My Journey as a Combat Medic: From Desert Storm to Operation Enduring Freedom, by Patrick Thibeault

9781782000907

Osprey Publishing,  2012

176 pp

available format: PDF, Kindle

 

There are two items of business I have to conclude before I can move on with my discussion of this book.  First, I absolutely have to thank Osprey Publishing and Teddy Rose from Virtual Author Book Tours for my copy of this very insightful and personal account; second I must apologize to the same people along with the author, Patrick Thibeault, for being a week late with my post which was supposed to have been on February 1. Somehow in my muddled mind the 1st got transposed to the 11th on the calendar and well, to all concerned, mea culpa, and I sincerely apologize for the lateness. 

As Patrick Thibeault notes, "The combat medic is the warrior healer, someone who provides lifesaving medical care during operations in a combat zone. He or she is a warrior by trade and a healer by choice..., "  "... one of a few people who brings compassion and humanity to the field of battle." My Journey of a Combat Medic is, in part, the author's story of his role as a combat medic in Desert Storm and in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. Much more than that, however,  it is a record of his personal journey from training to coming home, an eye-opening story of the arduous and demanding preparation not only to be a soldier but to become a full-fledged combat medic. It is an eyewitness account that details part of his time in the Middle East, a record of his homecoming and readjustment to regular life, including his ongoing struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). There is also a section for would-be combat medics where he offers advice based on his own personal observations and experiences.

I think I misjudged this book at first, thinking that I was about to read about the author's experiences as a combat medic, expecting it to be  about trauma suffered on the battlefield and how the author as a combat medic dealt with what he came across in the field. As the author started getting into his Army training days, it slowly dawned on me that his account was not limited solely to what had happened with him in the combat zone: this is actually the story of how a man dedicated to "compassion and humanity" came to take the road leading him to places where those two qualities are as necessary as the bandages and syringes of morphine in his medical bag. While his training and his later experiences in the field (along with open discussions of personality clashes and other issues that give the book more personal depth) make for a fascinating read, even more compelling is his treatment of coming home, especially his struggles with PTSD.  Point by point he gives an honest assessment of the components of his own PTSD as well as triggers he's come to recognize that might set it off.  He also offers some very good advice here: 

"There is a million dollar question that Joe Public likes to ask a combat veteran: have you killed
anyone? Don’'t ask a veteran if they killed anyone; that is a can of worms that does not need to be opened." (136)

I've been appalled in reading several accounts of returning soldiers that this is one of the first questions people like to ask -- as if that's all they care about.

My real issue with this book is that I think the editing/proofreading could have been a bit tighter. Sometimes it's a bit distracting for a reader when you're really into what the author is saying and up pops a poorly-edited paragraph or a typo or 2 or 3. Aarrgh.  Otherwise, I'm always amazed at other people's lives -- why they chose to do what they've done in life, what they did, and how it affected them afterward, and I was definitely not disappointed here.  Do not let the simplistic style of the narrative fool you:  there is an important story here, one which should be a welcome addition to the growing number of personal accounts from those who've returned from  serving their country during  the conflicts in the Middle East.  Unlike many of these works,  there are no literary flourishes here, it is not a book designed to question the whys or rightness/wrongness of these operations, and it is not a story that highlights every tragedy the author may have witnessed during his various tours of duty.  Any personal story is a story worth telling, especially one that takes place in a situation that no one can really understand unless you've been there.  

My thanks to Teddy Rose, for the offer to join his book tour at Premier Virtual Author Book Tours. 

