Shelved: Roundup of Books Read and Reviewed in November 2024

 

Authors Talk

The Cuban Sandwich:  A History In Layers.  Andrew T. Huse, Barbara C. Cruz, and Jeff Houck.  University Press of Florida, 2022.  180 pages.

Every state has a couple of foods that Americans associate with that state.  In Florida, it's most likely key lime pie and the Cuban sandwich.  Personally, I think smoked mullet is a much bigger and better contribution to food than those two combined, but they are the quintessential Florida foods in the minds of most Americans.  

The Cuban sandwich has a long history of popularity, but both its composition and its origin have been clouded by conflicting claims and stories.  Tampa, Miami, and Key West all claim to be the home of the sandwich, which typically consists of some combination of pork (ham, roast pork, pulled pork), Swiss cheese, mustard, and pickles on Cuban bread.  Tampans add salami, a heresy according to other aficionados.  While the origin story has been researched before, authors Huse, Cruz, and Houck felt that there was more to the story and that it hadn't been fully told.  After extensive research, and I'm sure countless Cubans, they've created this fantastic history and a great read.  I have always believed that food is an excellent entry point when studying history, and this book delivers.  Their research reveals that Cuba was known for its sandwiches even before the Spanish-American War, even before the word sandwich reached Cuba, and they were often considered treats for upper class Cubans out on Sunday strolls.  There were different sandwiches with different names.  One of those sandwiches, called a mixto by most Cubans, eventually made its way to the United States, probably with immigrants to New York City.  The original sandwich looked very different, often including turkey or chicken, and/or lettuce and tomatoes. When Cubans settled in Florida, the sandwich went from upper class treat to staple for workers in cigar factories and other occupations.  The authors have done a delicious job of presenting Cuban and Florida history in all of its layers, and, along with the history, they include really interesting profiles of people and businesses that have made and continue to make contributions in Cuban sandwich-ology.

 

Kissinger's Betrayal:  How America Lost the Vietnam War.  Stephen A. Young.  RealClear Publishing, 2023.  432 pages.

Henry Kissinger's recent death at age 100 marked the end of a roughly 70 year career as academic historian, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, and advisor to a dozen presidents.  He shaped much of America's Cold War policy and history, and he became one of the most powerful and influential men in all of American history, credited with overseeing detente with both the USSR and the People's Republic of China and negotiating the Paris Peace Accords that ended US involvement in Vietnam.  His legacy is incredibly complicated, and historians will be struggling to unpack it and sort it out for decades.  Was he a genius diplomat  who worked tirelessly to achieve peace or was he a war criminal whose actions brought death and suffering on a huge scale, ultimately thwarting peace and stability?

Author Stephen A. Young's book tackles this question of legacy head-on, and one can correctly infer from the title what his opinion is.  Young was on the ground during the Vietnam War, tasked with building support for South Vietnam's government amongst the local populations as part of the US-sponsored CORDS program.  He went on to become an academic and think tank director.  Here, he relies on formerly classified documents in American, Vietnamese, and Russian archives, numerous interviews, and especially the personal papers of U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam, Ellsworth Bunker to accuse Kissinger of turning his back on the people of South Vietnam, deceiving President Nixon and other Cabinet members, along with the South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, causing the collapse of South Vietnam when it could have survived otherwise.  He makes a compelling case, and the background  and history of the Vietnam conflict are phenomenally presented.  However, it is obvious that Young does have a particular agenda, and his interpretations differ from the accepted view.  For example, while conventional wisdom often portrays Nguyen Van Thieu as extremely corrupt and incompetent, I think Young portrays him almost as admirable, even heroic.  And, of course, we will never know for sure if South Vietnam could have survived American withdrawal under different conditions.  Biased as the author as, I still think the book adds to the history of the Vietnam War.

  

Author talk

Mermaid Confidential.  Tim Dorsey.  William Morrow, 2022.  368 pages.  (#25 of 26 Serge Storms novels)

With national and world events in the state they're in, I felt the need for a quick for a quick mental palate cleanse, and what could be better than the continuing adventures of my favorite psychopathic, history-loving, serial-killing vigilante, Serge Storms.  Serge is the creation of Tim Dorsey, the brilliantly twisted comic genius who unfortunately passed away far too early, one year ago this month.  Serge Storms is a manic, obsessive, super-intelligent anti-hero who is Florida's biggest fan and supporter, constantly dispensing knowledge about everything Florida - history, culture, flora, fauna, climate, geology, all things Florida.  He travels the state with his best buddy Coleman who is decidedly not intellectual and is, in fact, drunk and/or stoned most of the time.  As they pursue their Florida adventures, they encounter really good people who have been grievously wronged by really bad people, and Serge goes into full vigilante mode, devising incredibly ingenious plots to exact revenge and set things right.

Mermaid is a love letter to the Florida Keys - and, yes, the Keys are a strange and different place from even the rest of Florida - and the reader learns about real locations, events, and cultural touchstones that make the Keys unique, including learning about Florida condo living, charter boat fishing, drug smuggling, cartel wars, and money laundering. (There's even a chapter set in Forsyth, Georgia that caught me by surprise.)  The Serge novels are always fun and always educational.  I'm glad that I have about 20 more to read, but sad that there aren't more to come.  Why isn't there a Serge Storms TV series yet?  Just begging for Danny McBride to produce it.

Audiobook preview

The Templar Legacy.  Steve Berry.  Ballantine Books, 2006.  496 pages. (Cotton Malone series, book 1 of 19)

Did you read the The Da Vinci Code twenty years ago, like everybody else?  I did, and I remember enjoying the ride but feeling very unsatisfied upon completion, much like I felt with the tv show "Lost" (but not as intensely unsatisfied as I felt with "Lost").  In 2006, author Steve Berry began the adventures of Cotton Malone, a highly capable federal agent who retired to become an antique book dealer in Copenhagen.  When his former boss has personal business in Copenhagen and pops in for a social visit, he finds himself embroiled in a mystery that disrupts and threatens not only his life, but the very foundations of western history and Christianity,  a mystery involving the Knights Templar.

