Ocmulgee Mounds
Seven Islands of the Ocmulgee: River Stories. Gordon Johnston. Mercer University Press, 2023. 172 pages.
The Ocmulgee River flows for about 255 miles through the heart of Georgia, becoming a major tributary of the Altamaha before flowing into the Atlantic. A thousand years ago, a Moundbuilder-culture city thrived on its banks at modern-day Macon. For a hundred years, white settlers and enslaved Africans labored on its banks building farms and plantations. The rivers became a major thoroughfare, moving people and goods from central Georgia to the Coast well into the 1930s. As a boy, I spent a bit of time fishing on the Ocmulgee and Altamaha, and I visited the Ocmulgee Mounds. The rivers are still cherished by fishermen, canoeists, and kayakers today.
I was intrigued to see Seven Islands appear on a couple of lists of great southern reads published this year. However, I was leery because I’ve tried a couple of critically-acclaimed short story collections in the past couple of years and hated every second of them. Still, I decided to give it a chance, and I am glad I did. It was a page-turner, and I read the entire book in one poolside sitting. The seven stories deftly blend the past and present, and they are all definitely tied to the place, to the river. Johnston’s writing reminds me of that of novelists Taylor Brown and Flannery O’Connor. They are southern, southern gothic even. They could be studied in creative writing classes as examples of the importance of setting and atmosphere. Each story evokes the wildness, mystery, and antiquity of the Ocmulgee. If you’re southern and love being immersed in a story, I would suggest reading these stories.
The Story of Paris' Occupation, Timeline
Star Crossed: A True Romeo and Juliet Story in Hitler’s Paris. Heather June Macadam and Simon Worrell. Citadel, August 22, 2023 (Advance Reader’s Copy). 320 pages.
In 1940, as Paris was occupied by Nazi Germany, Annette Zelman was a Jewish teenaged art student who adored surrealism and dada and dreamed of making her own splash in the art world one day. Like her siblings, she worked alongside their parents at designing and tailoring clothes in the family apartment by day. At night, she loved to frequent the illegal clubs and “dancing schools” of the Latin Quarter that appeared and disappeared just as quickly because the Germans had outlawed jazz and swing music. Parisian students danced in rebellion against occupation and became “Zazous” (known as “Swing Kids” in Germany) wearing garish oversized clothing requiring yards of fabric (violating rationing laws) and swing dancing all night long. She designed her own Zazou fashions. Her favorite hangout was the Cafe de Flore, also frequented by Simone De Beauvoir, Pablo Picasso, and Django Reinhardt. There, she drew the attention of multiple young men, but her sight settled on Jean Jausion, a dashing, adventurous, but moody, young Catholic poet, the son of a prominent Paris physician. The pair fell in love despite warnings from her family and outright opposition from his. They made plans to marry, violating new Nazi decrees banning marriages between Christians and Jews. Annette was arrested and became one of the first French citizens deported to Auschwitz. Jean resolved to find her and got more deeply involved in French Underground resistance activities. Although Jean has been remembered and memorialized as a French literary figure and martyr of WWII, Annette’s story, and their joint story, hasn’t been told until now.
Star Crossed is a great true-life love story featuring larger than life real-life characters who struggle to live normal lives in the most abnormal circumstances. It’s also a great view of life in occupied Paris, drawn from never before published family letters, archival records, and interviews with Annette’s last living sibling. This book is set for publication August 22, 2023.
Lost City of the Monkey God
Jungleland: A Mysterious Lost City, a WWII Spy, and a True Story of Deadly Adventure. Christopher S. Stewart. Harper, 2013. 288 pages.
In 2009, journalist Christopher S. Stewart left his Brooklyn apartment, wife, and child for a month to travel to Honduras, not to cover the military coup that was taking place as he arrived, but to begin his own personal search for the “Lost City of the Monkey God,” aka the “White City,” that was described by various explorers since the time of the Spanish conquistadors and most recently by American adventurer and World War II spy Theodore Monde. In 1941, Monde became an international celebrity after reporting that he had discovered the ruins of the once monumental stone city, inhabited by a perhaps unknown civilization, in the midst of the brutal Honduran rainforest. However, Monde never returned to the site, his life interrupted by WWII and other personal issues culminating in his death by suicide in 1954. Worse, he never divulged the exact location, and the city remained lost.
