tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85379824594213572532024-03-13T06:47:21.345-04:00the real stuff...the nonfiction portion of<a href="http://www.readingavidly.com/"> reading avidly dot com, a casual reader's journal</a>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.comBlogger122125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-30278732601359885022024-03-01T10:51:00.003-05:002024-03-05T08:12:07.989-05:00Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom, by McCracken Poston<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikniNJqBIsBK5v0gGYBp-73yXp3PIaIN77Ldyxwxp2YydnvT79dv-BHGeEx2BdHUAHQvKOfBvtU0gxj4RTTWcwZcoxsrHlqoEhgun7oe8o-InRbLl_XuhKKRKKGxtC7Ybw048gNfFq44KmnbxwEhKNby-2xULZR9ubVZup9xUupmqPGd862kIBQ5QU/s445/postonzenith.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="294" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikniNJqBIsBK5v0gGYBp-73yXp3PIaIN77Ldyxwxp2YydnvT79dv-BHGeEx2BdHUAHQvKOfBvtU0gxj4RTTWcwZcoxsrHlqoEhgun7oe8o-InRbLl_XuhKKRKKGxtC7Ybw048gNfFq44KmnbxwEhKNby-2xULZR9ubVZup9xUupmqPGd862kIBQ5QU/s320/postonzenith.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>9780806542799<div>Citadel, 2024</div><div>320 pp</div><div><br /></div><div>arc -- my many thanks to the publisher along with my apologies for getting to this so late. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not a big true crime reader, but I had seen this story portrayed on <i>American Justice</i> on A&E some time ago so I was very interested when contacted about reading this book since there's always more to the story than a one-hour television show can offer. I was right in this case. A new release from Citadel Press, <i>Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom </i>is a compelling read that shines a spotlight on a sadly all too-common occurrence: an overzealous police detective and a district attorney who, without any real evidence, charged an innocent, eccentric man with the murder of his wife and put him on trial. Let me just say that while I've tagged this book as "true crime," there is actually no crime here unless you want to count that particular rush to judgment; <i>Zenith Man </i>is very much a cautionary tale at its heart. </div><div><br /></div><div>The "Zenith Man" of Ringgold, Georgia, is Alvin Ridley, once a TV repair man and owner of the local Zenith franchise. The author's father once described him as "a good man," who is "odd now, very odd, but I don't think he would ever hurt a fly." He made people in the town uneasy with his strange behavior, but by and large lived the life of a recluse. So, in October of 1997, the people in Ringgold were hit with a double whammy when they learned that social outcast Ridley not only had a wife, but that she had also died in their home. It seems that Virginia Ridley had not been seen outside her home for decades, and in the late 1960s her estrangement from her family had forced her to have to go to court to assure her parents (who believed that she had been held against her will by her husband) that she was just fine where she was. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>On October 4, 1997, Alvin Ridley slowly made his way to the pay phone behind the Catoosa County Courthouse Annex, where he made at least two calls, one of them to 911. With very little emotion, he informed the operator that he thought his wife has "passed out," and in answer to the operator's question, noted that his wife was not breathing. He also let the operator know that his wife was an "<i>epi-letic</i>," a part of the conversation (along with his request to "please hurry") that was never "shared with the public or played on the news stations." While the conversation was "detached" and "matter-of-factly" in tone, Ridley asked the 911 operator to "Please hurry." After the death was discovered, the body was examined by the local coroner, who had found signs of petechiae, which could indicate that Virginia had been strangled or smothered; not once was Virginia's medical condition considered. The coroner moved the body to the state pathologist at the GBI where an autopsy would be performed, and in the process also passed along the rumors that Virginia had been a captive in the home for over thirty years. When the pathologist started examining the body, he saw the petechiae, and came to the judgment that Virginia had "died at the hands of another person," either from "soft strangulation or a smothering, as in with the aid of a pillow or something like that." The local coroner had also revealed to the lead detective on the case that she'd known Alvin for twenty years, and at no time had she "known him to be married or living with another female." By June 1998, authorities had come to arrest Alvin Ridley for murdering his wife, and the town rumor mill geared up once more, helped by Virginia Ridley's sister rehashing the past and prompting headlines such as the one in <i><a href="https://twitter.com/RealZenithMan/status/1691452512170287104" target="_blank">National Examiner</a>, </i>which ran a story with the all-caps headlines "SICKO HOLDS HIS WIFE HOSTAGE FOR 30 YEARS THEN KILLS HER ... COPS CHARGE." Attorney McCracken Poston Jr., representing Ridley, did manage bail for Alvin, but the hard work of defending his rather difficult client was just beginning. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>Zenith Man </i>takes the reader through that uphill battle, but the book as a whole is much more than just another true crime account. Poston's patience, his efforts to understand how Ridley thought and his ability to treat him as a human being rather than simply a client is illuminated in this story, his empathy contrasted with the rush to judgment by others who simply jumped to their own conclusions about him because he was an eccentric loner and social outcast. As it turns out, Ridley would later be diagnosed with (as noted on the jacket blurb so not a spoiler) autism spectrum disorder, which helps to explain his behavior. Honestly, had Alvin not had Mr. Poston as his attorney, I believe he might just be sitting in prison to this day. As Mr. Poston says on his own goodreads review, there are "millions of other adults out there still not yet diagnosed, interacting with the criminal justice system," which, when you think about it, is more than a bit depressing -- how many more innocent people like Alvin just might end up (or are currently) imprisoned for the wrong reasons? The book also highlights how Ridley and Poston's relationship helped Poston in his own life, making it a very human story all around. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>Highly recommended. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-57005669255439714162024-01-06T13:43:00.000-05:002024-01-06T13:43:10.468-05:00Fear is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance, by Azam Ahmed<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic4Aa_aGdeMZl_DKt7i4Gv8KDzaaoFpaD-P5OU__ArW7pfdoIiFwBTsSffJupTRXdEq3KN5daPVWVGB96aR_8CuMLzCHO8bPYlCP1zd7a08mg4rpZN5ntn8sTgQ9TZo031nP6CcKrQpcFvDa7wyFFn5V5ZusAEl85qs20YGd2LgBboTeZYWqN6fBQR/s400/ahmedfear.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic4Aa_aGdeMZl_DKt7i4Gv8KDzaaoFpaD-P5OU__ArW7pfdoIiFwBTsSffJupTRXdEq3KN5daPVWVGB96aR_8CuMLzCHO8bPYlCP1zd7a08mg4rpZN5ntn8sTgQ9TZo031nP6CcKrQpcFvDa7wyFFn5V5ZusAEl85qs20YGd2LgBboTeZYWqN6fBQR/s320/ahmedfear.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780593448410</div><div style="text-align: left;">Random House, 2023</div><div style="text-align: left;">374 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">read in December 2023</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I came across this book after seeing it written up in <i>The New Yorker</i>'s "Briefly Noted" section back towards the end of November, and was so taken with that brief mention that I knew I had to have it. Before the book even arrived, I found myself doing a bit of research on Miriam Rodríguez, the woman at the center of it all, and came across a <a href="https://twitter.com/hannahdreier/status/1707030253753790827" target="_blank">post on X</a> (what used to be <i>Twitter</i>) that linked to another post by author Gary Shteyngart who described the book to a perfect T. He called it a work</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"about a personal tragedy set against the canvas of a societal one," </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">and after finishing <i>Fear Is Just a Word, </i> I can't think of a better, more eloquent phrase to sum up this book. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> On January 4th, 2014, Miriam received a 4 a.m. phone call that would quite literally dictate the direction of the rest of her life. She wasn't at her home at the time in the small town of San Fernando in Tamaulipas state of Mexico, but rather in McAllen Texas, where she had gone to put some distance between herself and her troubled relationship with her husband Luis. Two hours later she was in Reynosa, just across the Rio Grande, catching a bus to take her back to San Fernando, where she was picked up by her daughter Azalea. The news was the worst any mother could hear -- Miriam's twenty-one year old daughter Karen had been kidnapped, and her captors, members of the Zetas cartel, had demanded a ransom. Luis had taken out a loan from the bank to pay off the kidnappers, made the money drop, and was told to be in the cemetery twenty minutes later. The day passed, no Karen. Another day passed, same thing. Sunday another call came, demanding more money; a week went by, no word. Finally, after an agonizing two weeks, another call came in, saying that after Miriam paid "a small payment" in exchange for her daughter, her release was, according to the caller, now ready to happen. After a month, Miriam realized that "they are not going to bring her back to me," vowing that she would "find the people who did this" to her daughter and "make them pay." In <i>Fear is Just a Word,</i> author and <i>New York Times </i>investigative journalist/bureau chief Azam Ahmed follows Miriam's "quest for vengeance" and in doing so, examines the wider "societal" tragedy, exploring how Mexico became a country where the rule of law is so dysfunctional that it ceases to function, leaving families of the disappeared with neither recourse nor justice from a government that is supposedly there to help and protect them. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> As Miriam had said years earlier during a violent assault by the Zetas on her town in 2010, </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"How can they just let something like this happen? ... What is the government doing? Why aren't they stopping this?" </div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">The author takes on those very same questions, and he also explores how things in Mexico have come to the point where the country has become, for lack of a better word, broken. The book moves through present and past to reveal how and why this has happened, offering a look at how the cartels have built and maintained their power over the decades. He looks at the rise of government corruption and institutional failures that have allowed these groups to carry out their business with impunity, which was also helped by the long-term dominance of a single political party in the highest offices of the government. The end of that long reign brought a new party to power, with a new government finding itself in a position of holding less power than the cartels, ultimately using militarized violence as a solution. As if things weren't bad enough, the declaration of a "war on drugs" in 2006 by Mexico's president did nothing except to lead to a major expansion of that violence, unchecked, leaving ordinary people displaced, dead, or often left to suffer a worse fate for numbers of families -- having loved ones who have been disappeared. What it all comes down to, really, is a frightening portrait of a nation in serious decline, where human lives have little value, and there is very little in the way of help coming from the government when it is needed most. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It is important to realize that <i>Fear is Just a Word </i>is not just another book about Mexican cartels. Ahmed keeps Miriam's story front and center as she searches for her daughter's kidnappers (and ultimately her murderers), tracking them down using whatever means she could muster. Talk about a badass woman -- oh my god, some of the things she did in her quest absolutely blew me away. As of October 2023, the number of disappeared people as recorded on the nation's interior ministry's "official database" stood at <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/un-raises-concerns-over-mexicos-alarming-numbers-missing-persons-2023-10-03/" target="_blank">111, 896</a>, and the reality is that there are probably more. While many of their families may go as far as searching for their lost loved ones or speaking out publicly, Miriam felt the need to take things even further and do the impossible: fight back. She would not rest until she found some sort of justice for Karen, despite the fact that she knew she likely had a target on her back; her rage, pain and sorrow became channeled into something meaningful, not just for herself, but for other families whose loved ones had vanished. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My brief encapsulation here does not do the book or the author the justice both deserve but it is a must read, for sure. It is beyond timely and relevant especially now, and it is clear that the author must have put in years of research in putting this book together. <i>Fear is Just Another Word</i> is an outstanding example of great investigative journalism that puts a very human face on tragedy, revealing exactly what people are capable of in the face of utter indifference and hopelessness. It is one of the very best books I read in all of 2023, and I can't recommend it highly enough. </div><div><p></p></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-61816932542993299202023-01-12T11:02:00.001-05:002023-01-12T11:17:47.109-05:00Fifty Forgotten Books, by R.B. Russell<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitN_2HaCSE15abHXnmBt20g00OayBVr8xoPLvw2v9X10e4sN_Sx74e-O2hdh0y5v6Q96CaOn8av0B_pDiEUvhFFSs7kC9fyyOuDcVO9843TXH8MCgkEzPbgTFa4UxxJYh5RreT2AsMu9Gb3LeMx37JLe1Exnx0QaL7-JKjAkIeff_pbUR-Q0Az_w/s2339/russellforgotten.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2339" data-original-width="1524" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitN_2HaCSE15abHXnmBt20g00OayBVr8xoPLvw2v9X10e4sN_Sx74e-O2hdh0y5v6Q96CaOn8av0B_pDiEUvhFFSs7kC9fyyOuDcVO9843TXH8MCgkEzPbgTFa4UxxJYh5RreT2AsMu9Gb3LeMx37JLe1Exnx0QaL7-JKjAkIeff_pbUR-Q0Az_w/s320/russellforgotten.jpg" width="208" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781913505509</div><div style="text-align: left;">And Other Stories, 2022</div><div style="text-align: left;">224 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Fifty Forgotten Books </i>is, according to author and <a href="http://www.tartaruspress.com/" target="_blank">Tartarus Press</a> co-founder R.B. Russell,</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"intended to be a personal recommendation of often overlooked and unloved novels, short story collections, poetry and non-fiction."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">If <i>Fifty Forgotten Books</i> had simply stopped there, it still would have been greatly appreciated, but it's within the discussions of these titles that the brilliance of this book shines through. Russell's idea here is </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"not just to discuss the books, but to explain what they have meant to me over time, thus forming an oblique, partial memoir of my life." </div></blockquote><p>He is overwhelmingly successful on both fronts. </p><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCwCJM9cw18S6iMj75QlBDrwN5UYHHTl2kZJc5GydhlH8ZDOyy_Gby0rUBkw_TOkLNqenpU7lPlEnsiWgHAvYt8uWqiweeCjKatuorr8I5FkX0SR6zCUKaZTEFuwlLOcMgW1wK5iDBH1r-3rGJfEFi5jwj2Li3BXVvJCYv1CSLdWf--26gg7U-Xg/s400/russellforgotten2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="260" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCwCJM9cw18S6iMj75QlBDrwN5UYHHTl2kZJc5GydhlH8ZDOyy_Gby0rUBkw_TOkLNqenpU7lPlEnsiWgHAvYt8uWqiweeCjKatuorr8I5FkX0SR6zCUKaZTEFuwlLOcMgW1wK5iDBH1r-3rGJfEFi5jwj2Li3BXVvJCYv1CSLdWf--26gg7U-Xg/w260-h400/russellforgotten2.jpg" width="260" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br />the true cover underneath the burnt orange dustjacket<br /><br /></i></span></td></tr></tbody></table>As most memoirs do, Russell begins his journey here in childhood, during which he had no particular awareness of "a point" at which he'd "started to collect books," but he does remember the discovery of a nearby junk shop with "several shelves of tatty books for sale," where he used to spend his pocket money. With the discovery of <i>The Outsider </i>by Colin Wilson at age fourteen he'd started buying books by authors Wilson had included in his work; by then, as he notes, he realized at that point that he'd become a collector. On then to "jumble sales, junk shops," and then it was the "wonderful world of second-hand bookshops." Of these, he can remember details about the shops themselves, including such proprietors as a certain Mr. Brookes, who first introduced him to Arthur Machen's excellent <i>The Hill of Dreams,</i> after which he was asking for (and growing frustrated when he was unable to acquire) books by Arthur Machen "in every bookshop I could find." Later, Russell would hear from a friend about the "newly formed" Arthur Machen Society, making his way to the society dinner where he "met friends who helped to shape my reading and publishing life..." making "a greater number of lifelong friends on that one weekend than at any other time." His adventures with the Society (and a rather haughty character known here as "Mrs. X") continue on across many chapters, eventually culminating in the story behind the creation of the Friends of Arthur Machen, still in existence. And on his way to the present, he reveals how Tartarus Press got its start in 1990 with Russell's "guide to Arthur Machen's favourite pubs," <i>The Anatomy of Taverns, </i>photocopied by his partner Rosalie Parker, while he "folded, collated and stapled." There is, of course, much more, but at this point I'll leave the rest to potential readers to discover and delight over. I will add only that there are parts of this book that made me laugh out loud. <div><br /></div><div><div>As to the books under discussion here, the list is not only eclectic but as you read through each chapter, it is more than obvious that they are also meaningful in a deeply personal way. The fact that he begins and ends this book with a chapter entitled "The Outsider" (two different books) seems to reinforce that idea as well. Some of these titles, as he notes, "have never been well enough known for them to be subsequently 'forgotten'," although "just as many have always been appreciated ..." I have to admit it was a bit strange to see Andrew Hurley's <i>The Loney</i> on the list, a book I've been an advocate for since I read it not all that long ago. Russell also notes in his introduction that his title is "more of a challenge or invitation to readers to determine how many of these works <i>they </i>remember." Taking him up on that challenge, out of the fifty books listed in the table of contents, I've read fifteen, I have eight that I own but haven't yet read, and I bought three before I'd even finished reading <i>Fifty Forgotten Books. </i>So twenty-three are here in my house as of this moment -- not quite at the fifty percent level but close, with the upcoming delivery of the three I purchased tipping things over that line. Of course, this doesn't begin to count the books he mentions outside of those fifty, and when I have some time I'll be going back through those happily making another list.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have had the great pleasure to have read more than a few fictional works written by this author (I'll be starting <i>Heaven's Hill</i> here shortly), and I realized long ago just how very talented a writer he is, so I'm not surprised that he carries that quality over into <i>Fifty Forgotten Books</i>. Each book the author includes in this volume elicits particular memories over different times in his life encompassing his reading, the joys of secondhand bookshops and booksellers, book collecting, the people he meets and more, recounted by someone who is obviously deeply passionate about all of the above. While I enjoyed reading about each title presented by the author in this volume, it's the autobiographical writing that makes <i>Fifty Forgotten Books </i>so engaging and in my humble opinion, exceptional. </div><div><br /></div><div> I'm just a reader, not a critic, but I know when I have something extraordinary in my hands, and this book definitely falls into that category. Very, very highly recommended.<span style="background-color: white; color: #767676; font-size: 14px;"> </span></div></div><div><p></p></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-70535273695527268782022-12-17T15:14:00.002-05:002022-12-18T14:32:21.864-05:00In the Mouth of the Wolf: A Murder, A Cover-Up, and the True Cost of Silencing the Press, by Katherine Corcoran<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFHxDW7moaUFv4XzI_HrzIffVwf-hBUP6IUrMYHmNysbNZASHfYe8uo2pxBCEMpdVT772LgRgn7kiALDDQ1BP93EohuFAGjoWklbdeBN_zax5VFTCB12g4G-BTIluDVJsnBDZHKoqk2vCwRnpld4z8E4XPil6OtCxmFecQIzKSdKZ5LBP-zWIw4Q/s400/corcoranwolf.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="263" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFHxDW7moaUFv4XzI_HrzIffVwf-hBUP6IUrMYHmNysbNZASHfYe8uo2pxBCEMpdVT772LgRgn7kiALDDQ1BP93EohuFAGjoWklbdeBN_zax5VFTCB12g4G-BTIluDVJsnBDZHKoqk2vCwRnpld4z8E4XPil6OtCxmFecQIzKSdKZ5LBP-zWIw4Q/s320/corcoranwolf.jpg" width="210" /></a></div><br /> <i>"<b>A society without truth is a scary place to live."