Shelved: Roundup of Book Posts March 16 - March 31, 2024

 

Discussion of Men's Adventure Magazines

Weasels Ripped My Flesh! Two-Fisted Stories From Men's Adventure Magazines.  Editors Robert Deis, Josh Allen Friedman, Wyatt Doyle.  New Texture, 2013.  436 pages.

As Co-Editor Wyatt Doyle writes in the forward,  "If you want to know where a society's head was at, dig thorough their stuff." If you want know where American men's heads were at in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, check out the Men's Adventure magazines that were popular during the day.  They were sort of like comic books for adult men or a continuation of the action-packed, and a little seedy, dime novels popular in the late 1800s.  Looked down on as low-brow and slightly pornographic, these magazines published crime, fantasy, sci-fi, and war stories, often written under pen names by writers who would become famous novelists, with titillating and graphic illustrations aimed at males yearning for adventure.  Doyle continues, " The magazines were entertainment, first and foremost, diversion without pretension. They were impulse buys, aimed well south of the brain for the softer targets of gut and groin.  Cheap, lurid, and sensational."

Weasels is the first collection edited by Deis, Friedman, and Doyle in the Men's Adventure Library.  (Check out the website https://www.menspulpmags.com/) They've collected a representative sample of stories including ravenous packs of wild animals, Nazi experimentation, jungle escapes, crime, war, etc.  Totally politically incorrect on many levels because they are sensationalized versions of  their time, but entertaining and revealing.  

Author talk

Backroads of Paradise:  A Journey to Rediscover Old Florida.  Cathy Salustri.  University Press of Florida, 2017.  256 pages.

As part of the New Deal in the 1930s, the federal government extended paychecks to writers, artists, actors, and other creative professionals by employing them in various cultural pursuits. The Federal Writers Project hired writers to submit historical and cultural stories that have proven to be invaluable to later historians, the well-known slave narrative interviews, for example.   In Florida, writers plunged into the largely undeveloped state of the time and submitted accounts of 22 driving tours, exploring the small towns and natural wonders of the state.  These stories, written anonymously by writers including Zora Neale Hurston and Stetson Kennedy,  were collected and published as a guidebook to the state that was largely unknown and unfathomable to most other Americans (still is).  The guidebook became a time capsule of sorts as the interstate system and the tourism industry transformed these small towns and the Florida of the 1930s forever.  Some of the towns stagnated and even disappeared, wilderness was leveled, and ways of life and industries like cattle and citrus started the decline which continues today.

A few years ago, journalist Cathy Salustri was inspired by the guidebook to recreate the road trips and to compare the two Floridas.  She traveled roughly 5,000 miles, and her book becomes a new guidebook, inviting the readers off the interstates and away from the strip mall-, car wash-, and storage unit-filled, traffic-congested homogeneity that Florida is becoming.

Author talk

Homage:  Recipes and Stories From an Amish Soul Food Kitchen.   Chris Scott.  Chronicle Books, 2022.  272 pages.

I love food and cooking and the huge role food plays in culture and history.  If you had told me that one of the greatest books I've seen about soul food in the past couple of years was about AMISH SOUL FOOD, I would have called you crazy.  But here it is, and it's a great addition to my cookbooks.

Chef Chris Scott is a former competitor on "Top Chef" and a successful restaurateur, and his book is a really personal history of his family history, the African Diaspora, and the Pennsylvania Dutch/Amish immigrant experience.  His formerly enslaved ancestors left the South after the Civil War and settled in Pennsylvania Dutch territory, and they blended their African, southern, soul food with the Amish traditions of their new home.  That's how food and culture work, always blending and evolving.  And why shouldn't these seemingly distinctive foodways blend?  What is soul food but food that takes you home to family, traditions, and history and comforts you?  So every culture has its own version of soul food.  Scott grew up with both soul food traditions, and he makes it his mission to prepare and serve food that showcases all of the elements of his background.

The book has great stories, absolutely beautiful photos - some of the best photography I've seen in recent cookbooks, and delicious recipes that I look forward to trying soon.  

Audiobook Preview

The Rumor Game:  A Novel.  Thomas Mullen.  Minotaur Books, 2024.  368 pages.

You may know Thomas Mullen from his Darktown series, novels about the first black members of the Atlanta Police Department and the barriers they faced.  He's back, and he's switched things up.  Instead of the pervasive and overwhelming racism of 1950s Atlanta, Mullen's new novel takes on the pervasive and overwhelming racism of World War II Boston.  But wait there's more:  Boston is not just incredibly racist, it's also a city of pervasive ethnic and religious hatred, affecting everything and everyone.  

The Rumor Game has all the hallmarks of a new series.  The two protagonists are Irish Catholic FBI Agent Devon Mulvey, a rakish rule-breaking, impetuous young agent who has to fight anti-Irish and anti-Catholic discrimination within the Agency, and Anne Lemire, a young half-Catholic and half-Jewish reporter, part Lois Lane and part Nancy Drew.  Mulvey's job is to keep an eye out for cases of industrial espionage or sabotage that might harm the US war effort.  Lemire's job is to fact-check the plethora of war-related rumors and gossip items that swirl around the city and which are also dangerous to the war effort.  After bumping into each other for the first time since junior high school days in the old neighborhood, they find themselves embroiled in a major plot involving counterfeiting, racist hate-spreading, and insurrectionist conspiracies, and their loved ones are also in the mix.  