*Violette Nozière: A Story of Murder in 1930s Paris

9780520206702
University of California Press, 2011
336 pp
(hardcover)

Violette Nozière was the only daughter of Germaine and Jean-Baptiste Nozière.  At age 18, in 1933, she gave her parents each a glass of water "laced with poison," killing her father and sending her mother (who only drank half) into a deep, drugged sleep.  Then she went off and bought new evening wear with money she stole from her parents and hung out with a friend at the La Coupole cafe in Montparnasse, "on the lookout for interesting encounters." While this opening sounds like a prelude to a work of historical true crime, Violette Nozière goes deeper,  examining the crime from the points of view of people living in France (especially in Paris) at this time as well as the sociocultural forces at work during  the period.  At the heart of this study is the question of justice -- in Violette's case, her motivation rests entirely on an accusation that no one at the time really wants to hear, one that actually increased public opinion against her. During this time, the crime that would cause so much sensation, as the author notes, couldn't be pigeonholed into "neat ideological packages," or "familiar scenarios," and left a great deal of uncertainty, an "ambiguity" within which the "meaning of the case for contemporaries" was to be found.  The book is interesting and provides a wealth of detail, not only about Violette and her parents, but also about changes in society as a whole during the interwar period that may have had a bearing on the case.   Looking at this period through various resources (including interviews with people who were there at the time), what the author reveals is that young women like Violette  tapped into the public's anxiety regarding changes in the roles of women, especially in terms of a class system and conventions that were rapidly changing and challenging traditional structures.   At the same time, she examines how the crime, the press coverage and the trial  led to the formation of an entirely new set of sociocultural and political questions that would a) find voice in various ideologies and b) have lasting effects even after the events were over. As the public became glued to the case, Violette came to represent "a sad and lovely ode to perversity...the inverted muse of youth, the scarred idol of a capsized world, the flower of evil of our age,"(163) a celebrity in her own right about whom even songs and poem were written.

I can't critique the author's view since I know little to nothing about this time period in France, but the book is thought provoking, well researched and filled with intricate details down to what someone at a steak house might be ordering for dinner, and it provides many points of departure for those who might want to learn more.  My issues are two: first, there are long, drawn-out discussions that while interesting, also detract from the main points of the book.  For example, the examination of the culture's fascination with crime leads to questions about "what sorts of crime and which criminals draw attention in a given period," and how "murder and mayhem" are "sold and consumed," all very interesting and relevant, but then a highly detailed investigation of the "fait divers," -- "miscellaneous happenings"  ensues, and it is about twenty pages later that we get back to the matter at hand. Iin short, I found an inconsistent quality in the writing that just sort of bothered me.  My second issue is that while I'm always happy with endnotes, there is no actual bibliography here.  There were a few times when I went to the endnotes only to find that the source had been referenced earlier, so I had to slog back through the ones preceding to find the first mention.  That is more time consuming than you might think and frankly, downright annoying.

Still, after having thought about this book, overall, I found it to be interesting and the author posits many points that reflect on our own society as well, in terms of societal/cultural change. I will say that this book is aimed at an academic audience rather than a broader public readership, so you should consider this aspect if you are considering reading it.  Otherwise, it's a good read and for the most part, the author's work is impressive.  

Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy, by Douglas Smith

9780374157616
Ferrar, Strous and Giroux, 2012
464 pp

hardcover


"One cannot help but see that we, the people of the present century, are paying for the sins of our forefathers, and particularly for the institution of serfdom with all its horrors and perversions."
                                       --- Prince Vladimir Mikhailovich Golitsyn

 Face it -- the way history is related can either be boring enough to use as a sleep aid or it can be vivid and leave a lasting impression or at the very least, a desire to go deeper and find out as much as you can about a certain topic.  Former People belongs in the second camp. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down.  For some people it might be just another dry account of something that happened in the distant past making them wonder why we should care, but for me it was a stunning chronicle of an entire group of people whose way of life came to end. That's not to say that there weren't other people in Russia whose lives weren't completely transformed or lost during this time,  and it's not to say  that anyone should care more about the nobility  any more than the lives and fates of every other living human being caught up in this maelstrom;  the last days of the aristocracy just happens to be the topic of Smith's most excellent book.  

