Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovály

9780841913776
Holmes & Meier, 1997
originally published 1973 as Na vlastní kůži
translated by Franci Epstein and Helen Epstein, "with the author"
192 pp

paperback

Finding this book was a stroke of luck, actually.  After having read Kovály's novel Innocence; or Murder on Steep Street (Soho, June 2015), I realized that the crime component of that book wasn't the entire story there.  The time, the place, and the people are what really stuck out for me, and it hit me that the story going on all around the mystery was much more important than the crime itself. I decided that I absolutely had to know more about this woman, and bought this book. What better place could there be to find out what motivated her than her own memoirs?  Under a Cruel Star is a short but very powerful book, one that you won't forget after you've finished it. It is a story of a woman who managed to survive during two extremely repressive regimes; it is also an examination of human nature and the moral choices people make under these circumstances.

Kovály's memoir covers a span of time from 1941 to 1968.  The author found herself part of the  "mass deportation" of the Jews from Prague that began in 1941, where, along with her family, she was sent to the Łódź ghetto.  They joined "close to one hundred thousand Polish Jews living in unimaginable conditions," but  Kovály found herself transported to Auschwitz before the end of the war and taken to do labor at another work camp.  As the Russian troops were advancing and were "so close to our camp that we could hear the rumbling of battle," the Nazis evacuated the camp, making the prisoners walk under heavy guard from Poland into Germany.  During this journey, the author and a small group of women decided to make a break for freedom and made it back to the Czech border.  Upon arriving in Prague, she discovered that trying to find food and shelter, even from friends, was not an easy task. Even her very best friend who had promised her family that he would do anything he could for them, reacts with horror when she knocks on his door.  After asking her what sense it would make "to risk one life for another," he admits that he's driven by fear -- after all, on the streets, columns were posted with lists of names who had been "executed for crimes against the Reich," which often meant entire families had been killed for trying to help, as she writes, "someone like me." Luckily, Kovály was taken in and helped by the Resistance up until the end of the war, when it was safe to return from hiding. During this time she married her husband Rudolf.

Yet, as she writes,  survivors were always not welcomed home with opened arms -- they'd often find themselves coming back to no home, or to trusted friends who'd kept their property and who now denied anything had been left with them.  Even worse, when they tried to get legal help, they were often scorned:

"It would also happen that a survivor might need a lawyer to retrieve lost documents and he would remember the name of one who had once represented large Jewish companies. He would go to see him and sit in an empire chair in the corner of an elegant waiting room, enjoying all that good taste and luxury, watching pretty secretaries rushing about. Until one of the pretty girls forgot to close a door behind her, and the lawyer's sonorous voice would boom through the crack, 'You would have thought we'd be rid of them finally, but no, they're impossible to kill off -- not even Hitler could manage it. Every day there're more of them crawling back, like rats..."

The survivors -- the Jews, partisans, returning political prisoners -- also had to contend with black marketeers and former collaborators who turned the Nazi defeat to their own advantage. Bureaucracies forced the returnees to jump through near-impossible hoops to get their lives going again.   Kovaly notes that she didn't find it surprising that people would turn to Communism, due to the "sheer despair over human nature which showed itself at its very worst after the war." Other factors (including the failure of prewar democratic ideals, the forsaking of the country by Western Allies, and the liberation of Prague by the USSR, plus blatant lies of citizens who'd lived in the Soviet Union) helped to set the stage for the rise of Communism in Czechoslovakia.  The author also states that "the most eagerly embraced belief of the time was that no national or racial oppression could exist under Communism."  While true that not everyone joined the Communist Party, Heda and her then husband Rudolf Margolius did, buying into the idea that building socialism would result in "peace, in an industrially-advanced country, with an intelligent, well-educated population."  But, as she goes on to explain, by the early 1950s these ideals had been largely forgotten and things had decidely turned for the worse, even though her husband had a high-level position in the new government. Arrests were being made under the "direct guidance of Soviet advisors whose task it was to purge the ranks;" ironically, as she says, those who had never joined the Party actually enjoyed a "temporary respite." Her husband, sadly, became a victim of the purges, despite his high Ministry position, he was arrested and eventually  executed as part of the Slanksy affair which resulted in other arrests, a series of show trials,  and state-ordered executions in 1952.