The Knights Templar order was an order of holy warriors formed during the Crusades in Jerusalem in 1118.  Over the next two centuries, the order enjoyed favor and support from popes and secular kings, accumulating great power and wealth.  Then, in the early 1300s, Pope Clement V, at the behest of French King Philip IV, declared war on the Knights Templar.  The Templars were charged with blasphemy, greed, and all forms of sexual deviance.  Thousands of Templars were brutally tortured and executed, their assets were seized, and the order was abolished.  Or was  it?  Over the next seven hundred years, legends grew of hidden Templar treasures and lost Templar knowledge.  Ex-agent Cotton Malone finds himself deeply involved in the Templar legend.  

If you like mysteries grounded in real historical events, the Cotton Malone series is a series that you would probably enjoy.

A "best of" compilation

Don Rickles:  The Merchant of Venom.  Michael Seth Starr.  Citadel, 2022.  352 pages.

Gen Xers and Baby Boomers definitely know who Don Rickles was.  He was a comedy legend for decades even though he polarized audiences throughout his career.  Fitting, because he was really two different people.  In real life, he was a shy, quiet, introverted mama's boy, and his friends described him as incredibly kind, sweet, loving, generous, and loyal.  On stage, he viciously attacked everybody, celebrities and civilians alike, making jokes that broke every single taboo and crossed every line, without regard to race, religion, gender, sexuality, politics, handicaps, and physical appearance.  He was an equal opportunity offender, a lifelong Democrat who was friends with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.  Most of his targets took it in stride, believing that an insult from "Mr. Warmth" meant that you had made it. Others took the insults to heart.  Audiences were divided as well, but Rickles zoomed to the top of his field, dominating stages and becoming a fixture on television in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.  This biography is an informative and thorough recounting of his career, but it's somewhat superficial.  There are no deep, dark personal tragedies, no alcohol, drug, or sexual abuse, no deep dives into anyone's psyche.  However, that might be appropriate considering that the subject himself built an impregnable wall that separated his public and private personas.

Audiobook Preview

The Maltese Iguana.  Tim Dorsey.  William Morrow, 2023.   336 pages.  Serge Storms series, #26 of 26.

I escaped again to Tim Dorsey's brilliantly hilarious Florida Man world, reading the last Serge Storms novel, published in 2023.  But is it really an escape from real life?  Dorsey's books are all filled to the brim with real life since plot lines are all taken from real life, and my favorite psychopathic history-loving serial killer Serge Storms dispenses more Florida history knowledge than any professor in each book, but the story is always presented in an unbelievably surreal and hysterically funny way.  SERIOUSLY, WHY ISN'T THERE A DANNY MCBRIDE-PRODUCED SERGE STORMS TV SERIES?  

In what is sadly the final chapter of the series, Serge and his buddy Coleman are loving life in their Florida Keys condo, all settled in to the routine of weekly game nights and spaghetti and meatballs potlucks with their neighbors, but then the pandemic hits, totally upending their world.  As if that wasn't enough, they find themselves enmeshed in an overcomplicated CIA debacle, allowing Serge to expound on fifty years of CIA history in addition to Florida Keys history and Florida movie history.

Author podcast appearance

Eden Undone:  A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II.  Abbott Kahler.  Crown, 2024.  352 pages.  

Take a handful of crazy Germans and a barren rugged flyspeck of an island in the Galapagos Archipelago in the chaotic decade of the 1930s, throw in a few American millionaire adventurers and a murder mystery, and you've got one hell of a story.  Narrative nonfiction author Abbott Kahler recognized the hook of a great story and told it in Eden Undone.  Kahler, the author of great books like The Ghosts of Eden Park, Sin in the Second City, and Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy. recently changed her name to avoid confusion with another author named Karen Abbott.  After she discovered the story, she learned that movie director Ron Howard had also discovered it, making his own movie adaptation of the story, set for release in the very near future.

The first crazy Germans central to the story are an unhappy housewife diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and an arrogant doctor who detests sick people, follows the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and believes that a life of primitive living, vegetarianism, and nudism will enable him and others to live to be 150 or older.  They meet, fall into something (love? not like you've known it hopefully), convince their spouses to "free" them, arrange for their spouses to move in together as husband and wife, and decide to move to the island of Floreana to establish their own personal utopia.  Once settled on the island, word gets out in the world press, and they're joined, despite their objections,  by a German couple looking for their own slice of Eden and a baroness with her two male sex slaves who plans to make Floreana a resort city for the wealthy, a new Miami Florida.  Lots and lots of tension ensues, and ultimately the baroness and one of her slaves disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.  "Gilligan's Island," it ain't - unless you picture an S&M, fetishistic version with elements of "Desperate Housewives," and Ryan Murphy productions thrown in.  It's a fantastic story that proves truth is stranger than fiction, and this is a great book.  I read it over the course of two days.

 

Audiobook preview

The Big Bamboo.  Tim Dorsey.  William Morrow, 2006.  352 pages.  Serge Storms series, book 8 of 26.

In this, the 8th of 26 titles in the Tim Dorsey series relating the adventures of history -loving psychopath Serge Storms, Serge and his best buddy Coleman indulge Serge's current obsession with movies.  Serge's search for inspiration to fuel his screenwriting efforts takes them on a madcap dash through Tampa, Orlando, and Miami before a family tragedy leads to the next logical location:  Hollywood.  In Hollywood, Serge lands smack-dab in the middle of a chaotic scene involving two incredibly sleazy film-producing brothers, who make Serge look like Mr. Morality, Japanese organized crime hitmen, and murderous Alabama rednecks out for revenge.  The plot is, of course, overly complicated and involves a huge cast of characters - true for every Serge Storms novel - but all the loose threads come together in the end, and of course, there is lots of history and lots of mayhem along the way.  Honestly, this may be least favorite Serge novel so far, but I still love the series and want more.

The 1853 Dinner Party inside the Dinosaur described in the book

Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party:  How an Eccentric group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World.  Edward Dolnick.  Scribner, 2024.  352 pages.

Natural history was all the rage in Victorian England.  It seemed that everyone spent their leisure time communing with nature, walking, climbing, and beachcombing, collecting animals, plants, rocks, and fossils.  They assembled personal collections which they proudly displayed, museums were established and attendance bloomed, and scientific lecturers drew standing room only crowds across the country.  Scientists who were charismatic and attractive had audiences of adoring female fans hanging on every word.  The prevailing attitude was that God had created a perfect world functioned smoothly according to his plan, and that science existed in order to prove and illuminate His work.  That worldview began to deteriorate around 1800 when fossilized remains of previously unknown creatures were discovered and studied.  They had been found before, explained away as dragons, cyclops, unicorns, animals that didn't catch Noah's ark, fakes planted by either God or Satan to confuse, but a handful of people began looking at them differently, and their claims shook the Victorian mindset, raising confounding questions.  How can this be when the earth is only 6,000 years old?  Extinction was impossible -how could God make that part of His plan?  How could there possibly have been an entirely different world with entirely different creatures long before Man ever arrived on the scene when the world was created for Man to enjoy?