The characters are interesting, and the story is good.  If it is the beginning of a new series for Mullen, I'll go along for the ride.  

Crash Course "The Mughal Empire"

The Moghul.  Thomas Hoover.  Public Domain. Kindle, Legare Street Press, 2023. 560 pages.

Are you enthralled by the current remake of James Clavell's Shogun?  When the original miniseries aired in September 1980, I was a high school freshman, and it quickly became one of my greatest TV memories. I read the 1975 novel on which it was based, and it became a favorite.  I began reading all of the other Clavell books.  Author Thomas Hoover had read the Clavell book also, and said to his literary agent "Why don't I do a Shogun novel set in India? "  The Moghul was originally published at about the same time the original Shogun series hit TV screens.  (The Moghul also received the TV series treatment, in two other countries, not the U.S.) A friend recently suggested Moghul, and it's free on Amazon Kindle, so why not?

There are many similarities. Both books are set in approximately the same time, early 17th century.  The leading character in both books is an English seaman (pilot in Shogun, captain in Mogul) leading a mission to a thoroughly foreign and strange place to initiate trade.  Both men have to deal with evil and corrupt Portuguese priests and merchants who will do anything to preserve their commercial and spiritual monopolies.  Both men find themselves embroiled in extremely complicated political struggles, plots, and civil wars that weaken Japan and India.  Both men find forbidden love with native women.  Both men are seen and treated as barbarians by their hosts, but they witness horribly bloody actions that make their hosts barbarians in their eyes.

The Moghul was entertaining but falls far short of Clavell's work.  I found myself skimming a lot, partly because Clavell did it so much better and partly because Hoover's intricate and elaborate political and economic explanations were too complicated and boring for me.  I don't remember Shogun being that hard too follow (But I was a high school freshman, so, of course, I was much smarter then.).  As far as I can tell, and as much as he explained in his notes, Hoover did do a good bit of research, so the historical glimpse of Moghul (Mughal) India was interesting.  Overall, I give the book a 3 out of 5.

Famous Recipes from Mrs. Wilkes' Boarding House in Historic Savannah.

Mrs. Wilkes' Boardinghouse Cookbook.

Why did it take me so long?  I grew up knowing about Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House.  I knew she and her husband were from my hometown, and her husband may have been related to me --- my maternal great, great grandmother was a Wilkes.  Mrs. Sema Wilkes took over the Savannah Georgia boarding house, already up and running for decades, in the 1940s, providing rooms and meals to railroad men and other travelers.  It's still run by the family, with her granddaughter there most days. I knew that people lined up to eat old-fashioned southern food there, and that it is one of the most famous restaurants in the city. Yet, I had never eaten there until this past February, because of the long lines, schedules not working out, and maybe fear of being disappointed.  It turned out to be one of the greatest meals of my life, hands down, and, offhand, I can't think of any other restaurant that has lived up to its own reputation as well.

The restaurant is only open on weekdays, for lunch only.  People start lining up at 10 AM or earlier, and there are no reservations.  We waited an hour and a half in line, something that I have never done before, for any restaurant.  Usually, if I hear 30 minute wait or longer, I leave.  At 11 AM, they start seating groups of 10 or so strangers at large tables.  The tables are filled with 20 or more bowls of food including fried chicken, roast beef, peas, beans, greens, rutabagas, potato salad, corn, biscuits, cornbread, etc.  Each one is different.  Then, you and your newfound friends start passing the bowls around, and the staff swiftly replaces the bowls as they empty.  Everything was amazing, and continuing the family style-ness, you are expected to clear your own dishes when you leave the table.

As soon as we got home, I ordered copies of two of the books published featuring Mrs. Wilkes' story and recipes.  If you're interested in southern food, these are great additions to your collection.

author lecture

Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America's Imperial Dream.  Gregg Jones.  NAL, 2012. 464 pages.

The Spanish-American War was called "a splendid little war" by Secretary of State John Hay.  It was launched in 1898 from Tampa Florida; a half hour from my house. Within six months, American forces had defeated the cruel and vicious colonial oppressors, the Spanish, liberated the oppressed peoples of Cuba and the Philippines, and acquired overseas possessions which would increase American prestige and economic clout.  Americans had unified in a common effort, helping to heal festering wounds of the Civil War, and (comparatively speaking) few Americans had died.  (The majority of those that did died of disease and bad canned meat, not enemy fire.  For flag-waving politicians and industrialist robber barons, it seemed indeed to be "splendid."

Then, lo and behold, reality set in.  Those ungrateful little oppressed heathens did not possess the common sense to be thankful for swapping Spanish oppressors for American benefactors offering progress, education, civilization, and salvation, that only Americans could bestow.  Whaaaaaatttt? How dare they?  The Filipinos launched a new war for independence which was much less splendid.  American troops were forced by the ungrateful savages into a protracted jungle guerilla war which brought a few thousand more American deaths and tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of Filipino deaths, committing horrible atrocities against men, women, and children along the way.   

Jones' book is a through account of the Spanish-American and Filipino Wars, America's giant leap into imperialism, and the anti-imperialist movement.  It's a worthy companion read to Stanley Karnow's book about the Filipino War, In Our Image.

 

 

Shelved: Roundup of Book Posts March 1 - March 15, 2024

 

Audiobook preview

Silent Cavalry:  How Union Soldiers From Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta --- and Then Got Written Out of History.  Howell Raines.  Crown, 2023.  576 pages.