At the center of this book are two families,  the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns.  Count Sergei Sheremetev (1844-1918) descended from a line of aristocratic nobles who were very close to Russia's imperial throne,  dating back to the 1500s.  Sergei, a devoted patriarch and  a "pillar of mindless Russian conservatism,"  firmly believed in autocratic rule and did not support the introduction of Western European institutions into his beloved Russia. He and his wife Princess Yekaterina Vyazemsky had seven children who grew up along with and were friends with the children of Nicholas II, and they had a number of servants, estate managers, governesses, valets and tutors.  Prince Vladimir Golitsyn (1847-1932), known as "the Mayor,"  could trace his family's lineage back to the 14th-century founder of Lithuania.  Much more liberal minded than Sergei Sheremetev, Vladimir was "ambivalent toward his own social class, preferring what he called 'an aristocracy of culture and intelligence, an aristocracy of lofty souls and sensitive hearts' ".   Former People takes the stories of these two families through the period of Stalin's Great Terror and examines how they (and others of their class) came to be known as "former people, " and how being determined as such affected their lives.  It also looks at how they coped -- sometimes leaving Russia altogether, but more often than not staying in their homeland and trying to rebuild their lives in order to survive. Around the stories of these two families, the author examines the historical events leading up to their downfall.

The rulers of Russia, the  "isolated islands of privilege in a sea of poverty and resentment," really never cared about the plight of the poor, and under Nicholas II, events would come to a head.   Nicholas was an inept tsar, and even a great many of the aristocrats who would attend the lavish palace balls were often horrified at how he was ruling Russia. With the Russo-Japanese war bringing defeat to Russia,  strikes by workers, revolutionary agitation, and events like Bloody Sunday in 1905 where innocent people were fired on by Nicholas' Imperial Guard, resentment that had long been simmering started to boil.  Even Nicholas' promises of reform were not enough since he was bound and determined to maintain autocratic rule.  Russia's entry into World War I was also a losing cause, once Nicholas took over as supreme commander.  In the countryside, peasants who only wanted some say and stock in the land they worked were frustrated and angry as well. Add in the strange relationship between the Imperial family and Rasputin, the economic downturn due to the war and other factors -- a revolution was pretty much inevitable, and its main targets were the privileged classes.  As the author notes,

"the violence of the February Revolution represented an attack of the masses on privileged Russia, those marked with the word burzhui, bourgeois...it was a term of scorn used for all of privileged Russia. Extremely malleable and with a long history, the term "burzhui" could denote the cultured elite, the rich, the intelligentsia, Jews, Germans, or even the revolutionaries themselves. It had nothing to do with a specific social class but stood in the eyes of the downtrodden for "the enemy" and, particularly from 1917 on, the enemy of the revolution.  The people stood in opposition to the burzhui in the sense of "us versus them" or "the masses verses the classes."  In the countryside, the peasants used the term to refer to all their enemies, especially the gentry and the monarchists."

There was also a sense that with revolution came freedom, but only for the "poor and the marginalized."  Anyone who might be viewed as trying  to limit this newly-found freedom was an enemy of not only the revolution, but the of "the people" as well.  A number of aristocrats were arrested, many of their estates were taken over by the poor or by the Bolsheviks, and even members of the privileged classes who were sympathetic to the promises of the revolution were considered enemies. House searches were common occurrences as were multiple arrests and even executions stemming from baseless charges. As Trotsky noted later, " There is nothing immoral in the proletariat finishing off a class that is collapsing; that is its right."

As the Revolution moved on into a civil war, as Lenin died and Stalin took his place, as Stalin cemented his leadership through purges and other repressive measures,  Former People follows the fates of the Sheremetevs, the Golitsyns and other "former people" in their efforts to survive and to come to terms with their new lives.  While the aristocrats are the main area of study here, the author makes it very clear that they  were certainly not the only people who suffered, especially under Stalin.  Concentration camps arose, large numbers of  the workers and peasants who had earlier been active in supporting the Revolution now found themselves victims of a ruthless regime and were brutalized, starved, put into prison, executed or simply vanished.