This book is incredibly entertaining and educational as it describes the work of these important, and eccentric, pioneers, the discoveries and theories that preceded their work, and the effects of their work on Victorian thinking.  It's one of my favorite reads of the year so far.  

Shelved: Roundup of Books Read and Reviewed in October 2024

 

Author on History Hack Podcast

Forged in Hell:  The Gripping True Story of the Special Forces Heroes Who Broke the Nazi Stronghold.  Damien Lewis.  Citadel Press, October 22, 2024 (Advance Readers Copy).  400 pages.

Damien Lewis is a well known British military historian who has written many books about World War II, including The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which was recently made into a major motion picture chronicling stories of the British Special Air Service (SAS) an elite special forces unit that was formed in 1941.  The SAS specializes in behind the lines clandestine operations that include hostage rescue, counter-terrorism, sabotage, and intelligence-gathering.  In July 1943, an SAS force was assigned to lead the invasion of Sicily, the "soft underbelly of Europe" as Winston Churchill called it, in order to dislodge Axis troops and to make a toehold for the largest invasion fleet ever assembled up to that time so that Allied troops could land and start making their way up  the Italian boot.  The SAS force was outnumbered at least 50 to 1 and had to deal with almost impregnable cliff-based defenses, and the fighting on the Italian peninsula would prove to be some of the most harrowing combat in the European theater, but the men of the SAS had their duty to fulfill.

Lewis is a great military historian, and his books read like novels.  If you are a military buff, especially a WWII buff, this book is a must-read.

CBS Sunday Morning

Love and Whiskey:  The Remarkable True Story of Jack Daniel, His Master Distiller Nearest Green, and the Improbable Rise of Uncle Nearest.  Fawn Weaver.  Melcher Media Inc., 2024.  376 pages.

While I've never been much a drinker, and I don't have a very discerning palate when it comes to alcohol, I was intrigued when I stumbled across a short video of Fawn Weaver discussing her new book.  I read it, and I loved it.   It's a great story of American history, but it's so much more.  It's the story of an inspiring woman who should be an example  of achievement, but I had never even heard her name until I stumbled on that video.  It's a great story of historical and genealogical mystery solving.  It's also a great story for aspiring entrepreneurs and business people, especially women and people of color.

Fawn Weaver's journey is incredible.  The daughter of a Motown music songwriter and producer turned preacher and a minister's wife who published books on marriage and family, she left home  and school at 15, lived in homeless shelters, and worked various jobs until, by age 20, she had become the head of a successful public relations firm. That success led to more success, with stumbling blocks along the way.  One day, she happened to read a story about the relationship between Jack Daniel and his distilling mentor, Nearest Green.  That story implied that the relationship had been mischaracterized by social media (gasps of shock and disbelief!), and she was hooked.  She made it her mission to uncover the true story.  She and her husband relocated from Los Angeles to Lynchburg Tennessee to do research.  Three years later, she had turned the prevailing narrative on its head and discovered a totally unique, and previously unknown, episode of American history, and they founded a brand new distillery, named Uncle Nearest to honor the first known black master distiller in American history, to preserve and to tell the story.  This truly is a great American story, accessible on many levels, even for people who aren't whiskey connoisseurs.  

Book Talk

Twilight Man:  Love and Ruin in the Shadows of Hollywood and the Clark Empire.  Liz Brown.  Penguin Books, 2021.  400 pages.

"In the booming 1920s, William Andrews Clark Jr. was one of the richest, most respected men in Los Angeles. The son of the mining tycoon known as "The Copper King of Montana," Clark launched the Los Angeles Philharmonic and helped create the Hollywood Bowl. He was also a man with secrets, including a lover named Harrison Post. A former salesclerk, Post enjoyed a lavish existence among Hollywood elites, but the men's money--and their homosexuality--made them targets, for the district attorney, their employees and, in Post's case, his own family. When Clark died suddenly, Harrison Post inherited a substantial fortune--and a wealth of trouble. From Prohibition-era Hollywood to Nazi prison camps to Mexico City nightclubs, Twilight Man tells the story of an illicit love and the battle over a family estate that would destroy one man's life."  (Amazon description)

Very few people today have ever heard of either William Clark Jr or Harrison Post, but they were once well known, at least in Los Angeles society, and Post's struggles were covered in the press, long after the society pages lost interest. Author Liz Brown only stumbled onto the story because she is the great-grandniece of William Clark and found a photo of Post in her grandmother's home.  The photo triggered memories of family whispers about her great uncle, and she set out to track down the real story of their relationship.  In the process, she manages to take a self-absorbed bore and leech (Post) whose total livelihood and existence are dependent on his connections to other people and to make his life interesting, even making him a somewhat sympathetic character.  She also takes the reader into the world of a rich and powerful family who played a significant role in the development of the western US, into Hollywood of the 1920s, and into the coded and hidden gay culture of the early 20th century.  It's a story that involves people keeping secrets hidden (even if the secrets aren't really secret) and inventing and re-inventing themselves.  The result is an interesting social history.

Overstated:  A Coast-to-Coast Roast of the 50 States.  Colin Quinn.  St. Martin's Press, 2020.  256 pages.

I stumbled onto this book.  I like Colin Quinn, and I liked I liked his book The Coloring Book,  It was a quick listen, obviously a project to keep him occupied during the pandemic.  It is, as promised, a very mild roast of the fifty states, celebrating the quirks and differences that make each state unique.  There are amusing bits and interesting bits.  While there are occasional historical flubs, he is not a historian and is not writing history, but the reader can see that Quinn does have an appreciation for history.  Try it out if you like Quinn as a stand-up.

Book Trailer

Follow the Stars Home.  Diane C. McPhail.  A John Scognamilio Book, 2024.  304 pages.

