The Girls Of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II, by Denise Kiernan

9781451617528
Touchstone, 2013
371 pp

hardcover

If you are at all interested in women's history or in the history of America's nuclear program, The Girls of Atomic City should be one of those books that gets added on to and then moved up to the top of your tbr pile.  It is one of the most thought-provoking nonfiction books I've read in a long time.

Pretty much everyone knows the iconic figure of Rosie the Riveter, who symbolized the women helping out the war effort during World War II.  When the men went overseas, many of the women left behind were called on to do jobs previously done by men, and their work amped up production lines to keep the war going.   The Girls of Atomic City explores some of the women who also kept things going in a project located  in a facility in what is now Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one that was geared toward putting an end to the war.

 The women were trained to do only very specific tasks without understanding the overall project that their labors helped to create.  They were not allowed to talk about their work, nor were they allowed to question anything, and they never knew who might report them if they did.  The project was so secret that wives couldn't talk to husbands about their work, dating couples couldn't discuss their jobs, workers couldn't talk to families or friends on the outside, and  violations of that rule often ended up with people simply disappearing, never to be heard from or seen ever again.    The women, along with the majority of men working at Oak Ridge, had no clue at all that everything they did helped to contribute to the production of the atomic bomb that was used first in Hiroshima, and then Nagasaki.  It was only when the bombs were dropped that the news was released, and people finally realized what it was they'd been working on.  In The Girls of Atomic City, the author examines the personal and professional lives of some of the women who called Oak Ridge home for the duration.  It can get a little boggy sometimes with too much detail, and in some cases doesn't seem to go far enough in terms of questions that weren't asked, but despite these flaws, an overall look at the big picture makes this a history well worth reading. It also made me wonder whether or not something like an Oak Ridge might be possible today in terms of the sheer amount of secrecy involved, but that's a point I'll take up later.  The book is definitely thought provoking and also provides a look inside the America of the WWII years.

Across eastern Tennessee, residents in 1942 found themselves having to move away from their homes, their farms and their land, much of which had been in families for generations.  The US Government needed the multi-thousand acres of  space for construction of  a facility for enriching uranium, a project so secret that all but a handful of  people who eventually came to work there had no idea of what all of their work was for.  The place was known as the Clinton Engineering Works (CEW) , a place staffed mainly by women since men were off doing their part in the war.  That's not to say that there were no men there, but a lot of the women working at CEW were attracted to the idea that they would be contributing to bringing their men  home safely and sooner.  They were also urged to take the jobs because of the money they'd be making, and for some, it was a chance to get away from home and do something entirely new.  The book also examines how some of these women made the best of living their lives despite the crappy housing, the mud and the restrictions placed on them as women, both at home and in the workplace.  For example, if a married woman  or women with children came to Oak Ridge before their husbands could get there, they found that they were not considered heads of household without their men and had to take what they could get in the way of housing, which wasn't that great. It was worse for African-American workers, who were segregated in every way from everyone else, but needed the jobs for the pay that they could send home to families left behind. But despite the harsh conditions, people here managed to build communities of friends and settle in for the duration.

Some of the best parts of this book deal with how the vast amount of secrecy had an effect on day-to-day relationships -- by the time all was said and done, some 75,000 people lived and worked at Oak Ridge  under an all-pervading aura of secrecy where conversations, even those between husbands and wives, were limited to mundanities rather than what happened at work that day. People never knew who would rat them out -- one woman in Kiernan's book was asked to spy on others shortly after she got there, and in some cases, people who talked a little too much were there one day, gone the next and never seen again.  Signs were posted everywhere to keep things under wraps so reminders were ever present. The secrecy even made local outsiders wonder if Oak Ridge was some huge social experiment going on under their noses, since the people who frequented local shops wouldn't discuss what went on in there or gave flip answers to questions.

 Thoroughly researched, the author also discovered women still living who had actually worked there and got their stories, which gives adds an extra layer of authenticity to her work.  The book is organized in a compartmentalized structure, where you meet a character or two, then on with what's going on at Oak Ridge, moving to small sections about the science and what was going on in the world with atomic research. One of the best parts of this book is at the end,when people realize after Hiroshima exactly what their work had created, and the very mixed feelings this discovery generated.

