Tag Archives: memoir

US Grant: the Civil War Years: Grant Moves South and Grant Takes Command*****

Posted on by

usgrantthecivilwaryI was fortunate to receive a DRC of this two volume biography of America’s greatest general, US Grant. Thanks go to Open Road Media and Net Galley for providing it in exchange for this honest review. This is the sixth Grant biography I’ve read, and aside possibly from Grant’s own memoirs, which are valuable in a different way than this set, I have to say this is hands-down the best I have seen. Catton won the Pulitzer for one of his civil war trilogies, and this outstanding biography is in the same league. Those with a serious interest in the American Civil War or military history in general should get it. It’s available for purchase now.

When I had read a couple of US Grant biographies, I told myself that enough was enough, and that I should push away from this one subject in favor of others. I am glad I ignored my own advice, because I have come away from this prodigious, in-depth study with a deeper understanding than anything else has provided.  It’s over 1100 pages long, and over 800 pages once one discounts the end notes and index, but it is as great a pleasure to read at the end as at the start, if not more so.

Is this a good choice for someone new to the American Civil War? Generally speaking (if you’ll pardon the pun) I’d say no, but for someone otherwise well versed in military history or with a tremendous interest level, time, and stamina, it could be. Because Catton is known as an expert in this field, I especially enjoy not having to review his citations. I know his sources will be strong, and one brief overview convinces me this is true.

The first volume starts with his less than glorious entry into the war. As many know, he had been a member of the regular US army during the conflict with Mexico, and had fallen apart and had to go home. Now he is back, but only after a string or two has been pulled by a family friend, and even then, his task is a daunting one. Volunteer soldiers don’t take orders or submit to discipline as a West Point soldiers do, and when he arrives, it seems the lunatics are running the asylum. One of the things that I am impressed with anew every time I read about Grant is his unerring judgment, the social radar that is an indisputable part of his talent. By knowing where to go easy on his men and how to bring them into conformity where it’s most important, he creates a solid force to move South with.

The battles of Belmont, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and the tragic but technically successful battle of Shiloh open up the Mississippi River for the Union and divide the South. Catton uses a number of anecdotes that are new to me, and his congenial tone, occasionally caustic wit, and spot-on analysis leave me both energized and contented at the same time.

The second volume, however, is where I learn the most. Until I read this biography, I haven’t understood exactly how great a risk Lincoln takes when he orders that the US military forces should be given the ballot, an unprecedented move, as he himself runs once more for the highest office. His opponent, McClellan, is a former Union general that at the war’s outset, was at the top of the chain of command.  He didn’t go home a happy man, and now he is running as a Copperhead, the moniker given those in the North that want to end the war and let the South leave the Union, slaves and all. And though I know it is often the case that soldiers and sailors choose to support their Commander in Chief at the ballot box, I haven’t fully recognized how badly this may go for Lincoln. Doesn’t every soldier want to go home? This is the Democratic ticket’s promise; end it now and send them home.

On top of all that, Lincoln and Grant, who think a lot alike, clamp their teeth together and endure the white knuckled ride that they know they’ll be facing when they decide against further prisoner exchanges with the South. There are two strong reasons for this decision: first, the South refuses to recognize Black men in uniform as soldiers, and won’t exchange them, assuming that all of them must be escaped slaves, including those with Northern accents. Grant declares that no prisoners will be swapped until the South is willing to parole every Northern soldier, and he means it.

In addition, both Lincoln and Grant realize that the South is running low on manpower. There are thousands of their soldiers sitting in military prisons; to trade them out and risk seeing them back in uniform is to turn a military contest into a war of annihilation. With prisoner exchanges, the war will last longer, and there will be more death. In a peculiar way, refusing to exchange prisoners is the more humane policy.

In an election year, this is a tough sell. There are families up North that have been notified that their son, brother, father, is a prisoner of the enemy, and word has by now been spread as to what kind of conditions those poor men face. How much harder is it to vote for Lincoln and the fight for the reunification of the republic when to do so is to prolong the time their loved one sits behind bars, slowly starving? Lincoln and Grant could temporarily resume prisoner exchanges until after the election, but they stand on principle, and it pays off.