The bulk of this book is in how Heda survived after her husband's arrest, his official ouster from the Party, and his death. For her, it was a time in which she lost everything but her son.  Her name was enough to deny her even the most basic necessities -- for example,  once while at death's door she was turned out of a hospital when they discovered who she was. Her work was terminated and she was left wondering how to make ends meet. Only a few brave people would continue to even associate with her and even some of her son's friends were no longer allowed to play with him. She spares nothing in describing how all-encompassing life under the Communists could be -- the regime reached down into every aspect of life, controlling seemingly ordinary people through brutality and fear. Ironically, while the average citizen on the street finds his or her life sliding into chaos, the powers-that-be led altogether different lifestyles.  Her account ends with a brief Prague Spring under 1968 before the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia; she herself left the country shortly afterwards.

There were times while I read this book that I was appalled, but quite frankly, there were times when I could seriously understand why some people made the choices that they did. While Under a Cruel Star is a very personal story, it can also be seen as an exploration of human nature under the most arduous and extreme conditions.   You can also read it as an understanding of how the best of idealistic intentions can often result in a nightmare.  It is also a study in the effects of totalitarianism on everyday, average people who, because of the need  to survive in an atmosphere of complete fear, often feel compelled to choose self-interest over the welfare of  fellow human beings,  keeping their heads down and getting on with their lives. Thankfully, there were others who chose not to go that route, or the author and countless others like her might never have survived.  I don't often read memoirs but as difficult as this one was to get through at times, I'm very happy I did. Highly recommended.

coming soon to a bookstore near you: Shocking Paris: Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse, by Stanley Meisler

9781137278807
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015
238 pp

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

Shocking Paris, according to the author Stanley Meisler, a "story of the foreign-born immigrant painters in Paris in the 1920s and the 1930," who collectively became known as The School of Paris -- "not a school or a movement in the usual sense ...simply a phenomenon of history."  He also notes that the story of the School of Paris is

"part of a much greater story of mass migration from the Russian empire because of religious persecution, political oppression and economic hardship." 

Meisler discusses the School of Paris artists both individually and as a whole.  As a group he states that

"The artists of the School of Paris came to France in a mass and rare migration, honed their art in the schools and museums of France, ignored the styles of French painters as young as themselves and produced a host of exciting and unique works of art. A good deal of great art would have been lost if they had come to Paris and did nothing more than mimic the bland work of young French painters."

--  individually, he looks at artists such as Modigliani, Chagall, and Jules Pacsin.  But the "key artist" in this group, the man who gets the bulk of the attention here, is  Chaim Soutine.  This may be because when Meisler graduated from college in the early 1950s, he discovered a family connection to the artist, and as he notes, whenever he saw a Soutine painting in a museum afterwards, he gave it extra notice. The anti-social, anti-hygienic, often downright bizarre artist most definitely has an interesting story, especially once his work was discovered and people started trying to acquire his paintings and he literally went from rags to riches.  And while Soutine's life and work is definitely the main thrust of this book,  Shocking Paris also reveals much more:  a brief examination of Russia and the anti-Semitic policies that drove many artists to find a haven in France, a look at forces inside Jewish orthodoxy that also had an impact on some artists' emigration to Paris, a look at the changing art scene that had moved from Montmartre to Montparnasse, French anti-Semitism, the effects of outside forces (the Depression, or luck in finding a patron to support one's work) that had the potential to make or break an artist's career and set up rivalries among the artists, and then there's the exploration of the Nazi occupation of France that sent huge numbers of foreign-born Jews to the camps and sent some of the artists in this book into hiding. Moving chronologically through 20th-century French history, he intertwines these outside events with the stories of some of the artists of the Paris School, although I've already said, it is Soutine's work and life that is the main thrust of the book, so perhaps the title is a bit misleading.

Personally speaking, if he had just made this book about Soutine, it would be much more reflective of what Meisler's actually accomplished here than what the title makes the reader think is going to be in this book.  Even the paintings by artists of the Paris School he's chosen to illustrate this book are dominated by Soutine's works, and his "Aftermath" chapter is given largely over to discussions about Soutine.  At the same time, Soutine's life was anything but dull and makes for really good reading -- especially his life in hiding after the Nazi occupation.   As part of his focus on this artist, Meisler also points out the problems with trying to get a handle on the man from the biographical standpoint, and even from criticism of his works. For example, he notes how Jewish critics have come up with some "convoluted theses" about him by looking for Jewish content that isn't reflected in his work.