Again, I feel misled. I thought I was getting book about a really fascinating and overlooked piece of Civil War history, the role of anti-secession southerners in the Civil War.  It's a great premise.  There were notable pockets of white resistance to the Confederacy throughout the South.  West Virginia actually broke from Virginia in order to remain with the Union, and there were sizable groups of people in North Georgia and North Alabama who opposed secession.  Some southern men actively resisted the Confederate conscription laws.  Some actively resisted by harassing Confederate officials and military units tasked with rounding up draft-dodgers and deserter.   Some provided assistance to escaped Union prisoners and soldiers trapped behind Confederate lines.  Some men actually chose to don Union uniforms and fight for the Yankee "invaders."  It's a subject that I would love to learn more about.

Alas, this is not the book for that.  It purports to be about the First Alabama Cavalry, USA, a unit of over 2,000 men from the northeastern corner of Alabama that General William T. Sherman hand picked as his personal bodyguard unit.  He tasked them with setting up and protecting his personal encampment on the March to the Sea, and they often rode point -lead - on the March itself. It is a story that should be told, and, until recently, it is a story that was intentionally covered up by so-called Alabama historians and archivists. THAT'S the story I wanted to read, both the story of the unit and of the cover-up.

Instead of that, I got  what appears to be a growing genre:  books written by retired or unemployed southern-born "journalists" that purport to be historical, but they're really memoirs that lay out how awful the South is and was and how their families were and are historic outliers, always proudly standing on "the right side of history."  And seemingly every other paragraph includes a damnation of  Donald Trump and "red-state Republicans."  (How many books would never have been written if Trump had never run for President? My guess is lots and lots.) I was listening to this book and had to quit after about a third of the way through, after learning nothing about the First Alabama, except that they existed and they came from the area around Winston County.  What I learned was the political views of the author and his family.  I don't read history for lectures about 2024 politics, and I couldn't care less about his politics.

Preview of Secrets of the Dead: A Samurai in the Vatican City, PBS

The Samurai.  Shusaku Endo.  Harper and Row.  336 pages.

Unfortunately, this is another book I didn't finish.  Shusaku Endo is considered a great Japanese novelist, and The Samurai is considered a classic.  A few years ago, I slogged through another of his classics, Silence.  I tried again, and I've decided that maybe I'm not cut out for Japanese fiction, and Endo specifically.

The problem is the pace. It's so slow and and spiritual.  Not my cup of tea.  I would prefer a more historical book about the real story.  In this case, The Samurai is the fictionalized story of Hasekura Tsunenaga, a Japanese Christian samurai who traveled as an official ambassador to the Americas and to Europe from 1613 to 1620.  Tsunenaga was well received in Spain and by the Vatican.  It's a really interesting story, and there was an episode of PBS' show "Secrets of the Dead" (preview linked above) about the mission.

Endo's fictionalized version moves so slowly, and it's focused more on the samurai's personal spiritual journey than the diplomatic one. Again, not my cup of tea, but I'm sure there are many who would appreciate the read.

author talk

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.  James McBride.  Riverhead Books, 2023.  400 pages.

In recent years, James McBride has published two of the most highly acclaimed and popular novels of the century:  Deacon King Kong and The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.  I'm of two minds when I read McBride.  On one hand, I can easily see why they're so popular.  The reader is set down in an incredibly rich world populated by some of the most complex and fully developed characters and storytelling that has ever been published.  It doesn't matter who the reader is, black, white, northern, southern, the world that McBride reveals is foreign and strange, and, yet, it is so inviting.  On the other hand, McBride's writing is so detailed and complex that his books can seem to drag.  Like Faulkner, he seems to have an aversion to ending sentences. Some tangents seem to go on too long.  Every scene has to have pages and pages of backstory, sometimes reaching back generations.  One would not ask McBride to write a technical manual or anything else that requires bluntness or directness.

Heaven and Earth is set in the 1930s in the Chicken Hill neighborhood of Pottstown Pennsylvania.  Chicken Hill is predominantly black with a few dozen Jewish families mixed in.  The groups tend to keep to themselves, but the nexus is a Jewish couple named Moshe and Chona.  Moshe owns a theater, and he brings in jazz, blues, and klesmer musical acts, drawing black and Jewish audiences to Pottstown, to the chagrin of white Pottstownians.  Chona runs the grocery store on Chicken Hill, never making a profit because she always extends credit and gives away candy, toys, food, and merchandise to anyone in need.  Women gather at the store to gossip and problem-solve.  Moshe and Chona's lives are changed when they take in a deaf black orphan boy to protect him from being committed to an asylum.  His plight soon involves lots of Chicken Hill's most vivid characters, and it's entwined, somehow, in the mystery that opens the book.  In 1972, police uncover remains of an unknown person murdered in 1936, and the mystery is solved at the end of the book, but not until the reader is totally immersed in the lives of the people of Chicken Hill. It's amazing writing.