</b></i><p></p><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: left;">9781635575033</div><div style="text-align: left;">Bloomsbury, 2022</div><div style="text-align: left;">315 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the preface of this excellent, informative book, the author reveals that on her first day of work in 2010 as Associated Press bureau chief in Mexico City, she received news of a threat from a drug cartel. If a particular story was not published, they said, the bureau would receive a "special visit." Part of her job was to ensure the safety of "more than dozen correspondents and twenty freelancers around the region ... protecting the entire Mexico team of a U.S.-based international news agency." Having worked in Mexico by then for more than two years, she already knew what needed to be done, knowing that the press in that country was "under siege." Normally, the international media was left alone, but as she notes, "this was an epidemic," and it was only a matter of time until that would change. Although Mexico's constitution provides for freedom of the press, it is, as the author notes, "the most dangerous country in the world to be a journalist, outside of a war zone," with some fifty-one journalists having been killed there since the <a href="https://cpj.org/americas/mexico/" target="_blank">Committee to Protect Journalists</a> started keeping track back in 1992. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The death of Regina Martinez, a correspondent for <i>Proceso, </i> an "investigative magazine" on April 28 2012 captured the attention of Katherine Corcoran, who had admired her journalistic work over the years and had actually spoken to her on the phone once. Regina had been discovered brutally beaten to death in her home in Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz. This was only a few months after she had been away and had returned to find that someone had been in her house, leaving behind steam in the bathroom (as if they'd just taken a shower) and some open bottles of soap. She was used to threats and had always taken precautions, but the invasion of her space really rattled her. Despite friends' and colleagues' advice to contact the police, she refused, not trusting the justice system since she had firsthand knowledge of just how the system worked from covering the government in Veracruz, "a state known for corruption" and she had written "many exclusives" on the topic, preferring to avoid covering the cartels because of the danger involved for reporters who did. The overriding narrative in the cases of murdered journalists landed the blame squarely at their own doorsteps, as they were blamed by Mexican officials for their own deaths, implying that "they must have fallen into <i>malos pasos, </i>'bad ways'." In Regina's case, the police decided that she had been the victim of a crime of passion, but, as Corcoran realizes after talking to Regina's friends and colleagues, there was absolutely no way that was the case here. On the contrary, Regina's work in investigating and exposing the betrayals of the Mexican people by the government is what ultimately became her "death sentence." But what was it exactly that she was working on that would have caused her to be so brutally killed? </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaoK4oJEo9w9Jltj825k5hWwNMUnQKXVuZmo0J6m4hm6h77Yf_x4ANIRo6ghEP9eQLlHttaS4gbc8DM2RVOh10irpCKXT2WqLOME-YSS4Xq3iT4Z4tvoiLqu3MxP5QaAb2RhUPEejpPtbzyElzUsmlTbzI2eVwtnFYKRAakXEFa8XmmFDbfUXqQg/s2048/reginamartinez.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1684" data-original-width="2048" height="329" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaoK4oJEo9w9Jltj825k5hWwNMUnQKXVuZmo0J6m4hm6h77Yf_x4ANIRo6ghEP9eQLlHttaS4gbc8DM2RVOh10irpCKXT2WqLOME-YSS4Xq3iT4Z4tvoiLqu3MxP5QaAb2RhUPEejpPtbzyElzUsmlTbzI2eVwtnFYKRAakXEFa8XmmFDbfUXqQg/w400-h329/reginamartinez.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />Regina Martinez, from <i><a href="https://forbiddenstories.org/the-buried-truth-of-assassinated-journalist-regina-martinez/" target="_blank">Forbidden Stories</a></i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Katherine Corcoran certainly hoped to find the answer to that question. Meeting with colleagues and friends of Regina Martinez, she hoped to "solve the whodunnit" and "shine a spotlight on those who had gotten away with murder." That would not be an easy task at all; as she says, "the realities of reporting in Mexico were far more complicated" than she had encountered anywhere else. As the dustjacket blurb notes, a lot of people were afraid to even talk about Regina, while Corcoran and Regina's friends "battled cover-ups, narco-officials, red tape and threats," many from the government itself, the institution which is supposed to guarantee and protect the rights of journalists. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Corcoran's search for answers in Regina's case also shines a light on corruption at the highest levels of the Mexican government, as well as the state of journalism in Mexico where all too often journalists are pressured to either say nothing under the threat of "<i>plata o plomo,</i>" or they report the "facts" sanctioned by the state or other players, going along with the approved version of the news; some, as in Regina's case, are simply killed for daring to publish the truth. She also makes connections between what was happening in the United States in terms of freedom of the press, which has come increasingly under attack, where "Truth became optional; and information, a weapon used to control and manipulate," not to mention that somehow the independent press, "the bedrock of our democracy" came to be called "the enemy of the people." What she saw happening in America appalled her enough to realize that her country had "started to look like Mexico." It is a truly frightening thought, one that should scare anybody who truly believes in the Constitutional right to freedom of the press in a democracy. And yet, through all of her work in putting together this book, the author never loses sight of her subject, Regina Martinez, who paid an unthinkable price for trying to bring truth to the people of Mexico, to open their eyes as to what was happening in their country. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I cannot do justice to this book in just a few paragraphs, but I absolutely loved it and hated putting it down for any length of time. It is well written, beyond timely given what's going on in the US at the moment when journalists are being silenced on Twitter; it is researched in depth, it is informative, and drew me in completely. It also opened a number of avenues of exploration once I made my way to various websites the author mentions in her book including <a href="https://forbiddenstories.org/the-buried-truth-of-assassinated-journalist-regina-martinez/" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">Forbidden Stories </a> and <i><a href="https://cpj.org/tags/reginamartinez/" target="_blank">The Committee to Protect Journalists</a>, </i>and heightened my interest in the attacks on journalists in Mexico in such stories as the murder of <a href="https://cpj.org/2022/08/mexican-journalist-fredid-roman-shot-and-killed-in-chilpancingo/" target="_blank">Fredid Román</a> in August of this year, who wrote "critically" about the Truth Commission created by Mexico's President Andrés López Obrador, the purpose of which was to investigate the disappearing of 43 students from Ayotzinapa in Guerrero in 2014. That in turn led to two different documentaries on Netflix as well as the purchase of a book of in-depth reporting of that incident by journalist <a href="https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-12-03/mexican-journalist-anabel-hernandez-narco-women-are-much-more-than-mafia-dolls.html" target="_blank">Anabel Hernandez</a> called <i>La Verdadera Noche de Iguala. </i> Any book that can move me to take a further look (and fall down a few rabbitholes in doing so) is well worth reading, making me appreciate the author's hard work and her meticulous research even more. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I recommend this book so very, very highly -- it's certainly one of the best I've read this year. </div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-64574680866185725492022-08-29T15:26:00.000-04:002022-08-29T15:26:06.271-04:00We Carry Their Bones: The Search for Justice at the Dozier School For Boys, by Erin Kimmerle<p> </p><div><blockquote style="text-align: center;">"<b><i>They was throwaways."</i></b></blockquote></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWnJyuiRnTEVDuC0Fmna9CJofRpb4x_SlrD7vIPbVFXennXVHzmY8DdDRE5NnLNkGitmVLyEvB8IX5yD09zJPqt3yo5qe0GT-XnOJZdq-CqatelMnGFUeLS0B2b5VTqt5F9RZGLJtMcH4QBpKA3sr-5Yx0sVA6dsXOBkiiOZLqX89fUjGdFFKWtg/s300/kimmerlebones.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWnJyuiRnTEVDuC0Fmna9CJofRpb4x_SlrD7vIPbVFXennXVHzmY8DdDRE5NnLNkGitmVLyEvB8IX5yD09zJPqt3yo5qe0GT-XnOJZdq-CqatelMnGFUeLS0B2b5VTqt5F9RZGLJtMcH4QBpKA3sr-5Yx0sVA6dsXOBkiiOZLqX89fUjGdFFKWtg/s1600/kimmerlebones.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780063030244</div><div style="text-align: left;">William Morrow, 2022</div><div style="text-align: left;">241 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It wasn't all that long ago that I read Colson Whitehead's excellent <i>The Nickel Boys, </i></div><div style="text-align: left;">a novel inspired by the stories of abuse from men who as children were sent to the real-world Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. It is also a story of the long reach of trauma that lasts well after the horrific events at the fictional Nickel Academy, and how an investigation headed by a team from a Florida university that uncovers a "secret graveyard" sent one man back to finally confront the past and his pain. As Whitehead wrote in his book, "Plenty of boys had talked of the secret graveyard before, but ... no one believed them until someone else said it." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In <i>We Carry Their Bones</i>, Dr. Erin Kimmerle of the University of South Florida, who is also a leading forensic anthropologist, explains that she had been introduced by a friend to a "local reporter" who had been working on "a series of stories" about "the dark history" of the Dozier School, including "brutal beatings and sadistic guards and mysterious deaths." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div> As she notes,</div><blockquote><div>"The stories raised questions about a purported cemetery on the school's property, and the reporter had hit a dead end. He had found the families of boys who died in custody and were buried at the school, families that had never found peace, for they'd never been given the opportunity to properly mourn. No one could point to the location of the graves where their brothers and uncles were buried. No state official had stepped up to find those burials."</div></blockquote><div>While there was a small cemetery on the once-segregated black side of the grounds known in the records and among the locals as "Boot Hill," Dr. Kimmerle and her team were not "confident" that this was the only burial site. Permission to explore all of the grounds was denied by the Department of Juvenile Justice (which had claim to the side of the school where white boys had been confined and which did not close until 2011), and in 2012, the reason given was "pending sale of the property and other liability concerns." Kimmerle understood that with the sale of the "220 acres of the boys' school land," the new owners might very well "pave a parking lot on top of the graves of little boys," and that time was of the essence. </div><div><br /></div><div>Just briefly, because it is a book you must read for yourself so I won't go into too much detail here, <i>We Carry Their Bones</i> details the work of Kimmerle and her team in investigating the area while trying to discover not only an actual number of burials, but also in trying to identify some of the remains so that they could be returned to their families. She realized that a major part of her work was to glean as much information about the school as possible from the historical record, and to get to know as much as she can about the place and the people. Among her discoveries were the names of boys whose deaths had gone unreported by school officials, including boys who died after having run away, those who died after having been "paroled to local plantations for labor" or boys who died from illnesses while in "overcrowded living conditions, without adequate food or medicine." Most importantly, her findings didn't jibe with those of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), who 2008 were tasked by the governor at the time to "investigate the 32 unidentified graves that were marked by white metal crosses" and to figure out the identities of the dead in those graves. He had also directed FDLE investigators to determine "if any crimes had been committed." The FDLE had reported that they found </div><blockquote><div>"no evidence to suggest that the School or its staff made any attempts to conceal and/or contributed to the deaths of these individuals"</div></blockquote><p>and documented the number of burials as thirty-one, which just happened to correspond to the number of crosses (made out of pipes) placed there in the 1990s. Kimmerle's use of ground-penetrating radar suggested at least <i>fifty</i> burials in the area of Boot Hill, and the historical record speaks for itself as far as covering up crimes. </p><div style="text-align: left;">Her struggle to gain access to the school's grounds was a tough one. As one example, state bureaucrats refused her application for a permit saying that the recovery of human remains was not covered within the scope of the permit, which allowed only for the recovery of "objects of historical or archaeological value." She also met with stubborn resistance from Marianna locals, many of whom had either worked at the school at some point or had relatives who'd worked there and felt it would be better just to let things be than to rehash the school's history, which might damage the town's reputation and hurt it economically. As one woman, an archivist Kimmerle spoke to noted, the boys were "inmates, not children," as well as "throwaways." Of course there's also the fact that the school provided free labor from the Dozier boys as part of the convict-lease system and that many of the town's inhabitants had gained financially as a result. But Kimmerle would not be deterred in her quest, and with the support of the media, of many of the boys' families and of politicians to whom she appealed, her team would go on to not only excavate remains, but also to examine them forensically and to take DNA samples from relatives in her effort to match those remains to names. In the end, she would eventually carry some of the bones of the identified boys to reunite them with their families. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Colson Whitehead's blurb on the front of this book notes that "In a corrupt world, Kimmerle's unflinching revelations are as close as we'll come to justice," and at every turn it is obvious that her objective was to offer any support and help she could to the families of the Dozier boys who never made it home. As she points out at the end, "the door was closed to us in the search for historic justice by many who had the power to open it," but Kimmerle's determination and that of all of the people involved made it so they would not and did not fail. It is a difficult book to read on several levels but on the other hand, it is a story that seriously needs telling, right now. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Very, very highly recommended. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">*****</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">If anyone is interested, there's a documentary highlighting Dr. Kimmerlee's work available online called "Deadly Secrets: The Lost Children of Dozier"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">or if you want to read Dr. Kimmerle's report on the <i>Documentation of the Boot Hill Cemetery at the Former Dozier School for Boys, Marianna Florida</i>, you can find it <a href="https://usfweb.usf.edu/usf-news-archive/article/articlefiles/5042-boot-hill-cemetery-interim-report-12-12.pdf" target="_blank">here. </a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-41644388738872842642022-07-13T10:50:00.001-04:002022-07-13T10:58:43.710-04:00No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War by Hiroo Onoda <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7P87q458684S1NN2MRgdlak7bMdgSHP0vcduupnKmK9Qff64uxB0HlfQqRLHab13oxABe6mA9uzM0Mjk0bPM5uykZFIEx6tcjYAfFYt6jTm9PkbVczpPEtTieoyUMDC2iIhPkfEaC69X0xyVIf5leo2KrdJeWEXUO0Wpxy2KNQEeDJAuZu5oAkg/s500/onodo30years.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7P87q458684S1NN2MRgdlak7bMdgSHP0vcduupnKmK9Qff64uxB0HlfQqRLHab13oxABe6mA9uzM0Mjk0bPM5uykZFIEx6tcjYAfFYt6jTm9PkbVczpPEtTieoyUMDC2iIhPkfEaC69X0xyVIf5leo2KrdJeWEXUO0Wpxy2KNQEeDJAuZu5oAkg/s320/onodo30years.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781557506634</div><div style="text-align: left;">Bluejacket Books/Naval Institute Press, 1999</div><div style="text-align: left;">originally published 1974</div><div style="text-align: left;">translated by Charles S. Terry</div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">219 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I bought this book last year when I read that Werner Herzog had written a novel based on the strange story of Hiroo Onoda, author of this memoir and a soldier in the Japanese Army during World War II. I've now read both books -- this one and Herzog's <i>The Twilight World, </i>and I've watched the film <i>Onoda: 10,000 Nights in The Jungle </i>which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021. Evidently I couldn't get enough of this man's story -- it seems that indeed, sometimes truth is even stranger than fiction.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It was 1942 when Onodo was called up for his army physical; in December of that year he reported to the Two Hundred Eighteenth Infantry Regiment. After a brief time in Nanchang, he took and passed his officer examination, eventually ending up at the Futumata branch of the Nakano Military school where he was taught how to engage in secret warfare. In October 1944, American forces landed on Leyte; Onoda and forty-two other trainees were told they would be going to the Philippines. First, though, he would have a bit of leave, which he spent at his family home; ironically, as it happens, on leaving to report back to the army he told his mother that if she is informed that he had been killed, </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"don't think too much about it, because I may well show up again after a few years."</div></blockquote><p> Given what happened with this man, that turned out to be an understatement. Onoda was assigned to Lubang Island, to "lead the Lubang Garrison in guerrilla warfare." The objective: "to hamper the enemy attack on Luzon." Onoda was directed to destroy both the airfield and the pier at the island's harbor; he was further tasked with destroying enemy planes and killing the crews "should the enemy land" there. His final orders, however, were that he was "forbidden" to kill himself: </p><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">" It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens we'll come back for you. Until then, so long as you have one soldier, you are to continue to lead him. You may have to live on coconuts. If that's the case, live on coconuts! Under no circumstances are you to give up your life voluntarily."</div></blockquote><p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-JBLHJz6swRzisF4s2Xtn3tKhFaQl56v6RHdt4i6kibnemAjF7HnpiySrhVO-GikEiHOGJ3VyhOj5F_lRNmKhfMvQq_dnAqrQ9VSL_o24KhAwA_R3afoKLy2bqxXH5N7FW9K524Ke9-k8Fj0cKHcIwkjzEcmL03FmKBgfMLWmYHyVUJwpn8kljg/s1546/lubang4.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1546" data-original-width="1082" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-JBLHJz6swRzisF4s2Xtn3tKhFaQl56v6RHdt4i6kibnemAjF7HnpiySrhVO-GikEiHOGJ3VyhOj5F_lRNmKhfMvQq_dnAqrQ9VSL_o24KhAwA_R3afoKLy2bqxXH5N7FW9K524Ke9-k8Fj0cKHcIwkjzEcmL03FmKBgfMLWmYHyVUJwpn8kljg/s320/lubang4.png" width="224" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">from <i><a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Additions-to-Philippine-Slender-Skinks-of-the-I%3A-a-Geheber-Davis/8d67f84d38217bd0637c322a13dc477c2b6aec30/figure/0" target="_blank">Semantic Scholar</a></i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div><div>The situation on the island, for many reasons, started to go south almost immediately. By December of 1944 when Onoda arrived at Lubang, the tide of war had already started to turn in favor of the Allies and it was so grim that people back home in Japan were already bracing for enemy forces to land in their country. The "best outfit in the whole Japanese army" on Lubang weren't really up to fighting; they just "wanted to get off Lubang" and Onoda was hampered by the officers who refused to listen to him or to allow their soldiers to help him in his mission because they were "too busy." In one garrison, only half of the men were actually fit for work, the others sick and plagued by fatigue; newly-arriving soldiers failed to bring food with them and had to share in what little resources were available. As he notes, the five-month supply of rice would likely last for two months at best. He wrote that the troops he was supposed to be leading were "a bunch of good-for-nothings, concerned with only their immediate wants," and he had no authority to set them straight. With all of this (and much more) going on, Onoda couldn't convince anyone of the need for guerrilla warfare; even worse, when the Americans came to Lubang, they captured the airfield Onoda had been ordered to destroy. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>Fast forward to October of 1945, when Onoda received word via a piece of paper on which, written in Japanese, was a statement that "The war ended on August 15," and that the Japanese soldiers should "come down from the mountains." Onoda believed none of it, thinking it was an enemy ploy, and later at the end of the year, leaflets dropped from a B-17 offered copies of the surrender order from General Yamashita as well as a directive from the chief of staff. Once again he refused to believe what he was reading, deciding that these were "phony." These messages continued, and in every instance Onoda decided that it was the work of the enemy, that they were being tricked via propaganda into surrendering. By 1946 he was down to just four men, all of whom vowed that they would "keep on fighting." It wouldn't be until 1974 that he stepped out of the jungle, once he had word from his commanding officer that Japan had indeed surrendered and that he was ordered to return home. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the meantime, his little group of four became just one, with Onoda the only one left standing. His story reveals how he tried to do his best to continue his original mission while trying to survive in the jungle of Lubang Island, not an easy feat by any stretch. By the time his band of soldiers came down to just his comrade Kozuka and himself, Onoda says that they had "developed so many fixed ideas" that they were "unable to understand anything that did not conform to them." He stood firm in his tenacity and his commitment, not just to his mission but also to his firm belief that there was absolutely no way that Japan could have lost the war, let alone that his country's government had surrendered. It would only be after he was on board the helicopter that would take him home in 1974 that he would finally question his time in Lubang, asking "Who had I been fighting for? What was the cause?" </div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHvphZLBByGlXNjy6jASzKbS4DaSLcDKE85QNdsRYzFgNdszniGVlrIuHe7nhe-GxEnuV7xA7aqxDq_4esVFF_NrwIiA7MkNRkEHAd8iyahMqj-eadLWmhZE27r7A_mc3Z7v3SHeaN80U0e7-zWjg9r8jIizBc0aKlW6nvNVmwHSiQSa-2tra_3w/s1600/onodasurrender.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1557" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHvphZLBByGlXNjy6jASzKbS4DaSLcDKE85QNdsRYzFgNdszniGVlrIuHe7nhe-GxEnuV7xA7aqxDq_4esVFF_NrwIiA7MkNRkEHAd8iyahMqj-eadLWmhZE27r7A_mc3Z7v3SHeaN80U0e7-zWjg9r8jIizBc0aKlW6nvNVmwHSiQSa-2tra_3w/s320/onodasurrender.jpg" width="311" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br />Onoda leaving the jungle with former commanding officer Tanaguchi after he'd officially relieved him of duty. From <i><a href="https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/hiroo-onoda-1974/" target="_blank">Rare Historical Photos</a></i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>At the same time, it is important to remember that this is Onoda's story as told to a ghostwriter and it is likely incomplete. As so many readers have been quick to point out, it says nothing about the crimes the Japanese on Lubang perpetrated against the people who lived there. At a website called <i><a href="https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/hiroo-onoda-1974/" target="_blank">Rare Historical Photos</a>,</i> the writer discussing the photos of Onoda notes that "he and his companions had killed some 30 people in their long war" (pardoned by President Marcos), and there is also a <a href="https://vimeo.com/523924267" target="_blank">trailer on Vimeo</a> for a new documentary by Mia Stewart called "Searching for Onoda" in which she turns to her family on Lubang to express how Onoda's war affected the island's people. I can't find any information about when this documentary will be available to the viewing public, but I definitely plan to watch when it is released. And there's this: according to an article I read at the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220413-onoda-the-man-who-hid-in-the-jungle-for-30-years" target="_blank">BBC's Culture</a> page, the ghostwriter of this book, Ikeda Shin, published his own account, <i>Fantasy Hero,</i> in which he felt "it was his responsibility to inform the public that he believed Onoda was not a hero, nor a soldier, nor even a brave man." </div><div><br /></div><div> I had a lot of trouble putting it down once started and every time a new announcement would come for Onoda about the war being over, I was just floored by his logic as to why he refused to give up. I would also definitely recommend reading <i>No Surrender</i> if you are planning to read Herzog's book or if you're thinking about watching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alovhJmJOFQ" target="_blank">the film</a> based on his book just so you have some background. However you choose to view Onoda in light of the criticisms against him, the book still makes for great reading, and it's one I definitely recommend if you're looking for something well out of the ordinary. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /> <p></p><p> </p><p></p></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-5949366968929360452022-04-22T13:52:00.000-04:002022-04-22T13:52:19.002-04:00Robert Aickman: An Attempted Biography, by R.B. Russell<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLUusjQBW9xIpvgDrgK81WjCOPAJCxH5KkupKAAic6rjxuNgxze8zca9AxPDnfbdzwV9u12mD-VONHYzVSgY-LbSRgYFHykuCDqf2YQr1-SLeyeGiv8HyfcOdnuXCf4qb539JSZBkZBvO72cyN9bgD9eoWHhexeyWQ64zqnZogV1tbk4XeX2MMSg/s475/aickmanbio.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLUusjQBW9xIpvgDrgK81WjCOPAJCxH5KkupKAAic6rjxuNgxze8zca9AxPDnfbdzwV9u12mD-VONHYzVSgY-LbSRgYFHykuCDqf2YQr1-SLeyeGiv8HyfcOdnuXCf4qb539JSZBkZBvO72cyN9bgD9eoWHhexeyWQ64zqnZogV1tbk4XeX2MMSg/s320/aickmanbio.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div><br /></div>9781912586363<div>Tartarus Press, 2022</div><div>396 pp</div><div><br /></div><div>hardcover, signed, #326</div><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My introduction to Robert Aickman's stories came some years back via the <i>Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories </i>with "The Trains" in volume one. I remember sitting there mentally scratching my head, wondering what was going on there and puzzling over it until I gave up, deciding that I'd definitely have to come back to it another time. My inability to decipher "The Trains" might have made for a frustrating experience and turned me off Aickman for good, but no, the opposite happened -- not only did I make my way back to "The Trains," but little by little I also started picking up his story collections and little by little I became a huge fangirl of his work. I'm <i>still </i>mystified by many of his tales, but as Russell quotes author Sacheverell Sitwall in Chapter 22 (whose words from his <i>For Want of the Golden City</i> Aickman originally chose as the epigraph in <i>Cold Hand in Mine</i>), I've come to realize that "In the end, it is the mystery that lasts and not the explanation." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Aickman wrote two volumes of autobiography entitled <i>The Attempted Rescue </i>(1966) and <i>The River Runs Uphill, </i>published posthumously in 1986. <i> </i> While "both are full of colourful personal details," we are told, Aickman's "version of events is not always to be relied upon." As the dustjacket notes, in <i>An Attempted Biography, </i>Russell "disentangles the myths that have surrounded Aickman and his life." He also focuses on Aickman's long-lasting legacy of two great achievements: his work for the Inland Waterways Association and his writing. He also reveals much about the man himself -- Aickman was more than a bit over the top politically, often a downright cad when it came to how he treated women (most notably his wife Ray Gregorson who somehow managed to stay with him for sixteen years), great company and charming with some people while unpleasant, rude and opinionated with others. Somewhere in this book or elsewhere I've seen the word "polarizing" to describe Aickman, and that would be about right. Through countless interviews, correspondence, his subject's own writing and many other sources, Russell has written what just might possibly turn out to be <i>the </i>definitive biography of Robert Aickman. </div><div><br /></div><div>Without going into any kind of detail here, Russell begins with a quick run through Aickman's childhood including his life with his mother and eccentric father; Russell also touches on the "complex phantasies" which Aickman noted in <i>The Attempted Rescue </i>were what allowed him to survive his "first sixteen or seventeen years" of his life, "adolescent daydreams" which "were of the greatest importance to him." By the 1930s, however, what Aickman really wanted was to be a writer -- Aickman's grandfather was Richard Marsh, author of <i>The Beetle </i>(1897) and the namesake of the literary agency Aickman would create with his wife Ray in 1941 after his claims of being a conscientious objector kept him out of the war. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">After the publication of L.T.C. Rolt's book <i>Narrow Boat </i> in 1944, Aickman sent the author a letter telling him how much he and Ray admired his work, also making the suggestion that perhaps "some body" could be formed </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"a disinterested group of enthusiasts (but not fanatics) could do much to better the state of the canals,"</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">and offering to meet Rolt to talk about his idea. As Russell explains, the canals </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"had been neglected for many years, a large proportion of them owned by railway companies that initially brought with them the aim of removing objection to their proposed new railway lines,"</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">and that the four thousand miles of "navigable canal" had been reduced to half by this time. Rolt agreed, and from this meeting (which Aickman attended with his wife Ray but neglects to mention her presence in his autobiography, an ongoing thing with him evidently) would be born the Inland Waterways Association (IWA), which became something Aickman "could really get his teeth into." As it happens, Russell devotes a great deal of his book to Aickman's role in the IWA, and it's worth saying that Russell never lets the topic become dull -- while his subject was seen by some as a "pugnacious, persistent and fighting leader of the highest calibre," Aickman's time with the organization and his relationship with other members was often anything but smooth sailing (if you'll pardon the pun). </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Of course, Aickman's writing career is an integral component of this biography, especially his "strange" stories, which really started to be noticed after he and Elizabeth Jane Howard (with whom he worked on the IWA and with whom he had a lengthy affair) had their collection of stories published in <i>We Are For the Dark </i> in 1951. At this point, Russell notes, Aickman's "career in fiction was set... 'for the dark'. " He also had stories published in periodicals, including <i>The Tatler,</i> which not only ran his "The Trains" but also some of Aickman's ghost stories in Christmas issues over the next two years. It wouldn't be until 1964 when Gollancz published his <i>The Late Breakfasters </i>and Collins published his first Aickman-only story collection, <i>Dark Entries, </i>that his "long-time ambition" of being a writer was realized "to his satisfaction." He was also busy editing the first of eight volumes of Fontana's <i>Great Ghost Stories. </i>Russell goes on to discuss Aickman's various works, with the added bonus of insight into his stories, then moves on to the "new generation of fans" he'd gained via his writing. Ramsey Campbell, for example, read his <i>Dark Entries</i> in 1965, writing to August Derleth that Aickman was "the only new light on the fantasy horizon I could think of," then finally met the author in 1968. The final section of <i>An Attempted Biography </i>goes on to discuss Aickman's "Posthumous Reputation," about which Russell notes that it now "appears to be secure." I have to say that the fact that Aickman refused to "write with an idea of popular appeal" is one major quality that continues to draw me to his work. </div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As has been the case with each of R.B. Russell's books I've read, the writing is excellent, but of course, the true star of this book is Robert Aickman himself, a man who was "determined to realise his ambitions" and in so doing "often made enemies," as well as a man with "a great capacity for love and friendship." It's obvious that Russell has not only done an incredible volume of research, but in doing so, has come to know his subject very well. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>An Attempted Biography </i>now enjoys a place of honor on my favorites bookshelf -- I am just completely in awe of what Russell has accomplished here. Nicely done. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-64139234481739625512022-01-28T10:33:00.001-05:002022-01-28T14:34:08.728-05:00Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Family, by Patrick Radden Keefe<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi7hTidv0TtbpJ6n6IAqz87Fi6btq1ku758LR2gjx1qxP693O7_hwmhwdwr2ATp_2wtBOGE9lqksFVpxn5DQPwaNaHgH_95tPK8YZ5_U6bbp2tr1d7fiqGhI1hByL0aqLKtz2_OlM3QfoQpHYyuC5ZLfwrf2KiFCQfShibQ984dmD0NsMclfadXww=s2560" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1684" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi7hTidv0TtbpJ6n6IAqz87Fi6btq1ku758LR2gjx1qxP693O7_hwmhwdwr2ATp_2wtBOGE9lqksFVpxn5DQPwaNaHgH_95tPK8YZ5_U6bbp2tr1d7fiqGhI1hByL0aqLKtz2_OlM3QfoQpHYyuC5ZLfwrf2KiFCQfShibQ984dmD0NsMclfadXww=s320" width="211" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">9780385545686</div><div style="text-align: left;">Doubleday, 2021</div><div style="text-align: left;">535 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the afterword of this book, the author notes that he'd started working on this project in 2016, having come to it "indirectly." While researching the Mexican drug cartels ("not just as criminal organizations but as businesses"), his research had led him to the "new emphasis, among the cartels, on heroin." From there, Keefe was led to OxyContin, and to reading Barry Meier's <i>Pain Killer </i>and <i>Dreamland</i> (an excellent book, by the way) by Sam Quinones as well as articles published in the <i>Los Angeles Times. </i>He notes that he </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"was astonished to discover that the family that presided over the company that made OxyContin was a prominent philanthropic dynasty with what appeared to be an unimpeachable reputation." </div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">In an interview at <i><a href="https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/books/a36375389/exposing-the-family-behind-americas-opioid-crisis/" target="_blank">Esquire</a></i> in October of last year, the author explains what was behind the writing of this book, saying that he didn't want to write a book "in which the Sacklers felt like cyphers, in which they felt very remote." Since they would neither speak to or communicate with him, writing a book would feel "ineffective -- as though you were seeing them through a telescope, very, very distantly." But then litigation against the company and later the family resulted in a "huge body of documentation ... getting released in these lawsuits, including lots and lots of private emails" that offered Keefe a way to tell a "vivid and engaging" story, one in which "you feel like you really come to understand these people." An engaging revelation of the lengths this uber-wealthy family would go to to avoid any accountability, <i>Empire of Pain </i> is also a story of a family that somehow failed to pass on any sort of empathy through the generations, valuing their "good name" and their ongoing wealth above all other considerations. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And what a story it is indeed. In 1904 Isaac Sackler arrived in America from Galicia, and along with his three brothers, opened up a small grocery store in Williamsburg, New York. He did well enough to invest in real estate, but during the Depression when his fortunes started to wane, he reminded his three sons that he had "bestowed upon them something more valuable than money... a good name." As the sons' wealth began to grow, they delighted in seeing that "good name" adorn many a philanthropic enterprise, all the while keeping silent about where their money originated. In <i>Empire of Pain</i>, the author examines the Sackler dynasty, revealing a </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"story about ambition, philanthropy, crime and impunity, the corruption of institutions, power, and greed."</div></blockquote><p>Isaac Sackler always hoped that his sons would "leave their mark on the world," which they did, but my guess would be probably not in the way Isaac had intended. </p><p>The three Sackler sons (Arthur, Raymond and Mortimer) went on to become doctors, the latter two joining Arthur working in a state psychiatric facility in New Jersey, Creedmoor Hospital. In 1942, while still working at Creedmoor, Arthur accepted a position with the William Douglas McAdams agency which specialized in pharmaceutical advertising, where the focus became one of "how do you sell a pill?" Sackler was savvy enough to know that the <i>real</i> money would come from advertising directly to physicians rather than consumers, and beginning with a Pfizer product called Terramycin, he laid the foundations for future pharmaceutical marketing. Without going into detail, Sackler's strategies included marketing to "the prescribers" in medical journals, hiring a force of energetic sales reps, convincing prominent doctors to get on board with endorsements, having drug companies cite certain scientific studies (often underwritten by the companies themselves) that claimed that the new drug worked well and that it was safe. What Sackler had created was a "synergy between medicine and commerce," and the strategies worked: while the product itself wasn't particularly "groundbreaking," it was highly successful since "it had been marketed in a way that no drug had ever been." Not only had "Arthur invented the wheel," but he'd also laid the foundation for the future of pharmaceutical sales, including Valium, which more than cemented the Sackler family fortune. He also bought a "small pharmaceutical company" in 1952, by the name of Purdue Frederick, the running of which would be left in the hands of his brothers. </p><div style="text-align: left;">Flash forward in time: Richard Sackler, son of Raymond, got his medical degree and in 1971 joined Purdue Frederick as assistant to the president (his dad). When MSContin came along, Purdue started manufacturing and selling it in 1984, generating hundreds of millions in sales, "dwarfing anything that the company had sold in the past." By 1990 though, Purdue was set to "lose the monopoly on its flagship painkiller" due to patent issues, so they needed a "successor." Enter OxyContin, in 1996. The word at Purdue Pharma (formed in 1991) was that this drug was so good that it would "sell itself" but Purdue was taking no chances. The Sacklers followed Arthur's template in influencing government agencies like the FDA, co-opting physicians, completely downplaying the addictive qualities of the drug, faking reports, offering "capless" incentives to the sales reps, financing organizations advocating freedom from pain as well as pain research, and the list goes on. OxyContin became "the one to start with and the one to stay with." That turned out to be true: Purdue created a huge market for OxyContin, which in turn led doctors to prescribe it and to people becoming dependent on it. It also launched a major public health crisis -- by 2010, "millions of people had become addicted to OxyContin and other opioids," and America was "in the grip of a full-blown opioid epidemic." Purdue's answer: it's not the drug, it's the people abusing the drug. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> In the long run, as Keefe so skillfully reveals, the Sacklers did anything and everything necessary not only to deny and refute the claims of addiction, but also to preserve their "good name." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There is much more to this book than I can describe here, but as the dustjacket blurb notes, <i>Empire of Pain</i> is "a portrait of excesses," as well as a </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"study of impunity among the super elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference to human suffering that built one of the world's great fortunes." </div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">I don't know how anyone can read <i>Empire of Pain </i>and walk away unaffected. What struck me the most was the family's sheer lack of empathy, the lack of any sort of accountability, and the ease with which they managed to co-opt the institutions that are supposed to protect the public, including the FDA and the Department of Justice. The icing on the cake comes in watching the HBO documentary "Crime of the Century," which not only shows certain members of our government allowing all of this to happen, but also reveals how much Sackler money they'd received in campaign contributions. But read this book first. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Highly, highly, highly recommended. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-56030277659406688632022-01-08T13:12:00.004-05:002022-01-09T08:19:42.953-05:00The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey: A True Story of Sex, Crime, and the Meaning of Justice, by Julia Laite<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiz88GbVT5_6Ykn4FHwrG_BF_vlu9I3hRu4CO8gk8Zv4hmDVTjsPLUCZAzbL14SkbWWDU90yuBjn_jcXjpFVIGSnaQh1WdRh_y5tAxzgFaLiEYfelZwEdVCFWJfP1e35peIax_6PM6eOu94PADVsSZEpqExg2ackKjjstSWagWdI0iAqFz6GcAqlQ=s1024" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="637" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiz88GbVT5_6Ykn4FHwrG_BF_vlu9I3hRu4CO8gk8Zv4hmDVTjsPLUCZAzbL14SkbWWDU90yuBjn_jcXjpFVIGSnaQh1WdRh_y5tAxzgFaLiEYfelZwEdVCFWJfP1e35peIax_6PM6eOu94PADVsSZEpqExg2ackKjjstSWagWdI0iAqFz6GcAqlQ=s320" width="199" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781788164429</div><div style="text-align: left;">Profile Books, 2021</div><div style="text-align: left;">410 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Before I launch into my thoughts here, I absolutely have to offer my grateful thanks to the unknown but very much appreciated person who sent me this book, whoever that person may be. