speaks of; yet I live in a city that has one of the largest Asian populations in the U.S., and am married to an Asian immigrant, and parent to a child that is half-Japanese. So many of the stories—strangers that ask where you’re from, and won’t accept the truth of “California,” where Lee was born, or “Seattle,” my daughter’s hometown, are familiar ones.

Lee is fed up with the mainstream news stories that endeavor to pit Asian and Black people against each other. Her parents were small business owners in a mostly Black part of Los Angeles during the riots of 1992, and her experiences inform her conclusion, that there must be solidarity between all people of color in order to successfully fight for significant change.

The one bone I have to pick is the casual manner in which she dismisses the question of social class as a key factor. Her very brief note about this is that it’s a tomato and to-mah-to issue, not worth much discussion, because most people of color are working class. This is simply untrue, and it enforces a stereotype of Black people as being mostly poor and dispossessed, when in actuality, eighty percent of Black people in the US live above the poverty line. There are African-Americans that have far more money than I will ever see; some of the many Asian groups have a higher median income than Caucasians. So yes, social class is a huge factor here, one that Lee should examine more critically. There are working class Whites that can be allies; there are wealthy families of color that would shut down the struggle, given half a chance. The missing star in my rating reflects her failure to recognize this, and to offer concrete solutions to this problem.

The book’s title comes from Lee’s mentor at the otherwise very white-supremacist dominated Harvard—Jamaica Kinkaid. I actually gasped when I saw this. What a luminary she found to guide her!

Both the audio and print version of this book are equally readable, so go with whatever you usually prefer.

This is a fine resource for those seeking to examine Asian and Asian-American racial dynamics. Read it critically, but do read it. There’s a lot here that has needed to be said for a long, long time.

Our Man in Tokyo, by Steve Kemper****

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My thanks go to Net Galley and Mariner Books for the invitation to read and review; Our Man in Tokyo is for sale now.

For the most part, my curiosity about World War II has been slaked, but this book has a different point of view than any other I’ve seen. American history students know of the miserable experience of the two Japanese ambassadors to the U.S., whose own government did not even give them a clue that Japan was about to bomb Pearl Harbor, right there on American soil. But I had never heard a word about their counterpart, the U.S. ambassador to Japan. Joseph Grew was a skilled and seasoned diplomat, and he tried mightily to find common ground between the two nations. Of course, in the end he was more or less shouting into the wind. But I had never read a single thing about him, and so this biography caught my interest.

Readers should know that the last two thirds are much more interesting than the beginning. I don’t care about Grew’s early life, or his marriage, or his golf game. I’m in this strictly for the historical record regarding the U.S. and Japan during the period leading up to the war; also, of course, I wanted to know what happened to him, stationed over there as he was, once war broke out. All of these things are explained clearly and in a conversational manner that is easy to read or listen to. (Since I had fallen behind, I checked out the audiobook from Seattle Bibliocommons, and it sped things up for me.)

The various politicians with whom Grew dealt are interesting indeed. The divisions within the government itself, and also within the Japanese military, created all manner of problems with communication and decision making. There are some bizarre circumstances, and they’re well described. But also interesting to me are the less historically necessary, yet fascinating tidbits that he picks up along the way, living for a decade or so in Japan. Here’s just one nugget for you: Mt. Fuji was (and is) a popular vacation destination, but just prior to Japan entering the war, a terrible trend developed. Young people in their twenties and even their teens went to Mt. Fuji in order to throw themselves into the volcano! When 500 young lives had been lost, the government acted. There were no mental health clinics, and no counselors. Instead, they simply made it illegal to sell anyone a one way ticket to Mt. Fuji. And the really weird thing is, it worked! I am still shaking my head over this one. Kemper’s biography is full of these odd little bits that I doubt you will find anywhere else. His research and documentation are sterling.

As to the audio book, the reader does a serviceable job, apart from his dreadful pronunciation of Japanese names. Shudder.

I recommend Our Man in Tokyo to anyone interested in reading nonfiction about American diplomacy in Japan just prior to the outbreak of war between that country and the U.S. Don’t be ashamed to skip a couple of chapters at the outset if you wish; there’s not much there that will become important later.

Empire of Ice and Stone, by Buddy Levy****

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Empire of Ice and Stone tells of the voyage of the Karluk, a brigantine vessel that sailed from Canada to the Arctic in 1913. It was led by Captain Bob Bartlett, the world’s best ice navigator at the time, and Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a “visionary” leader in search of wealth and fame. My thanks go to Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for the invitation to read and review; this book is for sale now.

This well told narrative details a part of history of which I have read very little. As school children, most of us in the Western developed nations read of the early explorers, but stories of voyages in the twentieth century are few and far between. This is why I take this one on, but I begin to wonder partway into it whether it is more than I have bargained for.

The first half is more than a little confusing, because there are so (so, so, so) many names to remember, and almost all of them are Caucasian men—as is usual for the time and situation. About halfway into it, I abandon my efforts to memorize all of them, and once I am satisfied with memorizing the names of the two leaders plus “Auntie,” (more in a moment) and the ship’s pets, I calm down a bit and it’s easier to follow.  I am fortunate enough to receive the audio galley as well as the digital review copy, and that combination makes it easier to follow.

That said, this is not gentle reading. There is death—in many cases slow and terrible—and betrayal around every corner. I understood that there would be some of that when I took the book, but I’ll tell you right now, if you, dear reader, have any sort of mood disorder or are going through a dark time personally, you may want to stay away from this thing.