When I first encountered this work of historical fiction biography, I was intrigued.  The protagonist of the story is Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt, the great grand-aunt of Theodore Roosevelt.  I had never heard of her before, so I looked her up.  What a life!  She was the daughter of Benjamin Latrobe, one of the chief architects of the US Capitol and the White House.  At age 13, she began "courting" Nicholas Roosevelt, a friend and business partner of her father.  They married when she was 17, and he was 41.  Roosevelt was an inventor and entrepreneur who partnered with Robert Fulton.  Together, they pioneered the development of the steamboat, a huge advance in transportation that had a major impact on westward expansion.  In order to generate publicity and to demonstrate the efficacy of the steamboat in 1811, he sailed the New Orleans down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, in 14 days. It was an unprecedented journey, and Nicholas was not alone; Lydia accompanied her husband, 8 months pregnant and with a toddler in tow, breaking all gender barriers.  Lydia was apparently an incredibly woman of her day.

Unfortunately, I am not a fan of romantic historical fiction, and this book -as much as I could read - is definitely in that genre.  The title is a giveaway; it sounds like the title of a Hallmark Channel movie, even a Hallmark Christmas movie, and the book reads that way.  I would have much rather read a straight biography or history.  However, I  know there is a market out there, and there are readers who will appreciate it.  I am just not that reader,

Shelved: Roundup of Book Posts September 2024

 

Audiobook preview

Who Ate the First Oyster?:  The Extraordinary People Behind the Greatest Firsts in History.  Cody Cassidy.  Penguin Books, 2020.  240 pages.

This was one of the most fun books that I've read in a while.  It's very much aimed at a mass audience, and I listened to the audiobook version which was very podcast-like --- a really well done and thoroughly entertaining podcast, not the average podcasts with the clueless host, the breathless host, or the gigglebox host.  Writer Cody Cassidy did his research and interviewed leaders in one of the fastest evolving (pun intended) fields of science there is, paleoanthropology, the study of prehistoric humankind.  New discoveries and conclusions are being made in this field at an incredible pace, turning "established" theories on their heads.  He asked them about firsts, who did certain things first and how did they impact the development of humanity.  Who wore the first pants? Who painted the first masterpiece? Who first rode the horse? Who invented soap?  Who invented the wheel? Who told the first joke? Who drank the first beer? Who was the murderer in the first murder mystery, who was the first surgeon, who sparked the first fire--and most critically, who was the first to brave the slimy, pale oyster?

Of course, no one could provide concrete answers like "Thag did it on June 21, 45,000 BC."  What he does do is set up the context and describe the likely character and scenario and explain the invention, how it came about, and its significance.  In the process, he really prompts the reader to think about prehistoric man in a totally new light.  First, we have to drop the whole idea of prehistoric man being "primitive" and less intelligent.  Just consider the vast knowledge that they had to know in order to survive and how helpless we would be in their world.  Second, there are undeniable universalities across all human cultures that make us human and unite us over place and time.  There were prehistoric geniuses, dullards, clowns, artists, wheelers and dealers, just like humans today.  This was an eye-opening, edifying, and entertaining book.

Red Hook:  Brooklyn Mafia, Ground Zero.  Frank DiMatteo and Michael Benson.  Citadel, 2024.  368 pages.  (Advance Readers Copy:  Official Sale date is November 26, 2024.)

Today, we know Brooklyn as the second largest borough of New York City, at 71 square miles, a vibrant, diverse home to artists and hipsters, but it was an independent city for 250 years before it was officially absorbed into New York in 1898. Around the turn of the 20th century, Brooklyn was known for two things:  a busy port and lots of crime.  It seemed men had two choices according to the authors, "You either worked the docks or you became a crook."  There were as many as 79  juvenile street gangs, and many of the alumni graduated into harder crime.  Irish and then Italian organized crime families came to dominate Brooklyn, with all of the big names involved, with nicknames like "Scarface," "The Mad Hatter," "Peg Leg," "Wild Bill," "Cigar," and "The Executioner."  Over the 20th century, mob activities, turf wars, and hits were commonplace, and Brooklyn became "ground zero' for organized crime.  That century of Brooklyn's history is well documented here by two bona fide mafia historians, one of whom is the son of a former Mafia bodyguard, and the other has published numerous books on the subject.   This is a must-read for those interested in mob history.

Podcast on Willoughbyland

Willoughbyland:  England's Lost Colony.   Matthew Parker.  Thomas Dunne Books, 2017.  313 pages.

Having recently read Keith Thomson's Paradise of the Damned, the account of Sir Walter Raleigh's obsession with the legends of El Dorado, the golden city of South America, this book popped up on my radar.  Raleigh's stories and expeditions inspired many other English adventurers over the next several decades, including Sir Francis Willoughby.  In 1650, Lord Willoughby, a royalist concieved a plan to colonize the land between the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers, present day Suriname, both as a refuge for fellow royalists escaping parliamentarian rule in England and as a profit-making venture.  He recruited hundreds of settlers, including planters from Barbados and Jews who had earlier settled in Brazil.  The colonists discovered a world beyond their dreams:  vast tracks of thick jungle, an area of immense biodiversity including 800 tree species, 1,600 bird species, 300 species of catfish alone, and animals like anteaters, armadillos, caiman, and manatees.  Even in 2013, an expedition documented thousands of species of animals, including 60 never before identified.  By 1663, there were 1,000 white colonists successfully producing and exporting sugar and tobacco. They enjoyed a degree of religious tolerance found in few places in Europe at the time and were ruled by an assembly of planters that voted on proposals offered by the governor and executive council.  The colony largely coexisted peacefully with their indigenous neighbors.  Unfortunately, the economic success was built on the enslavement of Africans, and the Barbadian planters imposed their notoriously brutal form of slavery on the enslaved.  The colony was captured by  the Dutch during the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1667, but it was nominally re-captured by the British a few months later.  By that time, there wasn't much left of the colony, and Suriname was officially swapped for New Amsterdam (now New York City) in a treaty seven years later.  Today, there is almost no trace of the colony, except for the descendants of those enslaved people, and the jungle has swallowed Willoughbyland.

Author talk

Perfidia.  James Ellroy.  Knopf, 2014.  720 pages.

Are you a misanthrope at heart?  Do you think humanity is innately evil and beyond redemption? Do you like long, overly complicated stories full of vile characters who speak in stilted and totally unrealistic dialogue?  Do you like gritty, grimy, graphic, violent crime noir? with shocking levels of corruption, racism, and brutality?  If so, you are probably familiar with the works of James Ellroy, or definitely should be.  I've read some of his other works, but I somehow missed this book, which won numerous awards and has been called a "great Americal novel" by many reviewers and critics,  until now.