Stewart had always been fascinated by the stories of the Lost City and had developed quite an interest in Monde and his expedition, accumulating notebooks full of research and even meeting with Monde’s nephew who had possession of Monde’s personal papers and journals. He met with other explorers and anthropologists who had worked in Honduras. Finally, he decided he had to go and see for himself. In Jungleland, he tells the stories of the two expeditions, Monde’s and his own, in alternating chapters. Though 70 years apart, Stewart and Monde faced many of the same obstacles, the dangerous jungle itself and man. The Honduras of 1941 and of 2009 hadn’t changed much: corruption, unstable government, pirates, bandits, wanted men hiding out in the jungle, etc. Jungleland is very similar to David Grann’s The Lost City of Z and Douglas Preston’s The Lost City of the Monkey God, both excellent books on the subject of lost cities. Interestingly, archaeologists and anthropologists have made stunning discoveries in the last decade or two that have turned traditional thoughts about “civilization” in the rainforests of central and South America on their head.
Orthodoxy had previously held that the rainforests could never have supported anything more than very small nomadic bands of hunters and gatherers. Now, evidence is mounting that there were, in fact, large stone cities with roads and irrigation systems supporting large, more sedentary, populations.
If you’re interested in the subject, I recommend reading any, or even better, all three books.
Elizabeth Winkler interview
Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature. Elizabeth Winkler. Simon & Schuster, 2023. 416 pages.
In 2019, journalist Elizabeth Winkler published what she thought was a rather innocuous article exploring a recent theory about a woman writing some of the plays attributed to William Shakespeare. Within hours of publication, she was shocked by the volume of vitriolic comments on social media that attacked her personally and demanded an immediate retraction. She was likened to Holocaust deniers and anti-vaxers. The attacks came from dedicated Stratfordians - those who hold without doubt the opinion that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the sole author. Looking into it, she discovered that the entrenched Stratfordian establishment had always engaged in threats and ridicule to discredit anyone who dares to question their facts, that is, those who engaged. Most refused to even engage in discussion or debate on the topic. The most revered living Shakespearean scholar in the UK, Sir Stanley Wells, has gone on record saying that questioning history was “immoral” and anyone doubting Shakespeare’s authorship was mentally ill. Winkler decided that she had a book to write.
Starting with the fact that we know almost nothing about Shakespeare, Winkler discovers that most “biographies” are unverified legends and conundrums. His parents and daughters were illiterate, yet his female characters are considered the best written female characters ever created by a man. There is no evidence he ever attended any school or left England, yet his plays reveal detailed knowledge of history, geography, law, myth, and languages. No one ever really talked about him as a writer in his lifetime or noticed when he died, yet other authors who are totally unknown today were publicly lauded for weeks after their deaths. Unlike his peers, his will and personal inventory make no mention of books, unfinished works, or publishing rights. Authorship questions have been investigated for centuries, with good reason. There is much more reason to doubt William Shakespeare’s sole authorship than to accept it.
This is one of my favorite reads so far this year and might be my favorite read of the year at year’s end. Winkler does a magnificent job of exploring the controversy and the most likely candidates and theories.
Rinker Buck book talk
Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure. Rinker Buck. Simon & Schuster, 2022. 416 pages.
A few years ago, Rinker Buck published The Oregon Trail, the account of his re-creation of westward migration in a covered wagon, accompanied by his brother. It was one of my favorite reads of that year. In the process of researching that book, he stumbled onto the realization that Americans had never been taught - surprise, surprise - the full story. (Admittedly, I was part of that transmission of ignorance. I would have taught westward expansion differently if I had known myself.) In fact, wagon trains did not conquer the frontier, river flatboats did. Five or six times more American settlers moved west on flatboats than by wagons on overland trails. Families bought or built their boats, loaded their belongings and livestock and set sail down America’s rivers, for months-long voyages. When they arrived at their final destination, they either sold the boat for a profit or dismantled it and used the parts to construct a cabin or other farm buildings, American commerce exploded when farmers and producers realized in the early 1800s that it was easier and cheaper to ship goods on rivers to consumers in river settlements or ultimately to the port of New Orleans for shipment to the eastern seaboard and beyond. Today, a huge percentage of American commerce still travels on barges on American rivers, and rivers are just as vital to the American economy as before, if not more so
For this book, Buck decided to recreate a flatboat journey from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, and I am sad to say I was very disappointed. In fact, I stopped reading less than halfway through. First of all, Buck, as he admits himself, has no skill whatsoever in managing people. It was evident in The Oregon Trail, but overwhelmingly clear here. He selects collaborators and crew members who come across very poorly: incompetent, arrogant, useless, stupid. Then, instead of confronting their uselessness or even harmful behavior and attitudes, he allows things to ooze and fester until they explode, and the other person leaves. It creates much more stress on his adventures than is necessary. His non-confrontational nature seems to come from his mother who chose to “parent” her 11 children by literally writing down all of their infractions and misbehaviors each day and giving the notes to their father to deal with when he came home.