There's obviously much more to this story than I've mentioned here -- Lenin's own (ignored) background from the nobility;  the unofficial countryside wanderers who helped fuel the flames of already-existing resentment among the peasant class; the heist of the century where the Bolsheviks looted banks, the treasury and private art collections; a more in-depth look at the Russian civil war, revolutionaries and later officials who often helped others escape fates that could have been much worse than they were -- there's a wealth of information in this book that tells the story of the end of one era opening into another.   These stories are all related in a way that puts human faces on tragedy, never verging into a boring account.   Using a wide variety of primary sources including diaries kept at the time,  along with secondary works, the author has put together this amazing and fascinating book that is literally impossible to set aside.  There are family trees of the Sheremetevs and Golitsyns that are helpful; I copied them so I wouldn't have to keep flipping back and forth each time I needed them as a reference.   It is a fantastic book that will appeal to people who have any amount of interest in this time period and I most highly recommend it.  And perhaps while it's easy to feel that the aristocrats brought a lot of their future woes on themselves,  and that their fate as a class only scratches the surface of  the suffering that people endured under  the Romanovs and the Soviets,  it's also difficult not to feel sorry for them as human beings along with the millions of others who lost lives and loved ones in this tumultuous time period.

The Boy Kings of Texas: A Memoir, by Domingo Martinez

9780762779192
Lyons Press/Globe Pequot Press, 2012
441 pp

paper

"Yo sé bien que estoy afuera ..."

-- José Alfredo Jiménez (from "El Rey")

 The above song, translated and quoted in its entirety in the prologue of this book, was, according to author Domingo Martinez,  "an unofficial anthem for the Mexican farming class in the 1970s and 1980s, a song which was popular on the Texas/Mexico border, and "the paean of machismo, the topographical map of the rural Mexican male's emotional processing." The song was "the source code" for all that Martinez, who himself was always on the outside (afuera),  was hoping to escape -- a long list of ills, all "wrapped in a deep, all-consuming appeal to be accepted, protected by an ever-ready defensive, fighting posture." 

The Boy Kings of Texas is its author's first book, and was nominated for this year's National Book Award for nonfiction. It  captures Martinez's experiences growing up in Brownsville, Texas in the 1970s and 1980s,  then goes on to his life after leaving Brownsville.  The author details his upbringing in a family in this border town where cultures can't help but collide, and where the ever-present culture of machismo -- which in Martinez's case isn't limited just to the males in his family  -- came to have a huge impact on his life. Later, as an adult,  this would be most evident in his relationship with his brother Dan, who, as the oldest, was brought up to be the main 'boy-king' in charge of protecting the family's honor as well as his siblings.   What is striking is not only the book's unflinching honesty and its rawness, but also the way in which Martinez tries to understand what lies underneath the way he and his brothers and sisters were raised.  His story goes back in time to when his grandmother was young, then into his father's childhood where he too was raised to be a "boy king" and how place, circumstance and culture helped to shape his mom and dad as individuals and as parents.  As he weaves their stories into the picture, Martinez also adds some heartbreaking, but often funny tales of his childhood and adolescence, where he realized pretty early on that he didn't exactly feel like he fit into the macho world of the barrio, an acknowledgment that would follow him throughout his life.

Unlike most memoirs or autobiographies, Boy Kings of Texas is not a straight point A to point B account of his life; it tends to read like a series of short stories that move around in time. Sometimes the author starts out with a thought,  is then reminded of something else, and then moves backward or forward eventually getting back to where he started. The book's pages are filled with multiple fights that see blood being drawn,  but the violence is somewhat tempered by his insights, with his sometimes funny anecdotes, and by his affection toward his extended family that is there even as he's presenting his readers with their faults.

