Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America, by Candacy Taylor

9781419738173The Abrams Press, 2020
360 pp

hardcover


"it didn't tell you if a place had a good steak, or good seafood, or had a soft bed...it told you where you would be safe."



This book is a must read.  An absolute must read.

I'd first heard of the Green Book while reading Matt Ruff's novel Lovecraft Country a couple of years back.  In the novel, set in the 1950s, one of the characters was the editor/publisher of something called The Safe Negro Travel Guide.  I remember at the time thinking what a crap thing it was that something like The Safe Negro Travel Guide had to even exist, and wondering if there was some underlying truth to it I looked it up, and sure as s**t there it was, The Negro Motorist Green Book.  I was appalled, actually, a) that this was a real thing and b) at my own ignorance -- I had no clue that it existed.



However sad the fact of its existence, it turned out to be, as author Candacy Taylor notes, "an ingenious solution to a horrific problem,"  representing 

"the fundamental optimism of a race of people facing tyranny and terrorism."  

In Overground Railroad, the author (who has visited over four thousand Green Book sites, and  provides some of the photos she's taken in the book)  offers an across-the-decades overview of the  Green Book, published from 1936-1967, setting her work within both historical and geographical contexts of American history.   In doing so, she examines racism and other forces at work in this country that led to the necessity of creating such a guide.   Victor Green, who founded the Green Book in 1936, most likely made no money from it, but as the author notes,

"his reward was much more valuable than money, because for every business he listed, he may have saved a life."

As she also states, "real change can come from simple tools that solve a problem," which is what made the Green Book so powerful.

  The dustjacket blurb for Overground Railroad states that

"During the Jim Crow years and into the civil rights movement, travel for black America was difficult and dangerous. Black travelers couldn't eat, sleep, get gas, or shop at most white-owned businesses."

Over the years that the Green Book was published, racial segregation was in "full force" across this country.  While the automobile offered African-American families  a larger measure of personal freedom and a chance to "venture out onto America's highways and enjoy the country they helped build," they didn't have access to a lot of the US due to segregation.  Beaches, swimming pools, golf courses, theaters, parks, and other facilities were either whites only or had separate areas for African-Americans.    "White Customers Only" signs were everywhere, and black people suffered humiliating experiences when they were more often than not denied access to basic services/necessities -- even Coke machines were off limits in some cases.  Prior to the advent of the Interstate Highway system most long-distance auto traveling was done via country roads, and then along small-town main streets where black travelers could likely be subject to harassment or worse by local law enforcement.  Sundown towns (and sundown counties, for that matter) also posed various dangers for African-American motorists who just might find themselves stranded on their roads at night, and as the author mentions, there were no published lists to let anyone know about their existence.   Route 66 was one of the worst roads to travel, since there were hundreds of sundown towns along the way and services for black people even more difficult to find than for white travelers.   Even after the interstates were built in the 1950s, travel continued to be filled with uncertainty and danger, and while there were other black travel guides in circulation, "a blessing to the black community,"  it was the Green Book that not only stayed in print the longest but also had the longest reach and the widest readership.  It became a staple in glove compartments, allowing people to "travel without embarrassment," as the inside cover of the 1948 Green Book proclaimed.   While it couldn't protect travelers from racist cops, as the author notes, "it was still the best travel aid a black family could have." 

my photo, from the book

 The Great Migration of African-Americans lasted from 1915 to 1970, and for people fleeing horrific Jim Crow realities including lynchings (the author cites more than four thousand black people having been massacred by the KKK and "other white vigilante groups" between 1877 and 1968) or who were in search of better opportunites in the North (or in some cases westward),  the Green Book was not only a "perfect tool to facilitate" this mass move, but it "likely gave black Southerners the courage they needed to leave."  Getting into a car and leaving wasn't as simple as it sounds -- even if a person had a job allowing him/her to make regular car payments, a lot of car dealers wouldn't sell to African-Americans, and banks weren't too eager to loan them the money anyway.  In some cases a white person had to offer to guaranteee a loan by co-signing. And while in Jim Crow states, sometimes just passing a white man was on the highway was a dangerous move.

The dustjacket blurb also notes that this guide was "hailed as the 'bible of black travel,' "  but in reality, it was so much more -- as the author notes, it was also 

"a compelling marketing tool that supported black-owned businesses and celebrated black self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship."

 These establishments included restaurants, gas stations, vacation spots, nightclubs, tailors, beauty parlors, motels and tourist houses among many others.   Although some white-owned, integrated places allowed African-Americans, the majority listed in the Green Book were black-owned enterprises which were not only safe havens for travelers, but the money people spent there was a boon to and strengthened local economies.

my photo, p. 264 (1963-64 edition of Green Book)

Another major impact of the Green Book  is that it helped to shape and strengthen a sense of community among African-Americans,  which would become very important especially during the civil rights years.   In Birmingham, Alabama, for example, self-made, black millionaire A.G. Gaston built A.G. Gaston's Motel in 1954;  it was listed in the Green Book in 1956.   He had intended that it should be a "place where his community could feel safe to congregate, eat, and socialize."  Gaston was an important figure not only in Birmingham business and in his efforts to support African-Americans who needed help, but he was active in the Civil Rights movement.  His motel served as Martin Luther King Jr's headquarters where he had a "war room" to organize protesters and strategize for his campaigns.  The Green Book sites, the author states, were "on the front lines in the battle for equality."

Obviously this is just a very, very brief sketch of Overground Railroad. I'm not a reviewer, just a reader, and what Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. says about this book on the back-cover blurb sort of sums it all up:

"If 'making a way out of no way' is a theme that runs throughout African-American life, few things encapsulate that theme more powerfully that the Green Book. A symbol of Jim Crow America, it is also a stunning rebuke of it, born out of ingenuity and the relentless quest for freedom."

It is unforgettable, compelling and a book that is not only beyond relevant but also critical reading in our own times, one that should be on the shelves of every library everywhere including the one in your home.   It is worthy of winning any book award nomination that may come its way.

Brava, Candacy Taylor, just brava.

Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition, by Buddy Levy

9781250182197
St. Martin's Press, 2019
400 pp

advanced reader edition, so my many thanks to the great people at St. Martin's Press for a paper copy.

I was delighted to have been offered a copy of this book, since I am and always have been a serious devotée of exploration narratives of all kinds, most especially accounts of expeditions in the polar/Arctic/Antarctic regions.  Another factor in saying yes to St. Martin's Press was that it wasn't all that long ago that I'd watched this fascinating story play out on  American Experience (PBS)  in an episode called "The Greely Expedition" and decided that I had to know more, so of course of I was going to accept their offer.  Smart decision on my end:  once I began reading  Labyrinth of Ice a couple of nights ago at about 6:30 p.m., I didn't  stop reading until  two in the morning, and only then because I had to be up by 5:30.

According to the author,  "Like nearly all great stories from the past," the story in this book has already been told,  but he intended this book to

"provide an interpretation that focuses on the adventures, triumphs, and the unity, brotherhood, and patriotism of the men"

 which he does, but he also doesn't skimp on the strength and fortitude of these people required for their very survival.  When this expedition began in 1881, not a single person under Greely's command would have been able to visualize the horrific challenges that would face them only two years later, when things became so dire that the expedition's doctor wrote in his journal while drifting on an ice floe that

"It is terrible to float in this manner, in the snow, fog, and dark. This seems to me like a nightmare in one of Edgar Allan Poe's stories."  