The telling is not without its flaws, though.  Sometimes the book bogs down with a lot of details.  For example, how many times did we need to hear about all of the shoes that were lost to the mud? If it wasn't high heels, it was saddle oxfords or shoes that cost their owner a lot of money -- I mean, seriously, once is enough for readers to get the point. And other than human interest, why did we need to know about one woman's  interactions with prospective in-laws in New York? There are a number of little stories like this one, and while they help to make these people a little more real for modern readers, they become cumbersome and irrelevant  after a while. Then there are places where I felt the author could have done more follow up. For just one example, there's the story of Ebb Cade, the African-American man whose legs were broken in an accident. He was put into an Oak Ridge hospital where he received injections of plutonium even before his bones were reset -- Kiernan gives us a little bit of that story, including the pulling of his teeth, then fails to follow up in any more detail on what happened to him, as previously discussed in Ellen Wellsome's The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War or in James H. Jones' most excellent Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments.    

Overall though, The Girls of Atomic City is an incredible and eye-opening book, not just about the people who lived there and what they were doing, but about a time in America when this sort of secrecy on the part of the government was rarely questioned and was accepted as vital to national security.   I think the big question I was left with at the end of it all was whether or not a project involving so much secrecy on the scale of Oak Ridge could ever occur again in the U.S.  Highly unlikely, but then again, maybe there are things like this going on right under our noses that we don't know about.  I definitely and most highly recommend this book to anyone interested in women's history,  Cold War history or the history of the war effort in the United States.

If you're at all interested in this topic, there's an entire website with pictures documenting the  history of the CEW during the 1940s.  The book has pictures, but there are many, many more at this website.

Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the the Spending of a Great American Fortune, by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.

 9780345545565
Ballantine/Random House, 2013
456 pp


hardcover
 
 Empty Mansions is a book that proves the old axiom that sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction, and,  I would add, just as captivating.  The centerpiece of this book is Huguette Clark, a privileged, incredibly wealthy woman who chose to live her life happily by staying hidden. Huguette's story may seem to some to be the stuff of madness, but the the authors disagree, calling her  a "modern-day 'Boo' Radley," someone who shut herself away  in order to remain "safe from a world that can hurt."    Huguette died in 2011, at the age of 104, two weeks shy of 105, but her death isn't the end of this story.  As of yesterday, according to a report from one NPR station, jury selection began in the trial to decide who gets what from her estate.  Empty Mansions takes you from the wide Montana prairies to the smaller world of the privileged elite; from a beautiful mansion topped with a golden tower on Millionaire's Row in New York City  to a hospital room next to a janitor's closet in this strange but well-told and thoroughly-researched story.

The book takes the reader through the life of  W.A Clark,  former senator from Montana and self-made multimillionaire known as the "copper king," and his family -- his wife Anna La Chapelle, daughters Huguette and older sister Andrée.  Clark had other older children from a previous marriage, but lived with his second family on New York City's Millionaire's Row in a six-story mansion at Fifth Avenue and Seventy-seventh street.  The sisters grew up in opulence and lived privileged lives, all before tragedy struck with Andrée's death at the age of 16. After having lost her sister and best friend, Huguette was sent alone to a school for the "daughters of elite," where her dance teacher was Isadora Duncan.   In 1925 her father died, but due to the terms of his will, Anna and Huguette moved to an apartment at 907 Fifth Avenue. Huguette married in 1928, but it didn't last, and she was divorced by 1930.  As time went on, Huguette began to stop seeing visitors, becoming reclusive, and eventually stopped leaving her apartment.  Anna died in 1963, and Huguette "throws herself" into her art -- which consisted of painting and meticulously furnishing dollhouses, or more accurately, storyhouses where she could move her dolls (a massive collection) through the rooms, having them do different things, and studying cartoons frame by frame. She spent tons of money on these projects, and was also very generous with her money among friends and supporting worthy causes (along with paying for upkeep of the "empty mansions" she'd inherited) from her "fairy-tale checkbook,"  but above all valued her privacy, trusting in her attorney and her accountant to handle all business transactions.  But Huguette had also been getting treatment for skin cancer, and when her doctor died in 1990, she didn't look for another one, and all the while she was getting worse. A friend persuaded her to go the hospital for treatment, and she ended up at Doctors Hospital,  a "treatment center for the wealthy,"  in New York City.