While it's obvious that Martinez is a fine writer, there are plenty of times where the book sort of drags as you wait for him to get back to finish up his tangential discussions and return to the main thrust of whatever it was he was talking originally talking about.  He has this habit of taking a roundabout way of getting to things much like he's sitting across from you telling you a story, and has to throw something else in to explain what he's eventually going to tell you.  I was well into the first 100 pages or so before I became comfortable with his storytelling style, so it does take a bit of getting used to.   Also, while the story is set squarely in the barrio, its surrounding environs or even across the border in Mexico, it's energetic, crazy, and really filled with life, but once he moves to Seattle, it's much less vibrant. In Brownsville Martinez lives in a world that readers like myself who didn't grow up there have likely never experienced and that's part of the allure of the book.

I liked it with only a few reservations, and although the reader reviews seem mainly positive, I seemed to have enjoyed it much more than a number of readers did.  I've seen a quite a few reader reviews calling it "whiny," and one Amazon reader seems to have missed the point of the book altogether slamming Martinez for writing about his family trying to be white.  Well, let me say this: Boy Kings of Texas didn't at all come across as whiny to me; and while there is quite a lot of airing his family's linen in public, that's not the overall thrust of this book.   If you don't want to read about fights (another complaint that probably lowered the book's star rating for some people) or drugs or about a hardscrabble life of wearing hand me downs or about growing up in the barrio, then obviously this one isn't for you. If you want something very different with a lot of color, and you're at all interested in a unique way of life, then give it a try. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested; I mean, seriously ... everyone's got a story to tell and this one is not only engrossing but entertaining as well.

The Boys of '67: Charlie Company's War in Vietnam, by Andrew Wiest

9781780962023
Osprey Publishing, 2012
376 pp

(ARC from the publisher -- Thank you!!!)

I have been forever fascinated  with the Vietnam War -- most especially with the politics and behind-the-scene machinations behind America's involvement, but also with the growth and outright explosion of US opposition to the war, and the aftermath, as the soldiers came home, or did not.  But what really gets to me are the compelling stories of the people who were actually there.  The Boys of '67 briefly but powerfully examines the lives of a group of men from Charlie Company in the US Army's 9th Infantry Division -- from the time they received their greetings from Uncle Sam through their individual returns home and beyond.  It is a fine addition to the already-existing collection of personal histories of the war, focusing largely on the special bonds forged between these former strangers throughout their year in Vietnam.

The book is the result of  author interviews with several surviving members of Charlie Company, as well as their families and the families of some of those who went to Vietnam and never returned.   Wiest begins with the men themselves, talking about the lives they led prior to their time in the army, so that by the time these boys go off to boot camp, the reader is already somewhat familiar with them as real people.  Basic training at Fort Riley brought these men from different backgrounds together, and they were kept together by a decision  made by the powers that be.  Rather than taking the normal route, where the men went through basic training and then specialized advanced individual training (AIT) and afterwards were sent off to different units, the officers in charge realized that in keeping these men together, 

"They would know the men intimately—understanding their strengths, weaknesses, and foibles. Not only would the experience weld those men into a cohesive group of soldiers but also it would form a strong bond between the units’ officers, non-commissioned officers, and the ranks, forging a common brotherhood of war unique in the Vietnam era."

Arriving in Vietnam, the men of Charlie Company went on to prove command's assumptions to be correct.  They became a first-class fighting force, proving their mettle when caught up in horrifying and often surreal situations in the Mekong jungles, and they also became a very tight-knit group of friends bordering on family. They also showed concern for the welfare of the locals, especially the children.  But during their missions, documented by the author,, the inevitable casualties began to take their toll on the group. In the field, they would lose friends; as time went by and  the situation got worse, they would begin to question why they were even there.  As one soldier wrote to his parents, 

"My radioman died of the head wound he got on the 29th of July (he was shot by a sniper as I stood about 18 inches from him), another friend of mine lost one leg below the knee to a booby trap, and one of my men, who his from Minneapolis, lost an eye.  Every time one of our men gets hurt or killed I wonder a little more whether or not this country is worth it. Being in the infantry is the best way to become a pacifist.  I suppose that if I were not so close, so personally involved in the war, I would have no doubts about it all; but from where I stand the view is a little different. Men I have lived with for a year and a quarter are not easy to lose. It is difficult to keep working when a friend dies. I've been on the line since 18 January, and I've seen enough..."