When  Lieutenant Adolphus Greely accepted his mission, he knew after years of studying the history of Arctic exploration that things didn't always go as planned.   However, he ran a tight ship, so to speak, and as the author notes, he also had an "uncanny sense of the thing to do now."  His orders were to  set up "the northernmost of a chain of a dozen research stations around the Arctic," as part of the first International Polar Year,  and to endeavor to locate and rescue the men of the long-missing USS Jeannette, the subject of Hampton Sides' most excellent book In The Kingdom of Ice.  Greely also had designs on reaching the North Pole, or failing that, at least to wrest the claim of reaching "Farthest North" from the British, who held the record.  Sailing from Newfoundland, the men reached their destination of  Fort Conger "more than 1,000 miles north of the Arctic Circle," or as the author says, "quite literally at the far end of the earth."

map taken from CBC News

While Labyrinth of Ice covers their two years there, the real story begins in 1883, when for the second year in a row, "relief-resupply" ships failed to reach these men as scheduled.   When the first summer went by in 1882 with no relief ship arriving, Greely and his men were still well provisioned, so the situation wasn't dire, but when the summer of 1883 began to draw to a close with no relief in sight, his orders were to

"depart with his men and head south, using the motorized launch Lady Greely and three whaleboats, plus a dinghy. They would retreat, scouring the shores, hoping to find food caches or relief ships and men along the coast of Ellesmere Island as far south as Cape Sabine, or at Littleton Island, both some 250 miles south of Fort Conger."

Greely and his men could remained at Fort Conger where, "if well rationed," they would have enough provisions to last another year, but he would never have considered disobeying his orders.  He was supposed to leave by September 1st, but fearing the ice, he made the decision to leave nearly a month earlier on August 9, 1883, thus beginning an ordeal which pushed his leadership and his men to their limits.     The story of the southward journey of  Greely and his men is indeed harrowing, but what makes it even worse was that had there not been so much negativity in Washington DC about Arctic exploration under the auspices of Secretary Robert Todd Lincoln, and had the people in charge of the relief expeditions carried out the parts of their mission that they could have actually fulfilled, things may have been much different in the end.

Levy has done a remarkable job with this slice of American history, and as I said earlier, I had to keep reading it despite the fact that I lost nearly an entire night of sleep doing so.  I didn't find it "dry," as some readers said they did; au contraire, it held my attention the entire time, and it is perfect for people who don't read history as part of their regular lineup.   I have only one complaint, which is that there were so many times I wanted to know the source of a quotation or something he mentioned and there were neither footnotes nor endnotes.  I have an ARC, so perhaps they are put into the final version, so if that's the case, disregard.  I happen to be one of those geeknerds who actually goes to the notes for enlightenment so in that sense, the lack of citation was disappointing.  And just one more thing: I'm not exactly sure why he chose to use Dan Simmons' novel The Terror as a source; frankly, it just seems weird.   The book as a whole, though, is so good and so well done that in the grander scheme of things, I can certainly and highly recommend it to anyone interested in Arctic exploration -- it is truly an unforgettable story that the author has put together here and I can only imagine the amount of time he put into piecing it all together.

Conan Doyle For the Defense, by Margalit Fox

9780399589454

Random House, 2018

319 pp

hardcover

On the night of December 21, 1908, 82 year-old Marion Gilchrist sent her maid, Helen Lambie, on an errand to pick up an evening paper.  When Lambie returned, a downstairs neighbor was waiting at the door of Miss Gilchrist's flat on West Princes Street, Glasgow, and told her about some "fearsome noises" he and his sisters had heard in the Gilchrist flat from their flat below.   Lambie had a likely explanation in the pulleys used for the clotheslines, but the neighbor decided to wait at the door anyway while Lambie went in. As she did so, a man came toward her from the flat's spare bedroom and walked past Lambie and the neighbor.  Lambie, going into the dining room, called for the neighbor to come in, and discovered Marion Gilchrist laying on the floor with "nearly every bone of her face and skull being smashed."  The neighbor ran to get the police while Lambie made her way to find Miss Gilchrist's niece.  By the time she went back to West Princes Street and the scene of the crime, a doctor had discovered a "heavy dining room chair" that was likely the murder weapon, since Miss Gilchrist's wounds matched the shape of the "spindle-shaped legs."  As the night went on, a few Glasgow police detectives came to the flat. Papers had been strewn all around in the spare bedroom, jewelry belonging to Miss Gilchrist seemed be present and accounted for, with the exception of a "crescent-shaped diamond brooch", valued at fifty pounds.  Also noted: there was no sign of forced entry, meaning that the woman who normally kept her doors soundly locked most likely let her killer into the flat.  A warning went out to the "Pawns" about the brooch, and four days later, a bicycle dealer revealed to the police that he knew a man who'd been trying to sell a pawn ticket for a brooch matching the description of the stolen one.  It wasn't long before detectives honed in on the man with the ticket, a certain Oscar Slater.

Oscar Slater, from Wikipedia

 The police became focused on this man, believing they had the right guy since, after all, he was already a man of interest -- he was reputed to be a pimp, a petty criminal, and they also discovered that Slater was on his way to America with his girlfriend.  He was picked up, arrested, held in New York City, but agreed to be extradited back to Scotland to prove that he was not guilty.  In the meantime,  the brooch that had been pawned turned out not to have been the one stolen from Miss Gilchrist;  the Glasgow police, however,  were certain that they had the right guy, and explored no other avenues, leaving out any other possible culprits and dismissing testimony from people who could have exonerated Slater.   The case, which came down to some pretty iffy eyewitness identification, went to trial; in May, 1909, Slater was found guilty and sentenced to death, with sentenced commuted to hard labor for life. The story might have ended there, but in 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle was asked to take a  look at the case, which he did using  the same sort of logical, rational approach he had imbued in his creation Sherlock Holmes  to go over the particulars of the Slater case in order to try to redress the huge miscarriage of justice that had occurred three years earlier and sent an innocent man to prison.

The questions at the heart of this story concern two main issues.  One, why was it that  the police, knowing that there was nothing but some pretty dubious eyewitness testimony to connect Slater with the Gilchrist murder, continued to pursue the case against him, and two,  given that factor,  how could the trial culminate in a guilty verdict that carried a death sentence?

Fox slowly takes us through the circumstances of Slater's case and its aftermath;  around these events she puts us squarely in a "watershed moment" in which these events occurred. As she notes, the case

"straddles the twilight of nineteenth-century gentility and the upheavals of twentieth-century modernity,"

a "Janus-headed era" which looked both forward and backward. It was a time in which police work moved along  two investigative  paths, both of which she notes, existed side by side:  a "nascent, rationalist twentieth-century  science that would come to be called criminalistics" -- a "scientific, rationalist" approach,  and  the "murky nineteenth-century pseudoscience known as criminology,"  based largely on work developed by Cesare Lombroso whose theories posited that criminality was inherited and that there were "born criminals" who could be identified on the basis of certain racial and ethnic "signifiers." That's just a quick version of his ideas; there were even worse parts of Lombroso's ideas that I won't go into here.  The Glasgow police evidently chose to not take their time and do a rational analysis of the case based on what they actually had in the way of evidence (which was pretty much nothing), but set against the backdrop of rising anti-Semitism and xenophobia, police, prosecutors, and even the judge  succeeded in making Slater, a German, a Jew, and a known petty criminal, and  "one of the most convenient 'convenient Others' of his age" into the perfect a murder suspect. To get a conviction, they all they engaged in some pretty dodgy practices involving "suborned perjury, withheld exculpatory evidence, and all the inflammatory  illogic that the criminological method allows."