Another thing that I don’t really grasp until I read the second volume is Grant’s relationship with the Army of the Potomac, a collection of men that to some extent have been poisoned with McClellanism. It’s a real tightrope walk, and he is deft in his dealing with it. I can’t tell you everything he does here; that’s the point of the book, after all. But I came away with a renewed respect for General Sheridan, and an interest in reading biographies of that general also.

How much of Sherman’s march through Georgia and then to the sea is Grant’s idea, and how much of it is Sherman’s? I come away understanding this better than before as well, although I have read both Grant’s and Sherman’s memoirs. Catton has a way of crystallizing events without oversimplifying them.

And I nod with solemn satisfaction at the cold fury Grant experiences when he learns of the assassination of President Lincoln and the attempts on the lives of others, including himself.

I still shiver with pleasure when I reread the denouement, in which Grant sends General Weitzel and his troops, some of whom are Black, into Richmond when the Confederate capitol falls. I want to cheer as the throngs form for the military review in Washington DC after the war has been won; all those thousands of soldiers, all those citizens and international visitors in the stands and on the sidewalks, singing “John Brown’s Body”. Think of it!

I promised myself to be brief, and I haven’t really done that, but this is the least I can bring myself to say about this excellent biography. If my review is too long to hold your attention, then this two book series—even while allowing for the fact that Catton is a far better writer than I—will also be more of a meal than you are prepared for.

But for those with a sufficiently great interest level and stamina, I cannot imagine a better memoir of Grant for you to buy and enjoy. Enthusiastically recommended!

Titles You’ll See Here Soon

Posted on by

The last time I put up a preview page, it was in the midst of household chaos, and I made the post by way of apology for not having a review to put up. I was surprised by the positive feedback I got, and so today, even though I have recently posted a review and will have more soon, I thought I’d show you what’s next. There are some repeats from my last preview that I haven’t done yet, but I’m happy to say most of those are done. Here’s what you can look for between now and Thanksgiving, barring catastrophe:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox, by Carol Burnett****

Posted on by

suchgoodcompany  When I saw that Burnett had published a memoir of her years as America’s favorite comedic performer on The Carol Burnett Show, which ran from 1967 through 1978, my first thought was, what, another memoir? She’s already published at least three others, one of which I have read and reviewed. But the fact is, she hadn’t used up all her juice yet. Each of her memoirs focuses on some particular aspect of her life, and so this book is new, it’s original, and it’s probably the stuff you were hoping she’d talk about in her other memoirs. Lucky me, I read it free thanks to Net Galley and Crown Archetype. It was published September 13 and I am sorry to be on the late side, but I scored my own copy just prior to publication; I had no idea it was available till Crown put a promotion up on Facebook and it showed up on my home page.  I genuinely held my breath as I logged onto Net Galley to see if I was too late, and happily, the Literature Fairy smiled on me.

As the memoir begins, I am at first a trifle disappointed, because it appears as if she is just going to list every single person that’s ever appeared on her show and gush about how nice they were.  But she’s just warming up, and it gets more interesting. She describes how she made her way into show business, and though she skims over the early years, knowing that the reader wants to get to the show, it sounds very much as if she was the overnight success that aspiring actors only dream of becoming.  She was on a show that I wasn’t around yet to watch called “The Garry Moore Show”, and she must have made not only a tremendous impression, but also a lot of friends, because she was offered her own variety show—think of it!—and then was able to bring a head writer, a choreographer, a bunch of dancers and some other people west with her from New York to Los Angeles.

This show was a fixture in my childhood and adolescence. One of Burnett’s regular satirical sketches lampooned soap operas, and it was called “As the Stomach Turns”. It was one of the few things that made my parents and me laugh out loud at the same time. My friends and I spent ridiculous, late night hours creating our own satire of a satire, which we dubbed “As the Stomach Churns”, and which featured imaginary illicit relationships among our own teachers along with the administration, janitorial staff, and especially our librarian, a book hoarder that chased away all potential clientele from her sacred gates.  So when I saw that Burnett was writing about the show, I had to see what she’d written, because she had been an intrinsic part of my own development.