 

author talk

Tropic of Stupid. Tim Dorsey.  William Morrow, 2021.  368 pages.  (Serge Storms novel #24)

This is my third Serge Storms novel written by Tim Dorsey, the Godfather of Florida Man fiction.  Serge, you may remember, is the Florida native who is an absolute fanatic about Florida's history and environment.  He travels around Florida with his perpetually stoned traveling buddy Coleman.  Along the way he geeks out - like no history lover has geeked out ever - traveling from site to site and explaining the historical significance of each to Coleman and to the readers.  Along the way, he rights wrongs by kidnapping, torturing, and killing in bizarre ways an assortment of swindlers, crooks, and criminals who have hurt some poor innocents --- sort of a psychotic, homicidal maniac Robin Hood. I see Serge and Coleman as a demented version of Mr. Peabody and Sherman, the super-genius dog and boy who travel through time as Mr. Peabody teaches Sherman history.  Dorsey filled each Serge Storms novel with lots and lots of true Florida history, human and natural, lots of true Florida Man and Woman stories, and lots of humor.

In Tropic of Stupid, Serge and Coleman make the rounds of Florida's State Parks, visiting many to collect stamps in Serge's Park Passport book.  Each visit becomes a lesson on the park's history.  Meanwhile Serge decides to use a DNA service to work on his family tree.  He discovers the stories of several ancestors, allowing Serge to hold forth on sponge diving, turpentining, and cigar rolling.  However, a savvy Florida state investigator is also investigating Serge's family tree, having discovered that his DNA has similarities to DNA found at crime scenes connected to a cold case serial killer.  Is she on Serge's trail?  You have to read the book to find out.

Author talk

The Ratline:  The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive.  Philippe Sands.  Knopf, 2021.  448 pages.

On one level, it's a love story, the story of the marriage and love between Otto and Charlotte Wachter, just two people who stick together despite multiple affairs and attractions to others (on both parts), held together by their mutual fervent, undying, and never repentant devotion to Nazism.   Otto was committed to the Austrian Nazi arty from its beginning, and he was a leading organizer of the failed Nazi coup to take over the Austrian government before Anschluss (the annexation of Austria by Hitler).  He joined the SS and rose to high ranks as an administrator of occupied eastern Europe, highly regarded by SS head Heinrich Himmler and other superiors.  He oversaw the establishment and operation of Jewish ghettos and of deportations, and he was linked to multiple instances of the mass murder of civilians.  

Declared a war criminal, he evaded capture by the Allies until 1949, when he died in a hospital in Rome.  How did he escape capture?  Like hundreds, if not thousands, of other war criminals, he escaped via ratlines.  "Ratlines" is the term used to refer to the formal and informal complex web of underground escape routes by which these murderers escaped capture, adopted new identities, and lived the rest of their lives usually in Europe or eventually South America.  The Cold War began as WWII ended, and the Americans and Soviets immediately began collecting Nazis whom they thought might be useful scientifically or in the intelligence realm.  There were also many Nazi sympathizers who saw it as their duty to protect the criminals.  And there were vast international organizations who knowingly aided thousands of war criminals to escape, including the Red Cross and the Vatican.

In this book, Sands attempts to unravel the ratline that kept Wachter safe for four years.  He works closely with Wachter's son Horst, who gives him unprecedented access to Otto and Charlotte's papers and letters.  Horst himself becomes a sad character, maintaining until the end (still alive at 84) that his father, whom he doesn't even remember, was innocent, "the good Nazi," despite all evidence to the contrary.

Shelved: Roundup of Book Posts February 16 to 29, 2024

 

Audiobook preview

Naked Came the Florida Man.  Tim Dorsey.  Serge Storms book 23 of 26.  William Morrow, 2020.  336 pages.

Tim Dorsey is considered by readers and writers of Florida-based fiction as the master, maybe the creator, of "Florida Man" fiction, writing outrageous, unbelievable stories of Florida's unbelievable characters.  Following Tim Dorsey's death a few months ago, I read his first Serge Storms novel.  While I liked it and recognized some great writing, I wasn't sure about his leading character.  I just read the 23rd Serge novel, published in 2020, Naked Came the Florida Man, and I found it much more enjoyable.

Serge Storms is an incredible character, an anti-hero.  He is an obsessive, misanthropic, schizophrenic, homicidal psychopath, but he has a very strong sense of morality and justice, in his own way, if that makes any sense.  He absolutely loves Florida, its history, its nature, and its people - at least those people who don't violate his moral code.   He constantly shares this love and knowledge with his drugs-and-alcohol-impaired traveling companion, and thus with the readers.  Are you familiar with the animated duo Mr. Peabody and Sherman?  Well, picture Mr. Peabody as a homicidal psychopath and Sherman constantly doing drugs. But it's funny and entertaining, I swear! Serge Storms books are great fiction for history lovers, especially lovers of Florida history.  Dorsey's books are packed full of real history and information; they're like Florida guidebooks.  His most outrageous plot elements and scenes are often based on actual Florida events and people. I've learned lots of tidbits of Florida info and about sites that I've added to my list of places to visit.  It's obvious that the character of has developed over the course of Dorsey's books, and I want to read more.

The Art Thief:  A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession.  Michael Finkel.  Knopf, 2023. 240 pages.

Author Michael Finkel is attracted to seriously narcissistic and manipulative sociopaths and the stupid women who love them, and he forms relationships with them, starting with hand-written letters, that result in them telling all to him.  I'm not sure what that says about him, but it makes for incredibly interesting books, like this one.