Over the course of this narrative, among other things,  the author also seeks to reveal Oscar Slater as a human being rather than just an unwanted "Other."  She also examines Conan Doyle as a crusader, an "emblematic avatar" of the "long nineteenth century," which as the author says, ran beyond the century mark up to the outbreak of the first world war.

  The inside dustjacket blurb of this book tells its readers that

"For all the scores of biographies of Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the most famous detective in the world, there is no recent book that tells this remarkable story, in which Conan Doyle becomes a real-life detective on an actual murder case."

 The Slater case may not be as well known as the Edalji case,  the basis of the novel Arthur and George by Julian Barnes, so this book is good mainly for people who may be interested to learn about Conan Doyle outside of  his role as the "creator of the most famous detective in the world" and as a man with a "code of honor" who more than once refused to let justice take a wrong turn and affect innocent lives. But beware --  I've read three or four biographies of Conan Doyle since I read this book, and I don't completely agree with Fox's conclusions about the man himself, in which she sort of glosses over more than a few facts. I'll refer you to Russell Miller's The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle and Out of the Shadows by Georgina Doyle for further reading.  And while personally I think that there's a lot that could have been edited out without any detriment whatsoever to this story, one of the strengths of this book is that the author has managed to place her study  meaningfully into the context of that "watershed moment" mentioned above, socially, culturally, and scientifically, rather than just rehashing the bare bones of the case.

While the blurbers call this book a "thrilling true-crime procedural," I wouldn't go that far, but  it is a story that speaks to our own contemporary concerns not only about "the racialization of crime" but also about some pretty shady practices in law enforcement and the justice system which all too often ruin the lives of innocent people.

Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, by Kathryn Harkup

9781472933737
Bloomsbury, 2018
304 pp

hardcover, sent by the publisher

My many thanks to the lovely people at Bloomsbury for sending me this book.  Some time back I read and enjoyed this author's book A Is For Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie, in which the author had surveyed Christie's novels and short stories, and then wrote about fourteen different poisons -- arsenic through veronal -- used by Christie to kill off her victims.  Despite the gruesome subject matter, it was a fascinating book, so when I was asked if I would like a copy of Harkup's Making the Monster, I wasn't at all going to say no.

Kathryn Harkup is a chemist and as it says on her website, a "science communicator."  On the dustjacket blurb of this book we learn that she

"completed a doctorate on her favorite chemicals, phosphines, and went on to further postdoctoral research before realising that talking, writing and demonstrating science appealed a bit more than hours slaving over a hot fume-hood."

 Thank goodness for that, because in her role as "science communicator," she is able to take some very complicated science and distill it down so that people like me can understand it.  I love science but I will admit to being mystified by it at times; here I didn't feel overwhelmed or over my head.

That's a good thing, because Making the Monster, as the blurb says, "explores the scientific background" behind Mary Shelley's masterwork, Frankenstein: Or, Modern Prometheus, first published in 1818 and then again in 1831.  The book examines the "science behind the story," but it also pieces together the "political, social and scientific world that she grew up in."  The question that she poses at the outset is this:

"How did a teenager create a work of fiction that has enthralled, inspired and terrified for two centuries?" 

which, if you consider it, is a very good question indeed, one providing the framework for what comes next.

After a section on a brief look at the Enlightenment, the author takes us not only into Mary Shelley's life (family, education, contemporaries, her possible inspirations for her work, its creation at the Villa Diodati and the scandals! that followed her and her family), but into the novel itself, both the 1818 edition and the later, revised 1831 edition.  All of that makes for fascinating reading, but where this book actually shines is in following Victor Frankenstein as he makes progress in his creation.  This part is just plain genius, since alongside Victor in the fictional world, we are taken through the history of science up to that time step by step, as the author demonstrates what information was available to a young woman with a well-rounded education and sheds light on the work of scholars or other people who may have influenced Mary Shelley in her writing.  She also reveals how Victor's work may have followed or diverted from known science of the time.

Victor Frankenstein and his creation; 1831 edition illustration, reproduced in this book

We are guided through Victor's work first in collecting the "raw materials" aka body parts, and this leads to a brief discussion of the history of the study of anatomy and discoveries that were made through the process, while taking us into the world of "bodysnatchers, resurrectionists or the "sack-em-up men," which could often, as the author noted, provide a good living. Using this model (the fiction vs. the real science) she goes on to examine the question of how Victor would have been able to preserve what he'd collected against the history/practices of real-world counterparts, going on into how Victor constructed his creation.  She then turns to the  "small electrical machine" he built to provide the spark of life to his creature, and then it's on to the reanimation of his finished creation, which leads to some of the most interesting writing in this book  as she goes into the history of electricity and  experimentation in its potential uses in medicine, some of it just plain creepy.

Following this section is another excellent (albeit short) chapter that focuses on the mind of creature itself, and the moral implications of its creation; there is also a timeline in the back that is quite interesting and extremely useful.

Once I started Making the Monster it was a book I was reluctant to put down for any reason, which says a lot since "scientifically-minded" is not a description I'd use in describing myself.  However, as I said earlier, the way in which the author put this book together made the science completely accessible so that the information is not at all overwhelming.   It is also a timely release, since it is now two hundred years since the publication of the original edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which as a novel has continuously captured people's imagination over the centuries.  Anyone at all who has read Shelley's book will love this one which gets behind the science fiction into the science fact.

highly recommended -- and again, my many, many thanks to the powers that be at Bloomsbury.

The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer, by Kate Summerscale

9781594205781

Penguin, 2016

378 pp

hardcover

As someone who loves all crimes Victorian, I'd been looking forward to reading this book ever since I discovered it was going to be published.  Kate Summerscale is the author The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, one of my favorite historical true crime studies; that book held me pretty much spellbound right through to the end. She is one hell of a researcher for sure -- her books are steeped in cultural, social, economic and historical context so that the reader has a very good feel for  the bigger picture stemming outward from the crime in question, so that the end result is, as one blurber wrote about her Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace, the author "shed(s) light on Victorian morality and sensibilities."  Her research is nothing but meticulous, and both as a reader and as someone who enjoys history, I can tell she puts her heart and her soul into her work.  And it pays off. 

In The Wicked Boy, Ms. Summerscale takes on the story of Robert Coombes, who in July 1895 at the young age of thirteen, killed his mother, closed the bedroom door where the crime was committed, and then along with his younger brother Nattie, calmly went to a cricket match. The crime went undetected for a while, even when the brothers brought an older man, John Fox,  into the house to stay with them, and whenever anyone would ask about mom, they were told that she was out of town. But some ten days later, the milkman noticed a terrible smell, and passed the word around to the neighbors, who turned around and let the boys' aunt know.  When she arrives, she demands to speak with her sister-in-law, but Robert continues with the lie that she's out of the house.  Auntie, though, demands to see their mother, and when the bedroom door was finally opened, she was met with "the smell of rotting flesh" and the "form of a woman, lying on the bed, the face covered by a sheet and a pillow."  When faced with what he'd done,  Robert admits that it was he who had killed his mother because Nattie had "got a hiding for stealing some food, and Ma was going to give me one."