My second problem with the book is Buck’s overt insertion of politics every few pages. It is clear that Buck sees the word "conservative” as totally pejorative. In his mind, “conservative” is synonymous with bigoted, racist, closed-minded, ignorant, stupid, redneck, aggressive, hateful, and violent. Everyone he meets with whom he disagrees politically is portrayed that way, although he’s slightly more comfortable around one or two than the rest - but he still calls them names. And I stopped reading before he even left Ohio. I can only imagine how things progressed as he moved farther south and deeper into ‘Red” states territory. I don’t remember The Oregon Trail being so political, and it’s uncomfortable here.
Susan Wels in conversation
An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President's Murder. Susan Wels. Pegasus Crime, 2023. 272 pages.
From 1848 to 1881, thousands of people traveled by trains and carriages on weekends to visit the Oneida colony in upstate New York, a utopian community with fields, orchards, livestock, mills, and small factories that produced animal traps, baskets, spoons (Oneida is still a prominent flatware brand.) for sale throughout the country. The men and women worked and lived side by side, rotating through all the jobs in the community, and the women wore short skirts and cut their hair short, but that wasn't the most shocking thing that titilated the crowds.
Marriage was forbidden in Oneida and sex was encouraged. Oneidans advocated "free love" - to a point. The founder, John Humphrey Noyes, first cousin to President Rutherford B. Hayes, fashioned himself as a savior or messiah. He taught that sexual pleasure brought one closer to the divine, but sexual unions had to be carefully managed by himself and church leaders for the betterment of society. (An early proponent of eugenics) He himself engaged in incestuous relationships with his nieces and other girls as young as 12. An Oneidan practice was for older men to sexually initiate young girls while post-menopausal women initiated boys.
For a while, Charles Guiteau was an unhappy member of the Oneida community. Guiteau hated labor of any sort and chafed at the work to which he was assigned. He was also constantly rebuffed and ignored by the female members of the "free love" community. This would not do, he decided. After all, he would one day be the leader of the community and, in fact, the President of the United States. He left, determined that the world would soon know his name. On July 2, 1881, he shot President James Garfield, who would die in September.
Wels spent 12 years researching this book, and it is a pageturner, bringing together the stories of Noyes, Oneida, Guiteau, and Garfield, and it's rich in 19th century context.
From 1848 to 1881, thousands of people traveled by trains and carriages on weekends to visit the Oneida colony in upstate New York, a utopian community with fields, orchards, livestock, mills, and small factories that produced animal traps, baskets, spoons (Oneida is still a prominent flatware brand.) for sale throughout the country. The men and women worked and lived side by side, rotating through all the jobs in the community, and the women wore short skirts and cut their hair short, but that wasn't the most shocking thing that titilated the crowds.
Marriage was forbidden in Oneida and sex was encouraged. Oneidans advocated "free love" - to a point. The founder, John Humphrey Noyes, first cousin to President Rutherford B. Hayes, fashioned himself as a savior or messiah. He taught that sexual pleasure brought one closer to the divine, but sexual unions had to be carefully managed by himself and church leaders for the betterment of society. (An early proponent of eugenics) He himself engaged in incestuous relationships with his nieces and other girls as young as 12. An Oneidan practice was for older men to sexually initiate young girls while post-menopausal women initiated boys.
For a while, Charles Guiteau was an unhappy member of the Oneida community. Guiteau hated labor of any sort and chafed at the work to which he was assigned. He was also constantly rebuffed and ignored by the female members of the "free love" community. This would not do, he decided. After all, he would one day be the leader of the community and, in fact, the President of the United States. He left, determined that the world would soon know his name. On July 2, 1881, he shot President James Garfield, who would die in September.
Wels spent 12 years researching this book, and it is a pageturner, bringing together the stories of Noyes, Oneida, Guiteau, and Garfield, and it's rich in 19th century context.
Gregory Forth in Conversation
Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid. Gregory Forth. Pegasus Books, 2022. 336 pages.
Flores is a small island in the Indonesian archipelago that was thought to have been rather unremarkable. The largest animals to have existed on the island were thought to be a now-extinct cow-sized elephant species, Komodo dragons, and giant tree rats. Then, in 2003, several skeletons of a previously unknown small early human species were discovered. Standing about 3 feet tall, the individuals were first thought to be immature or abnormal, but it was soon proven that they were adults. In 2004, Homo floresiensis was introduced to the world, and, of course, the press immediately dubbed them "Hobbits." Further research revealed that they had lived on the island 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.