When all is said and done, the book is very reader friendly, interesting from an historical standpoint, and even if the reader knows absolutely nothing about the School of Paris or any of the artists that composed this group, Meisler makes the information accessible and interesting from the standpoint of human interest.  However, the focus on Soutine, while incredibly interesting, detracts a bit from what is seemingly implied by the title.  Still, I would definitely recommend it to anyone who may have an interest in the topic -- even though it's a bit top heavy on the Soutine side, it's still a good introduction to the Montparnasse art scene and the history of the time that helped to shape this group of incredible artists.

Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, by Jill Leovy

9780385529983
Spiegel and Grau, 2015
366 pp

"There were pictures of three colored men wanted in Mississippi for murder. That meant they had killed a white man because killing a colored man wasn't considered murder in Mississippi."  

-- Chester Himes, A Rage in Harlem, 36

hardcover

The above quotation is something I happened to come upon recently in my reading, and it feels more than appropriate in connection with Jill Leovy's Ghettoside.   Ms. Leovy reveals in her book that African-American men have been "the nation's number one crime victims," only six percent of the population, but a staggering "40 percent of those murdered."  Her book focuses on the area of Los Angeles formerly known as South Central; more specifically, she zooms in on the Watts area, and part of her thesis is that more often than not, "the idea that murders of blacks somehow didn't count."  "Black-on-black" murders in Watts are rarely reported since the media prefers to focus on "the spectacles" -- "mass shootings, celebrity murders" etc.; in the recent past, the police would even report these kinds of killings as "NHI - No Human Involved."  Ms. Leovy's book reveals that despite popular opinion, the victims in this neighborhood weren't just druggies, gang members or people from dysfunctional families -- a number of innocent people from good families, with no history of breaking the law or gang membership also found themselves too often caught up in the violence that plagues this area.  She believes that for the most part, the LAPD failed in its job to keep these people safe; she cites a number of factors that underscore her idea that the scarcity of resources (including policemen that actually care about the people in the community they're supposed to watch over)  that should be afforded to these neighborhoods and to the law-abiding people who live there is, in fact, one of the factors that actually helped to perpetuate the violence, leading to the rise in gang-administered "justice."   As she notes, "The system's failure to catch killers effectively made black lives cheap," and the failure of the system to "respond vigorously to violent injury and death" paved the way for homicide to become "endemic."

 In examining the epidemic of violence that plagued Watts, she focuses on the case of Bryant Tennelle, an innocent, non-gang affiliated African-American and the youngest child of the family.  Bryant's father was a detective out of Robbery and Homicide, and he had made the decision years earlier to raise his family in the area. He had a nice home, nice neighbors, and the people there felt some measure of safety knowing that there was a cop in their midst.  His decision to live there contrasts the choice of many LAPD officers who opted to live in more distant neighborhoods or out of Los Angeles completely, for example in Simi Valley (where I used to live, and where there's an LA cop in every neighborhood).  Ms. Leovy's in-depth examination of all facets of the investigation into Tennelle's death reveals a multitude of problems not only in the context of the community (the crisscrossing of  rival gang territories, reluctant witnesses, etc), but also the problems in the LAPD -- unconcerned, unmotivated policemen,  the lack of resources (especially desperately needed overtime to tackle the sheer volume of cases still unsolved as well as those ongoing), problems in finding and training just the right people to work in the neighborhood ... and this list goes on.  Ms. Leovy also reveals that in fact there are those rare individuals who actually care -- and will go to great lengths not only to solve their cases, but also to help people when they can. One of these people is John Skaggs, "the antidote" who refused to believe that any life was cheap -- and went well out of his way to provide some measure of justice for the victims' families, and in the case of Tennelle's death, protection and help for the witnesses.

Jill Leovy has walked these streets for years; she was also embedded at the Seventy-seventh Division of the LAPD -- and in 2006, she started "The Homicide Report" at the website of the Los Angeles Times,  an attempt at providing  a "comprehensive, day-by-day accounting of every homicide in the county." When she started working on her book in 2008, she embedded herself yet again, accompanying the detectives of the Southeast Bureau as they made their way to "crime scenes, court hearing and interviews;" she also spent evenings and weekends with the families of victims, attending funerals and just walking the streets.