 In examining the whys in the case, Summerscale turns to different factors that may have played a role in the reason Coombes did what he did. Maybe he was heavily influenced by the stories in the penny dreadfuls he read -- after all, as she notes, they had been occasionally linked by inquest juries to suicide and murder; the press had noted that they were "the poison which is threatening to destroy the manhood of democracy," and for some reason they were viewed as representative of a threat from the "lower orders." Or perhaps it was that Robert was afraid of his mother's temper and her threats of violence,  or maybe even as Summerscale notes the illustration above suggests, some sort of hidden psycho-sexual  "irresistible impulse."  It's an intriguing crime that I'd never heard of, and the whys may never be known.  After the author examines the particulars of the case, the law, the trial, etc., she then goes on to argue that perhaps history shouldn't judge Robert Coombes for what he did in July 1895, since he went on to lead an exemplary life.

As I said, it's very obvious that she's researched her story and her people meticulously. I couldn't get enough of the crime itself, trying to figure out why Robert would have done what he did and what Nattie's involvement may have actually been.  However, there comes a time when any researcher worth her or his salt has to know what to keep and what to let go when reporting her findings, and that's one of my issues with this book. There is so much detail that some of it easily could have been left out with no detriment to either the study of the crime at hand or the people involved.  For example, from pp 226 through 233 we get a long section on another Broadmoor inmate who played cricket at Broadmoor while Robert was there. Then, through the end of that chapter on 239, more about another young inmate. Interesting, yes, but germane to Coombes' story? I get that she's discussing other adolescents who ended up there, but still, thirteen pages?  This tends to happen throughout this book and it's frustrating when all I wanted to do was to move along and get on with Coombes' story.   However, despite my misgivings about the overabundance of what I see as unnecessary details woven into this narrative, I would certainly recommend the book to anyone who has an interest in Victorian true crime.

A veritable tryptich and a double mystery: She Said, She Said, He Said

Floreana Island, Galapagos (from destination360.com

read in April 2016

One early April night  I was going through one of my periodic bouts of insomnia,  tossing and turning and turning and tossing until I'd had enough. I decided to go downstairs to watch something on TV, figuring I'd bore myself back to sleep watching C-span or something. All that was on were infomercials and some really bad movies, and since by this time I was wide awake,  I moved over to Netflix and started skimming through documentaries (my favorite part of tv), and that's when I stumbled on one called "Satan Came to Eden."  It was based on one of the strangest stories I'd never heard, and so I wanted to know more. The result: a purchase of a veritable tryptich of books, two separate memoirs written by two women who'd been present at the time and an account by a writer in the 1980s who had "set out to follow the clues and solve the mystery."   The action took place back in the 1930s, when a strange woman who called herself the Baroness made her way to this lovely island, and after antagonizing everyone there, mysteriously disappeared off of the face of the earth along with her lover, never to be heard from again.

Starting with the book for which the documentary was named, Satan Came to Eden was written by Dore Strauch, who along with her lover and mentor Dr. Friedrich Ritter, decided to chuck life in German civilization and attempt to live in complete harmony with nature, hoping  to "fight their way to inner freedom."  Ritter, whose philosophy "moved between two poles, with Nietzsche at the one end and the other Laotse," kept a little black book in which he recorded the "remotest archipelagos and single islands."  Ultimately Ritter chose the small island of Floreana (aka Charles Island) in the Galapagos, based on reading William Beebe's 1924 book Galapagos: World's End.  (By the way, I get absolutely nada if anyone clicks through to Amazon so feel free.)  By the end of June, 1929, Ritter had given up his practice, the two of them had said their last farewells, and made their way to Floreana where they set about the business of living.  While Dore's book has a LOT of information about the Baroness, her entourage and her disappearance, much of Satan Came to Eden involves, of course, the hardships they went through in getting started, one of which was the arrival of a second German family on the island.  The new guys, the  Wittmers,  had read some of the newspaper accounts which had filtered back to Germany about the modern Robinson Crusoes, and in need of a healthy environment to raise their young but ill son, had also decided to make Floreana their home.  Margret Wittmer's story  is documented in book two, Floreana: A Woman's Pilgrimage to the Galapagos, which also gives a firsthand view of adjusting to life on a "wild, untamed 

desert island in the heart of the Galapagos archipelago."  The Wittmers arrived in 1932; at the time, Margret was five months pregnant.  Obviously, the story of the Wittmers adjustment to life there is different than that of Dr. Ritter and Dore Strauch, but they overlap with the arrival of another person and her entourage, the Baroness Wagner de Bosquet.  By all accounts, the Baroness (self-styled, of course) was a bizarre woman, coming in tow with her two lovers, Phillippson and Lorenz,  and a hired hand who couldn't wait until his contract was up to get away from her.   The Wittmers and the Ritter/Strauch party got only an inkling of what they would be in for once the Baroness arrived; over time she would proclaim herself the owner of the island, set up a hotel, and involve the other islanders into her sordid affairs including a near-deadly rivalry between the two men who loved her.  The Baroness certainly made life on Floreana difficult for her neighbors -- stealing supplies destined for the others and charging them exorbitant rates to get them back, prowling around, spying, and trying to cause tension between the Wittmers and the Ritter/Strauches.   After some time of having to put up with this whacked-out, crazy woman (who would sometimes meet island guests in her panties) and the strange goings on between her two men, Margret hears the Baroness announce that she'll be leaving Floreana to go to the South Seas, and that was pretty much the last time anyone ever saw her.  She disappeared with Phillippson, leaving a very sick Lorenz behind, but afterwards, she was never heard from again. That was 1934; no one has ever found any traces, including bodies. 

These two women's accounts offer varying takes on what may have happened to the Baroness and Phillippson.  Wittmer notes that the Baroness must have kept with her plan to go off to the South Seas via a visiting yacht;  Dore Strauch, who got the dates of the disappearance completely wrong, was adamant that murder had been done, and offered some clues (screams in the night, gunshots, etc.,) to bolster her claim along with some accusations.  But for me, the most interesting story in these books centers around the death of Friedrich Ritter -- was his death truly an accident, or was there more to it? 

In 1983, John Traherne offered his ideas in his The Galapagos Affair, in which he not only looks at the memoirs of the two women but at outside sources as well. He goes over the story, putting all of the players in place as these strange events occur, leading up to the disappearance of the Baroness and Phillippson; he then posits his opinion as to what may have happened.  Moreover, he examines the conflicting "she said she said" accounts of Ritter's death and comes up with various scenarios and then an entirely plausible solution, which actually accords with what I thought after I'd read the two women's accounts.  I won't say what that was, but I will say that of those two books, one of them is entirely suspicious, since the writer contradicts herself more than just once. It's also very obvious that she has something to prove, but I won't say any more.  I love playing armchair detective, and these books offered a great opportunity to do so. 