All comers that want to read this should do it near an internet source if at all possible, because the comedic sketches can be viewed on television and now also on YouTube. This is fairly new: I tried to view them a couple of years ago and they weren’t there yet, so this is exciting all by itself.

And if you have never seen any of her work and wonder what I am carrying on about, check it:

 

 

and with Robin Williams:

 

The life that she led sounds like something most actors could only dream of. She got up, got her kids off to school, started work on the show mid-morning Monday-Friday, with a single run-through on Thursday followed by a live show before a studio audience Friday, and then they were done at three o’clock and she was done by the time her kids were out of school. It came down to disciplined behavior on the part of the cast and crew, and to the unusually respectful atmosphere in which the show was done. Once a guest misbehaved and when he threatened to storm off the set, she let him go and said good riddance; they did the show without him.  (She won’t give us a name, but he was short. I have been speculating ever since.)

 

She does tell the many spoofs that were done on movies of the past, and which actors called to say they just loved what the show had done with their film, and which either called up and were angry or sent indirect messages that they were not amused. And she  offers a retrospective look at the way women in show business were expected to behave back then; she was sometimes a doormat, and exultantly recounts how Edie Gourmet, on a guest visit, gave some of it back to those that bullied Carol.

 

Some of the funniest bits of writing are included, and some of the regular cast’s best onstage moments are recounted, along with those of favorite guest stars. A complete list of every show and which guests were featured is at the back of the book for those that want to look up particular entertainers, or  peruse it for fun.

 

But the bottom line is that this is pure gold for those that love Burnett and the show, and that can follow along some of the high performance points online. If you aren’t interested in her work, then the memoir won’t mean much to you.

 

Recommended to Burnett’s many fans.

 

Michelle Obama: A Life, by Peter Slavin****

Posted on by

michelleobama I received this book as a birthday gift from a gracious house guest. I think he chose it for me because he knew of my strong interest in civil rights issues. Although this is actually out of my wheelhouse, I decided to read it, and I was surprised how much of it I enjoyed. Of particular interest was the beginning of the book, where a surprising amount of the narrative was devoted to African-American history, especially in Chicago. I hadn’t expected it and found it both interesting and useful.

I don’t generally follow the lives and careers of mainstream American politicians or their spouses, so  I didn’t know much of anything about Michelle Obama, other than that she had made it plain, upon taking up that famous residence, that her family would be her main focus and if the public didn’t like it they could lump it. After all, nobody was paying her a salary, so she had some choices.

Reading of how her parents struggled in order to get Michelle and her brother excellent educations, and of the tenacity with which Michelle approached school, social justice issues, and her career, I found myself feeling strangely sorry for her. Before her husband decided to pursue politics, her career outshone his. She was in demand and had a lot of choices. When she headed to the Ivy League, her classmates and professors were almost all white people, and the pressure was on her not only to succeed, but to be the one African-American that would be the example, the cultural education for a whole lot of privileged white people. That kind of hot spotlight would undo some people, make them decide to go on home and enroll at a school closer to home, but Obama—then Robinson—did it and did it well, and then she went back to her hometown, Chicago, to find ways to use her education to serve her community.

As the first Black first lady (FLOTUS), she’s had to make some difficult choices, and there would be a certain level of criticism no matter what she chose to undertake. Her career had been ascending like a rocket, and she took what will likely be a permanent leave of absence in order to keep her family well tended. She hadn’t wanted her spouse to go into politics, because she was convinced, as I am, that being a politician doesn’t end up making a difference. She urged Barack to become an inspirational instructor, or a school administrator, or go to work for a strong nonprofit, but that wasn’t what he wanted to do. He wrote a book; it didn’t sell. (Occupying the Oval Office would change that.) But when two parents put their careers on a fast track simultaneously, often the ones that pay the price are the kids, and she wouldn’t have that for their girls. If it came down to her career versus their development, she was determined to be there for them. And who am I to say that wasn’t the right thing to do?

Slavin is not an official biographer; in fact, after leaving the White House, Michelle plans to publish memoirs of her own. However, this writer was given interviews with people very close to the First Family with Michelle’s blessing, and maybe that is why some noteworthy items are glossed over.