Picture an art thief, and you probably pictured an egomaniac stocking a private vault with works for his own viewing like in the movies.  Or maybe you picture brazen robbers sneaking in at night and defeating high-tech security measures. Or maybe armed men tying up guards and slashing paintings from their frames like in the Isabella Gardner Museum heist in Boston. I bet you would never in your life picture a lazy, spoiled, unemployed-and-living-on-handouts, twentysomething Frenchman named Stephane Breitwieser. Nevertheless, over about 10 years from the 1990s into the early 2000s, Breitwieser and his girlfriend stole about 300 pieces of art from over 200 museums across Europe, with an estimated value of $2 billion. They chose mostly local and regional museums with little to no security, bought tickets, and stole in broad daylight, often with guards or visitors in the room.  His intent was never to sell and make profits. They displayed the art in the attic bedroom they shared over his mother's house, purely for their own pleasure. The acts and how they were committed is incredible enough, but then when you read what happened to the art and how European courts have treated the pair (and Breitwieser's mother), your mind will be blown.  Equally mindblowing is the sheer scale of art theft in the world and how little stolen art is ever recovered.

The Mothership lands.  Live, Houston, 1976

...And Your Ass Will Follow.  George Clinton.  Audible Original, Words + Music, Volume 39.

If you love music and audiobooks and are an Audible subscriber, you may have already discovered the "Words + Music" series there.  Each volume is about two hours long and features a particular artist discussing his/her life and work, complete with lots of music samples.

This particular volume features legendary funkster George Clinton who blended everything from doo-wop and soul to funk and rock and sprinkled in bits like songs he heard at friends' bar mitzvahs to create the one and only Parliament-Funkadelic sound, becoming one of the most influential and sampled artists in history.  He talks about the musical influences that literally surrounded him growing up in his New Jersey neighborhood where he interacted with diverse people and cultures and knew people famous and becoming famous from Sarah Vaughn to Dionne Warwick to the Shirelles.  He talks about his own musical journey from assembling a group in junior high to rejection by Motown to the Mothership.  It's a fun ride.  Check this one out or look for your own favorite artists on Audible.

Author talk

Golden Hill:  A Novel of Old New York.  Francis Spufford.  Scribner, 2017.  320 pages.

It's November 1746, and a young man named Richard Smith arrives in New York City from London.  He has no connections in the colony and seemingly no business, but he does have a line of credit worth a thousand British pounds sterling, almost 2,000 pounds in New York currency (or whatever crazy mix of paper, coins, and trade goods New Yorkers call currency at the time), an absolute fortune.  He's very  guarded and secretive about his background and his intentions.  He's also a little off-balance himself, having to adjust from the huge metropolis of London to the small backwater town that New York was in comparison.  His strange and closed-mouth character instantly raises red flags among the New York merchants and politicians that he meets.  Who is he? What does he want? Is the money real? Is he a con man, a criminal? Does he plan to use his money -if it exists - to involve himself in the unsettled commerce and politics of the city, on one side or the other?  These are all questions that the author leaves hanging in the readers' minds for most of the book as well, only providing answers at the end, and the answers are genuinely surprising, once revealed.  The ending was impossible to predict, but not too incredible or crazy to accept.

Spufford is a British author who has written several nonfiction books, and this was his first novel.  It won several awards and paced on several Best lists.  It's a very interesting depiction of colonial New York.  Golden Hill  is kind of in the picaresque genre, like Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, and Candide, rollicking adventures of a rough, dishonest, but likable hero, complete with romance, intrigue, and swordplay.  However, like Candide, Richard Smith is not dishonest, just naive.  Or is he?  The reader really doesn't learn the truth until the end.  It's a fun adventure.

Shelved: Roundup of Book Posts February 1 to 15, 2024

 

Author Talk

The Auburn Conference:  A Novel.  Tom Piazza.  University of Iowa Press, 2023. 199 pages.

Imagine that it's 1883, and you are in the audience for a "writers conference,"  whatever that is - no one has ever heard of one before.  Some of the biggest literary and cultural icons on 19th century America are the event's participants:  Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman.  Their stated mission is to discuss not only the craft of writing, but also America, its present and its future.  The thought of such an event is enough to excite any history buff.

Well, the Auburn Conference never happened, but author Tom Piazza created it in this novel.  He dreamed up the conference, gave voice to the above mentioned historical figures, and included a couple of fictional panelists:  a Confederate general and "Lost Cause" apologist and a popular romance novelist.  There are even a couple of surprise appearances by other historical figures.  He captures their personalities and uses their speeches and thoughts as commentary not only on America in 1883 but present-day America.  

I am often leery of historical fiction and alternative history fiction (and, sadly, more and more historical non-fiction) when the author endeavors to force 21st century sensibilities into historical events and onto historical figures, usually to push the author's own  personal point of view.  In spite of what seemed to me to be a slow start, the novel turned out to be interesting, and the personalities and discussions were well crafted.  However, the audiobook version that I listened to was kind of a disappointment.  The narrator's voice was like that of a 1930s radio melodrama actor and got on my nerves.  I had a quibble with the author as well.  The story is told by multiple narrators, and the narrator frequently changed abruptly and without warning (at least in the audiobook version), taking me several sentences sometimes to figure out who was speaking. All in all, the book leaves the reader with questions about the true character of America, questions worth thinking about in 1883 and in 2024.

Author Talk

On Savage Shores:  How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe.  Caroline Dodds Pennock.  Knopf, 2023.  320 pages.

First, kudos to the longest "Introduction" in publishing history.  It has set a record.  It went on and on and on and on.  Why?  Basically so that the author could explain, justify, and apologize for all the word choices that she made because the language of writing history is so triggering these days.

