Author Interview
The Traveler: One Man's Quest for Humanity From the South Seas to Revolutionary Paris. Andrea Wulf. Knopf, 2026. 512 pages.
I love discovering important people whose lives and accomplishments have been forgotten by history. George Forster is one of those men. Forster was one of the most celebrated and respected men in 18th century Europe, a naturalist who gave Europeans a spectacular new view of the world, and an active participant in a couple of the most monumental events in world history. A brilliant child, he began accompanying his father as a botanist on expeditions at age ten, and at age 12 he became the family's chief breadwinner by translating books and pamphlets from German to English and vice versa. At age 17, he became the junior naturalist on Captain Cook's second voyage voyage, spending the next several years on board the Resolution in search of the hypothetical continent of Antarctica, exploring the islands of the South Seas in the process. His published account of the expedition became a sensation, and his career took off. Besides his remarkably insightful descriptions of the flora, fauna, and cultures that he encountered, the remarkable thing about Forster was his condemnation of European imperialism, colonialism, and racism. Shockingly, he rejected the ideas of racial superiority growing into acceptance at the time and insisted that Europeans shouldn't impose their cultural standards on people of other cultures. He truly embodied the ideals of the Enlightenment philosophers, ideals like freedom and equality and the radical belief that humanity has more in common than not. He put these beliefs into practice, supporting the French Revolution and leading the push to introduce those ideals into Germany. As a result, he was branded a traitor, and German authorities, his former German friends and admirers, and his own widow, who never loved him, all worked to erase him from history. Here, Wulf has resurrected him and restored his place in history. It's an excellent biography.
Folly and Glory. Larry McMurtry. Simon & Schuster, 2004. 236 pages. Book 4 of 4 in the Berrybender Narratives.
Larry McMurtry's Berrybender family saga comes to an end with this fourth volume, and it opens with Lord Berrybender and the remnants of his family and entourage under comfortable house arrest in Santa Fe. It's the mid 1830s, and tensions are rising between the Texans and the Mexican government; the Berrybenders are caught in the middle. While Tasmin Berrybender works hard to keep as much order, and as much of her personal sanity, as she can manage, her husband Jim Snow - aka the Sin Killer - is out on the plains, escorting supply wagons and hunting, anything to keep out of Tasmin's way. He also makes his way to New Orleans with Kit Carson to pick up a surprising new Berrybender family member. While Lord Berrybender plans to take the family to Texas, the Mexican government decides to to move the family across Mexico to Veracruz. The journey is extremely arduous, and cholera and attacks by hostile Indians and renegade slavers devastate the procession. The Berrybender saga is full of brutality, realism, and absurdity all coming together for a great story. If you're a fan of westerns and Larry McMurtry, it's a must-read.
Author Harvey Rachlin takes a deep dive into the back stories of about 30 famous works of art, including some of the most famous in history and some that readers may not know as well. They all share one thing: they each have a fascinating history, whether it's how the came to be created or how they survived burglary, forgery, revolutions, ransoms, vandals, scandals, religious sects, and shipwrecks to eventually come to their current resting places, Each story is an interesting read.
The Florida Keys Skunk Ape Files: Island Cryptids, Histories, and Mysteries. Brad Bertelli. Southernmost Skunk Ape Society, 2021. 178 pages.
Did you know that Florida allegedly has its very own species of Bigfoot ? (Actually, there are legends of two to three variations in different parts of the state.) The most famous is the Skunk Ape, a hairy creature that stands 7 to 8 feet in height and carries a revolting odor that can be smelled up to a mile away according to the stories. This work of fiction, written by an experienced and respected historian and museum curator with decades of experience in the Florida Keys, purports to be a collection of historic encounters with skunk apes from the Spanish in the 16th century through the 20th century. The files were discovered in boxes by two teen boys in the attic of a Key West home. The pair formed the Southernmost Skunk Ape Society to investigate the sightings. Think Scooby Doo and Mystery Inc. The fictional encounter stories are pretty standard Bigfoot stuff, but the smart and inventive bit is that Bertelli has connected each story to a very real person, place, or event in the history of the Keys, with historical context for each. The result is a mostly fun one-sitting read, a romp through Keys history, and a decent addition to my Florida history shelf.
North Woods. Daniel Mason. Random House, 2023. 384 pages.