Because whereas this memoir is about her more than him, a fair amount of the president works its way into the text. Their lives are joined, after all. And it does seem a little myopic not to have addressed the elephant in the room: the first Black president can’t prevent cops all over the country from shooting Black men—and sometimes women—all the damn time and for no good reason. After all the protests that took place all over the nation, with chants and signs of “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” and “I Can’t Breathe!”, you’d think it would merit at least a paragraph.

It’s like it never happened.

So if you are an admirer of the Obamas, this is not a bad book certainly. And it’s tempting to jump into their court, so to speak, based solely on the amazingly stupid things about birth certificates and loyalty that the ultra-right has come out with, questions that a white presidential family would never have to confront.

But when push comes to shove, this book won’t make a big difference, and sad to say, neither will the Obamas’ eight years in the White House. It’s good to know that American society has moved forward enough to elect a Black president, but like all the presidents before him, his authority is limited and to some degree, illusory.

I recommend this memoir to those with an interest in Michelle Obama. Those eternally present polls that reflect the public’s perception of those in the White House show that a much greater number of Americans admire her than approve of the president. But of course, one doesn’t have to be American to want to read this; one only needs to be interested in the life of this historically first, First Lady.

Pancakes in Paris, by Craig Carlson****

Posted on by

pancakesinparisThe American dream has become harder for ordinary people to attain, but Carlson is living proof that it can happen; yet some of us may need to go somewhere else to find it. In his upbeat, congenial memoir, “the pancake guy” chronicles his journey, from the kid of a wretchedly dysfunctional home—and I don’t use the term lightly—to the owner of Breakfast in America, his own restaurant franchise in France. This title was a bright spot in my reading lineup last month, and it can be a bright spot in yours too. Thank you to Sourcebooks and Net Galley for the DRC, which I received free in exchange for an honest review.

Is this a thing that any kid in America could have done? Not so much. Carlson has a rare blend of  intelligence, organization, and social skills; above and beyond all else, he possesses unstoppable determination, clear focus, and a work ethic that never flags for one tiny minute until he discovers he is close to working himself to death. Those lacking talent and determination may never reach the end of the rainbow as this author has done; that much is clear. But oh, what fun to share the ride with him!

Given his family’s expectations for him, or lack thereof, it’s amazing he finished high school, and his acquisition of a college education is more remarkable still. But it is his junior year at a state college in Connecticut that plants the seed that will sprout and grow into a way of life; he is invited to spend his school year in Paris. Once he’s there, the tumblers click, and he knows that he has found his people.

As Carlson’s story unspools, he debunks stereotypes believed by many Americans, and a few of them are ones I believed too until I read this memoir. Carlson delivers setting in a way much more immediate than any number of Google searches can provide, but it’s his insights regarding French culture, law, and society that make his memoir so captivating. The prose is lean and occasionally hilarious. He plucks choice, juicy vignettes from his journey all along the way, and this makes us feel as if we are riding quietly on his shoulder taking it all in as he goes.

If you’ve never been to France and don’t intend to, you can still enjoy this book. If you don’t like pancakes or any aspect of the traditional American breakfast, it doesn’t matter. Carlson is enormously entertaining, and so his story stands on its own merits. I am furthermore delighted to see that the only recipe that is inserted into his narrative is actually a joke. A small collection of actual recipes is inserted at the end, and although I never, ever, ever do this, I intend to try one of them out tonight! But even if you skip the recipe section entirely, you should read this memoir. It’s too much fun to miss. The best news of all is that it’s available for purchase right now.

Get it, and read it!

American Heiress: the Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst, by Jeffrey Toobin****

Posted on by

AmericanheiressSometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, and the Patty Hearst fiasco was definitely a case in point. This reviewer is old enough to remember the news coverage at the time; here Toobin presents us with what is likely the most objective and well researched account of the kidnapping and subsequent crime spree in which Hearst was a participant. Thanks go to Net Galley and Doubleday for the DRC, which I received in exchange for an honest review. This book was released digitally earlier this month and is available to the public now.