Now, this book is by no means thrilling, exciting, suspenseful, or a page-turner, but it is groundbreaking in a major way. There are lots and lots of histories of European contacts with indigenous Americans and the African slave trade and the African  Diaspora, but this book is unique because it literally  takes the opposite direction. From 1492 to the early 17th century, hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people from the Caribbean and the Americas were taken to Europe, mostly to the Iberian Peninsula. Some were captured and enslaved, some volunteered or were sent by their rulers, maybe in hopes of receiving benefits for their people or for themselves. Some never returned home, some did, and some made multiple trips back and forth. Some were treated cruelly as property, some were presented as ambassadors in royal courts, some become affiliated with religious orders, and some used European laws  and courts to fight for their freedom and equality. 

Pennock has scoured archives and contemporary accounts to present the stories of these people, those who moved between two worlds. It's a fresh and necessary perspective.

A Life in Red:  A Story of Forbidden Love, the Great Depression, and the Communist Fight for a Black Nation in the Deep South.  David Beasley.  John F. Blair, Publisher, 2015.  224 pages.

During the 1920s and 1930s, maybe as many as million Americans called themselves Communists or leaned toward the principles of communism, attracted by the promise of economic equality.  It is not at all surprising that a large number of black Americans were drawn to communism, not only for economic equality and opportunity, but also for the promised racial equality.  Jim Crow laws, lynchings and racial violence, and racial discrimination were ubiquitous throughout the United States, and, in the 1930s,  the hardships of being black in America were exacerbated by the Great Depression, the rise of the KKK and racist demagoguery, and the racist implementation of the New Deal.  

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union worked to capitalize - pun intended - on the situation by inserting agents on college campuses and in black neighborhoods to recruit and to promote communism.  Some promising organizers were educated and trained in the USSR and then returned to the US as paid agents and agitators.  Some even saw their ultimate goal as the creation of a black state in the Deep South, following a violent revolution if necessary.

Herbert Newton was one of those black agents.  Along the way, he met and married Jane Emery, the white upper-middle class daughter of a former national commander of the American Legion.  His activities got him beaten, arrested, and indicted for promoting insurrection in Georgia for passing out party literature. An insurrection law in Georgia at the time (struck down by the US Supreme Court in 1937) made that activity a capital offense. For her communist beliefs and for marrying a black man, Jane was committed to a mental institution by a Chicago judge.  A Life in Red makes the most of limited information to depict the lives of the couple, including their friendship with author Richard Wright, who lived with them for years.  Jane served as a sounding board and inspiration for many of his works including Native Son.  Not a great book, but not bad.  3/5 stars.

"I Have Seen The Future: A Tour of the 1939 New York World's Fair"

Twilight at the World of Tomorrow:  Genius, Madness, Murder, and the 1939 World's Fair on the Brink of War.  James Mauro.  Ballantine Books, 2010.  432 pages.

I don't know who to blame, the author or the publisher.  Most likely the publisher.  The title of this book is very misleading, but it was still an enjoyable read.  

Forget the subtitle and approach this book as a history of the 1939 World's Fair in New York.  The goal was to showcase "The World of Tomorrow"  - well, actually, the goal was to make lots of money and bring millions of visitors and hundreds of millions of dollars into the city - when a group of men decided it was time to host a World's Fair that would outshine the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and restore New York City's supremacy.  Where? On top of a huge landfill in Flushing, Queens.  It was doomed from the start.  The country was still in the throes of the Great Depression, the effort got off to a late start, it was difficult to raise money, and the world was on the brink of World War II.  Even the weather was a disaster, rain on top of rain.  In the end, the fair was a huge disaster, losing millions. The anticipated crowds never materialized. Exhibits and pavilions fell apart as countries fell to the German blitzkrieg.  Americans complained that the 75 cents admission was too expensive and that the fair was too high-brow for common folks.  Labor unions held construction and maintenance hostage to outrageous demands.  Bomb threats became common.  Power went out, and rides malfunctioned.  Issue piled on top of issue. 

James Mauro's book is an interesting and thorough account of the history of the fair, from the first idea of it through closing day.  The title should have stopped there.  I assume the "Genius" referred to is Albert Einstein, who is a bit player in the story at best, and could have been left out entirely.  I'm not really sure what "Madness" refers to.  And the "Murder" doesn't really show up until the last quarter of the book.  

Maybe the publisher's idea was to market the book as another Devil in the White City, but the book falls short, mainly because the story is just not there, and Mauro is no Erik Larson.  Still, it's a good companion read.  If you enjoyed Devil, you will probably like Twilight, as long as you lower your expectations just a tiny bit.

Shelved: Roundup of Book Posts January 16 - 31, 2024

 

Devil In A Blue Dress Trailer 1995

Devil In A Blue Dress.  Walter Mosley.  W.W. Norton, 1990.  220 pages. Book 1 of 15 Easy Rawlins novels.

Walter Mosley has been one of the hottest names in crime fiction since at least the publication of the book in 1990, but I'm only now getting around to reading Devil, the first in his series of novels centered on Easy Rawlins.  Easy, the nickname of Ezekiel, is a Houston transplant to Los Angeles in 1948.  He's working and has bought a small house, living a life that attracted many black southerners to California during the Great Migration and WWII days.  Then, he loses his job and finds himself involved in a complicated mystery involving a powerful and wealthy man who has absolutely no qualms about using violence and hires Easy to look for a woman on the run.  She's on the run in LA's black neighborhood, where Easy would have easier access.  The story is a page-turner, and Easy Rawlins is a great character.  I will definitely be continuing his saga.