As more men died, replacements would be rotated in, but as the author notes, it was tough for these new guys to fit in well with Charlie Company.  Emotionally, the boys of '67 couldn't take getting close to them because of the losses they'd already suffered, and they found that they couldn't talk about losing their friends to relative strangers.

As the men began to return home, they discovered that the America they left wasn't the same America to which they were returning.  They were shocked and stymied by the protestors at the airports and adjusting to life after what they'd been through in Vietnam was proving more difficult than they realized.  One man wrote to his wife while recuperating from wounds in Japan that she should "see all the scars I am going to have," referring to the ones from the battlefield and subsequent operations, but as it turns out, their experiences left scars on the soldiers' psyches as well. While the men went through their own postwar hells, the wives and girls left behind also suffered as their men dealt with their post-traumatic stress, unable to put into words exactly what they were feeling.  As some of the remaining Company members began to make contact with others, they realized that their experiences could only be understood and shared with each other because they were there and knew what they had all gone through.

The personal accounts of these men or their surviving families  -- the letters, the interviews, etc., -- are what make this book.  The author presents these people not only as the fine soldiers they were, but also as human beings who suffered from serious psychological trauma both in Vietnam and afterwards. While highly personal, there is also insight into just what types of situations these men faced there via several accounts of the battles they fought, complete with tactical maps that give the reader a harrowing visual perspective on what these soldiers faced during their missions.

The Boys of '67 is emotionally powerful and if you're at all interested in the Vietnam war and its personal aftermath  from the points of view of the soldiers who were there, this would be a great reading choice.  Definitely recommended.

-- I purchased a regular copy of this book for my library;  if you would like this ARC, and you live in the US, I'll be happy to pass this one along and I'll pay postage.  Just be the first to leave a comment that you'd like the book.
 

Lost Antarctica: Adventures in a Disappearing Land, by James McClintock

9780230112452
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012
256 pp
(arc from the publisher -- a huge thank you!)

 James McClintock, Professor of Polar and Marine Biology at the University of Alabama, Birmingham,  is a scientist with thirteen research expeditions to Antarctica under his belt.  His research interests lie in "invertebrate chemical ecology, reproduction, nutrition and physiology, particularly in marine invertebrates," according to his website at UAB.   His book offers readers brief glimpses into the various types of research that are going on in Antarctica, some of his own experiences while working there, and a number of observations he has made over the course of several years, most importantly the  "ecological impacts of rapid climate change on the marine life of the Antarctic Peninsula," which, as he notes,  are "inseparably linked with the environment and geography."  In Lost Antarctica, Dr. McClintock simultaneously presents some of the wonders he's discovered in working on this continent  and provides a very readable, easily understandable narrative about the present realities and possible future effects of climate change.

While engaging in some personal anecdotes about working in Antarctica from time to time, his primary focus is on the connections among life down there and the change in climate.  For example, he notes how receding sea ice is playing havoc with the Adélie penguins, who depend on the ice as a platform for catching krill.  As the ice recedes, the Adélies have to go farther offshore to find their food, causing them to have to expend much greater amounts of  necessary energy to do so.  The warm temperatures and humidity that comes with warmer air also causes unseasonable snowstorms which bury the penguins and worse -- when the snow melts, the runoff often drowns the eggs, causing a substantial drop in numbers in the overall Adélie population.