If nothing else, check out the documentary -- the bizareness of the whole thing, especially in the case of the Baroness,  leaps out at you while you're watching, and in my case, I couldn't turn away.  I was so fascinated with it all that until my books arrived, I read every single thing I could find on these cases -- that's how deeply these mysteries got under my skin.  The books (all three) and the documentary I recommend for people into historical true crime; if you want to skip the two memoirs and go right to Treherne's book, he does a great job in bringing forth material from both accounts, summarizing them, adding in other, outside accounts,  and then offering his own viewpoint.   I'm left wondering though just  how many of these odd, unsolved mysteries there are that may be worth reading about which,  as was the case with this story, I had no clue even existed.  Now my appetite is whetted -- I'll be looking for them.

The Narcotic Farm: The Rise and Fall of America's First Prison for Drug Addicts, by Nancy D. Campbell, JP Olsen, Luke Walden

9780810972865
Abrams, 2008
207 pp

hardcover

The Narcotic Farm is a companion book to a PBS documentary of the same name.  The film itself is available online at Vimeo -- I watched it yesterday and just sat here sort of spellbound the entire time.  UPDATE: 2/29/2016: sadly, the documentary at Vimeo seems to have been pulled because of copyright issues.  Well, then, to whoever owns the copyright: why don't you put it on dvd at least so other people can watch it?????

I first heard of this book while reading Sam Quinones' Dreamland - up to then I had absolutely no clue that this place even existed.  The United States Narcotic Farm opened in 1935, just outside of Lexington, Kentucky; it was,  as the book notes,

"an anomaly, an institution where male and female convicts arrested for drugs did time along with volunteers who checked themselves in for treatment."  

In the 1920s, increasingly-strict drug laws and "aggressive enforcement" led to addicts being sent to prison "in droves," where they proved troublesome -- bringing drugs inside and getting non-addict prisoners hooked.  The authors note that by the late 1920s, about "a third of all federal prisoners were doing time on drug charges."   Social progressives of the time also took issue with the arrest of addicts, believing it to be "unjust" - so in 1929 two "government bureaucrats" lobbied for a measure that would create prisons just for convicted addicts, and by 1932, the construction of first of these institutions (the other in Ft. Worth) was underway.   Its administration fell under both the US Public Health Service and the Federal Bureau of Prisons - and on the day it opened the first director, Dr. Lawrence Kolb stated that addicts would not be sent to prison for what was basically "a weakness," but they would be able to receive

"the best medical treatment that science can afford in an atmosphere designed to rehabilitate them spiritually, mentally, and physically." 

They would not be "prisoners," but rather "patients." "Narco," as it was called by locals, was built on a thousand acres of farmland, the idea being that sunshine and hard work on the farm (and in other jobs) would help keep patients on the road to recovery and "cure both immoral behavior and also bad health."   It was a great idea -- not only  were people  lining up at the door to be admitted as an alternative to being thrown into the federal prison system, but it was founded on the question of whether addiction was a criminal offense or an illness that might possibly be treated, a question that still resonates today. It also served as an addiction research center, "the only laboratory in the world that had access to a captive population of highly experienced and knowledgeable drug addicts," where scientists tried to understand "the mysteries of addiction."   The book reveals that the legacy of the addiction research center [which moved to Baltimore and continued research under the auspices of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)], is that it

"established an entire scientific field and formulated the current definition of addiction as a chronic, relapsing brain disorder. It also trained a cadre of addiction specialist who themselves went on to work as heads of medical schools, government officials, directors of drug treatment centers, and leaders in addiction research."

from the Atlanta Georgian, 1935

The book and the documentary together detail the story of Narco from its beginning in 1935 through its final days forty years later.  Some interesting highlights of its history include a few notables who passed through its doors -- both William S. Burroughs senior and junior,  as well as a host of jazz musicians including Chet Baker, Lee Morgan, and Sonny Rollins. Both Burroughs, father and son, wrote books about their time at Lexington: Senior in his Junkie, where there's an entire section about him signing himself in," and Junior with his Kentucky Ham (which I'm planning to read soon)  detailing his time as a patient there.   However, as time went on, it became quite obvious that the "cure" wasn't working, but I'll leave it to readers to discover why this was the case.  The institution's addiction research center also became the subject of congressional hearings in the 1970s regarding human experimentation soon after the story broke on the Tuskeegee syphillis experiments (the subject of James H. Jones' most excellent book Bad Blood),leading in part to the center's demise.  Interesting as well is the fact that the director, Harris Isbell, had accepted funds from the CIA over a nine-year period  as part of the CIA's research for MK-ULTRA and had given prisoners the drug, although to be fair, he notes that it was actually done as part of legitimate science.  It wasn't just LSD, though -- all manner of narcotics and other drugs were tested on the prisoners, who, by the way, were rewarded with the choice of drugs (go figure) or less time for their services.

The Narcotic Farm, in combination with the documentary, is absolutely fascinating. It is mainly a book of photos from the time with accompanying text, but it is certainly well worth the read.  It opens a brief window not only into attitudes about addiction at the time, but medical ethics, notions of treatment, and quite frankly it's both disturbing and enlightening at the same time.

Recommended.

real-life Law and Order: Crooked Brooklyn, by Michael Vecchione and Jerry Schmetterer

9781250065186
Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2015
255 pp

hardcover (my copy from the publisher, thank you!)

The Rackets Division of the Brooklyn DA's office was where the author (Michael Vecchione) of this absorbing memoir "always wanted to be."  With co-author Jerry Schmetterer, Vecchione invites his readers to join him in a look back at his career.  Vecchione headed the division for over a decade, and was involved in several very high-profile cases that "struck Court Street like an earthquake."  I have to say that it took me longer than normal to read this book, not because of the book itself but because as I started to become more absorbed in his story, I grabbed my iPad and spent quite a bit of time finding more info on these big corruption cases as I read.

To whet potential reader appetites, here's just a very brief preview of a few cases that readers will find in here, most of which had repercussions that spread outward like a ripple in a pond:

• the crooked ADA known as the Undertaker, "the nephew of a community political leader"  
• a judge who held up the disbursement settlement in the case of a "permanently brain-damaged" baby by demanding $250,000 from the family's attorney before signing any papers
• another judge who ruled on the side of whoever would pay him the most, took bribes and gifts from attorneys (this one just killed me -- a woman's custody of her children hung in the balance)
• a huge case that brought down the "corrupt Democratic county leader and number three man in the New York State Assembly," which Vecchione notes would expose "the dirty political machine that ran Brooklyn politics -- a huge eye opener for me as Vecchione reveals how things worked in Democratic party politics at the time (and face it, probably still works on some level in the same way even now) 
• two "Mafia cops," NYPD detectives who were "carrying out hits for the Mafia" 
• the case of the theft of bones from a funeral home used to build a doctor's fortune

and more.  Personally,  the corruption doesn't surprise me -- I'm sure that these sorts of things continue to happen on a daily basis in cities throughout the United States.  

Crooked Brooklyn makes for compelling reading.  Some of the cases in this book would also make for great movie material.  The downside is that I found it to be a little disorganized in the writing itself -- for example, Vecchione would be talking about a particular case and then in the middle of the story, would go back in time, most of the time talking about something in his personal life that would bring us right up to where he'd left off.  To be very honest, from a reader point of view, when he would do that it was a bit distracting when all I wanted to do was to get back to the cases that to me were the high point of this book.