The setting is Los Angeles in December 1941.  The city is on edge well before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Pearl Harbor.  The entire city police force and government is made up of greedy, corrupt, power-hungry, evil, hateful, racist, misogynistic men who have no qualms about committing rape, murder, theft, or any other crime on the books as long as it adds to their wealth and/or power.  The Pearl Harbor attack leads to an explosion of sorruption and racism, like a gigantic pimple bursting and expelling oozing pus. Every character is tainted, including the alleged hero, Japanese-American police forensic specialist Hideo Ashida, as he attempts to solve the murders of a Japanese-American family in an all-white neighborhood.  This puts him into conflict and collusion at various times with Sergeant Dudley Smith, a war profiteer and schemer extraordinaire, Captain Bill Parker, an alcoholic climber with designs on becoming the next Los Angeles police chief, and Kay Lake, a 21-year old adrenaline junkie who thrives on being at the center of the action. There are also real people as minor characters like J. Edgar Hoover, Eleanor Roosevelt, JFK, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Paul Robeson.  Sure, it's graphic, violent, disturbing, totally politically incorrect, and disgusting, but I found it hard to put down.

Curator Talk on the exhibit at The Dali Museum

Reimagining Nature:  Dali's Floral Fantasies.   Salvador Dali Museum & Ludion, 2024.  108 pages.  (Available online and in The Dali Museum gift shop)

One of the pleasures of living where we do is that we are an hour from The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, one of our favorite museums, and we quickly became members after moving.  "Reimagining Nature" is a current exhibit (through October 27, 2024) of three suites of floral prints created by Salvador Dali between 1968 and 1972.  The prints are a part of the museum's permanent collection, but they haven't been displayed together for 20 years. In order to create these prints, Dali took original 18th and 19th century botanical illustrations by masters of the genre and painted over them by juxtaposing  surreal and incongruous elements and symbols that he often used throughout his career like flies, ants, melting clocks, and body parts.  The prints are collected in this catalog, no texts, just beuatiful engaging prints..  

Shelved: Roundup of Book Posts August 2024

 

The Cruise of the USS Codfish

I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This!: And Other Things That Strike Me As Funny.  Bob Newhart.  Hyperion, 2006.  256 pages.

A short time ago, the world lost a legend when Bob Newhart passed away.  He was one of the most unique and talented comedians ever, and, by all accounts, an extremely nice guy, one of my favorite performers.  He started his comedic career in clubs in the late 1950s, became the king of comedy albums and a favorite talk show and variety guest in the 1960s, the star of a long running hit tv show in the 1970s and another in the 1980s, acted in some big movies, and reintroduced himself to new audiences in great guest appearances in the 2010s.  His autobiography, originally published in 2006, returned to bestseller lists following his death, so I gave it a listen,  The audiobook version is only a few hours long, and it is read by him, a definite bonus.  As you would expect, there is nothing salacious or scandalous.  In fact, real autobiographical details are sparse, not much more than he would have discussed as a talk show guest, but the book is full of some of his greatest bits and the stories and inspirations around them.  This is a real treat for Newhart fans.

Book talk with author

A Deeper South:  The Beauty, Mystery, and Sorrow of the Southern Road. Pete Candler.  University of South Carolina Press, 2024.  400 pages.

Here's another in the umpteen dozen books that fall into what must be one of the biggest genres of nonfiction literature these days: a travelogue of the South designed to investigate and explain what makes the American South the most mysterious, confusing, interesting, misunderstood, demonized, and romanticized region of the United States, usually focused on race.  This  one is written by a member of one of the most privileged families in Atlanta, the Candlers, the wealthy, philantropic, and politically prominent family connected to Coca-Cola, among other enterprises.  As books of this genre go, it's  a good one.  Candler is a good writer.  I enjoyed the journey, - although "enjoyed" doesn't seem the right word - and I learned things and made note of places that I would like to visit myself, so I recommend it to readers of southern history and travelogues.  His description of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery took me there, masterfully. Two things stand out beyond that.  First, Candler is a few years younger than me, and he attended Atlanta private schools that charge about $50,000 or more a year tuition today, but I was shocked to learn that my public school education in small-town south Georgia was better than his.  He constantly refers to things he learned nothing about in school, but they were all part of my education.  Secondly, this was the worst edited book that I've read in years, perhaps ever.  Apparently, the University of South Carolina Press doesn't employ proofreaders.  I ran into grammar errors, spelling errors, wrong words, and repeated words every few pages.  I was so frustrated by the errors that it became difficult reading. (And while I'm complaining, the covers of the paperback both are permanently curled from normal reading.)

Author podcast appearance

Chaos:  Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties.  Tom O'Neill with Dan Piepenbring.  William Heinemann, 2019.  356 pages.

It's one of the most infamous crime sprees in American history, culminating in the bloody slaughter of seven adults in August 1969, at the hands of  The Family, a group of hippies under the control and direction of a self-proclaimed messiah/devil named Charles Manson.  In 1999, journalist Tom O'Neill was contracted to write a piece for the movie magazine Premiere focusing on the impact of the murders on the entertainment industry 30 years later.  As he got into the story, the story developed into an obsession that consumed the next twenty years of his life.  He interviewed hundreds of people and scoured thousands of pages of documents and discovered mountains of evidence that make it clear that the story we all have been told, the story promulgated by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in one of the best selling true crime books in history, Helter Skelter, is not the true story.  What he found is shocking.  The real story is full of police incompetence and massive coverups, and Bugliosi intentionally withheld evidence from court, fellow prosecutors, and defense attorneys and even allowed, if not encouraged, witnesses to perjure themselves on the witness stand because he crafted the story of Helter Skelter in order to make his career and fortune.  (Spoiler alert: Bugliosi was a bad, bad man.)  Charles Manson and the Family and/or their victims had deep connections to the entertainment industry:  producers, writers, executives, The Beach Boys, The Mamas and the Papas, Warren Beatty, Candice Bergen, and many others.  They also enjoyed a weird protection from authorities.  Manson and the people under his control were arrested numerous times before the murders, for auto theft, credit card theft, robbery, contributing to the delinquency of minors, drugs, and many more.  Even the accusations could have been used to revoke Manson's parole and reincarcerate him.  Yet, in every case, Manson and the others were released without charges or explanations.  Police officers told O'Neill that they were ordered to leave the Family alone.  Why?  O'Neill spent decades trying to figure out why, and his quest leads him into a deep dive into COINTELPRO, Chaos, and MKUltra - three incredibly illegal, unethical, and destructive secret projects conducted by the FBI and CIA which seemingly prove that government is never to be trusted.