The story of the Clarks, the author says, is also  "like a classic folk tale" in reverse, with

 "the bags full of gold arriving at the beginning, the handsome prince fleeing, and the king's daughter locking herself away in the tower."

Now, as if the dollhouses weren't weird enough, this is where the story starts getting just plain strange and even worse,  just plain sad.   At the age of 85, within two months of  Huguette's surgeries, she becomes an "indefinite patient," at Doctors Hospital,  choosing to remain there for the rest of her life, never telling family where she was, ordering everyone to respect her privacy at all costs.   According to the authors,  within a month, one of her doctors alerts the hospital's powers-that-be Huguette is the daughter of a multimillionaire, and that he'd be willing to help develop an "appropriate cultivation approach." Behind her back, they made fun of her, but the hospital officials hold meetings to figure out how to get her to give up some of her money.  The president of the hospital, again according to the authors, boldly says that

"Madame, as you know, is the biggest bucks contributing potential we have ever had."

The doctors go all out trying to get her to cough up in a number of measures that can only be described as coercive.

[As an aside, I'm a notetaker when I read, and going through them now, I see I had a "holy sh*t" moment that I noted in the margins when I came upon a scheme to get her to sign over her assets in a "charitable gift annuity"  scheme --

that carried much more risk than benefit for this 98 year-old woman.]  

It wasn't just the officials or her doctors who got part of her money, either, one of them outright blackmailing her into loaning him  an extra $500,000 on top of the million she'd already given him.  Her private nurse/companion is Hadassah Peri who also came to benefit from Huguette's generosity, as Huguette gave her and her family several "gifts" of cash and property, coming to over $30 million dollars.  Every now and then Peri would just happen to mention some monetary issue she was having, and Huguette would take care of it.  For example, Peri once told Huguette that her kids have asthma and there was a flood in the basement.  Huguette tells Peri she should really move, and hands her $450,000 for a new house. Christmas gifts came in the form of tens of thousands of dollars, she paid for Peri's children's schooling, their summer camps, back taxes the family owed to the IRS, a new house for Hadassah's brother and family to use when they were in town, and the list goes on and on and on.  She was being taken advantage of by pretty much everyone, including Citibank, who'd earlier lost millions in jewelry she'd had in safety deposit boxes, and only allowed her to settle for a maximum amount, playing on her need for absolute privacy and knowing she'd never take them to court.  By the time of her death, Huguette was cash poor, and had been selling off extremely valuable possessions  to pay for the little "gifts" she gave out as well as the taxes attached to the gifts. 

The empty mansions of the title refer to the places that had been acquired by the family over Huguette's lifetime, and then rarely, if ever used, and the chapter headings carry the names of the properties. Each one, including Woodlawn Cemetery, had been kept up by Huguette as places to preserve memories, and were left frozen in time with orders to the caretakers not to be disturbed in any way. 

This is truly an incredible story, and I've thrown it into the book group mix this year.  I will say that the first parts of the book that went back to the days when W.A. Clark was making his fortune and building up a tarnished reputation as a Montana senator were pretty dull, and that I almost put the book down.  Once the early history was finished, however, the story picked up with a vengeance.  There were parts that shocked, parts that made me downright angry, and parts where I couldn't tell whether Huguette was mentally disturbed, easily taken advantage of or coerced,  or whether she was just exercising her right to spend her money the way she chose to. I just wanted to know her story and how she got to the point where she chose to stay in a hospital for twenty years, but it turned into much more than that.  There are some really good points raised  in this book, but in the end, I discovered that it actually raises more questions than it answers.  That's not a bad thing, and there are probably things that will never be known, even when this upcoming trial gets underway.  

Definitely recommended, and while not all reviews have been positive, I don't really pay attention to them when I find something I've really liked reading.  If you are looking for something beyond the ordinary, you'll definitely find it here.

White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin, a memoir by Michael W. Clune

 (reposted from the main page of this online reading journal, 2013: The Year in Books )

1616492082
Hazelden, 2013
260 pp

my copy from the publisher -- thank you! 

At the time the author wrote this book, he'd been free from his heroin addiction for ten years. White Out is his story of his addiction and then how he came to kick it.    I won't got into great detail about what he wrote per se, because this is a book that actually has to be experienced --  it reads like he sat down at his computer and just let everything pour out of himself.