I have to say that I disagree with the reviewer who wrote about this book in Kirkus Reviews, who stated

"However, the author’s focus on courtroom maneuvering and investigative procedures can become tedious without greater context regarding New York’s labyrinthine government and history of corruption."

I didn't find this to be the case -- a) he does briefly touch on the Tammany machine in this book, b) it is certainly not at all tedious; in fact, the opposite is true, and c) "New York's labyrinthine government and history of corruption" are not the focus of this book, so I don't think that the reviewer is playing fair here. The dustjacket blurb says that this book is "perfect for fans of television shows like Law & Order, readers of true crime, and those hungry for details about the system that keeps us safe." Having watched hundreds of hours of Law and Order  in my day (the original -- not the spinoffs), and cheering on Jack McCoy in his long-running crusade for justice, I'd say that the blurber gets it right.

Recommended.

Meno male che Silvio c’è: Being Berlusconi, by Michael Day

9781137280046
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015
274 pp

hardcover; my copy from the publisher. Thank you!

"His only value is money and his only objective to save himself."

My introduction to this "Teflon tycoon," believe it or not, was through reading the Salvatore Montalbano novels  of Andrea Camilleri, one of my all-time crime-fiction novelists. I've been reading him for years;  he's another crime-fiction writer who integrates social and political commentary into his work, and Berlusconi has been a target of his for some time.  Then in June 2011 (I just plowed through my back issues to check the date) I was reading my New Yorker and I found an article called "Basta Bunga Bunga" by Ariel Levy which perked up my interest in this man even more,  and I've been following his antics ever since. And trust me, he is a man worth watching.  When I first got this book in the mail, the cover made it look like a tabloidish sort of thing so I was a bit hesitant, but as things turned out, I didn't need to worry at all -- not Day's style.

The subtitle of the book, "The Rise and Fall from Cosa Nostra to Bunga Bunga" is an apt descriptor of what this book covers. Author Michael Day has tracked Berlusconi's rise from his first inroads into his multi-billion dollar empire (reputedly with money from the Mafia)  through his being banned from ever seeking political office again and the sex scandals which became very public  --  a) a colorful story to say the least and b) a reminder of exactly what can happen when one man (and his cronies) abuses his power of office.    Just to set the record clear, in answer to one reader-reviewer's comments, Being Berlusconi is not meant to be the ultimate biography of this Italian former prime minister; rather, it is exactly as stated in the title: it is the story of Berlusconi's rise as a businessman (through real estate and sleaze TV)  and politician and then his decline and fall from political grace. Day takes the reader through his subject's  three terms as prime minister, clearly evoking the high levels of corruption emanating from his office ( For example, in the face of legal trouble, Berlusconi's parliamentary supporters simply came up with laws designed to make it nearly impossible for any decisive court action to touch them, or they bought off magistrates), but also examining the hot-ticket items (taxes, especially) that would convince voters to keep this man in office, despite everything he's done.  Day also puts Italy's politics and culture into perspective, explaining why people were so taken with Berlusconi.  He explains  the existence of Italy's "all-pervasive" culture of

 "partisanship and cronyism -- with family, friends and tribe doing everything in their power  to keep their their grubby grip on social financial advantage,"

and how Berlusconi "exploited Italians' adherence to the creed," taking "its grip on the country to a whole new level," causing him not to work "in the best interests of the nation," but rather to keep alive "the friendships and loyalties" he needed to sustain his "business interests, runaway libido and legal battles."

 While most people probably are aware of Berlusconi for his sex-related scandals with young girls (including the notorious "Bunga Bunga" and Rubygate scandals), Day clearly shows that there's more to this guy than just being a lecherous politician  -- while he certainly delves into Berlusconi's amoral side,  he reveals exactly how intelligent and savvy this guy really was, literally stopping at nothing to increase his political and economic clout. While "Bending the rules and benefitting (sic)  from friendships, acquaintances and associations is endemic to Italy," Berlusconi clearly made it an art form.  As Day states, the reality was that  Berlusconi "simply -- and very skillfully -- exploited ambivalence toward the rule of law that was already there."    At the same time, the author shows his readers a Berlusconi who is plainly an idiot. As just one example, he showed up uninvited at a Holocaust memorial ceremony held in Milan,

"...which marked the opening of the commemorative site at the city's Central Station.It was from this forbidding fascist-era structure that thousands of Italian Jews were sent in trains to the death camps" 

Berlusconi snoozed through the entire ceremony, then when it was over, took to the press to say that Mussolini "hadn't been that bad -- apart from those slightly draconian race laws -- and had done some 'good things.' " Or then there's the time, after the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake where he said something along the lines of how people made homeless because of this devastating quake should look on it as an adventure -- a sort of camping trip.  As one person summed up Berlusconi so nicely, "His only value is money and his only objective to save himself."

at the Milan Holocaust ceremony from The Guardian, Jan. 13, 2013 (photo by Daniel Dal Zennaro)

Being Berlusconi is a fascinating look at this "trash-TV mogul" who over the course of three terms as Prime Minister "left Italy to economically stagnate, morally decay and in some cases, physically fall apart."  If you have to ask who is Berlusconi, it is either not the book for you OR it is a great place to start if you're at all interested in the people behind the scenes of international politics.  It is in no way boring -- and seriously, every time I'd turn a page I'd wonder just what this guy was going to do next.  To answer reader's criticisms of this book, it is definitely not meant to be a tabloidish sort of exposé or a trashy beach read, so if that's what you're expecting, forget it.  This guy, plain and simple, is a living example of the perils of letting personal interests come before the needs of a nation.

my thanks to Palgrave Macmillan for my copy.

simply unputdownable: Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, by Erik Larson

9780307408860
Crown, 2015 (March)
448 pp

(arc - thank you, LTER and Crown Publishing)

My huge thanks to Library Thing's early reviewers' program for selecting me to read this book. I figured I had the proverbial snowball's chance in hell to win this book, since there were hundreds of people requesting only 15 or so copies.  I had even preordered the book betting that I wouldn't win. I'm not cancelling that order now; I know this is a book I want to read again.  

On May 7th, 1915 at 2:10 pm GMT, a single torpedo fired from a German U-boat slammed into the passenger liner RMS Lusitania; by 2:28, the ship was completely gone.  Okay, so that's old news -- everyone who's ever taken US history in school has at least been introduced to this information, normally related as one of the events leading up to neutral America's entry into World War I. [That's not quite the case, as it turns out -- America wouldn't start sending ships and troops over to Britain until two years later.]   So if this is a story that's already been told, why read about it again?  The answer is simple: it's written by Erik Larson, and it is darn-near perfect. And although I will always rank his Isaac's Storm my favorite of all of his books, this one comes very close. 