As the bodies begin to pile up, I start to feel angry, and I remain so, to some degree, until the book is done. Because this was a dumb thing that these men did. Their ship wasn’t up to the task, they cut too many corners at the outset, and this more or less spelled doom for many of those aboard. I can’t help speaking to these men as though they can hear me, and I’m asking what the fuck got into them to do this at all? If everyone had stayed home, most likely all of them would have lived to a ripe old age. True, they made some scientific discoveries; yet air travel was just around the corner, and the whole thing could have been done much more safely later on.

The story has a definite hero (Bartlett,) and a definite villain (Stefansson,) and the farther into the voyage we go, the more obvious this becomes. However, I would have liked to hear a good deal more about the other hero. Levy tells us that a lot of these men would have been dead before the rescuers arrived had it not been for the Innuit woman that was hired, along with her small children (!) to travel with them, and the narrative bears this out. Time and again, when they are on the razor’s edge of starvation, she comes up with an innovative way to use the environment around them to provide calories. Not always delicious calories, to be sure, but alive is alive. “Auntie” is a total badass, and deserves more ink; possibly not much information is available, given the biases of the time.

The book feels longer than it actually is; however, given the amount of complex information provided, it probably shouldn’t be pared down further. At the same time, I kept thinking that this would be so much more approachable if Jeff Shaara were doing the telling (via historical fiction.)

For those that are very interested in the history of early sea voyages, and to researchers, this immaculately researched book is recommended.

The Elephants of Thula-Thula, by Francoise Malby-Anthony****

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Francoise Malby-Anthony is an established author and the owner of a game reserve in South Africa. Although she’s written previous books about this reserve, The Elephants of Thula-Thula is the first of her books that I’ve read. My thanks go to Net Galley and Macmillan Audio for the review copy; this book is for sale now.

As I begin listening to the audiobook, I am not sure I like it much. After a brief passage about elephants, the author segues into a longer piece about rhinos and by the time she admits that the rhinos are her favorites, I mutter, “No kidding!” There are other passages in which she gushes about the refuge’s well-heeled but generous donors, and I’m beginning to feel as if this is the sort of book that people will buy because the refuge is a good cause, but nobody will actually learn anything or even enjoy it much.

About halfway in, though, I have a change of heart. The second half is much better than the first. She discusses throughout the book the challenges posed to the refuge by the pandemic, and she talks about the measures taken to remain solvent while also keeping her employees whole. There is actually more talk about elephants now. I confess I am jarred by the moment when a favorite animal dies (no spoilers) and she tells us that this is the worst grief of her entire life. She says this not too long after explaining that the reserve’s founder, her husband, has recently died, and so my head snaps up when the tells us that the loss of the animal is the worst. I am chalking it up to hyperbole, but if I were the editor, I’d suggest a rewording.

Nevertheless, there are wonderful anecdotes about the elephants, and of course the rhinos, as well as the addition of a cheetah. She discusses baboons—I’d never fully realized how scary they can be—and I enjoyed hearing about how one goes about moving a giraffe to another location. There’s a lot more about elephants in the second half, and she discusses the threat to the herd when some bureaucrats add up the acreage and decide that there are too many elephants here, and some must be either moved out or “culled” (which means, of course, killed!) The reserve is expanded, but it takes a whole lot of jockeying and maneuvering to carry it off.

Readers that have enjoyed Malby-Anthony’s earlier books, or that have a strong interest in wildlife preserves may enjoy this book greatly, and it is to them that I recommend it.

Poverty by America, by Matthew Desmond****

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“Hungry people want bread. The rich convene a panel of experts. Complexity is the refuge of the powerful.”

Desmond is the author of Evicted, the Pulitzer winning examination of urban homelessness. Desmond himself grew up poor, and his family was forced out of their home when he was a child. These things give him a different and more authoritative perspective than most urban ethnographers.

 My thanks go to Net Galley and Crown Publishing for the invitation to read and review. This book will be available to the public tomorrow, March 21, 2023.

This book is written for a general readership, and it’s more readable than any other nonfiction work I’ve seen on this subject. His tone is conversational, and his research is impeccable, drawing from a wide variety of sources, well integrated and organized. He addresses the past and present roles of racism, explaining how the overtly discriminatory statutes and policies of the past have morphed into more subtly framed, yet still ubiquitous ones of today. He tells us “why there is so much poverty in America and…how to eliminate it.” He speaks to an audience of middle and upper class readers, warning that we must “…each of us, in our own way, [must become] poverty abolitionists, unwinding ourselves from our neighbors’ deprivation and refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.”

In revealing the roots of American poverty, Desmond is thorough. He discusses the role played by medical costs, and the many workers that still cannot afford health care; the withering of unions, and the way that gig workers and independent contractors have replaced permanent employees; incarceration, and the debilitating effects it has, not only on the person sent away, but on their families for generations to come; the way that government assistance programs have been legally diverted to programs having nothing to do with the poor; the way that poor people are forced to pay more for the same goods and services that the better off pay. He discusses the ways that those living in poverty are cut off from political and economic opportunities. He does these things better than anyone else is doing them right now, and it makes me mad as hell, seeing millions of ruined lives all laid out so starkly.

It is when he approaches solutions that things become a little muddy. There are a few of his suggestions that I genuinely disagree with, but most of them are sound; the problem is that, despite his assurance that all of these changes can be made without much incursion into the lives of the wealthy and powerful, the chances of these people agreeing to implement such changes are somewhere between slim and none. He assures us that he is no Marxist (and that’s the truth, alas,) and that the rich can still have plenty; yet in reality, it’s clear to this reviewer that the kinds of changes that are needed are ones that working people will have to force from the tightly closed fists of the rich. This is where the fifth star falls off of my rating.

Nonetheless, Poverty by America is well worth your time and money, and I recommend it to you.