 And then there are the king crabs who are moving closer to the shelf up the Antarctic slope.  While there have been king crabs living in the deep-sea regions of Antarctica, as the climate  warms, they are moving into an area where much of the marine life has faced little threat from invading predators.   He also discusses the potential impact of the ice melt and the acidification of the ocean, all written in a very straightforward way so that the reader doesn't have to be familiar with or have to tackle scientific jargon to understand what he's trying to say.  

McClintock notes that his observations in Antarctica have served as a "wake-up call to a rapidly changing climate."  He notes that by the end of the century, the disappearance of the sea ice of the central and northern areas of the western Antarctic peninsula will lead to the disappearance of the Adélies and krill, the food on which so many species are dependent, will be gone as well.  The "seafloor organisms" will be in jeopardy from the crab invasions and the acidification of the oceans.  The chemicals that are these creatures' first line of defense will also be affected negatively, which could  mean a loss of  biomedical research potential in treatment of diseases. 

Lost Antarctica is an interesting look at Antarctica and the work that is going on down there; it's also a fine introduction to the hazards of rapid climate change. Sadly, I think that although it's quite good, it's going to be another example of preaching to the choir.  If you're already on the skeptic side of the global-warming fence, it may not change your mind,  but if you're one of those people who want to skip the heavily-jargoned and technical stuff and get right to the point of the potential effects, this book is a great place to start.

ps/I am buying a hardcover copy to keep for my home library; if someone in the US would like this ARC, I'll be happy to send it to you! Just be the first to comment below stating you'd like the book. I'll pay postage.

Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace, by Kate Summerscale

9781608199136
Bloomsbury USA, 2012
303 pp
hardcover

Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace is written by Kate Summerscale, whose book The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher  provided me with hours of entertainment.   It dealt with a Victorian-era detective involved in the famous case of Constance Kent, who was accused of murdering her young stepbrother in 1860.   Remaining in the Victorian period, the author takes on another case that made the headlines back in the day and caused a huge and scandalous stir -- the case of Isabella Robinson, whose husband discovered and read her private diary and then sued for divorce on the grounds of adultery on the basis of its contents.  The diary, the ensuing trial and Isabella's inner turmoil are discussed in depth, as are changes in Victorian England that are starting to challenge the period's status quo.  The book is also filled with details that fill in what's going on outside of Isabella's life and her trial. It's a good read, but sometimes the details are a bit too thick when you want to get back to the meat of the book and the author's analysis.

Isabella Robinson grew up in a well-to-do family.  She was born in 1813, married young and had her first child before she lost her first husband in 1842.  Two years later, she married Henry Oliver Robinson, a businessman with whom she had two more children. Henry and Isabella lived well; before moving to Edinburgh they lived in Blackheath Park; Henry's business prospered and by marrying Isabella, he also gained money her father had settled on her.  But Isabella was not happy -- Henry was away a lot on business and  he also had a number of extra-marital affairs, and Isabella came to believe that Henry wanted her only because of her money.    In 1849, Isabella started keeping a diary, her "friend in loneliness and in sickness, a companion and confidant." She

"used her journal as a place in which to confess her weakness, her sadness and her sins. In its pages she audited her behavior and her thoughts; she grappled with her errors and tried to plot out a path to virtue."

But as it turns out, the story that took shape in her diary, "a serial in daily parts, in which she was the wronged and desperate heroine,"  turned out to be her undoing and the seeds of her own disgrace.  It was there where her unfulfilled romantic and sexual needs would be reworked and translated into passionate, flowery prose just like one would see in a romance novel of the time, as she set down her accounts of her strong attachments to and romantic involvements with various men.  Her record of her time together with Dr. Edward Lane at first consisted of innocent details about the two families and her trips to his hydrotherapy establishment. Then she started writing down descriptions of the first instances of mutual attraction between them,  their clandestine meetings, and the first kiss when suddenly  “something extraordinary happened: the fantasies that Isabella had nurtured in her diary crossed into life.”  Isabella also documented a possible sexual encounter with Lane, when she writes that “I rested among the dry fern. I shall not state what followed.”  Unfortunately for Isabella, while she was sick one day, Henry found her diaries, along with other papers Isabella had held on to, became furious,  and in 1857, he and Isabella were legally separated.  England's laws were changing, so that now it was becoming easier to obtain a full divorce; by 1858 Henry filed for his own divorce from Isabella, wanting nothing less than Isabella's complete ruin.   He would keep the two children from their marriage as well as the money; Isabella would have to fend for herself.  But first, he had to go to court.