In February of 1974 Patricia Hearst, favorite daughter of Randolph Hearst, the publishing magnate, was kidnapped from the Berkeley apartment she shared with her fiancee. The group that grabbed her called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, or SLA. It was an historical time when many young people considered themselves revolutionaries, inspired by the Civil Rights movement, the women’s movement, and the Vietnamese and Cuban revolutions. But the SLA was an odd formation at best. They were the product of students from the University of California at Berkeley that had been part of a project to tutor prisoners at the Vacaville penitentiary. Instead of the prisoners gaining literacy, the students were mentored by a handful of prisoners in how to handle explosives and commit crimes against private property and the US government. The entire SLA, it would later be learned, consisted of seven Caucasian people under the age of 30 and one Black man named Donald DeFreeze. By the time this group of irresponsible nut wings made headlines, there wasn’t a legitimate group on the Left that would have anything to do with them.

But the story gets weirder still. The heiress had become bored with her boyfriend and was a terrible student; her future was looking lackluster, even depressing when the kidnapping took place. Within a few weeks, Hearst had joined her captors, brandishing an automatic weapon during a bank robbery, one of a number of crimes in which she participated. And the enormous amount of media attention paid to this band of misfits set tongues to wagging from city, to suburb, to the hinterlands: was Hearst truly a convert, or was she just following orders to stay alive?

Other books have been published about this bizarre series of events, but as far as I know, all of them have been written by those with a stake in the outcome. Toobin, an independent journalist who’s written for the New Yorker, has examined court documents and a host of other primary resources to ferret out the truth. Hearst chose not to cooperate with his book, which is the most objective treatment of the subject I have seen.

Most of the book chronicles events that are too strange to be fictional, and there is tragedy as well. But my favorite passage is when things are falling apart and one of the kidnappers tells a friend on the outside that a “Ransom of Red Chief” situation is developing, and everyone would really like to release this woman so the cops would stop searching so hard, but she just won’t go home. I also enjoyed the anecdotes regarding attorney F. Lee Bailey.

This is a fast read, with plenty of dialogue. There are no slow spots. And I can almost guarantee that no matter how off kilter your own life is right now, Hearst’s adventures will make it look tame indeed.

War and Turpentine, by Stefan Hertmans***

Posted on by

warandturpentineI received a DRC of this memoir from Random House through its First to Read program. I read the book free in exchange for an honest review. Though it wasn’t a good fit for me, I think there are niche readers out there that might enjoy it.

This memoir chronicles the life of the author’s grandfather, Urbain Martien, a Dutch worker that fought in World War I. The son of a brilliant artist, Martien worked whatever jobs were available until the war broke out. He had hoped to become an artist like his father before him, but instead wound up painting buildings just to earn a living.

Apart from its historic aspect, this title is one that I knew would be outside my comfort zone. Since retirement I’ve pushed myself outside my usual well-worn paths and taken a few risks, and though it doesn’t always work out for me, a few unlikely choices have affected me so favorably and so deeply that I have continued to push my own walls outward. I don’t know a thing about art, but I thought it might not matter. I pushed myself to read The Goldfinch, which was about a stolen museum painting but also much more, and once I did I couldn’t believe I had let the DRC pass me by. So I had this in my mind; War and Turpentine might be one more opportunity that I shouldn’t miss.

The basis for the memoir is a series of notebooks that the author’s grandfather gave him, a journal of sorts, and the memoir itself is done not in the usual linear fashion, but as a series of snapshots. I confess I prefer my memoirs to start at the beginning and end at the end, if not the end of life, then at the end of the period being discussed. But an artist would perhaps not have thought that way; I can see the reason for selecting a different format, but because there was no discernible story arc, I found myself floundering and eventually avoiding the book altogether.

The prospective reader should know that along with some really strong imagery and other word smithery, the memoir contains some very graphic violence.

I suspect the ideal reader for War and Turpentine would be one that loves art, art history, and European history.  It is for this niche audience that I recommend this book.