In 2003, anthropologist Gregory Forth started collecting stories from the island's indigenous Lio people about sightings of small living apemen on the island. The sightings go back for generations and as recently as 2018. Could there be Hobbit descendants out there? In this book, Forth collects accounts and tries to work out if it's possible.
Normally, this book would be totally in my wheelhouse, but I was disappointed. Most of the "eyewitness" accounts are unreliable, even by the author's reckoning, not even second- or third-hand, more like tenth- or fifteenth-hand. I would have preferred a book about the actual discovery of the skeletons and what researchers have put together about their lives. I don't know who greenlit this as a book, but it should have been an article at most. I can't recommend it.
Flores is a small island in the Indonesian archipelago that was thought to have been rather unremarkable. The largest animals to have existed on the island were thought to be a now-extinct cow-sized elephant species, Komodo dragons, and giant tree rats. Then, in 2003, several skeletons of a previously unknown small early human species were discovered. Standing about 3 feet tall, the individuals were first thought to be immature or abnormal, but it was soon proven that they were adults. In 2004, Homo floresiensis was introduced to the world, and, of course, the press immediately dubbed them "Hobbits." Further research revealed that they had lived on the island 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.
In 2003, anthropologist Gregory Forth started collecting stories from the island's indigenous Lio people about sightings of small living apemen on the island. The sightings go back for generations and as recently as 2018. Could there be Hobbit descendants out there? In this book, Forth collects accounts and tries to work out if it's possible.
Normally, this book would be totally in my wheelhouse, but I was disappointed. Most of the "eyewitness" accounts are unreliable, even by the author's reckoning, not even second- or third-hand, more like tenth- or fifteenth-hand. I would have preferred a book about the actual discovery of the skeletons and what researchers have put together about their lives. I don't know who greenlit this as a book, but it should have been an article at most. I can't recommend it.
Hell's Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier. Susan Jonusas. Penguin Books, 2023. 368 pages.
In the early 1870s, a new homesteader family arrived in Labette County Kansas, built a one-room cabin with a wagon-canvas partition, and opened business selling a few groceries and providing meals and floor space to sleep on to passing travelers. Pa and Ma Bender spoke German and very little English, and they soon had a reputation for being mean, unfriendly, and inhospitable. None of their neighbors ever even knew her first name. Their son (or son-in-law?) John had a nervous, unsettling laugh that erupted at odd times, but their daughter Kate was attractive, flirty, and outgoing. Single and married homesteaders and cowboys often stopped by just to see Kate. Her relationship with John raised eyebrows. Were they siblings, lovers, or both? She added fuel to the scandalous fire by advocating "Free Love" and claiming to be a medium who could interact with spirits.
In 1873, while investigating a string of disappearances involving lone strangers passing through, often carrying money, authorities went to investigate the Bender place, and they found that the family had vacated weeks before. They also found a gruesome murder scene inside the cabin and 11 bodies buried in the orchard. The Benders immediately became a part of the mythology and legend of the Old West. Tourists flocked to the homestead from all over Kansas, and newspapers carried reports of every detail, sighting, and theory.
In the early 1870s, a new homesteader family arrived in Labette County Kansas, built a one-room cabin with a wagon-canvas partition, and opened business selling a few groceries and providing meals and floor space to sleep on to passing travelers. Pa and Ma Bender spoke German and very little English, and they soon had a reputation for being mean, unfriendly, and inhospitable. None of their neighbors ever even knew her first name. Their son (or son-in-law?) John had a nervous, unsettling laugh that erupted at odd times, but their daughter Kate was attractive, flirty, and outgoing. Single and married homesteaders and cowboys often stopped by just to see Kate. Her relationship with John raised eyebrows. Were they siblings, lovers, or both? She added fuel to the scandalous fire by advocating "Free Love" and claiming to be a medium who could interact with spirits.
In 1873, while investigating a string of disappearances involving lone strangers passing through, often carrying money, authorities went to investigate the Bender place, and they found that the family had vacated weeks before. They also found a gruesome murder scene inside the cabin and 11 bodies buried in the orchard. The Benders immediately became a part of the mythology and legend of the Old West. Tourists flocked to the homestead from all over Kansas, and newspapers carried reports of every detail, sighting, and theory.
The book is a deep investigation into the family's story and the setting in which it took place. There was one overly long and detailed chapter about Kansas state politics that could have been reduced to a paragraph, but it's partially relevant.
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