While a grad student at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore,  starting at age 21, Michael Clune lived the life of a heroin addict for years, until he got to a point where on a visit to his parents in Chicago he was picked up by the police, thrown in jail and then given a choice of prison or recovery.  In between those two times, his experiences and his feelings often flow here in stream-of-consciousness-like prose, where he also reflects on memory, addiction, and time.  The book gets into his introduction to heroin, his addiction (and the denial that he's an addict) and his ongoing relationships with his demons. In fact, other than the central metaphor of "white," one of the themes that runs consistently through this narrative,  he spends a lot of this book talking about "the first time."  As he tells his readers, the first time is "dope's magic secret."

"Then I see a white-topped vial. Wow. I stare at it. It's the first time I've ever seen it. I know I've seen it ten thousand times before. I know it only leads to bad things. I know I've had it and touched it and used it and shaken the last particles of white from the thin deep bottom one thousand times. But there it is. And it's the first time I've ever seen it."

and 

“It might seem like I’m kind of obsessed by the first time I did dope. No shit. If you’re writing a book about this, and you don’t use at least this much space writing about the first time, you’re not being honest.”

Well, honest is what you get in this narrative, written in a style that can often come across as repetitive, but one which tries to convey what it was like for the author during the addiction years. His writing style seems to mirror his inner unraveling, but it makes sense and coheres in a bizarre, offbeat sort of way.  Through it all he reminds his readers that the heroin  is still "right over there" which, if you think about it, is pretty frightening. 

I liked this book.  I'll probably never really gut-level understand what Mr. Clune went through, and for someone like myself who picks up a personal account like this, I don't think it's fair to say that his experience can be entirely comprehended within the scope of a couple of hundred pages.  That's not a negative -- this is his unique story, a way for him to try to relate his unique experience which was pretty frightening,  even considering the positive outcome.  But I think this book is probably best suited for readers who are close to someone who is an addict and who may want to try to glean some insight from Mr. Clune's experiences. It's definitely an account I'd turn to in that situation.

my thanks to TLC book tours

*Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery, by Robert Kolker

9780062183637
Harper, 2013
399 pp

hardcover

"If the victims had been from middle-class homes in gated beach communities, the response, they assumed, would have been different." 

Five young women are the central focus of this excellent book, five "lost girls" who went to work one day and never returned.  All worked as escorts, advertising their services on Craigslist; four of them ended up as bodies wrapped in burlap hidden near the main road of Jones Beach Island (NY),   close to the small gated community of Oak Beach.  The body of the fifth young woman was located almost a year to the day after the other four.  Lost Girls offers no solution, no grisly details of how these murders were committed, or any of the usual true-crime components, because as the title reveals, the mystery behind the deaths of these young women has not yet been solved.  Instead, the author reveals a) the lives of these  women up to the very moment when they were last seen alive, b) some speculation about some of the residents of  the small, gated community of Oak Beach where one of these women was last seen running through the streets, c)  the events behind the discovery of the bodies and the lax attitudes of the police and other officials who ran the investigation, and finally, d) the aftermath of the girls' disappearances among the families and friends they left behind, as well as the crazy media circus after the discoveries of the bodies.  Most pointedly, however, he examines how each and every one of these "lost girls" and their families were failed by the system due to officials' indifference toward them, primarily based on what they did for a living.  Lost Girls is simply one of the best works of  true crime/reportage I've ever read.  Once I picked up the book, I stayed buried in it for the entire day until I'd turned the last page. 

The book begins with a prologue that starts with the disappearance of Shannan Gilbert, who  was last seen running through the streets of the Oak Beach community  in the wee hours of  a May morning in 2010. Evidently,  something had scared her enough to bolt from her client's home screaming, after the client had come to get her driver waiting outside in the car.   Shannan had called 911, but couldn't give a precise location.  The next call to 911 came from an elderly man  whose door Shannan had come to but left after he told her he'd phoned the police. Another neighbor calls, but it's still 45 minutes until the cops show and by then, Shannan has disappeared. Police take a report, but that's about it. Seven months after this bizarre incident, four bodies were located about three miles away from where Shannan had last been seen, and the police figured that one of them was probably her.  They were wrong.  As he notes, the bodies belonged to 

"Maureen Brainard-Barnes, last seen at Penn Station in Manhattan three years earlier in 2007, and Melissa Barthelemy, lsat seen in the Bronx in 2009.  There was Megan Waterman, last seen leaving a hotel in Hauppange, Long Island, just a month after Shannan in 2010 -- and, a few months later that same year, Amber Lynn Costello, last seen leaving a house in West Babylon, Long Island." 