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, by Jenny Lawson****

Posted on by

furiouslyhappyJenny Lawson is well known as The Blogess (the blogger that came up with Beyonce, the metal chicken). She won awards for her previous memoir, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened.  The only DRC I saw for this title was for readers in UK and Australia, so I waited till I could scoop it cheaply and bought it digitally. Those that read my reviews often know I almost never do this. For the $3 it cost on an Amazon Prime daily deal, it was worth it to me.

Lawson is one of a handful of authors that talks candidly and often very humorously about her own struggle with mental illness and autoimmune disorders. Her capacity to create imaginary scenarios totally out of left field is her greatest strength, second only to the ability—sometimes—to find a way to laugh at the nest of spiders that occasionally takes over her brain. And sometimes she is painfully candid. Try this one on:

 

“Sometimes being crazy is a demon. And sometimes the demon is me…And some of us just carry around our tiny demon as he wreaks havoc in our mind, tearing open old dusty trunks of bad memories and leaving the remnants spread everywhere. Wearing the skins of people we’ve hurt. Wearing the skins of people we’ve loved. And sometimes, when it’s worst, wearing our own skins.”

 

She rants about the well intentioned but ignorant advice she’s received from clueless amateurs. At various times she’s been told to shake it off, to stop eating gluten, and to let Jesus into her heart in order to experience a full and immediate cure.

Sure.

Her musings about flying, which her fame requires her to do a great deal of, though she is afraid both of flying and of leaving home, are brilliant. This reviewer crowed out loud from glee at Lawson’s suggestion that flight attendants be permitted “to whack one person per flight with a piñata stick for being the stupidest damn person on the plane.”

My favorite section is the one in which she details the horrors of remodeling in a way that makes me howl. And goodness knows we all need to do that.

Lawson inserts women’s reproductive anatomy into almost any sort of discussion, and whereas I applaud the feminist spirit that demands the word “vagina” no longer be treated like a dirty word, I confess it was a bit much for me. But then, I am probably older than you are; this may be a generational thing. And there may also be plenty of women from the Boomer generation that think her use of the word is great.

Now and then there’s an odd moment in which I stop reading and stare at the text. What? Did she proof read this, and did her editors? There are occasional remarks that strike me as racially insensitive. She spins a thread about the wild things in the out of doors, and cautions us that since bears don’t play, we should shoot one first and ask questions later. Assuming said bear is in one’s back yard or trying to fit through a window of one’s home, I can see the point, but it came out of left field and made me wonder. Really? Just shoot bears? And the thread further spins itself into a bison-and-Native-Americans discussion in which she assures us that it’s not great to have bison in one’s yard, but it would be awesome to keep a lot of Native Americans out there. My e-reader says, “?!?”

But then she drops and is off onto another stream-of-consciousness spiel before I can fully digest what’s been said. She does it a couple of other times also. And it occurs to me that she has perhaps the ultimate excuse, having said up front that she has known for most of her life that she is “not right” in the head, but I still wonder that her editors didn’t look at that and say, “Umm…Jenny? This part right here…?” There are no overt racial slams or this review would have a lot of empty stars, but there are small moments where I wonder if she understands how others may read what she’s said.

Many of her entries if not all of them are drawn from her blog, and it’s possible that if you’ve read her blog faithfully, you won’t want to pay for this book. As for me, I found it worth the three bucks to be able to get everything at once in a well organized format—known as a book—that I could read comfortably. I confess I would not have paid full jacket price for it now that I get most books free and also have less money to spend on them than when I was working, but for others it may well be worth it.

On the whole, this is a courageous and often eloquent, fall-down-funny memoir, and with the small reservations mentioned above, I recommend it to you.

Notorious RBG, by Irin Carmon****

Posted on by

notoriousrbgIf I were to review the subject of this memoir rather than the book itself, it would be a slam-dunk five star rating. As it is, I can still recommend Carmon’s brief but potent biography as the best that has been published about this fascinating, passionate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. I have no doubt many more will follow, and it’s possible I will read every one of them. As it stands, this is a rare instance in which I turned my back on my pile of free galleys long enough to ferret this gem out at the Seattle Public Library, because I just had to read it. You should too.