Mr. Larson sets up his account on a day-to-day basis, covering not only what's happening on board the ship during its voyage from New York to Liverpool,  but he covers what's going on in London, Washington DC, and occasionally Berlin. He also presents the unique perspective of the commander of the U-20, who ultimately gave the order to launch the torpedo that sunk the Lusitania.  He brings together and explains a "chance confluence of forces" that led to the sinking, beginning in New York the day of the Lusitania's departure.  He also reveals the story of the very hush-hush "Room 40," and how this secret "holy of holies" run by Winston Churchill had information regarding U-20 that somehow failed to be provided to the Lusitania's captain, which in hindsight would have saved hundreds of lives.  All of this is related in an account that grabs the reader's attention from the very beginning, then in Larson's very capable hands, builds little by little, gaining in suspense and tension all the way through to the end.  I mean, come on ... we know the ship sinks ... it's the getting there and the unfolding of all of the "confluence of forces" that kept me hanging onto each word.  Larson also discusses the events that came afterwards from the points of view of the Germans, the British and the Americans, up to two years and one day after the Lusitania went down along the coast of Ireland.   And if the historical parts fail to impress,  there are the personal stories of the passengers who survived this ordeal -- some of whom actually saw the torpedo coming straight at them while they were out on deck. 

RMS Lusitania. From http://www.pbs.org/lostliners/lusitania.html

There's just something about the word "Lusitania" that has stirred the public imagination for years. It's been widely written about,  and its sinking has sparked long-standing controversy over what was in its hold or whether or not the British purposefully failed to protect it as a means to force America into the war.  Larson has picked a great topic here and he makes it very easy for anyone to understand not only the sequence of events both before, during and after the Lusitania went down, but also the significance of this event on the wider world stage.  He has done a tremendous amount of research for this project as revealed by his sources both primary and secondary, and provides notes in the back of the book for easy reference. He also mentions the help of Michael Poirier, who himself has done immense amounts of research on the Lusitania and other ocean liners, a name I was quite happy to see cited here -- if anyone knows his stuff, it's Poirier.  The reader does not need to have any sort of background in history nor does he or she need to know anything at all about the Lusitania to enjoy this book -- everything is so well explained here that you could absolutely hate history before going into Dead Wake, and come out a huge fan of this little slice of it. My biggest issue with this book is that I don't understand why he felt the need to include Woodrow Wilson's ongoing courtship of second wife Edith, a topic that took up way too much space and almost made Wilson's role as president superfluous until the events of 1917 that ended American neutrality.  

I am so happy to have read this book -- and it certainly was an eye-opener for me.  There is so much going on here, but as always, Larson keeps tight control over the material making it flow like a novel.  I am also happy to recommend it to anyone who is a regular Larson reader or anyone even remotely interested in the topic.  To use an old cliché, I could not put this book down -- it's that good. 

turning history on its head: Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found, by Frances Larson

9780871404541
Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2014
317 pp

hardcover

Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found caught my eye while I was reading the "Briefly Noted" book section of The New Yorker sometime back.  The idea that someone would write about the severed head's significance in the history of  "the civilized West" appealed to my fascination with the strange so I knew I had to read it.  After finishing the prologue about the history and fate of the head of Oliver Cromwell, I knew I'd found something deliciously different here -- and that I had to finish this book in one go.

Sadly, the spectacle of  beheadings has come back into our lives full force with the public executions by radical terrorists in the Middle East after 9/11.  In her chapter titled "Deposed Heads," the author notes that only a month after the beheading of Daniel Pearl in 2002, the video made by his captors started circulating on the internet, and four months later the Boston Phoenix published a link on their website. When in May, 2004, engineer Nick Berg met the same fate, it only took days for the "unedited" video to be made available -- this time by Reuters, then picked up by US news networks. The online footage of the actual beheading

"remained the most popular internet search in the United States for a week, and the second most popular throughout the month of May, runner up only to 'American Idol.' "   

Even worse, the Dallas Morning News printed a photo of one of the terrorists holding Berg's severed head (although thankfully with face not visible),  saying that their decision followed "interest generated in the blogosphere," and that "not one of the 87 letters"  they'd received about it "called for these images not to be printed."

And now with the advent of ISIS,  beheadings are once again in the public sphere, "a piece of theatre designed to create power and cause fear" with "maximum visibility, maximum resonance" as well as its power to encourage "maximum fear."   The author notes that

"by searching Google for the latest execution video, the people watching also have their part to play."

As someone who didn't follow that herd, while it's hard for me to believe that in this day and age there are people who freely choose to watch someone's murder online, it is a known fact that audiences have been  drawn to executions for centuries, "ready to enjoy the spectacle."

But even outside the sphere of public beheadings and executions, the author uses her book to draw the reader's attention to the very human fascination with human heads.  Over the course of several chapters, she chronicles the history of shrunken heads, of heads taken as trophies, of severed heads as objects of power, about the fascination of heads used in art, the heads (and other body parts) of saints used as relics, of the study of heads and pseudoscience (phrenology, etc) and in real science (as tools for medical students), and finally, in a chapter called "Living Heads," which in part, explores the scientific (and other) attempts to determine how long the head lives after being severed, as well as the fascination people have with keeping their head alive so a body can be reattached when science has advanced beyond its current capabilities.

Ms. Larson writes very well and immerses the reader right away. Sometimes it's obvious that she's adopting a sort of tongue-in-cheek, funny attitude toward her subject, but most of the time she's quite serious. The book is easily accessible, very reader friendly and each chapter includes not just facts, but strong analysis as well.  I think a chapter on "decapitations in literature" to go with her chapter about art would have been a strong addition.  My only complaint is that the first time she made a statement and I went to look for endnotes, there weren't any.  I'm one of those readers who enjoy noting down sources as they appear -- and even though she has a sizable bibliography at the end of the book, it was incredibly frustrating not to know an exact source of information as it was given in the text.  I was also a little disappointed at her disclaimer at the beginning of her section on sources where she writes that she intended the book as a "popular account" so did not cite names in the text.  She also notes that "detailed notes" are available at her website, but jeez -- stopping my reading to go look online (even with Ipad next to me) is a lot to ask a person to do. Other than that  not-so-minor quibble,  it's definitely a book worth reading on what is to me a fascinating and sadly relevant topic.

He Wanted the Moon: The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and his Daughter's Quest to Know Him, by Mimi Baird

9780804137478
Crown, 2015
272 pp

arc -- my thanks to LibraryThing and to the publisher for my copy

Mimi Baird was just a little girl of six when her father, Dr. Perry Baird, a successful physician with a thriving practice,  was taken away by two state troopers while having lunch at a country club one day in 1944.  He wasn't under arrest, but rather the police were there to escort him to Westborough State Hospital in Westbourough Massachusetts.  Dr. Baird was no stranger to "mental institutions," having already "been held" at three others before Westborough, and he suffered what was then called "manic breaks," now recognized as serious bipolar disorder.  Using a combination of hospital/medical records, statements from Baird's friends, her own recollections and a treasure trove belonging to Dr. Baird, including his own manuscript that he wrote while hospitalized, Mimi Baird has put together a book about her father and his illness, relating how it affected her and her family especially since 1944 was the year he stopped coming home. Her father had always meant to publish someday, and now Ms. Baird has been able to fulfill his wishes some decades later. 

