Shelved: Roundup of Book Posts October 16 - 31, 2023

 

Author talk at the Museum of Jewish Heritage

The American Way:  A True Story of Nazi Escape, Superman, and Marilyn Monroe.   Helene Stapinski and Bonnie Siegler.  Simon & Schuster, 2023.  384 pages.

I love connections in history, and The American Way is a great example of connections done in a great and thoroughly entertaining way.  What connections?  In The American Way, co-author Bonnie Siegler manages to connect her Jewish grandparents' story of escaping Nazi Germany to New York to fellow Jewish refugee and Hollywood movie writer/director Billy Wilder to the creators of Superman to Marilyn Monroe and Joe Dimaggio to New York mob boss Frank Costello to a softcore porn magazine publisher.  Each one of the stories told is amazing and interesting, especially the story of Superman's creation and how the creators were cheated out of their just rewards by the publisher, the aforementioned smut peddler.  

Well, OK, true, the hub of the story is the story of Siegler's grandparents, Jules and Edith Schulback, a young Jewish furrier and his wife who managed to escape Nazi Germany just before the start of WWII.  Their experiences in Germany and those of their family members who were unable to escape are well documented and told.  The stories of the other individuals are the spokes radiating from the Schulback hub.  Altogether, the parts make for a very satisfying wheel of reading.

"Who was the best English monarch?" David Mitchell ranks

Unruly:  The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens.  David Mitchell.  Crown, 2023. 448 pages.  

A couple of weeks ago, David Mitchell appeared on my favorite talk show, "The Graham Norton Show," to promote his newly published history of English monarchs.  I had never heard of the book, but I immediately grabbed my phone and downloaded the audiobook version before he even sat down on the couch. Mitchell is one of my favorite British comic actors, and I'm a huge fan of his appearances on the British celebrity panel comedy/quiz shows.  He's incredibly witty, very snarky, and totally out of touch with popular culture, constantly ribbed by co-panelists for being ultra-"posh."  And he has a history degree.  I relate to him on many levels.

Unruly is all that I expected it to be.  Mitchell takes the reader from the beginning - the fictional King Arthur - up to the reign of Elizabeth I (meaning that a volume 2 is in the works, I hope).  He is a true iconoclast throughout, fully exposing the foibles and ridiculousness of the monarchs, their supporters and challengers, and the historians who have chronicled them over them over the centuries, with his characteristically biting Bitter humor in every paragraph.  However, don't be misled.  As the publisher's blurb says,  Unruly is "A funny book that takes history seriously." It's also a seriously funny history book.  

Lecture on the Election of 1932

Histocrats 7 Questions with Author

1932:  FDR, Hoover, and the Dawn of a New America.  Scott Martelle.  Citadel Press, 2023. 407 pages.

Authors use phrases like "Dawn of a New America" and "turning point" in subtitles all the time, but some authors fail to prove their case.  In 1932, Scott Martelle succeeds in laying out evidence that shows the significance of the presidential election between President Herbert Hoover and New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt, and he's written an excellent book about the candidates and the election.

Hoover and Roosevelt represented two different approaches to politics. Hoover was the traditionalist, believing voters would choose his record of administrative competence and conservative leadership over a naive, unproven upstart just spouting off platitudes. He saw campaigning as beneath him.  Like nominees before him, he did not appear at the nominating convention and never really displayed a desire for the presidency. He played hard to get, "Well, if you really, really want me to be your president, I guess I will."  For a large chunk of American history, it was considered unseemly to campaign for yourself; the candidates relied on surrogates to sling the political mud.  On the other hand, FDR was one of the most politically astute politicians in history, in my mind second only to Lincoln among US presidents, and every waking moment for over a decade was spent preparing for his presidential campaigns.  Rags to Riches orphan exemplar Hoover was seen as aloof, cold, uncaring and out of touch with average Americans, while privileged millionaire FDR convinced the poorest farmers that he understood their plight, and he won black voters over despite blocking all civil rights and anti-lynching legislation and even though blacks were often excluded from New Deal benefits.  FDR's new political style changed presidential politics forever.

Martelle also does a great job of putting the election into the context of 1932. Many forces came together, creating a "perfect storm" that led to the transition:  the Great Depression, the farming crisis, the Bonus Army, the Scottsboro Boys case, labor riots, the rise of socialism and communism, the KKK.  I learned things from reading the book about each one, and Martelle weaves all of the threads together to tell a compelling story.

 

Monty Python - Ypres 1914

Great-Uncle Harry:  A Tale of War and Empire.  Michael Palin.  Random House Canada, 2023.  336 pages.

You might know Michael Palin as a member of the great Monty Python comedy troupe or maybe from one or more of his excellent television travel series, but Great-Uncle Harry is a bit of a departure for Palin because it's a very personal family history, a quest in a way, decades in the making.  During the height of the Monty Python days, Palin's family inherited a collection of diaries, photos, and letters, a treasure trove of family documents.  Many of the items had to do with his Great-Uncle Harry, the brother of his grandfather.  Harry had never really been spoken of in the family before.  In fact, Palin had not known he had a Great-Uncle Harry, but he discovered that Harry had been one of thousands of young British men killed in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme.  Palin was intrigued, but life intervened.  Only in recent years did he decide to really dig deep and try to discover who Harry was.  This book is the result.  The finished product is an engrossing story, told of course with Palin's wit, not just of one victim of the Great War, but of the British Empire, as the subtitle foreshadows.  The reader is drawn in for glimpses of British education, class system, and society as a whole through Harry's eyes, and Harry comes across as an ordinary, average bloke kind of flailing around and trying to find his place and fit in a rapidly changing world. Palin makes a real connection, not complete but at least a connection, to a family member he never knew and makes him accessible to the rest of us as well.

Author's podcast appearance

The League of Lady Poisoners:  Illustrated True Stories of Dangerous Women.  Lisa Perrin.  Chronicle Books, 2023.  208 pages.

You say you're looking for a fun read and a beautifully illustrated book about infamous women in history who used poisons to murder?  Well, look no further. The League of Lady Poisoners is the book for you.  Lisa Perrin has illustrated many books in her career, but this is the first book that she's both written and illustrated.  She's obviously a little different; she dedicates the book to her parents, saying they hoped that she would create a beautiful children's book as her first book, and yet....

She tells the stories of 25 women from all over the world and across centuries who were accused of poisoning people, and they are organized by motive.  Some used their knowledge of plants to attain wealth and position, even becoming official, or unofficial, functionaries, providing their services to the powerful or to those hungry for power.  Some used poisons to collect insurance money or inheritances.  Others may have seen poison as their only chance to escape a life of abuse and mistreatment.  Some were just pure evil.  In the stories of the women, the reader learns a lot about their times and societies and where women actually stood in those societies.  

The book starts with a really interesting history of poisons, detailing their origins, uses, and effects.  Perrin also delves into the reasons that poisoning was seen as women's work.  As you might expect from Perrin's background, it's also a beautiful hardcover book with gold foil details on the outside and great illustrations throughout.