This book proves that reading is incredibly subjective, and readers can have wildly differing opinions of the same book, and maybe proof that book reviewers and influencers are just bandwagon followers. Maybe they all get notes about which books they are supposed to rave about. A year or year and a half ago, North Woods was everywhere, on every great books of the year list and all over social media. It was hailed as lifechanging and phenomenal and brilliant and every other superlative imaginable. It's historical fiction covering four hundred years of Massachusetts history told through place; that place is a secluded homestead in the Massachusetts woods, occupied over the years by a succession of eccentric characters who live, grow apples, dream of building a resort, paint, and die. The star of the book is the place, definitely not the people who are dull, uninteresting, and useless. Their stories are long and boring, and often pointless --- several stories just quit, they don't end. All of the stories are dull. Mason obviously would rather write about trees and leaves and seasonal changes than about people. He also has a penchant for the supernatural. I did slog through, but I can't recommend it. On a particularly generous day, I might give it three stars out of five, but closer to a 2 most days. And it's one of the worst book covers I've ever seen - that's the major reason that I delayed reading it for so long.
Fool. Christopher Moore. William Morrow, 2009. 311 pages. Book 1 of 3 in Fool series.
OK, I'm officially a big Christopher Moore fan. If you're a fan of Mel Brooks, Monty Python, and the like, like me, and you're not easily offended, I think you'd be be a fan as well. Fool is the first of a trilogy inspired by Shakespeare following the adventures of King Lear's jester, Pocket of Dog-Snogging. Fool is an incredibly hilarious and incredibly raunchy retelling of King Lear, a tale of “gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity." Lear divides his kingdom between his elder daughters Regan and Goneril and disowns his youngest, and formerly favorite, daughter Cordelia, and chaos results, with lots of treachery and plotting. Pocket, accompanied by his apprentice Drool, puppet named Jones, and pet monkey named Jeff, attempt to restore order in the kingdom and to rescue Cordelia. With lots of references to other Shakespeare plays sprinkled throughout, it's a very fast-paced and thoroughly entertaining take on Lear. It's not necessary to be familiar with Shakespeare to enjoy it, but if you are a little familiar, the Fool trilogy is for you. It also reminds me of Gregory Maguire's re-imagination of Oz in the Wicked series.
Shakespeare For Squirrels. Christopher Moore. William Morrow, 2020. 288 pages. Book 3 of 3 in Fool series.
Book 3 of Moore's Fool trilogy opens with the miniature jester Pocket of Dog Snogging, his giant, dim-witted sidekick Drool, and his horny pet monkey Jeff stranded at sea. After wearing out their welcome with a crew of pirates, they are cast adrift and wash up dehydrated on the shores of Athens, Greece. Pocket's immediate goal is to dazzle the local Duke and land a comfy job as the new court jester. However, they find themselves enmeshed in a tangled murder mystery version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Robin Goodfellow, aka Puck, is murdered, and Pocket has three days to find the murderer. He has four separate employers, Theseus, the Duke of Athens, Hippolyte, the Queen of the Amazons, Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, and Oberon, the King of the Goblins. Aided by Bottom and a crew of fairies, Pocket has to solve the mystery or else he and Drool will be executed. The result is a very fun mystery; think Shakespeare meets Dashiell Hammett, with lots of fairies, goblins, and other bits of magic. It reminds me very much of the Piers Anthony Xanth series of dozens of books that I devoured in my teen years. If you're a fan of intelligent, funny, magical, and pun-filled fantasy and haven't read Piers Anthony, you have missed out.
The Serpent of Venice. Christopher Moore. William Morrow, 2014. 336 pages. Book 2 of 3 in Fool trilogy.
The Serpent of Venice is the second book in Christopher Moore's Fool trilogy. It is a rowdy, bawdy mashup that seamlessly weaves together William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Othello, while hilariously parodying Edgar Allan Poe’s short story "The Cask of Amontillado". The plot revolves around political conspiracies, cultural prejudices, and a plot for total revenge. The story begins in late 13th-century Venice. Three powerful and corrupt Venetians—the merchant Antonio, the senator Montressor Brabantio, and the naval officer Iago—have grown tired of the miniature English jester Pocket of Dog Snogging ruining their schemes for power and wealth. As expected, there are lots of Shakespearean references, lots of shagging, and lots of raunchiness. I have to admit, that it's the weakest link in the trilogy for me, but still a great read. Maybe it's because The Merchant of Venice and Othello are not among my favorite Shakespeare plays, and I'm not as familiar with them as I am with some of the other plays. Maybe it's because of the very complicated plots, maybe the weird time jumps that confused me from time to time. Still very fun and more interesting than either play.
Noir. Christopher Moore. William Morrow, 2018. 352 pages.