Since this book hasn't even been released yet, I won't be going into any great detail here about its contents, leaving that for interested readers to discover.  I will say that the very best parts of this book come from Dr. Baird's own writings while hospitalized at Westborough and later Baldpate, a private hospital in Georgetown, MA. In many ways, what he describes while in Westborough begs a comparison to the action in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (complete with his own Nurse Ratched) both in terms of "treatment" and in the idea that the most important priority of those in charge is to get the patients to conform. He writes about being bound in straitjackets (from which he constantly attempted to escape), wrapped in cold wet sheets, and other standard regimens for the mentally ill that were extant at the time.  Even more interesting though is how the reader can actually witness Dr. Baird's deterioration, not just in his worsening handwriting as described by his daughter, but in how his accounts of what's going on with him do not even come close to matching what his medical records say. As his conditioned worsens, he becomes delusional, and just how much so becomes quite clear while reading through his writings. But the book goes well beyond the medical aspects to reveal just how much stigma mental illness in the 1940s carried in normal society, and even in the personal sphere, where in this case, Dr. Baird's wife Gretta was told to "try to forget him", and in so doing, would never talk about her husband's condition, not even to her children. 

As much as I enjoyed reading Dr. Baird's personal account, considering that this book is in part a daughter's "quest to piece together the memoir and the man," her narration can sometimes come off as kind of cold and detached.  There's a particular line in here where Ms. Baird talks about her mother naming her "the ice queen," and sometimes that iciness comes through onto the page. While there are a few moments of pure admiration and love that come shining through, sometimes I think the tone is  much more matter-of-fact  than one would expect from the feelings of a daughter devoted to her recovering her father's life story. 

All in all, I enjoyed reading this book. I can't actually speak to being in Ms. Baird's shoes, but I appreciate the fact that it must have been extremely tough for her to have to relive what her father suffered. On the flip side, I'd say that having people who remembered him so positively and with such affection must have been a blessing to her.    I do have to comment about the fact that Ms. Baird is very open and honest about the editing of her father's work to make it more readable and concise. First of all, perhaps it might have been a more honest and gutwrenching account if even small portions could have been left unreadable, so that readers might have a better feel for Dr. Baird as his mental state eroded at times; second, I am always a little uncomfortable when I read that editors mess with primary documents like Dr. Baird's manuscript, since I'm of the opinion that these types of sources should  always stand on their own with no alteration whatsoever. 

Definitely recommended -- this book is already garnering some pretty high ratings and readers seem to be loving it. 

The Disunited States, by Vladimir Pozner

9781609805319
Seven Stories Press, 2014
(originally published as  “Les États-Désunis,” 1938)
302 pp

paperback

"Life is service. The One who progresses is the one who services his fellow human beings a little more, a little better, by working a little more, enslaving themselves a little better all the time." (26).

"Beginning and end, and beginning again." 

                                       (248)

I've tried to write about this book three times here and it just comes across very stupidly to my ears. So I'm just going to offer a few insights into this book without really "reviewing" it.  You'll find  my favorite review of this book here at Words Without Borders, written by Scott Borchert who provides great analysis.

French author Vladimir Pozner was touring America in 1936,  and as he went from coast to coast and back again, he got a firsthand look at what was actually happening in this country at the time.  In his Les États-Désunis, published in 1938, he chronicled the time spent here along with his observations. His book is now published by Seven Stories Press in a translation by Alison L. Strayer.  After I read it, my immediate reaction was to think that in spite of all of the "progress" this country has made since that time, some things have barely changed -- a very discouraging  thought  if one considers the implications for a large number of Americans as this nation moves into the future.

Since I'm not really writing what I'd consider a "review,"  I'd like to point out a few parallels between Pozner's observations in 1936 and our current society in 2014.

•  In 1936, the prevailing philosophy in America  ran somewhere along these lines, and should sound familiar to our modern ears:

"Every American, wretched though he may be, can become a billionaire or president, if he is frugal, industrious, pious, etc. If you are poor and old or young and unemployed, you have only yourself to blame."  

• As Pozner traveled coast to coast, he discovered a nation in crisis -- a nation of people caught up in social, economic and class turmoil, racial prejudice and disparity, and a great deal of social unrest.  Sound familiar?
• He  discovered  that the owners of  giant corporations had little to no disregard for the environment, worker health, worker safety, and the law. Case in point:  that of Union Carbide, which started work on a "thirty thousand-horsepower hydropower station at Hawk's Nest, West Virginia." The work would entail digging a tunnel (32 ft diameter) between Gauley Bridge, West Virginia and Hawk's Nest, with the added bonus of harvesting silica for other uses. After only a few months working underground, men who were happy to even have work started becoming ill, and when they went to the company doctors, they were told they had "tunnelitis," a non-existent disease, or "high blood pressure," even though the contractors knew the men were suffering from silicosis. Doctors were forbidden to use the word, and handed out pills that did no good. Workers began dying, new ones were brought in immediately to take their places.  When the company was finally sued by three hundred workers after an autopsy on a dead man revealed silicosis, the contractors in charge of the project lined up their own witnesses, gave jurors rides home each day, and ultimately settled after a hung jury.  White workers' families received more in redress than black workers' families, and of course, just like today, that was after the lawyers considered their own fees and handed out a sum of their own choosing.  To make matters worse, families who received settlement money (which was pretty much nothing) were threatened with being cut off from federal relief programs.   The company's political connections helped when its representatives were called upon to answer to Congress, and of course, they denied any knowledge of wrongdoing.  Its profits, by the way, skyrocketed. Sound familiar?
• Another "sound familiar" moment: the author discovered that "gangsters" have their own capitalistic empires that reach far and wide throughout the country -- that "gangsterism is the crime industry in the era of monopoly, and its largest branch, racketeering, is nothing but the continuation of capitalist competition by other means." Gangsters had police, judges and other state officials in their pockets. More importantly, he finds that gangsters come mainly from "poor big-city neighborhoods," have had "no professional training," and that

"unemployment and its consequences -- enforced idleness, giving up the pleasures and necessities of life -- can lead certain people to a life of crime."   

Pozner uses  a wide array of different media to examine this America in crisis:  interrogations and testimony, newspaper articles, speeches, letters, songs, interviews, chats etc all serve to  illustrate this point. It also made me think that the forces put into place to protect  free-market capitalism and the flow of corporate profits to help stimulate the economy were (and still are)  in some large measure responsible for some of the nation's woes. Here's one further example at work:  one of the most intriguing parts of this book came from an interview with an unemployed shoemaker relating how the Pinkerton Agency (unbeknownst to him)  hired him  to get into a particular company and spy on other workers, often having him speak up about union organization, strikes and Communism  to see how other his fellow employees reacted. Arrests were made and people lost their jobs in the process, and worse.

In Boston, Pozner speaks with William H.L. Dana, grandson of Longfellow, who takes him on a tour of  an "itinerary of events" from this country's Revolutionary War period, then on to Concord, to Cambridge, and finally back to Boston, where Pozner wants to discover 

"What has become of the descendants of the patriots, the Minutemen who inscribed in the US Constitution the inalienable right of all to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Ironically, he finds that some of them have become members of the conservative establishment, now calling for area teachers to sign a loyalty oath or lose their jobs.  As he also learns, "From its glorious past, this crowd retains only the memory of witches burned near Boston two and a half centuries ago.”  But the good news, at least for Pozner, was that in "Real America," there were people who were trying in their own ways to actively protest against the system. 

I absolutely loved this book, and I will add that  Pozner's observations should not be disregarded simply because of the point of view from which he writes.  Highly, highly recommended.