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <i>The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey </i>is a well-constructed and thoroughly engaging work of history which might best be described as narrative nonfiction, meaning that there is not only a story to be told here, but a central plot, if you will, with a young woman by the name of Lydia Harvey at its center. We learn in the first sentence of this book that in January, 1910, "just a few months shy of her seventeenth birthday, Lydia Harvey disappeared." That was her <i>physical </i>disappearance, but she also "disappeared again and again" in the stories told about her by others:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"She was no one. Who she was, what she wanted, what happened afterwards; none of this mattered. She joined a legion of missing girls, whose brief appearances in newspapers and books remained uncomplicated by their past experiences of poverty, abuse or their exploitation in other kinds of work."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">While many of these women had stories told about them which ended, </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"condemned to a short life of misery, disease and degradation; they 'vanished forever beneath the slime of the underworld' and remained 'literally nameless and unknown,' "</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Lydia, as we are told, "refused this story;" and did not, as the dustjacket blurb reveals, "vanish forever into the slime of the underworld" despite others' expectations. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Lydia Harvey was sixteen years old in 1910 when she boarded a ship for Buenos Aires, leaving her family, her friends and her job behind. She had earlier been taken into a "respectable" home in the city as a domestic, but she worked long hours for very little money so when the opportunity arose to work in a photography studio, she took it. It wasn't long until she met "a beautiful woman and a handsome man" who offered her "nice dresses" and would "help her to travel;" her job would be "seeing gentlemen." Whether or not Lydia realized what she was in for is unknown, but as the author states, this girl, alone, sixteen, "work-weary and starry eyed" decided to take a risk, explaining her absence via letter to her mother saying that she'd gone on to become a "nursemaid for a respectable couple" in London. In Buenos Aires she found herself working as a prostitute, constantly reminded of how indebted she was to the couple who had brought her there, but things didn't go as planned, so they all traveled to London where eventually Lydia was arrested. Her story might have ended there, but in a Soho police station she "gave a witness statement that would form the key piece of testimony that saw her traffickers brought to some semblance of justice," and then, unlike so many young women in her situation, actually testified in court.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>Author Julia Laite had first encountered Lydia and her statement while researching her first book <i>Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens, </i>published in 2011, and according to this interview in the <i><a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/lydias-life-oamaru-link-to-1900s-sex-trafficking/HRKGKLNAFL6DR5THN7ZMKZ3NEE/" target="_blank">New Zealand Herald</a></i> , she couldn't get Lydia out of her head, "wondering what had happened before and what happened after." In writing this book, not only does the author answer this question, but she focuses a lens on several people whose lives became interwoven with Lydia's, offering Lydia's story to emerge through their eyes as well. She begins with Lydia's early life, moving her forward in time to being trafficked and to her encounter with the police in London; she then takes up the story from the perspective of the police, followed by that of the media, a rescue worker to whom Lydia was sent after being arrested, and then finally on to the couple who trafficked her. Yet this is neither a simple biography or history by any means; there is a wider story at work here involving, among other things, rapidly-changing women's roles, a world becoming much more interconnected, an increase in mobility among women, especially among the lower-middle and working classes, all of which sparked societal anxieties encapsulated by the "white-slavery panic" </div><blockquote><div>"fashioned by crusading journalists and anti-vice campaigners and taken up by a society that longed for young women to remain in their traditional place, while exploiting them for their cheap and flexible labor." </div></blockquote><p> Unfortunately, "the language of white slavery" didn't cover the exploitation of "black, Asian and indigenous" victims; the actual "white slavers" were also "profoundly racialised." Often women such as Lydia were somewhat idealized, while at the same time there seemed to be far less attention paid to who was responsible. There is also another, more complex matter that muddies the water: often, as in the case of one of Lydia's traffickers, Veronique Caravelli, sometimes women were both sex workers <i>and</i> traffickers, which seems to upset the typical understanding of victim and victimizer -- women who didn't quite fit the accepted mold of victims were most often characterized as criminals. Lydia's story played out at a time of a growing globalization of sex work, the trafficking existing on an international scale that ultimately required police forces around the world not only to be in communication with each other, but also to "establish a central authority in each country" to coordinate both national and international anti-trafficking efforts, which continued to victimize women. Obviously this is just a sort of nutshell description, and there is much, much more that I haven't even touched upon -- the role of the press, the role of social work, and so on, leaving it for the reader to discover. </p><p>At the outset the author reveals that there are "thousands of missing pieces to this puzzle," either lost, destroyed, or never made part of any historical record. Acknowledging that she had to weave "threads of imagination" into the information she discovered, she also notes that she has "followed careful rules" in doing so -- historical evidence exists for every detail offered in this story. Considering what she didn't have, she's done an excellent job here; not only is this book well researched, but the different perspectives that come to interconnect offer a more in-depth understanding of the individuals who made up part of Lydia's story as well as (quoting the dustjacket blurb) "the forces that shaped the twentieth century." I absolutely love reading history when it's written like it is here, in which an obscure figure from the past is given a voice and a life while all the while a clear picture of the world surrounding her takes shape. It is also amazing how much of this story continues to resonate in our own time, which I picked up on very early in the reading, but it is an idea runs throughout the book. </p><p>Very nicely done and very, very highly recommended. </p><p><br /></p></div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-41560341516459365422021-12-11T13:22:00.004-05:002021-12-11T13:26:56.790-05:00Pan: The Great God's Modern Return, by Paul Robichaud<p> </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AJejCAooBTc/YaeeTrlByoI/AAAAAAAAWVU/E7DJ2YjZ9_8TagLRDxtJ2f8eFBbuWfDagCLcBGAsYHQ/s300/robichaudpan.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="190" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AJejCAooBTc/YaeeTrlByoI/AAAAAAAAWVU/E7DJ2YjZ9_8TagLRDxtJ2f8eFBbuWfDagCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/robichaudpan.jpg" width="190" /></a></div>9781789144765<div>Reaktion Books, 2021</div><div>344 pp</div><div><br /></div><div>hardcover</div><div><br /></div><div>I am a huge fan of Arthur Machen's novella <i>The Great God Pan </i>(which I've recently reread), <i> </i>and I've been saying for some time now that some enterprising person would be doing readers like me a huge favor by collecting and compiling every story ever written about Pan and publishing them all together in book form. Since that's unlikely to be in the works for the near future, spending more time reading about the great god seemed to me to be a good idea, so I was beyond excited when I first heard about the publication of this book. It is one I've been looking forward to for a very long time, and without hesitation I can say that I was not at all disappointed. Historian Paul Robichaud has written this volume for readers "interested in learning more about the goat-footed god and how he has been imagined through the centuries." That would be me. For sure.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Through the centuries" is not an understatement in this case. Robichaud traces the various ways that Pan has been envisioned from antiquity up to our own time, using "individual texts, works of art and musical compositions," introducing them <i>and </i>"relating them where possible to the larger tradition of which they form a part." As he notes, </div><blockquote><blockquote>"Surveying Pan's role in mythology, art, literature, music, spirituality and popular culture ... shows how portrayals of the god reveal shifting anxiety about our own animality and our relationship to the natural world, whether this is understood as the wilderness beyond civilization or the cosmos as a whole. "</blockquote></blockquote><p> He begins with "Mythic Pan," exploring Pan's origins in the Arcadia region of Greece long before any written records appeared. Earliest representations of Pan consisted of bronze statues revealing the great god as an object of veneration by shepherds in the area. From there "the cult of Pan" made its way from Arcadia spreading across Greece, inspiring not only myth, but also poetry in the "pastoral" form as captured by Theocritus and Virgil (whose work, in turn, would also inspire others later through the centuries). </p><p>These "classical visions of Pan" ended when Constantine decreed that Christianity would become the Roman Empire's official religion, sending paganism into a "kind of half-life" until Pan and other pagan gods "disappeared from public view" up to the time of the Renaissance as discussed in "Medieval and Early Modern Pan." He reappears in different forms during this time, usually allegorically, so as to avoid controversy with the church. Signorelli's <i>The School of Pan </i>(1490) is just one example; as the author reveals, art historian Michael Levey has described the figures in the painting as "banished creatures of mythology, who had always existed and who have now crept back into the welcoming Renaissance air." </p><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiwkOuXE3VusEhGmXw_hiIIdPyfMwm7TK16dAzwiIUt_nRBEnRe8F16Uh5CE3NxDzIE39IcGIpjsyeo3kqGpUayu5wTff7cOhjEJgqW1Cj0pQG0r2PY00aVqmC6P6fjkH5Voq1u0Mo5E-zRYnAYiN2YvKa5S2CFR7bx862DxqZERwwzYQ7f7jRP5w=s1000" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="751" data-original-width="1000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiwkOuXE3VusEhGmXw_hiIIdPyfMwm7TK16dAzwiIUt_nRBEnRe8F16Uh5CE3NxDzIE39IcGIpjsyeo3kqGpUayu5wTff7cOhjEJgqW1Cj0pQG0r2PY00aVqmC6P6fjkH5Voq1u0Mo5E-zRYnAYiN2YvKa5S2CFR7bx862DxqZERwwzYQ7f7jRP5w=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">from<a href="https://ar.pinterest.com/pin/688487861775417158/" target="_blank"> <i>Pinterest</i></a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;">A few of Pan's appearances in literature come by way of Rabelais, Francis Bacon, Spenser and Milton; in popular culture he becomes the figure of Robin Good-fellow and even stands as symbol for James II, who was banished in 1688, serving as a code for Jacobites when it was dangerous to be known as loyal to the Stuarts. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I won't go through each and every chapter in any depth, but after the Renaissance, Pan re-emerges during the late eighteenth century and the Romantic period, which </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"valued wild nature, passion and imagination -- all of which were conducive to a rebirth of enthusiasm for the god, as was a revival of interest in all things Greek, including the irrational mysteries of Greek religion" </div></blockquote><p> taking his readers into the late nineteenth century before moving onto the twentieth. Noteworthy among the many and various works discussed in this section, the author offers queer representations of Pan in literature, including Forrest Reid's novel <i>The Garden God </i>from 1905 (which is now sitting on my shelf ready to be read thanks to a reprint by Valancourt Books) and E.F. Benson's short story "The Man Who Went Too Far," a chilling story which I recently read in John Miller's collection <i><a href="http://www.oddlyweirdfiction.com/2021/10/weird-woods-tales-from-haunted-forests.html" target="_blank">Weird Woods</a></i>, published by the British Library. </p><p>Two more chapters bring us to the end. First, "Pan as Occult Power" first examines Pan's more esoteric appearances in the work of Eliphas Levi; it's then on to fiction where he examines Machen's <i>Great God Pan</i> in some depth as well as the writings of Aleister Crowley, Victor Neuberg, Algernon Blackwood, and Dion Fortune before taking on Pan's association with modern witchcraft and the figure of the Horned God. Chapter six then delves into "Contemporary Pan" which for me held a number of surprising connections to ponder. </p><p>Robichaud, as he explains at the beginning, has no assumptions that readers of this book might have "any prior knowledge of the material explored here," and he has written this volume in a highly-approachable fashion making it beyond reader friendly. I have barely skimmed the surface in this post, but trust me -- if anyone wants to know anything at all about the Great God Pan, it's very likely found here in this wide-ranging exploration of the goat-footed god. Beware though -- I came up with a list of twenty-five books I wanted to read from the author's source material. </p><p>Most definitely and very highly recommended; an excellent book that will have a place of honor on my shelves. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-11807173995757287882021-11-13T12:21:00.001-05:002021-11-13T12:21:24.371-05:00Truffle Hound: On the Trail of the World's Most Seductive Scent, With Dreamers, Schemers and Some Extraordinary Dogs, by Rowan Jacobsen<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-re1l511BHNc/YY_O4n5M95I/AAAAAAAAWNA/Jw48N2op4iwwwmTUt0VHSohAy2YQJ3x0ACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/jacobsontrufle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="262" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-re1l511BHNc/YY_O4n5M95I/AAAAAAAAWNA/Jw48N2op4iwwwmTUt0VHSohAy2YQJ3x0ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/jacobsontrufle.jpg" width="210" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781834474194</div><div style="text-align: left;">Bloomsbury, 2021</div><div style="text-align: left;">283 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover (my copy from the publisher, thanks!)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Just prior to the Covid outbreak of 2020, a new restaurant opened nearby and everyone I know who went there raved about the truffle fries. I asked one of my friends if she knew that there was nothing truffle about the fries, and she looked at me like I was out of my mind and told me about the delicious and rich truffle oil that gives them their flavor. So now that I've finished this book, I'll be handing it over to her so that she can see for herself that her beloved truffles <i>frites</i> are covered in olive oil containing 2,4-dithiapentane, a synthetic chemical that offers up a "heavy-handed impression of truffleness." Anthony Bourdain once said about truffle oil that it was "about as edible as Astroglide, and made from the same stuff." This book, however, isn't about dispelling myths about the stuff poured over french fries to push them into the double-digit dollar zone -- it is an examination of the "dreamers, schemers, and sensualists" who in the presence of the fungi itself become "quivering puddles." Of the real stuff, there are a variety out there -- chef and author Rowan Jacobsen mentions at the outset that "about a dozen species play prominent roles in this tale" -- of those, </div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"two have starring roles: <i>Tuber magnatum, </i>Italy's celebrated white truffle, which is often called the Alba; and <i>Tuber melanosporum, </i>the queen of black truffles.."</div></blockquote><p>Describing his first olfactory encounter with the white truffle , Jacobsen notes that </p><p></p><blockquote>"It was hardly a food scent at all. It was more like catching a glimpse of a satyr prancing across the dining room floor while playing its flute and flashing its hindquarters at you. You think, What the hell was that? And then you think, I have to know. "</blockquote><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">I not only love that description but I also understand -- I've never had the pleasure to have tried the white variety but the black, well, there's this little Italian deli that carries them and they have more than once (very sparingly) graced my papardelle in shaved form. Anyway, after that first experience with the white truffle's heavenly scent, the author went looking to discover what he could about these prized fungi, and found himself on a "quest" to discover what it is about truffles that has the power to turn people into the above-mentioned "quivering puddles." Traveling throughout Europe, the UK, Canada, and various places here in the US, Jacobsen spent time with truffle hunters, their specially-trained dogs, hopeful truffle farmers and entrepreneurs looking toward the future, truffle sellers and scientists to learn all he could about these prized fungi, of which the white variety is, as he says, "the world's most expensive food." The more he becomes involved in his quest, the more he finds himself "starting to think of truffles as the street artists of the forest, splashing smells across an airy canvas, blowing the minds of passersby." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rGR92iLCNpw/YY_nE9THzgI/AAAAAAAAWNg/04VZVHlNgKMbrZaiSNN5Eoj6kYYvu8zQgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/truffleknight%2B%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rGR92iLCNpw/YY_nE9THzgI/AAAAAAAAWNg/04VZVHlNgKMbrZaiSNN5Eoj6kYYvu8zQgCLcBGAsYHQ/w300-h400/truffleknight%2B%25282%2529.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">In Hungary: Grand Master of the Saint Ladislaus Order of Truffle Knights, Zoltan Bratek (from my copy)<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></span></td></tr></tbody></table>This is my first book by Jacobsen; I love his casual yet knowledgeable style of writing enough that on the strength of this one I just bought his <i>A Geography of Oysters </i>even though I despise them. Even if you don't like food writing (or truffles for that matter), there is much to enjoy in <i>Truffle Hound, </i>especially the stories of the people Jacobsen meets and of course, the awesome dogs who are part and parcel of the experience. This is a good book, and I can most certainly recommend it. <p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;">*******</div><div style="text-align: left;">With apologies to Nicole at Bloomsbury for taking forever to finish this book, I offer my sincere thanks for the lovely, finished copy. </div><p><br /></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-35223174088158906712021-08-15T15:03:00.000-04:002021-08-15T15:03:19.413-04:00My Dark Places, by James Ellroy<p style="text-align: center;"> <i><b>"Dead women owned me." </b></i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U55ip4ZkzJ4/YRkjtfWnYAI/AAAAAAAAVt0/vl9GthDxcH4X_AjhjMu7fwUVja8-5gutwCLcBGAsYHQ/s475/ellroydark.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="305" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U55ip4ZkzJ4/YRkjtfWnYAI/AAAAAAAAVt0/vl9GthDxcH4X_AjhjMu7fwUVja8-5gutwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/ellroydark.jpg" width="205" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;">9780679762058</div><div style="text-align: left;">Vintage, 1997</div><div style="text-align: left;">424 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Last year I read Ellroy's <i>LA Quartet, </i>the opening novel of which is <i><a href="http://www.crimesegments.com/2020/09/the-la-quartet-by-james-ellroy.html" target="_blank">The Black Dahlia</a>. </i> In that book, as the author noted in his afterword, a "personal story attends the Black Dahlia," inextricably linking him to "two women savaged eleven years apart." One of these women was his mother, Geneva (Jean) Hilliker, who was killed in 1958, her murderer unknown and her case never solved. The other, of course, was the real-life Black Dahlia herself, Elizabeth Short, whose story Ellroy had read as a boy in Jack Webb's <i>The Badge </i>"a hundred times" and who not only became his "obsession," but also a "symbiotic stand-in" for his mother. <i>My Dark Places </i>tells that "personal story," which began when the author was ten and arrived home to discover that his mother was dead; it also explores his own unique relationship to her memory and how it changed over time. It was her murder that shaped who he ultimately became; here he lays his demons bare for all to see. Completely misquoting Bette Davis in <i>All About Eve, </i>fasten your seatbelts -- you're in for a bumpy ride. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The body of Jean Hilliker Ellroy was found on Sunday, June 22, 1958 in a small strip of ivy at King's Row and Tyler Avenue in El Monte, California. The first part of the book details the crime from that point, using a third-person point of view to tell the story, recreated from the records of the original investigation. After the victim had been discovered, her car had been found behind a local bar where she'd spent time with two other people, a blonde woman with a ponytail and a man who came to be known as "the Swarthy Man," both unidentified. From there her whereabouts were traced (sans the blonde) to a local drive-in, where a carhop put her with the Swarthy Man in his car twice that night. After that, despite tracking any and every lead they had and interviewing a number of witnesses and possible suspects, law enforcement lost their trail and the case went cold, or as Ellroy puts it, "moved into limbo." In Part Two, Ellroy delves into his past, detailing his somewhat complicated relationship with his mother and after her death, his life with his father. As a kid, he knew his mother drank and brought men home, and even before her death was told by his father in no uncertain terms that she was a whore. After she died, he went to live with his father where he was left largely unsupervised and subject to his father's rants on race and women. Ellroy's life began to spiral downward during this time -- school left him feeling like he didn't fit in, he started using drugs, broke into houses, shoplifted, stalked girls and did some pretty horrific things for attention; as he got older and his dad's health deteriorated so too did Ellroy's mental state. As he noted when young, "My mother's death was a gift -- and I knew I had to pay for it." While very likely the most difficult to read because of the racism and misogyny, it is staggeringly honest, and for me the strongest section in the book. As I said to one of my goodreads friends, while reading this part I said out loud that this man was an effing pig, but after learning about his life with his father, it came as absolutely no suprise. It was also at this point in his life that his obsession with Elizabeth Short began, and as he said in <i>Black Dahlia, </i>the time when "Jean Hilliker and Betty Short" became "one in transmogrification." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Part three introduces Bill Stoner, a homicide detective with the LA County Sheriff's Department, the man who in Part four helps Ellroy to tackle his mother's case, beginning in 1994. Stoner was no stranger to murdered women as Ellroy discovered; their cases are offered here in mesmerizing detail as well as Stoner's own obsessions in trying to solve them and put their killers behind bars. As was the case with Ellroy who at thirteen knew that "dead women owned me," the same might be said for this man over the course of his career. It was Stoner who first showed Ellroy his mother's file, then stayed with him as they re-interviewed old witnesses and tracked down possible new ones, solicited new leads, and put out as much publicity as possible in the hope that anyone from 1958 might come forward. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I won't say I threw myself into this book; as was the case when I read his <i>LA Quartet, </i>it's more like I fell down the rabbit hole after getting sucked into it. It was impossible not to, actually -- even though this book is a work of nonfiction, reading <i>My Dark Places</i> had much the same effect on me as those four novels did. It is real, it is raw, and while as I said earlier it is beyond difficult to read, it is yet another fine piece of work by one of my favorite writers. Overall, though, it is, as the back-cover blurb so rightly describes, the story of a man who spent some three decades running from his mother's ghost, trying to "exorcize it through crime fiction," and a man hoping for some sort of redemption. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Definitely not for the faint of heart, but to Ellroy fans, a book not to be missed. </div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-50535701509346963402021-06-20T15:11:00.000-04:002021-06-20T15:11:35.943-04:00How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, by Clint Smith<p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D4GuQn53bKM/YM4DaGNZF8I/AAAAAAAAVbw/5EfvjCs__N09-Icc0HXRG_YSAI2rZI6XACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/smithword.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1321" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D4GuQn53bKM/YM4DaGNZF8I/AAAAAAAAVbw/5EfvjCs__N09-Icc0HXRG_YSAI2rZI6XACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/smithword.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;">9780316492935</div><div style="text-align: left;">Little, Brown and Company, 2021</div><div style="text-align: left;">336 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;">hardcover</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In September of this year the longlist for the National Book Awards will be released, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this book there. I also wouldn't be at all surprised if it wins -- it more than deserves this accolade and any other that comes its way. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Clint Smith was born and raised in the city of New Orleans, and yet, as he says, he "knew relatively little" about the city's "relationship to the centuries of bondage" rooted in its</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"soft earth, in the statues I had walked past daily, the names of the streets I had lived on, the schools I had attended, and the building that had once been nothing more to me than the remnants of colonial architecture." </div></blockquote>He quotes historian Walter Johnson as saying that "the whole city is a memorial to slavery," and realizes that "it was all right in front of me, even when I didn't know how to look for it." After the statue of Robert E. Lee was taken down in May, 2017, Smith notes that he had become "obsessed with how slavery is remembered and reckoned with," and with "teaching myself all of things I wish someone had taught me long ago." In an interview with <i><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/openbook/article/85387-clint-smith-s-nonfiction-debut-reckons-with-history.html" target="_blank">Publisher's Weekly</a>, </i> he notes that as he watched the "architecture of [his] childhood coming down," he thought about how<blockquote><div> "these statues were not just statues, but memorialized the lives of slave owners and how history was reflected in different places."</div></blockquote><p>He also states in his book that right now America is at an "inflection point," </p><blockquote><blockquote><div>"in which there is a willingness to more fully grapple with the legacy of slavery and how it shaped the world we live in today"</div></blockquote></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"> but that while some places have "more purposefully ... attempted to tell the truth about their proximity to slavery and its aftermath," there are others which have "more staunchly" refused. From this beginning, as Ibram X. Kendi, author of <i>Stamped from the Beginning </i>notes in his blurb for <i>How the Word Is Passed,</i> <i> </i>Smith visited several "historical sites that are truth-telling or deceiving visitors about slavery." Each chapter, as Smith describes in his prologue is a </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"portrait of a place, but also of the people in that place -- those who live there, work there, and are the descendants of the land and of the families who once lived on it. They are people who have tasked themselves with telling the story of that place outside traditional classrooms and beyond the pages of textbooks."</div></blockquote><p>They are also, as he says, "public historians who carry with them a piece of this country's collective memories," who have "dedicated their lives to sharing this history with others." </p><p>Using a wide variety of scholarship discussing the actual history of these locations, personal interviews, as well as his own experiences and insights, he begins this "necessary journey" (as W. Caleb McDaniel calls it in his blurb) to discover how each place has come to address its dark and painful past, or <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/openbook/article/85387-clint-smith-s-nonfiction-debut-reckons-with-history.html" target="_blank">how in some cases</a> they "worked not to have a discussion about slavery." He stops first at Monticello Plantation before moving on to the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/the-plantation-every-american-should-visit" target="_blank">Whitney Plantation </a>in Wallace, Louisiana where people are "confronted with the reality of slavery." Angola Prison is the next stop, where he discovers that the one thing not on the tour he took was the fact that the prison was built on top of a plantation. In fact, he recalls that after the guide spoke about "Indigenous communities and French exploration of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries," he moved directly to post-Civil War America, failing to mention the time that Angola had been a plantation where enslaved black people were responsible for a cotton yield "higher than most other plantations of the South." And while the guide did mention convict leasing, he failed to talk about it as an "explicit tool of economic and racial subjugation." In Virginia, Smith visited the Blandford Cemetery where 30,000 Confederate soldiers found their final resting place, later returning there with a friend for a Memorial Day Sons of Confederate Veterans commemoration ceremony; in Galveston, Texas he celebrates Juneteenth. Then it's up north to New York City where he discovers its "untold history" unraveling all around him, after which he's off to Gorée Island in Senegal, Dakar to the Slave House and Door of No Return, a "place that still holds the ghosts of thousands and remains a symbol for the plight of millions. " That is not his final stop though -- he visits the National Museum of African American History which stirs up the memories of his maternal grandparents who had accompanied him and who will go on to share their stories with him.</p><p> As Smith notes at the end of his book, "he history of slavery is the history of the United States." It is neither "peripheral to our founding," nor is it "irrelevant to our contemporary society." It is "in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories." </p><p> I have become an staunch advocate for this book -- it's one everybody should read, not just for the history within, but also for Clint Smith's writing here, which is not only knowledgeable but truly insightful and inspiring, coming straight from his heart and his soul. </p><p>so very very very very highly recommended. </p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-9423924758472567982021-06-15T13:28:00.006-04:002021-06-15T13:42:42.100-04:00Sphinxes and Obelisks, by Mark Valentine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mEYTm7UmhIs/YMjMenYoVOI/AAAAAAAAVZo/l3PDqZOj2CYXIJl7c1woMIxexckO8QcZACLcBGAsYHQ/s200/valentinesphinx2.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="133" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mEYTm7UmhIs/YMjMenYoVOI/AAAAAAAAVZo/l3PDqZOj2CYXIJl7c1woMIxexckO8QcZACLcBGAsYHQ/w213-h320/valentinesphinx2.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>9781912586318</div><div>Tartarus Press, 2021</div><div>266 pp</div><div><br /></div><div>hardcover</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>The other day I received an email notifying me that Tartarus has published a two-volume set of the <i style="text-align: left;">Collected Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions</i><span style="text-align: left;">, which I quickly bought. I received a "notification of payment" email from Ray Russell, saying that the books would be posted next week. I emailed back to thank him and happened to mention how very much I was enjoying this book, and he made the most spot-on comment ever:</span><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">"Mark has a way of making you feel that you need just a few more shelves..."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A "few more shelves" indeed: this time around the final tally is fourteen books bought out of the list of 36 I noted as "want to read," with three more already on my shelves thanks to <a href="https://www.valancourtbooks.com/" target="_blank">Valancourt</a>. Where I'm going to put all of these I don't know, but that's what happens when I read Valentine's essays. I know from experience that before I even open one of his books I'm going to need a pen and paper to write down the titles he discusses, and I also know that I will not escape unscathed as far as the bank account goes. And I don't care. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Sphinxes and Obelisks </i>is (as are many of Valentine's essay collections) a book lover's paradise, with the dustjacket blurb mentioning books that have been "overlooked," offering examples of such "recondite reading" material as </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"an interplanetary fantasy by a Welsh squire; a timeslip into a mysterious England by a priest once called the original Dorian Gray; an avant-garde novel about a tea-party and the Holy Grail."</div></blockquote><p>I mean, seriously, who could resist? At the same time, this book is also a fascinating collection of odd miscellany of rather out-there topics including the Sphinx Illusion performed in 1865 at the Egyptian Hall, a "strange head of myth speaking" to an audience "from out of a casket, uttering its omens and riddles;" an essay on what ghosts wear, and the game "Cat-at-the-Window" as recalled by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Marsh_(polymath)" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Edward Marsh</a> in his memoirs, which ends in speculation as to whether Algernon Blackwood's story "Ancient Sorceries" "may have been inspired by a too fevered indulgence in the cat game" (read the story, you'll understand) and the possibility of a more "pedestrian and peregrinatory version of the game" having been known to Arthur Machen, "the eminent historian of Dog and Duck, an old bowling game," and "admirer of cats." As a matter of fact (and unsurprisingly) many of these essays contain various literary roads leading to Machen, as well as various examples of one of my own newly-discovered reading passions, psychogeography (especially in "Apocalypse and Marrow Jam: <i>Pilgrim from Paddington</i>") which also happens to stem from my reading of Machen's <i>Hill of Dreams </i>last year. </p><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FNjjEHijp1o/YMjbdXvxc3I/AAAAAAAAVZw/Zi8IcpSlCX4ZVMUzWqbmqgqJJkBtCvsbQCLcBGAsYHQ/s500/valentinestodare.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="304" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FNjjEHijp1o/YMjbdXvxc3I/AAAAAAAAVZw/Zi8IcpSlCX4ZVMUzWqbmqgqJJkBtCvsbQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/valentinestodare.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Colonel Stodare (with the Sphinx) as he appears in the book; this photo is from <i><a href="https://travsd.wordpress.com/2013/06/28/colonel-stodare/" target="_blank">Travelanche</a></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Beginning and ending with treks through bookstores (never new books, by the way), in dreams and with writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard_(author)" target="_blank">John Howard</a>, <i>Sphinxes and Obelisks</i> is another must-read collection for fellow travelers who are easily led down the rabbit hole to dally in the realm of the obscure. I have to say that Mark Valentine is one of the few writers whose fiction and nonfiction works consistently attain the level of near perfection; this book has the feel of listening to an old friend whose love of literature knows no bounds. </p><p>Very, very highly recommended; one of my favorite books so far this year. </p><div style="text-align: left;"></div></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-66277724843660480222021-05-19T15:50:00.001-04:002021-05-19T15:50:28.799-04:00Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era, by Tiya Miles<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ht8ov4nMtVE/YKUIZcjc5UI/AAAAAAAAVQc/kVCqx0iQ56wB8FPrXHJlwEhufg9sqR-JwCLcBGAsYHQ/s307/mileshauntedsouth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="307" data-original-width="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ht8ov4nMtVE/YKUIZcjc5UI/AAAAAAAAVQc/kVCqx0iQ56wB8FPrXHJlwEhufg9sqR-JwCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/mileshauntedsouth.jpg" /></a></div>9781469636146<div>University of North Carolina Press, 2015</div><div>154 pp</div><div><br /></div><div>paperback</div><div><br /></div><div>"... <i>let our ghosts be real, let our ghosts be true, let our ghosts carry on the integrity of our ancestors." </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>I seriously do not remember why I bought this book in the first place, but some nights ago I chose it from my history shelves completely at random and started to read. I was instantly blown away and have recommended this book to any number of people. It's that good. It's that necessary. </div><div><p></p><div>In 2012 Professor Tiya Miles had gone to Savannah to work on her novel; after lunch one day, on her way back to her hotel, her attention was drawn to a woman waving at her. The woman asked if she would like to take "a historic tour" of the local Sorrel-Weed house, and Miles was "intrigued" enough by the idea of "being beckoned into history" to buy a ticket. As she was guided through the house, she learned the story of its owner, Francis Sorrel, a "cotton tycoon" of Haitian heritage, passing for white. Sorrel had lost his first wife to typhoid and then married her sister Matilda afterward. As the story goes, Matilda had committed suicide "by jumping off the second-floor balcony," because she had caught her husband and his "mistress," a "slave girl" by the named of Molly, <i>in flagrante. </i> A week later, Molly herself had been found "strangled, dangling from the ceiling rafters of the carriage house," and while Francis moved to a nextdoor townhouse, Molly and Matilda remained as resident ghosts. The author was told that if she wanted to visit the scene of Molly's death, she could come back that evening for the "Haunted Ghost Tour," which she did. In the "stillness of that night" Miles writes that she cannot say if she "felt Molly's presence," but she did feel a "kind of call," to </div><div><blockquote>"search for evidence of Molly's life in the archival rubble of urban slavery, to tell her story and redeem her spirit from the commericialized spectacle of bondage I had witnessed"</blockquote><div>along with a pledge to "restore her memory and her dignity." Afterwards, going through historical records, she discovered nothing at all to indicate that a woman named Molly had been owned by Sorrel; as she notes, </div><blockquote><div>"Although many young women like her surely existed in antebellum Savannah and the torturous rice plantations of the surrounding countryside, this Molly was not among them. Someone had concocted her story of racial and sexual exploitation as a titillating tourist attraction."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">And now, she writes, she wanted to know why Molly was "invisible in the historical record and hypervisible on the Savanna ghost-tourism scene. " She also was left with a number of questions she felt needed answering: </div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Why were ghost stories about African American slaves becoming popular in the region at all? And why were so many of these ghosts women? What themes prevailed in slave ghost stories, and what social and cultural meanings can we make of them? What 'product' was being bought and sold, enjoyed and consumed, in the contemporary commerical phenomenon of southern ghost tourism?"</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Very briefly, because there is so much to this short but extremely complex study that I could never hope to capture here, the book begins with a look at the growth in popularity of the ghost tour, examining how haunted history has come to captivate audiences everywhere. We live in an age in which "ghost lore has moved into myriad cultural forms" widely available on television and online; she quotes the editors of the book <i><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/popular-ghosts-9781441164018/" target="_blank">Popular Ghosts</a> </i> who note that "we appear to live in an era that has reintroduced the vocabulary of ghosts and haunting into everyday life." In the American South, as Miles notes, the "surge in haunting tales has taken on a particular cast, and often features spirits who are said to have been slaves." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In her journey to find the answers to the questions posed above, the author took part in several ghost tours in the South, and the book takes us through her experiences at three of these -- the Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah, the New Orleans home of Delphine Lalaurie, and The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville. As the back-cover blurb reveals, the guides of these tours, "frequently promoted and experienced at plantations, urban manor homes, and cemeteries throughout the South" often rely on "stories of enslaved black specters," in which their</div><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote>"haunted tales routinely appropriate and skew African American history to produce representations of slavery for commercial gain."</blockquote></div><div style="text-align: left;">Professor Miles' work highlights the commonalities which she discovers in each tour, discerning a particular, overall pattern while examining and analyzing the ways in which this industry appropriates a number of elements of African American culture. These tours borrow the experiences of enslaved people which are "boiled down to an exotic essence, and sold for a price," while the "black history material" Miles encountered was "romanticized or decontextualized." While violence is part and parcel of the "signature tales" of these places, what is presented is done in such a way as to trivialize the actual brutality endured by enslaved peoples, especially women; the tourists are offered "narratives that temper the history of slavery and race relations, assuage guilt, and feed fascination with the racialized other." In this way history becomes sanitized, kept at a "safe" distance from the ghost-touring public. The reality is though that far from a means of entertainment, the ghosts of enslaved peoples are "deadly serious messengers from another time that compel us to wrestle with the past," one that is "chained to colonialism, slavery, and patriarchy but a past that can nevertheless challenge and commission us to fight for justice in the present." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> It is impossible to miss the author's passion for her subject; writing it in the first person not only highlighted that particular aspect of this book, but also made the reading less daunting than a regular textbook and more like I was actually along for the ride as she made her journey. <i>Tales of the Haunted South</i> is not only an important, interdisciplinary study, it should be required reading for our time and absolutely should not be missed. </div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-12581217172100326352021-02-24T13:29:00.001-05:002021-02-24T13:29:38.836-05:00the IRL book group read: The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the True Hermit, by Michael Finkel<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EkKJN7S-G7w/YDZr_v7iJXI/AAAAAAAAUqc/e1vK0QmH1SQeMHTpuX-GbwMprQAnrgB_ACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/finkelhermit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="259" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EkKJN7S-G7w/YDZr_v7iJXI/AAAAAAAAUqc/e1vK0QmH1SQeMHTpuX-GbwMprQAnrgB_ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/finkelhermit.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781101911532</div><div style="text-align: left;">Vintage, 2018</div><div style="text-align: left;">203 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Truth be told, there is nowhere I'd rather be than in the woods. We often make our way to a cabin in the Ocala Forest about four hours northwest from here, where there is no wifi, no television, lots of quiet, and at night sitting next to a crackling fire outside, time for mezcal or bourbon shots, holding hands, laughing together and watching the flames. Our stay generally consists of doing absolutely nothing except perhaps an occasional hike if it's not summer, and lots of reading. It's the place we go for mental battery recharging, reconnecting, and it works wonders. We go home and we're reset, ready to move on. Chris Knight, the subject of this book, also enjoyed being in the woods. One day in 1986 he parked his car somewhere among the forests in Maine, left the keys and walked into the wildnerness. Unlike us though, Chris never left. He stayed there for twenty-seven years, and other than the impersonal "hi" to someone passing by his location, never spoke to another human being. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And then came the day in 2013 when he came out of those woods, fully expecting to return to his solitude but finding himself instead arrested for "almost certainly the biggest burglary case in the state of Maine," the number coming to 1,080 "to be exact." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When I first decided that I wanted to read this book, I thought that it would be a story about a man with the sort of romantic notion of just dropping out of society, going off the grid. Now after having finished it, my assumptions were completely wrong about this guy. While he did indeed drop out, it wasn't a case of living off the land I had imagined -- in order to survive, Chris Knight became somewhat of a parasite -- helping himself to what belonged to others including food, clothes, books, the occasional cash, watches, batteries, radios, and the list goes on. But he had a "moral code" -- if an item looked valuable, he would leave it. After he'd broken in and picked up whatever he needed, he returned to his camp until his supplies would run low and he'd do it all over again, likely never thinking of the people left feeling violated, frightened and angry; over the twenty-seven years in the woods, the so-called "Mountain Man," "Hungry Man," the "North Pond Hermit," or whatever they'd labeled him had never been caught. The last supply run he made was to a camp catering to kids and adults who had "physical and developmental disabilities," which he treated as his "own private Costco." What drove him to do all of this? Well, that's the maddening part -- we never really find out. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">That's not to say that the author didn't try -- in trying to understand the why, he ponders the possibilities of mental health/medical issues and family/personal background; he also delves into the world of hermits, historical and contemporary, contemplating what it is that has led many to leave the world behind and take up a solitary existence. But as one psychologist notes about the North Pond Hermit, in the end</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"Nothing makes complete sense... Knight is like a Rorschach card. He really is an object for everyone to project onto." </div></blockquote><p>Mr. Finkel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35969564" target="_blank">notes at goodread</a>s, under "Popular Answered Questions" about his book, that Knight "had a wildly unusual idea for how to live" and that "he has an awesome and daunting brain," with "insights into modern society and solitude and the meaning of life that you will find nowhere else." That's all well and good, and over the course of the book you can see how the author feels himself getting closer to Knight, but the fact is that in the long run there really are no answers to be found here. And Chris Knight isn't talking. Finkel's take on the matter is that Knight left "because the world is not made to accommodate people like him," while Knight says only that he'd found a place where he was "content." He also wished that he "weren't so stupid to do illegal things to find contentment." The truth is though that he did. He also caused pain and anguish to his victims. It seems to me to have been an impulsive decision to walk away from his car in 1986 and go into a life of self-imposed isolation; people who go off the grid generally have some long-term plan for how to do it. Chris Knight obviously did not and ended up having to steal for his survival. </p><p></p><p></p><p><i>The Stranger in the Woods </i>makes for fascinating reading. Aside from Chris Knight's story, what I locked onto really was the author's exploration of the natures of and differences between solitude and isolation. My only issue with this book comes toward the ending in the way that the author wouldn't let go, wouldn't respect the requested privacy of Chris or his family, and would not take no for answer. That just seems wrong to me somehow. However, the book as a whole is well worth reading, and as the title suggests, it is an "extraordinary story." </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-80581346974068556692021-02-23T14:59:00.001-05:002021-02-23T15:00:37.824-05:00 Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country, by Edward Parnell<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LeB9UZSeX7E/YDPM5FqoEfI/AAAAAAAAUqI/mVo9MBEqozEpXdw8lsIDXUqnGVKWdfVlACLcBGAsYHQ/s500/parnellghostland.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="327" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LeB9UZSeX7E/YDPM5FqoEfI/AAAAAAAAUqI/mVo9MBEqozEpXdw8lsIDXUqnGVKWdfVlACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/parnellghostland.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9780008271992</div><div style="text-align: left;">William Collins, 2020</div><div style="text-align: left;">468 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Given that I have an intense passion for old ghost stories and weird fiction, it's surprising that I hadn't heard of <i>Ghostland </i>until I started seeing a number of reader reviews of it on Goodreads. It was so highly regarded that I knew I had to read it, and once picked up it was not put down. That's how very good it is. It is all at once a book of psychogeography, a chronicle of family, memories, travel, and nature; and at its very heart, a beautiful, moving memoir of grief. And if that isn't enough to whet anyone's appetite, in <i>Ghostland </i>Parnell also treads the ground walked by some of Britain's most famous writers of ghost stories and the weird. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In an <a href="https://folkhorrorrevival.com/2019/12/27/ghostland-review-and-interview-with-edward-parnell/">interview at </a><i><a href="https://folkhorrorrevival.com/2019/12/27/ghostland-review-and-interview-with-edward-parnell/">Folk Horror Revival</a>, </i>the author explains how he had gone to the childhood home of M.R. James, Great Livemere, and wrote about it on his website, after which he was contacted by a managing editor from Harper Collins. He was asked if he'd ever considered writing a book about James and "other writers of the weird and eerie." The idea appealed, especially a book that would be "concerned with ghost stories and films and the places around Britain that fed into them." In <i>Ghostland , </i>as he notes, since childhood he'd been "obsessed" with the supernatural and horror; as a four year-old, as his story goes, while on holiday in Wales at Caernarfon Castle, he'd asked the tour guide if there might be a chance they would see "the Spectral lady." He was also, as he puts it "part of what <i>The Fortean Times </i>has come to term the '<a href="http://www.revenantjournal.com/contents/a-lost-hazy-disquiet-scarfolk-hookland-and-the-haunted-generation/" target="_blank">haunted generation</a>'." More to the point though, he says that he "only wanted to write about the subject if I could bring something of myself to the narrative," and after doing </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"some proper thinking and research into who and where I'd want to explore, I realised that the locations I was considering were connected to my own family -- a story which itself could be said to be somewhat haunted." </div></blockquote><p>Leaving Livemere, as he says in the book, "the final words of James' last published story, 'A Vignette' resonate: </p><p></p><blockquote>Are there here and there sequestered places which some curious creatures still frequent, whom once upon a time anybody could see and speak to as they went about on their daily occasions, whereas now only at rare intervals in a series of years does one cross their paths and become aware of them?" </blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"> And in finding these "sequestered places," as he notes in the interview, </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"the writing of the book became a way of reclaiming something that had been lost to me. A way of trying to give form to those half-glimpsed figures that otherwise languish in shadow on my father's old Kodachrome slides."</div></blockquote><p>As he makes his way around to explore the locations from the books, movies, television shows and short stories that he enjoyed so much, he discusses these works and writes about the authors themselves, recalls childhood memories, and slowly reveals the story of his "phantom family -- a host of lives lived, then unlived" in an attempt to help him "reconcile the real and the half-remembered." </p><p>While I won't go into very much here, one of the key ideas that runs through <i>Ghostland </i>is the link between landscape and the work of the writers he's chosen to explore here -- and how awareness of their environment seemed to have been embedded within themselves as much as it has been embedded in their writing. There are more than mere traces to be found in, as the back-cover blurb notes, "the ancient stones, stark shores and folkloric woodlands of Britain's spectered isle," as well as the inland waterways (and I'm so happy he mentioned Elizabeth Jane Howard's "Three Miles Up" which is one of the most frightening stories I've ever read -- and beware, the film version is not quite the same), graveyards, and more, including the stone rings, hills, and other features found in Arthur Machen's work, or Ithell Colquhoun's Cornwall, to mention only a few of the many places he visits. But landscape, nature and place also have personal connections for Mr. Parnell -- they evoke memories of family, which he can now remember not in terms of "disquiet" but rather as "reassuring." His journey is related here much along the same lines as W.G. Sebald's Suffolk journey chronicled in <i>The Rings of Saturn </i>(another recent, <i>excellent</i> read) down to the photos embedded within the text. </p><p>It is one of the most beautiful books I've read, a poignant way in which the author finds a way to try to express "what is haunting him," as well as a way in which to try to "lay to rest the ghosts" of his "own sequestered past." I cannot recommend this one highly enough ... I'm sure I will go through it again many times. An absolute no-miss for readers (like me) who thoroughly enjoy old ghost stories, and especially for readers who (also like me) are lovers of weird fiction. </p><p><br /></p><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-65130450149749420982021-01-12T14:55:00.001-05:002021-01-12T14:57:04.549-05:00Court Number One: The Trials and Scandals That Shocked Modern Britain, by Thomas Grant<div class="separator"><br /></div><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l6GFSC5mWOU/X_m39R5Wz9I/AAAAAAAAUXQ/rwjFtx-5bO4_He1CSd2C5VR9JSIYu9RrACLcBGAsYHQ/s500/grantoldbailey.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="326" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l6GFSC5mWOU/X_m39R5Wz9I/AAAAAAAAUXQ/rwjFtx-5bO4_He1CSd2C5VR9JSIYu9RrACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/grantoldbailey.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781473651630</div><div style="text-align: left;">John Murray, 2020</div><div style="text-align: left;">440 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I don't remember quite how I stumbled upon this book but I had picked it up in August and sadly let it sit on my shelves for the next four months. I'd actually forgotten about it until as part of my end-of-year cleanout I rediscovered it, making it almost like a belated Christmas gift to myself. It took me about five days to read but I was completely engrossed throughout, since out of the eleven cases covered here, I was familiar with only three, and even among those I'd had little to no clue about the courtroom side of things. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I must admit to being a wee bit confused over the actual title of this book, which in 2019 was published as <i>Court Number One: The Old Bailey Trials That Defined Modern Britain</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wf9_yWmZ_rI/X_m-Mp4vqmI/AAAAAAAAUXo/XiqvmRn5X0QNXSnbLCLnyka6dQg8gQHjACLcBGAsYHQ/s675/grantoldbailey2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="439" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wf9_yWmZ_rI/X_m-Mp4vqmI/AAAAAAAAUXo/XiqvmRn5X0QNXSnbLCLnyka6dQg8gQHjACLcBGAsYHQ/w260-h400/grantoldbailey2.jpg" width="260" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">leaving off the words "scandals that shocked" of this later edition. I would hate to think that the title change might have been an enticement based on those three words to garner a larger reading audience, because this is much more than just a tell-all for titillation. As the back blurb says, "Court Number One recorded the changing face of British society, providing a window on to the thrills, fears and foibles of the modern age." As the author puts it, </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"This is a book about this courtroom, about some of the people who have appeared in it, whether as defendant, counsel or judge, and about the practice of criminal law. It is also intended to be about British sensibilities and preoccupations over the last hundred years. It is one of the contentions of this book that through the criminal trials that have occurred in Britain's foremost court there can be traced at least one version of social and moral change over the last century." </div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">The author takes his readers through eleven cases ranging datewise from 1907 to 2003, some familiar, others less so. What remains constant throughout is the idea that, as Grant says, "the court is not a hermetically sealed space, divorced from the values and prejudices outside." Setting each of these cases within its contemporary social, cultural and political contexts, it soon becomes clear that the "language of the courtroom is as much saturated in ideology as any other medium." These words come directly from his coverage of the trial of Marguerite Fahmy, but they are appropriate in each and every case in this book -- as times and cultural attitudes change, contemporary popular prejudices are also reflected in how the case plays out in court. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The story of Marguerite Fahmy, as a matter of fact, is one of the best exemplars of this idea, and quite frankly, it makes for appalling reading. In 1922, Marguerite Alibert married "Egyptian playboy" Ali Fahmy Bey in France, sealing the deal after converting to Islam and having an Islamic wedding in February 1923. It was a terrible marriage in which Fahmy had expectations of "obedience" from his wife and she, "a hard-nosed adventuress" thought otherwise. Violent quarrels between the two were commonplace as they traveled "around the finer cities of Europe." On July 10 of that year, the couple were staying at London's Savoy hotel where at 2:30 in the morning a hotel porter coming out of the elevator and carrying luggage saw Fahmy Bey in the corridor, who demanded to see the night manager. The porter, continuing on his way, heard three shots, turned back in time to see Marguerite throwing a gun to the floor. By 3:30, he was dead. Marguerite was arrested for her husband's death, and what would seem to be an open-and-shut case made its way to a trial that lasted for six days. When it came time for the verdict, she was found not guilty. How could this happen, one might ask, when she was caught dead to rights? It seems that her defense attorney had hit upon a defense that would not only acquit Marguerite but also cause "the whole of Court Number One" to break out into "thunderous stamping and applause" by conjuring in the mind's eye "the abominations and cruelty of the Orient and the plight of a Western woman caught it in its maw." The author calls her defense a "carefully constructed piece of rhetoric" drawing on "prevalent literary and cultural motifs" in which the "image of the Eastern man, cruel and sexually masterful," was the stuff of "fiction and cinema of the time" that both fascinated and horrified. One need only turn to the <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13513.html" target="_blank">"poisonously salacious"</a> story of Diana Mayo in E.M. Hull's <i>The Sheik </i>to understand why. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As the author takes his readers through this century via the eleven cases tried in Court Number One, it is almost like having a front-row seat in the courtroom from which to watch every act of each drama unfold. Murder, sex, "deviancy," espionage, prison escapes and more fill this book, as do serious miscarriages of justice. I don't use the term "front-row seat" loosely here -- as the author also states, "the metaphor of the theatre is constantly employed in accounts of trials in the twentieth century," a theme that resonates throughout this book. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Court Number One</i> is likely not for a reader who wants just a quick look at these cases, because it takes time for the author to establish the current cultural/social/political scene, to examine past cases that reflect directly or indirectly on the ones under study here, and most importantly, to try to offer a window on the changes from one period to another over the century that also had a bearing on the action in the courtroom. In that sense, it does seem to meander a bit, but with purpose. It is a job well done, an extremely interesting and informative book that made for fascinating (and at times, spellbinding) reading. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">very, very highly recommended</div><p></p>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-5699867527544021562020-11-11T14:11:00.011-05:002020-11-11T14:41:11.019-05:00The Onion Field, by Joseph Wambaugh<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5UN6w8o_Q-o/X6qd3tz7D9I/AAAAAAAAT20/PfQ_RMDCbYE05wZ31uiNeNUw43PTI3nzACLcBGAsYHQ/s500/wambaughonion.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="310" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5UN6w8o_Q-o/X6qd3tz7D9I/AAAAAAAAT20/PfQ_RMDCbYE05wZ31uiNeNUw43PTI3nzACLcBGAsYHQ/w248-h400/wambaughonion.jpg" width="248" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">9781847241740</div><div style="text-align: left;">Quercus, 2007</div><div style="text-align: left;">originally published 1973</div><div style="text-align: left;">410 pp</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">paperback</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The back-cover blurb of this book reads as follows:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"<i>The Onion Field </i>is the frighteningly true story of a fatal collision of destinies that would lead two young cops and two young robbers to a deserted field on the outskirts of Los Angeles, towards a bizarre execution and its terrible aftermath."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">After having finished reading <i>The Onion Field </i> last week I can say that this short and succinct paragraph doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what happens here. While the book discusses the horrific killing of a policeman that took place on March 9, 1963, the real story here is that of the surviving officer, Karl Hettinger and the long ordeal he faced after the murder. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The traffic stop made by LAPD officers Ian Campbell and Karl Hettinger on the night of Saturday March 9, 1963 led to the death of Campbell as the two officers found themselves disarmed by a pair of thieves who were out to commit robbery. The "official" reason for the stop was that the Ford's license plate lights were out, but the men in the car had already aroused their suspicions. Campbell approached the car and opened the driver's door carrying only his flashlight; he then asked the driver to get out of the car. Greg Powell complied, but quickly disarmed Officer Campbell, while ordering his partner Jimmy Smith to take Hettinger's gun as well. Campbell, who by now had a gun in his back, told Hettinger to give up <i>his </i>gun, which he did. The policemen were ordered into Powell's Ford coupe, with Powell ordering Campbell to drive and Hettinger forced onto the floor of the back. Powell assured both men that they would be driven up the Ridge Route and let go on a side road so that they would have a "long walk back to the highway." Indeed, about ninety miles from where they'd started, Powell ordered Campbell to turn off on a dirt road and to stop the car; both officers were told to get out. Within minutes Campbell is dead and Hettinger is running for his life. He makes it to safety, but as Wambaugh so clearly shows here, he will never escape the onion field. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xvJejl--ihs/X6w2vVrjRxI/AAAAAAAAT3E/SjCIsapCyvMfHH3JRpHVODfIzTgnUT4hwCLcBGAsYHQ/s670/onionfilmposter.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="670" data-original-width="464" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xvJejl--ihs/X6w2vVrjRxI/AAAAAAAAT3E/SjCIsapCyvMfHH3JRpHVODfIzTgnUT4hwCLcBGAsYHQ/w278-h400/onionfilmposter.jpg" width="278" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from <a href="https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32840525940.html" target="_blank">Ali Express</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">After Campbell's death and the arrest of the killers, it doesn't take too long until Hettinger's actions that night are being second guessed, with the first comments coming from a former roommate of Hettinger's and fellow cop who told his friends that </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"You can <i>always</i> do something. I just don't see giving up your gun to some crook under any circumstances. And even after that you can do <i>something. </i>Karl should've..."</div></blockquote>and then things get worse. As a "young red-faced vice cop at Wilshire Station" who had been on the job for less than three years (whom I'm guessing is Wambaugh himself, as he <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Wambaugh" target="_blank">started his police career</a> in 1960) had learned during his time there, <blockquote><div>"Policemen thoroughly believed that no man-caused calamity happens by chance, that there is always a step that should have been taken, would have been taken, if the sufferer had been alert, cautious, brave, aggressive -- in short, if he'd been like a prototype policeman." <br /></div></blockquote><p>In reading "prototype policeman," think tough guy. An order in memo form was then circulated throughout the LAPD that basically labeled Hettinger and Campbell as "cowards no matter how you slice it." Written by an Inspector Powers ("a cop's cop") on "Officer Survival," it instructed officers that "Surrender is never a guarantee for anyone." Prior to reading it at a roll call, the station captain added his two cents' worth, saying that </p><p></p><blockquote><i>"Anybody </i>that gives up his gun to some punk is nothing but a <i>coward."</i></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Although there had been other recent instances of policemen being disarmed, no harm had come to any of them and it is likely that neither Campbell nor Hettinger expected anything different in their experience. And while some of the men didn't necessarily agree with its contents or its bottom-line message, the memo "was given the chief's blessing," and thus became part of the LAPD's manual. As Wambaugh states, </div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"Both the dead man and the survivor were implicitly tried by police edict and found wanting. There <i>had</i> to be blame placed."</div></blockquote><p>Hettinger himself believed that "almost all policemen were critical of his behavior that night." Now I get that what we know now as PTSD wasn't a term yet invented or even defined in 1963, but when he is forced to resign after being caught for shoplifting, one might have thought that someone would have connected the dots and viewed Hettinger's acts as a cry for help, but that didn't happen. Hettinger himself wasn't fully aware of why he did this or why he was plagued with nightmares and other symptoms. </p><p>Things slid further downhill for Hettinger during the trial, since he had expected to tell his story once and then get back to his life, without having to live through it again. That wouldn't be the case -- Wambaugh, who read through thousands of transcript pages, carefully goes through what happened in the courtroom to reveal how this trial was prolonged for nearly seven years after a retrial, a number of appeals, and a defense attorney who seemed to delight in causing trouble and shakeups. </p><p>If you're expecting your standard true crime book, look elsewhere. Not only does the author do an excellent job of portraying Hettinger's ongoing suffering in the wake of Campbell's murder, but he is in no hurry to get right to the killing, periodically cutting away from the night of March 9, 1963 to examine the lives of all four of the main people involved as he takes his readers right up to the point of intersection when everything went so wrong. <i>The Onion Field </i>is well written with a depth so rarely seen in true crime reporting; it is intelligent, suspenseful, and above all compassionate, all making for an excellent read. It's a book I put down only to sleep. </p><p>Oh - and don't miss the film! It doesn't quite capture the immense depth of the book, but it comes very close. </p><p><br /></p><p>very highly recommended </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p></p></blockquote>NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-22234128984182515592020-08-27T15:44:00.001-04:002020-08-27T16:12:02.045-04:00A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes, by Eric Jay Dolin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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9781631495274<br />
Liveright Publishing/WW Norton, 2020<br />
392 pp<br />
<br />
hardcover<br />
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As someone living in South Florida, about a third of a mile as the crow flies from the coast, reading this book during a very active hurricane season may not have been the brightest idea in terms of mental health. I needn't have worried: it was so well done that I found myself completely engrossed almost immediately. As it turns out, all is not doom and gloom here -- as the dustjacket blurb reveals, it is a melding of<br />
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"American history, as it is usually told, with the history of hurricanes, showing how these tempests frequently helped determine the nation's course." </blockquote>
From the beginning, the author acknowledges that in writing the "history of the American hurricane," this book must be "selective," given that there have been quite possibly "more than a thousand" of them over the past five hundred years. Among the individual hurricanes discussed throughout the book, found here also is a history of meteorology, which Dolin notes is "intriguing, and at times rather nasty," the "influence of hurricanes on the course of empire, the outcomes of war," "critical innovations in communication, aviation, computer, and satellite technology," and he examines how<br />
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"the history of American hurricanes forces us to confront thorny questions of how we can learn to survive and adapt to the continued barrage that is sure to come from the greatest storms on Earth."</blockquote>
Beginning with Columbus, the author moves forward through time as he highlights various storms that had some sort of historical impact, for example two which played a "critical role" in the early colonial history of Florida, one of which kept the French from conquering the Spanish. The 1609 storm that affected the people of Jamestown also "left its mark on literary history" as Shakespeare's inspiration for <i>The Tempest</i>. The Treasure Fleet Hurricane off the coast of Florida hit in 1715, sinking an entire fleet of ships carrying "jewels, coins, ingots, and "exotic goods" and ramped up piracy in the Atlantic. Moving into the 20th century, the author highlights the 1900 Galveston Hurricane that not only killed thousands of people but also remains the "deadliest natural disaster in American history." There's an entire chapter on "Death and Destruction in the Sunshine State," beginning with the 1926 hurricane that "battered Miami," and then the book moves on to more recent hurricanes including Hugo, Camille, Andrew and Sandy through Harvey, Irma and Maria. As he is discussing these storms, the author adds in the technological advances over time in the areas of forecasting, weather science, and discusses the pioneering efforts of those who put themselves potentially in harm's way, for example, those people who were brave enough to fly into the eye of the hurricane itself. Most importantly, Dolin reveals that throughout our history with hurricanes, it's not been just a matter of stories about "death, destruction, and despair," but also "charity, kindness, humor, and resilience."<br />
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<i>A Furious Sky</i> is one of the most compelling and seriously educational nonfiction books of my reading year so far, combining history, personal accounts, the science of meteorology, the growth of forecasting/prediction technologies, politics, and a look at the very real hazards of climate change, which has the potential to bring ever more powerful storms into our lives. It's tough to do a broad history like this one, but Mr. Dolin's done a fine job here and the book makes for great reading even for people like me who aren't particularly gifted in the realm of science. Very highly recommended.<br />
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<br />NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-49780088888698521502020-06-08T14:28:00.001-04:002020-06-08T14:43:05.053-04:00Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic, by Eric Eyre<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
9781982105310<br />
Scribner, 2020<br />
293 pp<br />
<br />
hardcover<br />
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Even after being diagnosed and beginning treatment for Parkinson's in the midst of it all, the author of <i>Death in Mud Lick, </i>Eric Eyre, stuck to his guiding principle of "sustained outrage" as he continued to investigate and to report on the flooding of opioids into West Virginia, ultimately winning a Pulitzer in 2017 for his hard work. The word dogged doesn't even begin to describe his determination to get to the truth. At the same time, this is not just another book on the opioid epidemic -- here we are provided with an intense scrutiny of what goes on behind the scenes of a number agencies which are supposed to be regulating the flow of these powerful drugs to safeguard the population. What happens here is real, it is not at all pretty, and if you had to choose only one book on the topic, this would be the one.<br />
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Five years before his death, William "Bull" Preece fell off of a ladder while working at the Penn Coal Mine in West Virginia. The resulting back injury led to a prescription for pain pills; when that prescription ran out, he would find doctors who would give him more OxyContin and Lortab, and two years after his accident, his older sister Debbie realized that he was addicted. While she tried to help him, including getting him into rehab, and while he tried to help himself at a methadone clinic, the pull of the pills was just too much. Eventually he died of an overdose in 2005. Debbie was left with several empty prescription bottles with their labels still intact:<br />
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"ninety Valium; sixty oxycodone; ninety OxyContin, an extended-release form of oxycodone, and thirty Zestril tablets."</blockquote>
When Bull died, his autopsy revealed that he had "five times the lethal limit" for oxycodone in his blood, and the case was closed after his death was ruled an accident. For Debbie, however, someone had to pay. She hired attorney Jim Cagle, and by the summer of 2007 they filed a wrongful death lawsuit against a doctor who had written Bull's prescriptions, and also against the local pharmacy that filled them. Had this been the entire story, it would have been interesting enough, but this is just the jumping-off point for what follows. As it turns out, Debbie Preece, who had had her own previous trouble with the law, and her attorney had missed an important part of the opioid epidemic, the distributors who were responsible for the flow of the drugs into the area.<br />
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Enter reporter Eric Eyre, who covered the state government, who had heard newly-elected state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (the "first Republican attorney general in West Virginia since 1933") was about to kill off a lawsuit "on behalf of the citizens of West Virginia" that his predecessor had filed against "Cardinal Health, Amerisource-Bergan, and a dozen other prescription drug distributors" responsible for flooding the area with an overabundance of opioids. Eyre was also "tipped off" that Denise Henry Morrisey, the wife of the the new AG, had served as lobbyist for Cardinal Health since 2002. Making things even <i>more</i> interesting, Patrick Morrisey had himself been a lobbyist for "two trade groups" that represented Cardinal and a couple of other distributors. Regarding the lawsuit, it seems that Morrisey did not want the two attorneys the former state AG had appointed to prosecute the case, preferring to have his own attorneys instead. One of these attorneys just happened to be Jim Cagle, the same lawyer who had earlier worked on Debbie Preece's behalf.<br />
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<i>Death in Mud Lick</i> puts an eagle-eyed focus on Eyre's efforts to gain information from not only the huge and powerful drug distribution firms, but also from various government officials and government agencies, and reveals how Morrisey in turn set out to "derail" Eyre's investigation. Just reading this book frustrated me to no end -- not because it is bad (because it is most certainly not), but because, as Eyre writes in the preface,<br />
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"As the addiction crisis spread across the country, some health advocates sounded the alarm, but industry lobbyists snuffed out policymakers' efforts to stop the scourge. They found politicians willing to do their bidding. The regulators -- the DEA, the pharmacy board -- failed to do their jobs. Pablo Escobar and El Chapo couldn't have set things up any better." </blockquote>
I am a natural cynic and even I was shocked at what goes on behind the scenes to protect not the citizens of this nation but rather the ultra-lucrative pharmaceuticals industry. I am a huge believer in the power of investigative journalism done the right way, and I have to say that <i>Death in Mud Lick</i> is one of the best books I've read on this subject. After what he went through during the course of his investigations, Mr. Eyre deserves all accolades this book may receive.<br />
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<br />NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-42640764520815909712020-05-18T14:17:00.000-04:002020-05-19T09:08:50.722-04:00Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era, by Jerry Mitchell<br />
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"<i>Those guys got away with murder...It's not too late."</i><br />
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<br />
9781451645132<br />
Simon & Schuster, 2020<br />
418 pp<br />
<br />
hardcover<br />
<br />
<br />
It's January, 1989 in Jackson Mississippi, and reporter Jerry Mitchell was on assignment for his newspaper <i>The Clarion-Ledger </i>to cover the state premier of the film <i>Mississippi Burning. </i>He normally had the "court beat," so this was something different for him. Mitchell found himself seated next to someone who seemed to know a lot about what was and wasn't true about the film, based on the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. As it happened, that man turned out to be retired special agent Roy K. Moore, who had been in charge of the FBI in Mississippi at the time. Later, when the rest of the press had gone, Mitchell stayed behind to listen to Moore talk to two other men, another FBI agent and a journalist who had covered the events at the time. During that conversation he learned that nobody had ever been prosecuted for the murders of the three men, even though "more than twenty Klansmen' were responsible. Mitchell wondered how it was possible that twenty people, their identities known by locals who'd never turned them in, could get away with murder. Why hadn't the state of Mississippi done anything about it? From further conversations with Moore, Mitchell learned that although one killer eventually talked and had given the FBI what it needed for prosecution, the governor of the state "couldn't" do so, "essentially refusing to uphold its own murder laws."<br />
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As Mitchell began to research this case he came to learn about the connections between the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, which "worked with and even helped fund the white Citizens' Councils" to help fight desegregation in the state, and the murders of the three activists. He'd hoped that by bringing certain facts to light he would "spark" the Attorney General to "pursue new charges in the case," but it was not to be and the case remained cold. Feeling like he'd failed, his colleagues reminded him that they had been able to help<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"ferret out unreported details about a twenty-five-year-old murder case that many powerful figures had wanted to keep sealed."</blockquote>
That was at least "something." He continued to read about other civil-rights "cold cases," and eventually his research would lead him to into the murder of Medgar Evers, the firebombing of the home and store of Vernon Dahmer Sr. which led to his death, and the September 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham which killed four little girls -- Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair. All of these crimes were the work of members of the KKK; none of those responsible had ever been punished. The main issue facing Mitchell was that time was not on his side: witnesses and suspects were dying off. In a "race against time," Mitchell was determined to bring the details of these crimes into the light through his investigations, hoping that his work might be a driving force into not only getting these old cases reopened, but also that people like Byron de la Beckwith, Sam Bowers, and Bobby Cherry (the KKK members responsible) would finally be brought to justice for their crimes. Yet, what continued to "gnaw" at him after these successes was the "Mississippi Burning" murders that by 1998, still had not been "reckoned with." Undaunted, and even as the "pool of witnesses and evidence" decreased, Mitchell continued his efforts for justice in this particular case, determined to bring Edgar Ray Killen, "the moving force" behind these murders, to trial.<br />
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The book is divided into five parts, each section under the names of the victims of these horrific crimes, beginning and ending with James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. It is his contention that the "Mississippi Burning" murders were not only the "result of a months-long battle plan," but also that the head of the Mississippi branch of the KKK (the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan), Sam Bowers, meant to send a message<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"not just to African-Americans and civil rights activists throughout the state but to the nation at large. Bowers meant to tell all of America who held power in Mississippi, who called the shots, who could do as they pleased, and who needed to live in fear."</blockquote>
What was just as important, notes Mitchell, is the message of the "murderers' impunity." As long as they were still in power, as long as they were still free and living among the public, the message would continue to be heard and understood not just in Mississippi, but throughout the entire nation as well. In each and every case presented here, he offers clear proof of how these people managed to maintain this impunity and escape prosecution; what I discovered here chilled me not only down to my bones, but to my very soul. Quite honestly, I was so stunned by what came to light here that right after I'd finished, I could not move for the longest time, just sitting here staring into space and trying to digest what I'd just read. <br />
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While he notes other cases he'd worked on but could not solve, saying that he felt that he'd failed more often than succeeded, I say that he should be beyond proud of what he's accomplished; in bringing out the truth behind these four crimes, he also paved the way for bringing about a long-overdue measure of justice. He had been told a number of times just to "let the past be," but he has long believed that "Truth rules, while hate thrives on obfuscation, murkiness and fear." It is important, he says, to know and to remember the truth of what came before in the "past waves of white supremacy" so that we are able to act now and in the future. <br />