What happens when you take a hapless bartender nicknamed Two-Toes, his Chinese-American sidekick, a mysterious sexy woman nicknamed The Cheese, a tight-lipped Air Force general, a wisecracking kid, Petey the black mamba who narrates part of the story, a taxi driver who never drives his taxi, an elderly Chinese opium den owner, a black longshoreman whose dream is to join FDR's Secret Service detail one day even though FDR died two years ago, an assortment of drag kings, and the secret society of powerful men called the Bohemian Society and set it in 1947 San Francisco, specifically the Tenderloin district? You get yet another hilarious novel from Christopher Moore. Noir is a raunchy parody of noir detective fiction. Think Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler meets Monty Python and Mel Brooks. The absurdities, laughs, 1940s slang and tropes are fast and furious, like a Roscoe spitting slugs.
Razzmatazz. Christopher Moore. William Morrow, 2022. 400 pages.
Sammy Two-Toes, The Cheese, Moo Shoes, Uncle Ho, Scooter, and their Tenderloin district friends are all back for more action in and around 1947 San Francisco. This time, Sammy leans into his new role as the neighborhood problem solver, and he's asked to solve the murders of a couple of drag kings because the police don't care and, at the same time, he helps his friend Moo Shoes track down a stolen magical Rain Dragon statue to save his uncle's opium den from a dangerous gangster. Meanwhile, Sammy's girlfriend Stilton and her former "Wendy the Welder" friends work on a secret project that catches the eye of government agents. Sammy has to rely on his quirky friends and street smarts to solve these chaotic mysteries before disaster strikes. Will San Francisco be plunged into a Chinese Tong war? Will the city itself be destroyed by another catastrophe? Once again, the result is an action-packed, hilarious, 1940s slang-drenched parody of noir fiction.
Author Talk
The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker: A True Tale of Love, Murder, Treason, and Ordinary Folks Who Saved America. Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz. Simon & Schuster, 2026. 448 pages.
In the early morning hours of September 11, 1851, seven armed white men, including a federal marshal and a Maryland enslaver determined to retrieve his runaway "property," four young enslaved men who had crossed the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania, surrounded the home of William and Eliza Parker near Christiana, Pennsylvania, about 47 miles west of Philadelphia. William Parker was not the man to try. He had emancipated himself twelve years earlier as an 18-year old, and he had made a home in Christiana, along with many other free and formerly enslaved blacks, welcomed and respected by the their mostly Quaker neighbors. They weren't safe, however, as slave catchers routinely ventured into Pennsylvania intent on collecting bounties for runaways and not really caring whether the people they harassed and kidnapped had ever, in fact, been enslaved, and the newly passed Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 only emboldened them. Parker, however, was equally bold, if not more bold. He organized his neighbors into an abolitionist vigilante organization, riding the countryside in their own patrols, actively mounting missions to recover kidnapped people, and maintaining networks for spreading warnings and information. He confronted enslavers and slave catchers head on. Now, with his wife, children, and friends to protect, he refused to back down. The Maryland enslaver, Edward Gorsuch, also refused to back down. Alerted, dozens of Parker's armed neighbors arrived on the scene, and the confrontation turned violent. Gorsuch was killed, and the other men in his party were wounded and forced to flee for their lives. The incident became known as the Christiana Riot, or the Christiana Resistance, and it and the resulting arrest and trial of dozens of men for treason became a watershed event in the abolitionist movement and in American history. This is definitely a 5-star read about the incident, and Parker. It's also a fantastic account of Philadelphia's role in the Underground Railroad and abolitionism, but, don't be misled, there were just as many Philadelphians who opposed abolition, including blacks who willingly provided information and assistance to slave catchers and even participated more actively in the practice, and anti-abolitionist mobs rampaged from time to time in the city. The stories of the black abolitionists like the Purvis and Forten families and John Pierre Burr, the illegitimate son of Aaron Burr, alone make this book a great read.
Silence of the Lambs Trailer
Hannibal Lecter: A Life. Brian Raftery. Simon & Schuster, 2026. 336 pages.
This was a bit of a departure from my regular reading fare. I'm not a huge slasher/gore/horror fan. I think I've read two Hannibal books, Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, I've seen four Hannibal movies, all more than 24 years ago, and I thought they were OK, just books and movies. I knew that Hannibal Lecter became one of the most famous movie villains of all time, but apparently Hannibal Lecter is a much bigger part of American popular culture than a part of my life, so much so that in 2024 a particular presidential candidate constantly made bizarre references to the character. I was so turned off to election coverage at the time that I never heard or read a single instance of that. Entertainment and popular culture journalist Brian Raftery has written a complete history of Lecter, using extensive interviews with many people involved directly with the creation of the books, movies, and television shows --- all but the creator Thomas Harris, whose aversion to any publicity or interviews rivals that of the famously reclusive J.D. Salinger. The book is also a thorough examination of the character's role in pop culture and how American pop culture shifts are reflected in, maybe influenced by, the publishing and movie industries. Lecter's rise reflected America's growing obsession with real-life serial killers. Harris, who honed his writing craft as a crime reporter with an eye for grisly detail, forged connections with the FBI as the FBI was developing the whole art(?)/science(?) of criminal profiling. While the original inspiration for Lecter was a real life person that Harris met, Harris was further inspired by all that he learned from picking the brains (Hannibal Lecter pun?) of FBI profilers, and he built relationships with some of the first female FBI agents that greatly informed his creation of Agent Clarise Starling, also considered one of the most iconic characters in American cinema. Raftery's book is extremely entertaining, even for very casual Lecter fans like myself; for real fans of the books or movies, it's definitely a must-read.