 

author talk

Sunshine State Mafia:  A History of Florida's Mobsters, Hit Men, and Wise Guys.  Doug Kelly.  University of Florida Press, 2024.  194 pages.  

Almost from its inception in America, organized crime has had a home in Florida.  Crime family leaders quickly recognized that Florida was a safe haven from both winter and law enforcement.  Like every other American, mob figures viewed the wide open state as a vacation playground at first but then started running very successful bootlegging, gambling, prostitution, extortion, money laundering, and drug smuggling operations which made them lots of money and inspired some locals to go for their own piece of the action.  Doug Kelly is a licensed private investigator, security expert, outdoorsman, columnist, video producer, and writer who has crafted this short, but informative history of organized crime in the Sunshine State, based on his own experiences, research, and lots and lots of interviews with retired law enfordement members,  It opens with a quick introduction to the organization and inner workings of organied crime and then delves into the stories of the infamous like Al Capone and Tampa's Trafficante family as well as the lesser known figures who carved out their own local fiefdoms built on illegal activities like bolita, the popular lottery ball game imported from Cuba.  It's a good read if you're into organized crime history or Florida history. 

Shelved: Roundup of Book Posts July 2024

From CBS Sunday Morning

James:  A Novel.  Percival Everett.  Doubleday, 2024.  320 pages.

I must admit that I was apprehensive about reading James.  I had tried reading Everett's previous critically acclaimed novel, Trees, and honestly didn't like any part of it.  I only read a few dozen pages.  I also have a general aversion to hugely popular things, usually steering clear.  Finally, I have had mixed reactions to "re-tellings" of classic stories.  I recently enjoyed The Good Wife of Bath  but found Demon Copperhead lacking.  Nevertheless, I decided to plunge into James, and I'm glad I did.

Mark Twain has always been one of my favorite Americans, and there's no doubt that his incredible insight into Americans and American hypocrisy and foibles is in a class by itself.  Whether it's Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn  or any of his other stories, speeches, travelogues, or novels, Twain pulled back all the coverings and painted astonishingly accurate portrayals of the American zeitgeist, the "spirit of the time." In James, Percival Everett proves that he also has that gift.  James is a retelling of the story of Huck Finn and Jim, his escaped slave friend and companion.  True, Everett's Jim is not Twain's Jim, but that's ok;  Everett makes him better.  He is now older, with a wife and child, he's literate, and he teaches the enslaved people in his world the essentials of language and behavior that allow them to survive in slavery.   The enslaved people in Jim's world are all at least bilingual, wearing metaphorical masks around whites - speaking and acting ignorantly - while using correct grammar and speech to discuss sometimes deep issues amongst themselves.  Jim and the other enslaved people in his world offer a brilliant look into slavery and race.  Many of Jim and Huck's adventures are captured in this book, and there are new adventures, and tragedies, along the way.  There's a major surprise twist and a "Django" like twist at the end, but I found neither jarring.  Jim - rather, James - emerges as a brilliant character and hero, and it's a great novel. I think Twain would have approved.

Author on C-Span

The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.  Jack El-Hai.  PublicAffairs, 2013.  304 pages.

Filming has just recently ended on the adaption of this book as "Nuremberg," starring Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, and Michael Shannon.  Guessing release in 2025?

The book tells the story of Dr. Douglas Kelley, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who found himself charged with supervising the mental well-being of 52 men accused of being complicit in the greatest evil ever perpetrated, the top surviving Nazi officials at the end of World War II.  The men were imprisoned in Nuremberg awaiting the first trials of their kind, trials conducted by an international court following a war to determine their guilt in crimes that didn't even really exist before the war.  It was Kelley's job to ensure that they were competent to stand trial, but he went above and beyond, making it his job to try to understand how these men could have done believed and done what they did and how they could get a nation to go along.  He wanted to know if these men were really different from any other men, and, if so, how.

Kelley was a rising psychiatric star in the 1940s.  Soon after enlisting in the army, his techniques revolutionized the psychological treatment of soldiers traumatized by war, and his methods were quite successful.  Always driven to excel and to climb to the top in his profession, he seized the Nuremberg opportunity as a means to achieve professional status.  He spent hours and hours building relationships with men like Albert Speer, Rudolf Hess, and the highest-ranking prisoner of all, Hermann Goring, administering batteries of psychological tests.  The relationship between Kelley and Goring was the deepest; Goring even liked Kelley enough to ask him to raise his only child if anything happened to both of her parents.  The book is based on Kelley's voluminous records, and is an incredibly interesting look into the minds of the Nuremberg defendants.  It's also a look into Kelley's mind and the tragic ending of his life and the impact on his family.  

Author talk

Wild Women and the Blues.  Denny S. Bryce.  Kensington, 2021.  384 pages.

1920s Chicago: speakeasies, bootlegging, gambling, Al Capone, mob wars, numbers running - the backdrop for this historical fiction work, but with a difference.  The action takes place in black Chicago, the section called Bronzeville, so it's a 1920s story that's both different and familiar simultaneously.   The center of the story is centenarian Honoree  Dalcour, a sharecropper's daughter who moved to Chicago as a child, telling her life story to an aspiring young filmmaker, Sawyer Hayes,  who has discovered a possible unknown film by the successful black filmmaker of the era, Oscar Micheaux.  Honoree had a role in that film, and Sawyer can't resist tracking down the last living link.  Honoree tells him her story.  Abandoned as a teen by her mother and by her first love, she becomes a dancer in a speakeasy at 19, but she has dreams of bigger things, even stardom on Broadway.  She gets a break when she's hired to dance at Chicago's most prestigious black-and-tan (club that allows integrated audiences) speakeasy, the Dreamland Cafe.  Her revelry is cut short, however, when she is unwittingly involved in murder and mob double-crosses that forever alter her life.  The result is page-turner revealing a well-researched world and multiple family secrets that had been hidden for nearly a century. 

An entertaining read.  

Author on podcast

Burma Sahib.  Paul Theroux.  Mariner Books, 2024.  400 pages.