During the somewhat complicated legal proceedings, Lane, of course, denied everything, citing Isabella's words as “a tissue of romances from beginning to end."   Isabella's own lawyers came up with the defense that  that their client was suffering from some sort of uterine sickness that was linked to nymphomania, causing her to write down what virtually amounted to romantic and sexual fantasies to use later.   How degrading --  at the time, many doctors believed that masturbation was the "chief symptom" of nymphomania, and that the scenes in her diary were written for the purpose of personal gratification.  The author notes that

"The medical witnesses in the Divorce Court suggested that Isabella had become mired in a circle of desire and excitement, recorded and created by her diary: her lascivious thoughts, translated to paper, took on an apparent reality that gratified her erotic impulses."

Not only did Isabella have to sit through this testimony day after day and have her space and personal life invaded by the reading of her private journals, noting 

 “That men, mere strangers, no ways authorised, should have considered themselves at liberty to pry into, to peruse, to censure, to select from, my private writings, with curious, unchivalrous, ignoble hands, I cannot understand,"

but the newspapers had a field day reporting some of the excerpts from Isabella's diary as they were read aloud in court, with only a few reprieves:  sometimes the court was cleared of women and reporters when the day's topics were deemed as too delicate or too indecent.  And after all of the legal proceedings were completed, after the trial and  Isabella's private thoughts dragged her through the very public mud, Robinson failed to get his divorce. Their marriage, however, would end some years later, interestingly enough when Isabella was caught in the act with one of her children's former tutors. 

While Isabella's story is fascinating, the book works on different levels. First, the diary reveals Isabella's inner turmoil as a middle-aged, married woman, desirous for any male affection, but with little or no accepted outlets for expression of her sexuality.  At the same time, the author explores a changing Victorian period, one where traditional ideas and established conventions were being challenged.   For example,  the changes to the existing  divorce law started in 1858 when the secular divorce court was established.  This change made divorce easier for the middle classes to obtain, and as the author states, Henry Robinson's divorce was one of 302 cases to go before the court within the first fifteen months.  Out of those cases, only six were denied, including Robinson's.

I got really involved in Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace -- the author has done an amazing amount of research, all duly footnoted.  Not only does she present Isabella's court case in the context of a changing society, but she takes the time to establish the lives of the major players, going into deep background, for example, with Dr. Lane's family and their relationship to the Robinsons.  There's also a bit of a who's who with people like Charles Darwin, whose own work was also upsetting the established scientific and religious applecarts, causing him a great deal of stress that had to be relieved with the new practice of hydrotherapy.  And the revelation that Isabella was caught with one of her children's old tutors made me wonder if in fact, there may have been some measure of truth in her diaries. Seriously, one of the things that kept turning over in my head the entire time was the question of "did she or didn't she?"  The double standard that existed for men and women is also a topic of discussion that pervades this book.  Aside from the positives, however, there is so much detail embedded in the book that there's a great temptation to skim, and I must admit I did this in a few places, especially in places where so much background started to feel a bit boggy.  And as much as I liked this book, it wasn't as personally appealing to me as her Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, which I think was the better of the two. 

All the same, I'd definitely recommend it if Victorian history is your thing; I'd recommend it to readers who are interested in women's history as well. Overall I found it to be a good book, a bit weighted down with an abundance of detail but still very interesting.