Kolker examines the lives of these women through interviews with family, friends, and acquaintances in the first two sections of this book. Their home lives as young girls are detailed under short chapters (one for each girl) revealing very different backgrounds -- some of these girls had no father figure, some had tempestuous and negative relationships with their mothers, one of the girls had been raped at a young age, drugs were a factor in many homes, etc. -- but in most every case, financial hardship was part and parcel of their background. While some of these girls had dreams -- one wanted to be a singer, for example, -- things just didn't end up the way they planned.  In another set of short chapters, this time headed by their street names, the author looks at how they came to work in the sex industry and to use Craigslist as well as its competitor, Backpage,  and what it was that made them go out on their own that one last and final time. The personal focus is the best part of this book, but what follows also makes for compelling reading, especially the speculation by locals and others interested in the case as to who may have been guilty for at least one of the deaths, and the way in which these girls were written off by police just because they were prostitutes.

This work draws on conversations from family, friends, pimps and co-workers in the sex trade, boyfriends, police officers and others, and it's obvious that Robert Kolker has spent an immense amount of time doing his research.  Pulling it all together, he doesn't rely on simulated dialogue, nor does he try to sensationalize any parts of this story or pad it with the sort of titillating tidbits so prevalent in modern true crime books.  He has a writing style that hooks you on the first page and keeps you invested until you find yourself speculating along with the others about all the theories he lays out pertaining to Shannan's disappearance -- and the deaths of all of the others as well. He goes through several possibilities, leaving room for doubt, never claiming to have an answer -- because there isn't one yet -- but in an effort to be thorough,  he interviews some of the people who others feel may have been responsible.  Best of all, he does all of this without ever becoming judgmental about these women and what they do for a living.  Au contraire -- no matter what anyone else may think, he points out that these were young girls with lives and people who cared about them -- and that their deaths deserve to be taken as seriously as anyone else's, with just as much official attention as would be given anyone else. As he notes,

"The demand for commercial sex will never go away. Neither will the Internet; they're stuck with each other. It may no longer even matter anymore whether the sale of sex among consenting adults is wrong or right, immoral or empowering. What's clear is that no good can come from pretending that the people who participate in prostitution don't exist.  That, after all, is what the killer was counting on."

This is such a haunting book -- and the fact that this stretch of island was also the dumping ground for other prostitutes' bodies (and a toddler)  makes the reality  even more sad. Even worse -- these bodies had been there for some time, and no one came looking for them.

I loved this book from beginning to end, so I have pretty much nothing negative to say about it, but there are a couple of issues.  First (and this is a very minor one), Sanibel Island is not part of the Florida Keys, although the author states this.  Second -- where the heck are the photos? I mean, photos to give the victims a face instead of having to rely on descriptions would have been the perfect touch -- I sat with my Ipad on my lap to get visuals of these "lost girls."  It's a stunning book, and I most highly recommend it to anyone who may be interested.

*The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, From Key West to the Arctic Ocean, by Philip Caputo

9780805094466
Henry Holt, 2013
320 pp

arc via LibraryThing early reviewers and Henry Holt
(but I bought one, too!)



"Hope...Isn't that what it's always been?"

My many thanks to LT's early reviewer program and to Henry Holt for my review copy.

When I started reading this book, I was explaining to my erstwhile spouse that it was a book about a guy and his wife who took to the open road with an Airstream in tow to go from the southernmost point to the northernmost in the US.  I told him that it sounded like a really cool trip, and that I was a little jealous that people can just pick up and go where they want to when they want to.  His response was something along the lines of "well, after we retire..." and then I heard the words "a year" and "RV" and that was as far as I let that conversation go.  A) it's forever until retirement,  B) I couldn't be uprooted that long away from home, and  C) my daughter gave me two conditions for disowning me as a mother: starting to wear  Christmas snowman sweaters and hopping in a motor home to tour the country when I get old.  Still, reading about someone else's adventures on a very long journey is always interesting, especially when it's tied up neatly in such a tale as this one.  The Longest Road is not just another travelogue; it's an exploration of America's backroads and more to the point, its people.   Aside from only a few minor issues I'll get to shortly, it's a very good read.