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With notes, bibliography, index, etc., the page count runs to just over four hundred pages, but I was so completely engrossed in what I was reading here that the hours just flew by. I do think it would have helped to have included photos along with text, but I sat with tablet in hand when I wanted to match names with faces, or to reacquaint myself with the four cases discussed here. And although this rarely happens, I happen to agree with the dustjacket blurber who says that <i>Race Against Time</i> is a "landmark book" and "essential reading for all Americans," adding only that it should be read especially by anyone with even a passing interest in civil rights both past and present. It's one I'll never, ever forget.<br />
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****</div>
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My thoughts are from a reader's perspective; here are a couple of real reviews of this book:</div>
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from David J. Garrow, at the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/a-journalists-quest-to-bring-murderous-klansmen-to-justice/2020/02/13/b380d922-36d0-11ea-9541-9107303481a4_story.html#comments-wrapper" target="_blank"><i>Washington Post</i></a></div>
from Dean Jobb at <i><a href="https://southernreviewofbooks.com/2020/03/04/race-against-time-jerry-mitchell-review/" target="_blank">The Southern Review of Books</a></i><br />
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<br />NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-13368821012309459472020-05-15T13:07:00.000-04:002020-05-15T13:07:37.942-04:00The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vMerVw9Bnrs/XrvuKJ8ld5I/AAAAAAAASgo/EHOK6dqbBWklSCNf6NSaoZ3lYbiz8pUAgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/millardriver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="330" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vMerVw9Bnrs/XrvuKJ8ld5I/AAAAAAAASgo/EHOK6dqbBWklSCNf6NSaoZ3lYbiz8pUAgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/millardriver.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
9780767913737<br />
Anchor Books, 2006<br />
416 pp<br />
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paperback<br />
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<i>The River of Doubt</i> begins with Theodore Roosevelt hovering between life and death "deep in the Brazilian rain forest." It was apparently not quite his time though, as he would go on to finish out his journey through an uncharted tributary of the Amazon, not entirely unscathed but living to tell the tale. It is a harrowing story of an expedition in which whatever could go wrong did go wrong. At the same time the author offers a look at the often-unforgiving natural world surrounding these men; she also examines what it was about these particular men that got them through the dangers they faced on their nearly one-thousand mile journey. <br />
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Suffering from a "bruised spirit" after a landslide defeat in his bid for president in 1913, Theodore Roosevelt decided to accept an offer from the Museo Social in Buenos Aires to be a guest lecturer. He was offered a rather large sum of money for three engagements, but beyond the fees, the trip would allow him the opportunity to see his son Kermit who was working in Brazil. Roosevelt also had a "passion" for natural history and science, and wondered if perhaps he might be able to somehow "indulge" that passion while in South America. Turning to a friend who just happened to be the president of the American Museum of Natural History, Roosevelt was offered "full support," and was eventually put together with old friend Father John Augustine Zahm, who was at that time planning his own expedition to the Amazon. Roosevelt was, of course, delighted and at this stage of the game anticipated "a 'delightful holiday' that would provide 'just the right amount of adventure.' " <br />
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The plan was that the expedition would travel north from Buenos Aires by boat along "well-known navigable rivers to the Amazon." From there the group would go up the Rio Negro and down the Orinoco before crossing Venuezula to the Atlantic. Plans changed, however, when Brazil's minister of foreign affairs suggested to Roosevelt that perhaps he would prefer to take a trip "down an unknown river" with Colonel Cândido Rondon, who had earlier discovered and named the Rio da Duvida, but knew very little about either its "course or character." Rondon would use the opportunity to do a survey of this uncharted territory; it would be more dangerous than the route planned by Zahm for sure, but it was just the challenge that Roosevelt "had been yearning for." Little did anyone know exactly what was in store for them once they set off on this journey that would ultimately leave Roosevelt at death's doorway.<br />
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Millard has done a fine job here, using a number of primary sources which include the journals of other expedition members to give a more rounded view of not only events but of the Amazon itself. Her writing about the flora, fauna, and people indigenous to the area become integral to the story of the expedition as the group moves further into uncharted territory. She also realizes that this is not solely Teddy Roosevelt's story; indeed it is probable that no one would have survived had it not been for Colonel Rondon. Throughout his many years of working in the Brazilian wilderness, Rondon had become a devoted and dedicated advocate for the country's indigenous people; Millard notes that even when attacked by them, Rondon's men had orders to never retaliate. Rondon left gifts for them instead, and although his peaceful tactics toward the Cinta Larga people was an issue of debate between Roosevelt and the Colonel, it seems that it worked, as the expedition, which could have been decimated "by consensus" of the tribe, was allowed to continue on down the river.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m5asMthxFCM/Xr69CX3AzJI/AAAAAAAAShU/sb0u3ypj-V4IKu0YxBUmCrVK7BCOkauhACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/trcr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="336" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m5asMthxFCM/Xr69CX3AzJI/AAAAAAAAShU/sb0u3ypj-V4IKu0YxBUmCrVK7BCOkauhACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/trcr.jpg" width="322" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roosevent and Rondon; photo from the <a href="https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Blog/Item/Descending%20the%20River%20of%20Doubt" target="_blank">Theodore Roosevelt Center, Dickinson State University</a></td></tr>
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<br />While the book is informative, the way Candice Millard wrote it also offers readers a suspenseful narrative as to how they survived, as the back-cover blurb reveals,<br />
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"an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks." </blockquote>
I am focused on people in whatever I read, and here, when it comes right down to it, the question becomes this: when at a point of no return where things are at their worst, what is it within people that allows them to carry on? In that sense, <i>The River of Doubt</i> is not just about the physical journey made by these men, but a sort of journey of self-discovery as well. <br />
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At times a true white knuckler, <i>The River of Doubt</i> makes for compelling, page-turning reading. And don't miss the PBS <i>American Experience</i> episode "Into the Amazon" which brings this book and this expedition to life. I am a huge fan of Amazon exploration narratives, and this one is definitely high on my list of good ones. <br />
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very much recommendedNancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-40448259922338828772020-04-19T16:23:00.000-04:002020-04-19T16:49:46.255-04:00La séquestrée de Poitiers, by André Gide<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RLkOhCqkTio/XpxSCFW0BnI/AAAAAAAASR4/iN3nh-DyitACyPC6vLetUgqyx6W7AV8bACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/gidepoitiers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="224" data-original-width="136" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RLkOhCqkTio/XpxSCFW0BnI/AAAAAAAASR4/iN3nh-DyitACyPC6vLetUgqyx6W7AV8bACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/gidepoitiers.jpg" width="242" /></a></div>
9782070369775<br />
Gallimard, 1977<br />
138 pp<br />
<br />
paperback<br />
<br />
A few weeks back the name Blanche Monnier cropped up during an online discussion, reminding me that I had a book about her case on my foreign language shelves. Oho, I said to no one, reading this book might be a great way to pull my brain away from coronavirus stress. First of all, it's in French so it's different from my general reading fare, and then, of course, Monnier's story is so bizarre that I figured it would hold my interest for the duration. It did. <br />
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I first came across Gide's interest in both the Monnier case and that of Marcel Redureau (also included in this volume) a while back while reading Sara Maza's excellent <i>Violette Noziere: A Story of Murder in 1930s Paris </i>(University of California Press, 2011), so I picked up this little book, but by the time it arrived I had likely already moved on to something else and so the poor thing sat gathering dust until the recent above-mentioned conversation. Reading it now, I'd only made it through the first few pages and I was glued. As someone who reads mainly to try to understand what Gide calls the "unexplored regions on the map of the human soul, the <i>terrae incognitae," </i>and reads historical crime to see what it says about various facets of contemporary society, I found both cases covered in <i>La Séquestrée de Poitiers</i> to be utterly fascinating, and I can certainly recommend it to others with the same mindset.<br />
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Based on a multitude of documents on the case which Gide studied, the book begins with the story of Blanche Monnier, although here the family name has been changed to Bastian and Blanche's to Mélanie, who was found living in horrific conditions after twenty-five years of confinement in her mother's home. The case made for sensational headlines since the "respectable" Monnier family had been held in high esteem for many, many years. I will refer to her as Mélanie since it is written as such here, but think Blanche. On receiving an anonymous letter that "a spinster" is "locked up" in the home of Madame Bastian, "half-starved ... for the past twenty-five years -- in a word, in her own filth," the attorney general of Poitiers ordered the Commissaire of police to go the address on rue de la Visitation to investigate. It seems that the story told in the letter was true; Mélanie was removed from the home and taken to the hospital, while her mother and her brother were arrested. While I won't go into any detail (if you wish to read about it, you can find one version <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/mademoiselle-blanche-monnier-facts/inigo-gonzalez" target="_blank">here</a>) the point of Gide's examination of this case was this: how was it that this "monstrous-seeming case" which led to "public outrage," one "... in which Madame Bastian and her son appeared clearly guilty from the start," could end "with the accused being acquitted?" It's actually in combing through what these documents reveal about life and society in this provincial town that the real answers are discovered.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YgYzMP57Ihw/XpyQUG-Q1XI/AAAAAAAASSE/DCHNw9mIlw4dEFZq8R-wjG5EhCR6Bp1IgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/monniernews.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="900" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YgYzMP57Ihw/XpyQUG-Q1XI/AAAAAAAASSE/DCHNw9mIlw4dEFZq8R-wjG5EhCR6Bp1IgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/monniernews.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from <i><a href="https://allthatsinteresting.com/blanche-monnier" target="_blank">All That's Interesting</a></i></td></tr>
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<br />
Next up is the case of Marcel Redureau, a fifteen year-old boy who in 1913 seemingly for no reason went to work one day and killed his employer's entire family and their servant, leaving only a small boy behind. Seven people lay dead in a most gruesome fashion, and Redureau was arrested and confessed that it was a particular remark made by his employer that had set him off. While the crime is particularly heinous, Gide's focus here is on the prosecution and the trial of this boy, which I won't go into, but which led him to question the "current psychological expertise" which "doesn't allow us to understand everything." And then of course, there's the jury, which clearly failed in its duty ...<br />
<br />
Thom Nickel states in his 2016 article at <a href="https://spiritnews.org/articles/the-local-lens-andre-gide-frances-great-crime-writer/" target="_blank">The Spirit of The Riverwards</a> that Gide, who had a "fascination and even obsession with crime and punishment," could see "facts that judges and jurors overlooked." He goes on to state that "Gide recorded his impressions and analyses of judicial cases while serving as a juror," writing about them in depth,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"examining both the facts of the case and the background of the accused in a way that dovetailed with his lifelong rejection of traditional morality." </blockquote>
which is beyond evident throughout this little book. Don't get hung up on the somewhat sordid details ... it is well worth reading for Gide's understanding of what's actually happening in these two cases.<br />
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<i>******</i></div>
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Note: To those people who had asked me if there was an English translation and to whom I said no, I didn't realize it at the time, but these two cases are part of a larger work I just bought today called <i><a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/76scc5ty9780252028441.html" target="_blank">Judge Not</a>, </i>(originally published in 1930) translated by Benjamin Ivry.NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8537982459421357253.post-30879405480513146282020-02-11T10:59:00.000-05:002020-02-11T11:27:09.275-05:00I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, by Michelle McNamaraTrue crime books make up only a tiny fraction of my home library, and those are generally accounts of crimes from long ago. I had picked up <i>I'll Be Gone in the Dark</i> when it came out in paperback after I'd watched a tv documentary about the Golden State Killer; I knew then that I had to read about it. Once I opened <i>I'll Be Gone in the Dark</i>, I could not stop reading. To borrow Megan Abbott's reaction blurbed at the beginning, "This book just knocked me over." I finished the book by dinnertime.<br />
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9780062319791</div>
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Harper Perennial, 2019 (hardcover ed. 2018)</div>
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344 pp</div>
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"Golden State Killer" was the name given by author Michelle McNamara to the real-life monster who was responsible for 50 sexual assaults in Northern California and ten or more murders in the southern part of the state. While law enforcement officials in both areas investigating these cases were stumped and completely frustrated over a number of years, a breakthrough came in 2001 when DNA proved that the same individual had been responsible for all of these horrific crimes. She had originally used that name in an article she'd written for <i><a href="https://www.lamag.com/longform/in-the-footsteps-of-a-killer/" target="_blank">Los Angeles Magazine</a> </i>in 2013; prior to that the guy had been known as "The East Area Rapist" in the north and the "Original Night Stalker" in the south, collectively EARONS once his DNA had been identified as having been linked. He had started his reign of terror in the 1970s; by 1986 he seemed to have stopped. In <i>I'll Be Gone in the Dark</i> she not only examines the crimes and the hunt for this man, but also provides a rather empathetic aspect to the victims and their families, to the men and women in law enforcement on whom this case took a huge toll in some cases, and plays it straight about her own obsession with this case that she had wanted to see through until the end, hoping that the guy would be caught. </div>
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She begins with a sort of teaser about a summer hunting for the Golden State Killer from her daughter's playroom. She says that "every obsession needs a room of its own," and there, after husband and child were asleep, she did her work on her laptop "surrounded by a half-dozen stuffed animals and a set of miniature pink bongos." I use the word "teaser" because this is just a glimpse of what's to come as we read about all the reports, archives and transcripts she read, all of the countless hours of work she and her researcher put into trying to find the guy, her meetings with members of law enforcement, trips to scenes of crimes, interviews with victims or their families, reaching out to fellow DIY detectives online, and even the unanswered questions left behind after her death.<br />
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It's this obsession that captured me completely throughout this book, the thread I followed and hung on to while reading. In part two, for example, via early drafts of Michelle's <i>Los Angeles Magazine </i>article, she speaks about a woman she calls "The Social Worker" who had lived in the east Sacramento areas "through the height of it" who warned Michelle to "take care of herself. Or it can consume you." Michelle's answer: "<i>Can?" </i>She also states that she didn't laugh about the warning, but "agreed to pretend" that they were "skirting a rabbit hole...rather than deep inside it." When it's not her talking, but rather sections pieced together from notes, for instance, I definitely noticed.<br />
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Gillian Flynn says in her introduction that <i>"I'll Be Gone in the Dark" </i>is a "snapshot of time, place, and person." This is so eloquently captured throughout the book, but as she also notes, it's Michelle's writing about the people here that helps to power the story. Her husband says in his afterword that<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"What interested her, what sparked her mind and torqued every neuron and receptor, were <i>people ... " </i></blockquote>
which is so obvious as she writes about the victims, their families, or people caught strongly in an aura of fear and utter terror just living their daily lives<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"on their way back from the disco club, or a double feature of 'Earthquake' and 'Airport 77' at the drive-in, or the Jack LaLanne gym"</blockquote>
who knew that anyone could be a victim, any home could be the next target, or that even the presence of a man in the house wasn't a guarantee of safety. She also realizes the costs paid by the men and women of law enforcement for whom the Golden State Killer<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"still haunts their dreams. He's ruined their marriages. He's burrowed so deeply inside their heads that they want to, or have to, believe that if they locked eyes with him, they'd know." </blockquote>
The man responsible has left a huge wake behind him; his years of terror, it seems, have taken a personal toll on everyone, including the author.<br />
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I spent an entire day on nothing but this book; once I was in that was it. Outside world gone. Given that I'm not really a huge fan of modern true-crime accounts, and that they're not a usual stop in my reading repertoire, that says something. I will say that it was a bit choppy in construction which was a bit of a put off, and I'm not quite sure I was as attentive in the final chapter when it was mostly a lot of facts related by Michelle's lead researcher and a journalist friend of hers.<br />
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The book ends with an epilogue entitled "Letter To An Old Man," in which she predicts that<br />
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"One day soon, you'll hear a car pull up to your curb, an engine cut out. You'll hear footsteps coming up your front walk...The doorbell rings. No side gates are left open. You're long past leaping over a fence. Take one of your hyper, gulping breaths. Clench your teeth. Inch timidly toward the insistent bell. </blockquote>
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This is how it ends for you."</blockquote>
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And in the end, that's how it was. Unfortunately, for all of the time, energy, determination and sleepless nights she put into trying to help solve this case (the "obsessive search" of the title), McNamara died in 2016, thus never got to witness the moment she'd been waiting for. I find that tragic in a very big way, since throughout this book I could absolutely sense how very much she wanted this guy to be caught, locked up, and put away for the rest of his life.<br />
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recommended.<br />
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NancyOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12027036137062767840noreply@blogger.com0