All That Is Wicked:  A Gilded-Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind.  Kate Winkler Dawson.  G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2022.  320 pages.

In the early 1870s, the people living in upstate New York were caught up in an extremely sensational true crime story;  Edward Ruloff was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for the murder of a store clerk during a robbery.  It wasn't his first brush with the law.  Decades earlier, he had been charged and tried for the murders of his wife and baby and suspected of murdering his sister-in-law and her child.  Eventually, he served 10 years in New York's infamous Auburn Prison, famous for its strictly enforced solitary confinement and silence rules, after being convicted of kidnapping his wife, but not of her murder.

Ruloff was infamous for another reason.  He was considered by many to be an academic genius specializing in the study of classical languages, and he spent his life working on a manuscript outlining his earthshattering  and brilliant   (in his opinion) theory on the origins and evolution of language.  Acknowledged classical scholars read his theory and interviewed him.  Generally, they concluded that his theory was garbage, but he had an unrivaled knowledge of and talent for interpreting classical Greek and Latin texts.  

Ruloff was interviewed by scholars, reporters, and alienists - the 19th century forerunners of psychiatrists.  His case was iconic because it stimulated debate in the academic, medical, and legal worlds on three major questions?

1.  How can such a brilliant mind be so evil?

2.  Was Ruloff too evil to live?

3.  Would the destruction of such a brilliant mind be harmful to society?

The word psychopath didn't exist in Ruloff's time, but Dawson lays out the characteristics of psychopathy in her book and uses them, and comparisons to infamous 20th century psychopaths,  to prove Ruloff's condition, and the importance of his case in creating modern criminal psychiatry.  Even after his death, Ruloff was important because his story, and his brain itself, discredited faulty 19th century pseudoscience like phrenology and the racist idea that there were physical differences in the brains of the different races.

Overall, this was an interesting book, that is, until the last few pages when the author decided to do something I absolutely hate.  She was telling a perfectly good historical story, but then she couldn't resist throwing in biased political statement twisting and outright lies in order to prove that she is "on the right side of history."  That's not why I read the book, and it has no place.  

 

Sea People:  The Puzzle of Polynesia. Christina Thompson.  Harper, 2019.  384 pages.

The puzzle of Polynesia has existed for hundreds of years and is three-fold:  

1. Who are the people we call Polynesians?

2.  Where did they originate?

3.  How did they populate the Pacific?

From the initial contacts made by Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries to the present, scholars, archaeologists, and anthropologists have tried to answer those questions.  Christina Thompson published this account of the puzzle and the various theories put forward over the years.  While linguistic, cultural, and physical characteristics indicate that Pacific Islanders share many commonalities, they are still a mystery.  As Thompson points out, a major impediment is the completely different mindsets of Pacific and European peoples.  Pacific Islander history is oral.  It is not literal, and it is non-sequential - there is no concept of dates or chronological order as Europeans see time.  Over the years, various theories have emerged about their origins, and the theorists have often shaped the oral stories to fit their particular theories.  One interesting theory that gained popularity in the 19th century was that Polynesians were "Aryans" - not THAT "Aryan"- originating in central Asia and migrating eastward before spreading across the ocean.  Now, 20th and 21st century anthropologists and archaeologists are making new discoveries that challenge previously held ideas.  

Thompson's book is an interesting and informative history of European contact with Pacific Islanders and the theories that have developed to solve the puzzle, and it hints at just how much more there is to learn.

Wish You Were Here:  Photos From The American South.   The Bitter Southerner, 2023. 256 pages.

The Bitter Southerner is one of my favorite online magazines.  There are always great stories by wonderful writers about the South and its past, present, and future.  These are stories about people, places, and things that make the South what it is.  Some of the stories are about things familiar to me, to one degree or another, and some are about things that I've never heard of or thought about.  They almost always make for good reading.

Great photos also accompany the great stories, and the editors have just released a collection of some of the best photos from the magazine's first 10 years, 2013 to 2023.  It's a beautiful book.  It was kind of jarring when I first opened it and found that there were no captions and no context at all, just page after page of photos.  (The credits and brief captions are listed at the end of the book, but they're still not "captions" by any definition.  They tell you nothing about the photos.)  Like I said, kind of jarring, but as I paged through I realized that it was the perfect showcase for the photos.  The viewer can appreciate the photos as the art that they are. A very few of the people photographed are recognizable; but the vast majority are just people going about their lives, making the patchwork quilt - or crazy quilt ? - that is the South.  It's a great collection.

Author Book Talk

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.  Casey Cep.  Knopf, 2019.  336 pages.  