I’m an old school feminist from the seventies, but Ginsberg is one from the fifties. How is that even possible? Imagine the courage it would take to step forward at a time when no women’s movement even existed! She sued Rutgers University for equal pay and won. Later, she was the first female law professor at Columbia University, and she sued them for equal pay too. She volunteered as an attorney for the New Jersey American Civil Liberties Union, represented custodians in a class action suit, and later, when the Free Speech Movement on campuses in the 1960s began to warm up, she was already red hot and ready to go.

The best parts of Carmon’s memoir are the primary documents, because we get to see RBG’s own words. Ginsburg was made a federal appeals judge by President Jimmy Carter and moved to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton. She’s issued a number of tremendously eloquent decisions, and has chosen to read her dissent aloud, a thing not usually done, a record-breaking five times at the time this book was written. The lacy-looking necklace that fans out on all sides of her neck is her dissent collar, and so those that hear the Court deliver its decision can see exactly where Justice Ginsberg stands as soon as they see what she is wearing.

At times such as these, in which a woman in Indiana was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison for having an abortion [reference mine], it gives women hope to know that there is a fighter on the Supreme Court who’s looking out for our interests. It doesn’t mean that women can step away from this political battle, but it’s a thing that encourages us and lends us fortitude.

In January, it is rumored that Ginsberg will release her own memoir, one that relies heavily on her court decisions. Likely this will be an even better memoir than this one. For now though, this uplifting, funny, well-documented memoir is as good as it gets. Go get it.

They Left Us Everything, by Plum Johnson***

Posted on by

theyleftus Plum Johnson is gathered, together with her siblings and other family members, at the family manse following the death of her mother. This memoir focuses on the things she’s learned and the insights she gains over the course of the year it takes to empty and sell the property. Thank you to Net Galley and Putnam Penguin for the DRC, which I received free in exchange for this honest review.

I knew when I requested this story that I was stretching my comfort zone. It paid off big time a couple of times recently–one of them was The Goldfinch—and since there seemed to be a lot of buzz generated around this title, I thought I’d go for it. And I have to admit, this time it was not a good fit. But I am confident that there are readers out there that will enjoy it. Different strokes and all that.

The first thing that jarred me was right up front, and it was a small thing, yet a big thing. The pet the author remembers so fondly—the one that’s buried on the property—was named Sambo. I felt like I’d been slapped, to be honest. If that was the pet’s name, I’d think an author today would have had the sensitivity to change it for purposes of publication.

Sambo???

Enough; let’s get on with the meat of the story. The author has spent years under the domineering gaze of her dying mother. The woman didn’t go fast, and she didn’t go out a pleasant person. In some ways it makes it harder to grieve when someone goes out ugly, because it sends all sorts of conflicting emotions rocketing through one’s senses, which are already jumbled sufficiently at the loss of a family member. And it is in taking time to go through her mother’s things, the more personal ones apart from the things that have resale value, the letters, the journals, the things she saved for so many years, that the author feels as if she really knows who her mother used to be.

I think there are a lot of us out here, Boomer-era adults that have said goodbye to parents or are still doing so, that can relate to this. Often it takes a fair amount of experience to appreciate our parents’ better moments, to realize that some of the things they did for us that we took for granted were not  the same things everyone’s parents did. Plum’s musings made me think of my own mother, a woman that died disappointed with life and darned cranky about it, but who told me about the internment of Japanese Americans and made me use standard English by the time I was five. Like Plum, I find myself wishing my mom could return for a visit to give me one more chance to thank her for the things she did right.

We get a glimpse of the author’s life, the choices she made and what her mother had to say about them. But it was difficult for me to relate to them, not only because of the level of affluence that is demonstrated here, but also because it’s depicted as being part of the everyday landscape. Plum doesn’t feel more fortunate than others, but rather this is what her normal looks like, and while I understand that for some people that is reality, I found it alienating. Art versus tennis? That’s the controversy? In addition, for most of the book we also assume that people are white, because that’s what normal looks like to Plum. There are a few places that break this up a little bit, and it is for that reason, together with the fluency with which the memoir is written, that I rated this 3 stars rather than 2.5.

Figure out who you are, and that will tell you whether this book is your book. It’s for sale to the public July 19, 2016.