The author's father once said that there was nothing like being "in a car with everything you need, nothing more, and an open road in front of you." Jack Kerouac wrote "Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is so ever on the road." When Caputo's father, who loved being on the road himself, died, the author realized at age 69 that a lot of his own life was behind him, and he pondered about life ahead. He came up with this crazy idea to go from the southernmost point in the United States (Key West) to the country's northernmost point in Alaska, not "purely for the adventure" but rather to discover what people across this country think holds us (as a nation) together in a time when we are so torn apart on several issues. His intention is not to "take the pulse of the nation," an impossible task, but to ask his question to the people he meets along the way. His vehicle of choice for the journey is a leased, classic Airstream trailer, "wanderlust made visible and tangible." With his wife and two dogs in tow, he made his long journey, choosing to mainly follow America's backroads and highways, following the journey made by Lewis and Clark as much as possible to the west coast. Along the way he meets a wide variety of people, visits places and does things he's never before experienced.

As someone who also loves to travel America's backroads and smaller highways, camp, stop in at mom-and-pop eateries and start conversations with perfect strangers I meet, this book definitely appealed to me. I would love to retrace Mr. Caputo's footsteps/tire tracks someday, but since that's probably not ever going to happen, reading about his journey is almost as good. His descriptions of places I've been are right on the money, but it's the people he meets that keep things really interesting. "Listening" to them and hearing what they have to say about America, their communities and themselves is an eye opener. There are funny parts to this book and some where you just want to cry. I'd love to hear this as an audio book with the author doing the reading.

Just a few minor niggles: a) while I happen to share many of the author's points of view, I can see how his political musing might be a turnoff for some people who don't -- I felt the emphasis should have been more on what other Americans thought, considering the premise of his adventure; and b) a map would have been extremely helpful -- I had my Ipad on my lap looking at each highway, each road, each town, etc.where a map could have provided a one-stop visual representation of the trip.

All in all, The Longest Road is an enjoyable read, and I've selected this book for one of my book group's choices for the fall. Definitely recommended; try not to let the politics get in the way of the rest of the journey.

The Price of Justice: A True Story of Two Lawyers' Epic Battle Against Corruption and Greed in Coal Country, by Laurence Leamer

9780805094718
Times Books/Henry Holt, 2013
448 pp

(arc: thanks to LibraryThing's early reviewers program  and to the publisher for my copy)


"A fair trial in a fair tribunal is a fundamental constitutional right...That means not only the absence of actual bias, but a guarantee against even the probability of an unfair tribunal." (334)

When I first requested this book from LibraryThing I thought it sounded interesting, and once I picked it up, I didn't realize just how blah a word "interesting" would come to be in this case. That cliché about not being able to put the book down was absolutely true for me. I'll get right to the point and say that this is one of the most outstanding books I've read this year. Coming on the heels of Going Clear by Lawrence Wright, you can believe that The Price of Justice was a powerful read.  It reads much like a legal thriller, but this story of corporate greed, judicial and political corruption, and sheer, unmitigated disregard for human life in return for one man's drive for greater profit in the coal industry is all too real.

While there are several issues covered in this work of investigative journalism, at the heart of this story is the question of whether or not corporations should be allowed to fund the very court justices who are involved in rulings involving the corporation, by the question of correctness in allowing the justice in question to remain as a judge. In this instance, it all started with a verdict handed down by a West Virginia court in the case of Caperton v. Massey Coal Company. Mr. Caperton had sued Massey because it had canceled its contract with Harman Mining to supply Harman with needed coal. Caperton, the owner of Harman, was severely affected by Massey's fraudulent cancellation, and his company went out of business.  He found himself in huge trouble and a mounting pile of debts including miners' pension funds.  His attorneys, Bruce Stanley and Dave Fawcett, worked hard to get Caperton an award for damages;  Massey, headed by Don Blankenship, appealed the decision and the case was set to be ruled on by the West Virginia Supreme Court.  However, before the judgment could be appealed, an election of a new WV Supreme Court Justice was underway, and Blankenship set up a nonprofit through which he was able to contribute millions to eliminate the incumbent (Warren McGraw) and bring in someone he knew would take his side in the case. Although legally not allowed to directly support his candidate of choice (Brent Benjamin), Blankenship used the money to pay for a slur campaign against McGraw.  Even though Blankenship's participation in the campaign against McGraw came to light, the appeals trial continued with Benjamin as a justice, and ended up in Massey's favor.  Later developments would take the case right up to the US Supreme Court, but as Leamer notes, the battle was far from over. In the meantime, Massey (and Blankenship) was allowed to continued its fraudulent practices while the utter disdain for following mandated safety and environmental measures led to tragedy among many mine workers and their families.