George Orwell, real name Eric Blair, was one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century, and his books Animal Farm and 1984 are undeniably classics, two of the handful of books that I have read multiple times.  Paul Theroux is a popular and highly respected author in his own right.  The two come together in this fictionalized version of Blair's life in Burma from 1922 to 1927. At 19, he joined the Imperial Police and spent the next five years enforcing British colonial rule, stationed in various outposts during his service.  His parents were products of the British colonial system themselves, his father having been an opium agent in the Indian Civil Service, a bureaucrat overseeing opium sales to China, and his mother having been raised in Burma, the daughter of a French speculator in timber and other enterprises.  Blair's grandmother and other relatives still lived in Burma when he was there. 

As portrayed by Theroux, Blair is a complicated muddle of awkwardness and confusion, a real loner and outsider, freakishly tall (at 6' 2"), and incredibly socially awkward, always more comfortable reading, writing poetry, and dreaming of being a successful writer than he was at personal interactions.  He's pressured by his father into accepting the police job in Burma even though he always suspects that it is not his place.  From the beginning, he's troubled by the brutality and hypocrisy that he's expected to uphold in his job, which is in British eyes to enforce law and order and to impose "civilization" on the deprived, and depraved, "Orientals" who are paradoxically simultaneously thought of and treated as ignorant, simple, and childlike on one hand and devious, sly, and conniving on the other.  The struggle in the book is Blair dealing with all of this and trying to keep his sanity.

The novel is an interesting take on Blair's life and how it shaped his future work,  It is also a searing indictment of British colonialism.  The reader may well come away with the impression that the British are the most evil, vile, disgusting, and perverted people who ever lived. and not just for the horrors committed in the name of Empire, but also for the soul-crushing abuse that was a daily part of life in British public schools and the larger British class system.  

 

 

Shelved: Roundup of Book Posts June 2024

 

From CBS Sunday Morning

The Year of Living Constitutionally:  One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning.  A. J.  Jacobs.  Crown, 2024.  304 pages.

I saw a story about this book on "CBS Sunday Morning" a few weeks ago and thought it sounded interesting.  I regretted my purchase before I was finished with the author's introduction.  Strike one:  the author decided to illustrate the second amendment by walking around New York City carrying a musket and bayonet everywhere.  Nobody did that in 1787.  Reeks of narcissistic, agenda-driven stunt. Strike two:  Maybe it was meant to be a joke, but he wrote that his children invoke the first amendment every time they call him names.  Even joking about that (calling a parent names) is unfathomable to me.  If it's a joke, not funny; if not, it's so far removed from my experience to make it too weird. (Yes, I am very old-fashioned in some ways.)  Strike three:  In a couple of paragraphs, he goes on and on about what he describes as the shockingly brutal and horrific language used in the Constitution.  If you're triggered by words in an historic document, maybe you should stay away from history.  I bailed on this book in the first chapter, not worth my time.

Author talk

Palace Council.  Stephen L. Carter.  Knopf, 2008.  528 pages.

"In the summer of 1952, twenty prominent men gather at a secret meeting on Martha’s Vineyard and devise a plot to manipulate the President of the United States. Soon after, the body of one of these men is found by Eddie Wesley, Harlem’s rising literary star. When Eddie’s younger sister mysteriously disappears, Eddie and the woman he loves, Aurelia Treene, are pulled into what becomes a twenty-year search for the truth. As Eddie and Aurelia uncover layer upon layer of intrigue, their odyssey takes them from the wealthy drawing rooms of New York through the shady corners of radical politics, all the way to the Oval Office."  Publisher's blurb

This is, I think, the third book by Stephen L. Carter that I've read, following Invisible, his great biography of his grandmother, and another political thriller, the genre of most of his writing.  This book is definitely a complex and suspenseful thriller that takes the reader into the world of the black upper class of Harlem and the political back rooms of Washington DC from the Brown vs Board of Education decision to Watergate.  Eddie Wesley, a rising literary figure, stumbles into a complex web of political intrigue that can, and does, become a major disruption of his life and a threat to the country.  It's an excellent read.

Author Talk

Painter in a Savage Land:  The Strange Saga of the First European Artist in North America.  Miles Harvey.  Random House, 2008.  368 pages.

In 1564, a group of French Huguenot (Protestant) colonizers landed in northern Florida and established a settlement named Fort Caroline on the St. John's River, near modern day Jacksonville, but the exact site is still unknown today.  In 1565, the Spanish founded St. Augustine and immediately set out to destroy their rival's toehold in the New World, mutilating and massacring most of the French, who were not only enemies of Spain but also Protestant heretics, so they massacred and mutilated in the name of God, forcing the French to set their sights north - Canada.  One of the few French survivors was Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, the official artist and cartographer of the expedition, the first European artist to set foot in the continental United States and a very mysterious and significant figure in history.  The mystery?  Very little is known about his life before and after Fort Caroline.  Then, there's his American work itself.  To date, historians have discovered none, or almost none, of his original illustrations of the Native Americans in the area, illustrations of the French colonizers and the fort, and maps that he drew.  The works attributed to Le Moyne are actually reproductions of his works made by contemporaries John White (the governor of the failed Roanoke colony) and Theodor de Bry and many others, each of whom applied his own vision and agenda to Le Moyne's work.  The result is that historians have questioned the authenticity and reliability of the images.  The Indians often have European features, and they are shown using tools and weapons that the Florida Indians would have never seen.  Many of the images are incredibly violent and brutal depictions of war, sacrifice, and even cannibalism.  Le Moyne's original captions and labels have been lost or altered over time. Did Le Moyne even witness these events?  Are the misrepresentations accidental or intentional?  For what purpose and who did the misrepresenting, Le Moyne or White or de Bry?  

Even Le Moyne's work after Fort Caroline is mysterious.   He seems to have spent most of the rest of his life doing incredibly beautiful and accurate botanical paintings, but most of those works known to us today were only discovered in the 20th century.  Harvey explores these mysteries and the history of Fort Caroline  in this fascinating book.

Audiobook preview

Paperbacks From Hell:  The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction.  Grady Hendrix.  Quirk Books, 2017.  256 pages.

I'm not a huge fan of the horror genre, but I am well aware of the author Grady Hendrix, a huge star in the field.  Hendrix possesses a love and knowledge of the horror genre that is unmatched, a human encyclopedia on the subject.  His novels each tackle a different sub-genre, like vampires or zombies or haunted houses, include all the best (and worst) elements of the sub-genre, and are simultaneously frightening and hilarious.  In 2017, he published this history of horror literature of the 1970s and 1980s, a golden age of horror novels, movies, and television.  