This book's publication coincides with recent events that have raised awareness of racism and the abuse of police powers, especially in connection with African-American communities.  It is an issue that is (I feel) of immediate concern and one which has crucial implications for everyone in this country. Not everyone will agree with Ms. Leovy's idea that more policing is necessary in neighborhoods with the highest crime rates; not every cop has the potential to be another John Skaggs or his devoted/caring colleagues in the LAPD.  In fact, while I was researching Ms. Leovy and her work on "The Homicide Report," I came across an article relating an "open letter" to the Madison, WI, police chief from the Young Gifted and Black Coalition calling for NO policing in their communities in the county:

"Our ultimate goal is to be able to hold our own communities accountable and to expel what we consider an occupying force in our neighborhoods. Our people need opportunities for self-determination, not policing."

Ghettoside has indeed been an eye-opener of a book, and while I don't agree with everything Ms. Leovy says here, the biggest idea that every reader of this book ought to come away with is that discounting or ignoring the violent deaths of African-Americans -- just because they're living in troubled communities and because they're not white --  under any circumstances is just wrong and should absolutely not be tolerated.   Discounting or ignoring the problems that affect lives in these communities  is also untenable.  Obviously, this is not a new problem that is limited to the neighborhoods in South Central in modern times; the quotation I started with shows that in 1957, writer Chester Himes was aware that black lives had no value as opposed to the lives of white people, and this attitude has been perpetuated (especially in the context of the criminal justice system)  from the beginning of our nation's history.   That's the real problem -- an even bigger one is how to solve it.

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. 

Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram, by Charles W. Johnson

9781611683967
ForeEdge, 2014
348 pp

hardcover

my copy from the publishers and the awesome people at Librarything's Early Reviewers program

Of all possible fields of history from which to choose, polar exploration in its heyday is my favorite subject. When I was a kid I was fascinated with explorers and would spend hours upon hours reading about them. In the realm of polar expeditions, I got my start reading Roland Huntford's The Last Place on Earth, a true account of about the rush to the South Pole, and what turned out to be a race between Amundsen and Scott to plant their respective country's flag. It was in that book where I first heard about the Fram and about Fridtjov Nansen, and I remember being quite impressed that Nansen had such foresight in building the perfect ship. In this current book, author Charles W. Johnson provides not only a look at Amundsen's expedition in the Fram, but also at the two other epic expeditions of the ship, its creation, the men who called it home for years on end, and its eventual fate. 

Regular readers engaged in histories of polar exploration who are already familiar with Fram's voyages will still find plenty to like about this book. The author picks up on some things Nansen glossed over in his Farthest North, the record of his voyage on the Fram. There are a number of original photographs as well as maps that the reader can reference. Interestingly, it was an article about a few remnants of the USS Jeannette expedition (the subject of Hampton Sides' current book In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette and a great read, by the way) that somehow ended up in a place far, far away from where they should have been that got things going for Nansen. An article written about the finds prompted another article by a Norwegian scientist studying polar currents. His article in turn caught Nansen's eye and after much scientific study, Nansen decided to build a "special ship" that could weather being frozen into pack ice. The idea was that the ship and its crew would be "carried by the same currents that carried the Jeanette's remains over the pole." As the author notes, the ship was to be a sort of "driftwood, of an extraordinary kind." With much careful planning, the Fram was born -- and she was to see two more major expeditions in her lifetime. Not only does the author detail these expeditions and the people who were involved, he also examines what else was going on in the field of polar exploration, north and south, at the time. So the reader ends up with a kind of general but not overwhelming or overdetailed history, also making it perfect for anyone with even just an interest in the field of polar exploration during the period which the author calls "the height of polar fever." 

Granted, there are probably people who will take a look at this title and think that a book about a ship has just got to be duller than dishwater, but there's way more than just the ship under discussion here. It's a wonderful book, and by the way, the hardcover copy is beautiful and would make a great gift to someone who is interested in the subject.

Thank you to the publisher, and thank you to Librarything's ER program!