For several reasons the topics involved in this  book struck a personal chord. I wish I could say that I was surprised at some of the blatant misdeeds going on in the courts and among politicians as outlined by Mr. Leamer in this most excellent book, but frankly, I'm not. Aside from those issues, I was also deeply disturbed by the blatant disregard that this one man in the coal industry showed for his workers and other human beings whose lives were turned upside down, ruined or extinguished by his unscrupulous business & political practices. His absolute control was backed up by threats, intimidation, money and protection from court officials and politicians who looked out for their own financial and political interests, rather than for the interests of the victims. Had the above-mentioned subjects been all there was to this book, it still would have been good, but Mr. Leamer also examines the price paid in personal terms by everyone involved on the side of obtaining justice, including the dedicated attorneys fighting this man for over 14 years.

Other reviewers of The Price of Justice have correctly noted that this book reads like a legal thriller, and while I'm not a huge fan of that genre, the book kept me turning pages until the very end. Definitely and highly recommended -- absolutely one of the best books I've read this year. 

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief, by Lawrence Wright

9780307700667
Knopf, 2013
430 pp (including index & bibliography)


Once in a while you pick up a book that just literally blows you away, and for me, Going Clear is one of these.   From the first words through the last, I have to say I was completely mesmerized and well entrenched in this page turner of a book -- even missing a day on a Maui beach to finish it -- some of the stuff in here is so unbelievable that you just know it has to be real.   If you're an ardent Scientologist, you probably won't want to read this book, but for anyone who's interested in looking at this group's origins, the life of its founder, its beliefs and the goings on within, it's a definite must read.  Now added to  my favorites list for 2013, Going Clear is an outstanding work of investigative journalism, made even more believable by the author's focus on maintaining a balanced presentation, including comments from the Church of Scientology's leaders, attorneys, and meticulous fact finding and fact checking.  I'll skip to my usual ending and recommend it highly right up front. 

The author was, in his own words, "drawn to write this book" based on a number of questions many people have regarding Scientology: what makes it so "alluring;" what its adherents gain from it; how "seemingly rational people" can subscribe to beliefs that most people would see as "incomprehensible;" why celebrities and other "popular personalities" get themselves involved when the end result is a "public relations martyrdom;"  etc.  The book starts out with a look at the life of L.Ron Hubbard, a science-fiction writer who ultimately became the founder of this religion/cult/organization whatever you want to call it, the beliefs it is founded on and espouses,  and its growing popularity.  Then Wright spends some time on just how Scientology came to acquire religion status with the IRS -- an ugly story that  will cause you to shake your head in total disbelief, -- and how even the FBI couldn't shake down this organization despite its illegal maneuverings and activities because no one would speak up.  He also examines the Hollywood celebrities and other well-known people who embraced Scientology and how the head of the organization came to woo them for monetary gain and as a lure for new members, and finally, he examines why people are reluctant to leave the organization and the experiences of those who managed to "blow."   Throughout the book he also examines "the process of belief," not just in terms of Scientology, but in other religions as well. He's done an amazing amount of meticulous research, and his narrative is based partially on people who got out of Scientology and had plenty to tell, although as I noted above, he gives equal time to Scientology's array of attorneys, some of the organization's own documentation, and to the people high up in the movement.

There is no adequate way to summarize what's in this book ...it's definitely one you must read for yourself. All I can say is that you will likely be blown away by its contents and by Wright's magnificent reportage.  Granted there are a few tedious spots centering around Tom Cruise which probably could have been left out because frankly, he's just not that interesting of a person, but overall, it's one that should not be missed whatsoever.  Definitely prizeworthy, it will keep you absolutely astounded throughout the entire book.  I'm still shaking my head thinking about it!

South Park, Season 9, Episode 12...it IS exactly what Scientologists believe!