Author Talk
The American Revolution and the Fate of the World. Richard Bell. Riverhead Books, 2025. 416 pages.
Did the British musicians play “The World Turned Upside Down” when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown? Probably not—or at least, we have no reliable evidence that they did.
The story first appears in 1828, 47 years after the surrender. The actual surrender terms called for the British to march out to a British or German march, but no contemporary source identifies the music. Whether or not it happened, the American Revolution did, in fact, turn the world upside down, and historian Richard Bell documents it as a transformative international event. Millions of people on every continent saw their lives affected, trade was disrupted, independence movements and progressive social reforms were inspired, and global refugee crisis was created. Battles were fought in North America, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean. For two years following Yorktown and the fighting largely ceased in America, the British continued to fight the French and Spanish around the world. When the Treaty of Paris formally ended hostilities and recognized American independence, American allies France and Spain were arguably worse off than before the war, and the British Empire, despite having lost vast territory, may have emerged stronger than ever. In this book, Richard Bell tells the full story as it has never been told before. In a very original twist, Bell grounds his narrative in the stories of roughly a dozen individuals including Prussian drillmaster Baron von Steuben, Mohawk Molly Brant, escaped slaves John Moseley and Harry Washington who became early colonists of Australia and Sierra Leone respectively, the ruler of the Indian state of Mysore, indigenous Peruvian revolutionary Tupac Amaru, and Peggy Shippen Arnold, the wife of Benedict. The result is a new and fresh take on the American Revolution that leaves readers informed, entertained, and contemplative --- a great read for America250.
The story first appears in 1828, 47 years after the surrender. The actual surrender terms called for the British to march out to a British or German march, but no contemporary source identifies the music. Whether or not it happened, the American Revolution did, in fact, turn the world upside down, and historian Richard Bell documents it as a transformative international event. Millions of people on every continent saw their lives affected, trade was disrupted, independence movements and progressive social reforms were inspired, and global refugee crisis was created. Battles were fought in North America, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean. For two years following Yorktown and the fighting largely ceased in America, the British continued to fight the French and Spanish around the world. When the Treaty of Paris formally ended hostilities and recognized American independence, American allies France and Spain were arguably worse off than before the war, and the British Empire, despite having lost vast territory, may have emerged stronger than ever. In this book, Richard Bell tells the full story as it has never been told before. In a very original twist, Bell grounds his narrative in the stories of roughly a dozen individuals including Prussian drillmaster Baron von Steuben, Mohawk Molly Brant, escaped slaves John Moseley and Harry Washington who became early colonists of Australia and Sierra Leone respectively, the ruler of the Indian state of Mysore, indigenous Peruvian revolutionary Tupac Amaru, and Peggy Shippen Arnold, the wife of Benedict. The result is a new and fresh take on the American Revolution that leaves readers informed, entertained, and contemplative --- a great read for America250.
2025 Movie trailer
Train Dreams. Denis Johnson. Farar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011. 116 pages.
The book tokers and influencers all got the memo: it's time to move on from Larry McMurtry to Denis Johnson. I'm seeing a lot of references to this novella, but I had previously never heard of Johnson, so I gave it a try. Train Dreams follows the tragic and isolated life of Robert Grainier, a railroad laborer, logger, and freight hauler in the Pacific Northwest, who was born in the 1880s and died in the 1960s. Orphaned at an early age, he begins a grueling itinerant life in the logging and railroad industries that transformed the region in the early 20th century. Following the tragic loss of his wife and child, he retreats deep into the woods, leading an isolated life tormented by grief and regret. In the meantime, he survives in the difficult and mysterious landscape, and he has few encounters with other people, living a slow, unaffected life while the world rapidly changes around him. It is a slow-burn read, especially at first, and it seems like there's not much happening, but I was soon drawn into a beautiful, simple, often melancholy life - just a guy putting one foot in front of the other and surviving while time passes him by. The conversation between Grainier and Peterson, the man shot by his own dog, alone makes it worth your time to read the book. In the end, I thought it was really great fiction, and I plan to read more Johnson and maybe watch the 2025 movie adaptation of Train Dreams.