I've always been a fan of shlock.  I love 1950s B-movie monster and sci-fi movies, I grew up on "Dark Shadows" reruns after school, I won't pass up a 70s demon cult movie when I'm TV grazing, and I have been known to read a really trashy novel here and there, so this history is right up my alley.  My "to view" and "to read" list has grown as a result.  It's a relatively short book, but it is so full of details and information about dozens and dozens of works and authors and about how those works reflected the events of the day.  (There is much to be learned by historians studying popular culture and entertainment.) Hendrix's humor is a super bonus, funny lines zooming left and right, like when he describes a particular group of books as "Scooby Doo, but with more orgies." Never in my life would I have dreamed that there were so many books featuring prehensile penises and nipples, man-eating (literally) vaginas, exploding babies, satanic cults, and cannibalism and much, much more.  This was a really fun read, and I think that I will read some of his novels. (And I may be spending more time in the horror sections of my favorite used book stores.)

Ken Burns interview Erik Larson on Demon of Unrest

CBS Sunday Morning

The Demon of Unrest:  A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War.  Erik Larson.  Crown, 2024.  592 pages.

You can't go wrong with an Erik Larson book.   Well, except for his last book, in my opinion, an attempt at horror fiction that made my worst books of the year list.  No worries, though, he is definitely back on track with Demon, which may now be at the top of my list of favorite Larson books.  I don't think it matters much how much you know about the Civil War and the events leading up to the firing on Fort Sumter; you will learn much more from reading this book.  Larson is the undisputed king of narrative nonfiction, and like his previous books, this book reads like a thriller.  The subtitle is incredibly apt in this case, as the story is crammed full of "Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism."  Larson does a great job of establishing why South Carolina started the whole thing, with his explanation of the mindset of "the Chivalry," the uniquely South Carolinian mindset among its planters that simultaneously crippled progress and filled them with wild romantic fantasy, leading to the conflict.  He uses two great allusions, comparing South Carolina to Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, the jilted bride for whom time stops, and paralleling the events leading up to the firing to the Code Duello, the Dueling Code which was at the center of a southern gentleman's honor, and thus, his being.  

Larson incorporates the stories and personalities of the people involved in the events so well through diaries, letters, and documents.  Of course, there are insights into Lincoln, Davis, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, and Sumter commander Major Robert Anderson, but the reader also gets to know some lesser known characters like James Hammond, slavery apologist and stoker of South Carolina's ardor for conflict, Edmund Ruffin, the pied piper of secession who traveled the South urging secession, Captain Abner Doubleday, US officer at Sumter who seldom saw eye to eye with Major Anderson (and who definitely did not invent baseball), and Mary Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter whose diary is a phenomenal record of the times.  There's also Lincoln's chief political rival and Secretary of State William Seward along with several other US and Confederate Cabinet heads and other government officials who each seemed to have their own agenda.  This book is a must read!

Authors talk

Ella and Marilyn, the "Drunk History" version

Can't We Be Friends: A Novel of Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe.  Eliza Knight and Denny S. Bryce.  William Morrow Paperbacks, 2024.  384 pages.

Thanks to the internet, people are becoming more and more aware of an extraordinary friendship between two of the most famous women of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Marilyn Monroe and Ella Fitzgerald, legends in their fields, at the peak of their careers.  I've never been a jazz fan, and I've never sat down and listened to Fitzgerald.  To me she was just that lady who popped up on 1970s variety shows and broke the glass with her voice in a commercial in the 1980s, but I recognized her great talent.  I've seen some of Monroe's movies and thought they were interesting, but I know much more about her personal life because of the "scandals" and conspiracies.  Historical fiction authors Denny Bryce and Eliza Knight have written a very entertaining novel about the deep friendship that emerged from letters that Monroe wrote to Fitzgerald asking for voice lessons.  Their common bond, besides real mutual admiration for each other's talents, was struggle.  For Fitzgerald, the external struggles were against racism, sexism, and body-shaming, while she struggled internally with finding true love and doubting her mothering because she left her son to be raised by an aunt while she toured the world.  For Monroe, there was the sexism of Hollywood which not only affected her earning power and personal control over her career, but it also led to type-casting and unfair accusations of unprofessional behavior.  Then, there was her horrible track record with men, which was both a cause and a symptom of her mental instability, depression, and self-doubt that led to major alcohol and pills addiction. 

The book is not a biography, but the authors obviously did a great deal of research, and they created an enlightening and entertaining novel which has added to my understanding of and appreciation for both women.  (By the way, much of the recent internet storytelling gets it wrong, apparently.  Yes, Marilyn may have helped Ella get bookings in certain L.A. clubs, but Ella wasn't ignored by those clubs because she was black.  Black women like Dorothy Dandridge, Earth Kitt, and Lena Horne performed in those clubs frequently. Ella was ignored because she had a fuller figure than those women.)

Paradise of the Damned:  The True Story of an Obsessive Quest for El Dorado, the Legendary City of Gold.  Keith Thomson.  Little, Brown, and Company, 2024.  400 pages.

Keith Thomson, the author of the excellent history of pirates Born to Be Hanged, just published Paradise in May.  It's the story of the mythical land of El Dorado, the city of gold described by  indigenous tribes and sought after by European for centuries, but this book approaches the story from a different angle than the books you've read and documentaries you've seen, focusing not on the Spanish search for the fabled city but on the English efforts instead.   Not just the English efforts in general, but the efforts of one of the most interesting Englishmen in history in particular, Sir Walter Raleigh.  Raleigh was a soldier, explorer, writer, poet, and colonizer made famous in English history and legend, for his battles against the Spanish, failed colonial attempts at Roanoke, and introduction of tobacco and potatoes to England.  He's also famous as a long-time favorite of Queen Elizabeth I and a victim of her successor, King James I.  However, he became an ardent believer in the Spanish stories of El Dorado and spent years of his life and much of his personal fortune exploring South America in search of the city that would grant huge personal riches on himself and on the queen he loved.  He and his men endured incredible hardships slogging through jungles and battling the Spanish on numerous expeditions, while his many enemies at court used intrigue and manipulation at home to push him out of Elizabeth's fickle favor, and, in the end, to get him imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed.  Thomson's book is a great review of his life, the endless political jockeying within the English court, and the impossible quest of so many Spanish and English explorers.