In 1977, the Reverend Willie Maxwell was attending his step-daughter's funeral in rural Tallapoosa County Alabama when the girl's uncle pulled a gun out and shot him dead.  Reverend Maxwell had become a well known figure in eastern Alabama over the previous decade.  He first built a reputation as a handsome, well-dressed man who was often called upon to preach in country churches and at revivals throughout that part of his state.  Then, his wife was found murdered in her car on a dark road.  Over the next decade, other relatives of the minister died under mysterious circumstances, and, lo and behold, each one had a small life insurance policy in his/her name, with the beneficiary named, you guessed it, the Reverend Willie Maxwell.  Alabama investigators were sure that Maxwell was responsible, but they were unable to prove it.  Insurance companies fought claims, but they couldn't prove anything either.  Meanwhile, Maxwell's neighbors all knew what happened.  According to the rumor mill, Maxwell was not only a serial killer committing insurance fraud, but he was also a practitioner and priest of Hoodoo, the peculiar Alabama brand of spiritualism that blended Christianity, with African, Caribbean, and southern beliefs, rituals, and magic.  

Author Harper Lee grew interested in the story as it played out in court, and she decided that it would make a great subject for a book.  Unfortunately, that book was never published.  Casey Cep's book tells the story, but they're actually multiple stories in one, and each story is great.  There's the story of Maxwell and the murders, and his own murder.  Then, there's the story of Tom Radney, the progressive liberal white Alabama attorney and politician, who defended Maxwell throughout his legal troubles due to the deaths and the insurance claims and THEN defended the man who killed Maxwell. Finally, there's the life of Harper Lee, her personal and professional struggles, and her incredibly complex and interesting relationship with Truman Capote, the childhood friend whose most famous work, In Cold Blood, would probably not have been as successful - or even published, without her involvement.  All the stories make Furious Hours a great read.

 

Zarafa: A Giraffe's True Story From Deep In Africa to the Heart of Paris.  Michael Allin.  Walker Books, 1998.  224 pages.

I tend to avoid books, movies, and television shows that are centered on animals because, quite frankly, human beings are horrible and frightening creatures, and it seems like most animal stories have cruelty, suffering, and death at their center.  I can't stand that.  (And yet I read lots of dark human history. I just like animals more than people.)  However, I remembered hearing good things about Zarafa when it was published, and it's one of several books about the first "so-and-so" animal to arrive in "such and such"  place, usually Europe or the US.  These stories are interesting because, in each case, there's usually some cultural impact that surrounds the animal's arrival and makes for a good story.

Fortunately, Zarafa, the book, is not all cruelty.  There are a couple of pages about how animals like Zarafa were captured (The necessity of capturing them very young means slaughtering the mother, and for every animal successfully transported like Zarafa, several more die in the capture and transport.), and there are a few pages on the importation of animals by the Romans for slaughter in arenas, when thousands of animals may die for the pleasure of the crowds over the course of a few days. Aside from being ripped from her family unit and spending most of her life apart from her kind, Zarafa is fairly well taken care of.  Yeah, I know, "aside from all that."  It's bad, but not unreadable.

Anyway, the story begins in 1826 when Egypt's viceroy Muhammad Ali decides to gift French King Charles X with a giraffe, the first giraffe in France.  Following the French Revolution and Napoleon Wars, Europeans returned to Enlightenment ideals, and royals and wealthy individuals began to assemble new curiosity cabinets, museums, and menageries.  Collection fever was high.  Ali hoped to capitalize on that by currying favor with Charles with the gift of exotic animals.  Zarafa was captured, floated 2,000 miles on the Nile, crossed the Mediterranean, and then walked 550 miles from Marseilles to Paris.  She became an instant celebrity, drawing crowds, inspiring souvenirs and fashions, and stirring French imaginations.

Author Michael Allin paints a vivid picture of Ali's Egypt and of late 1820s France.

There are several children's books that tell the tale and a 2012 animated movie.

Shelved: Roundup of Book Posts January 1 - 15, 2024

 

Book trailer

Histocrats 7 Questions with Author  

The Middle Generation:  A Novel of John Quincy Adams and the Monroe Doctrine.  M.B. Zucker.  Historium Press, 2023.  507 pages.  

When I first heard of The Middle Generation, my interest was immediately piqued.  Historical fiction about John Quincy Adams, probably the most intellectual president ever and one of the most accomplished American figures in history who is unfortunately often placed on lists of worst presidents ever, set during one of the most critical time periods in American history?  And it was implied that the book was something of a political thriller, well researched by the author who based it on Adams' personal journals and letters.  What a unique idea!  

John Quincy Adams himself represents a major transition between the classical revolutionary America and the America that became a world player.  He was groomed for greatness from childhood b his father and revolutionary leader John Adams, acting as his personal secretary by his early teens, bridging generations of American political leaders. He was the first President to wear long trousers instead of knee britches.  He was a staunch opponent of slavery and an advocate of industrializing and diversifying the national economy.  He envisioned the United States as an equal to the European powers, ready for a seat at the table.  

Like his father, though, he was never a politician,  and he never had the personality for it.  He was blunt, direct, and found social situations and everyday small talk tedious and pointless.  In short (pun, get it?), like his father, he was "obnoxious and disliked."  Quincy comes off poorly in this book, cold and distant, a terrible father and husband.  His constant struggle is to live up to his parents' expectations for greatness and legacy. His wife is portrayed as perpetually miserable, grieving the loss of a child, dealing with Adams' distance, and always overshadowed by her mother-in-law who was a very strong woman and equal partner to husband, yet Quincy never seemed to see Louisa as a real partner.  Their children come across as spoiled, entitled, whiny brattish losers who constantly disappointed their parents and grandparents.

Alas, the book is not a political thriller. Instead, it focuses on Adams' service as Monroe's Secretary of State and his role in securing US borders with Canada, acquiring Florida, and negotiating the Missouri Compromise and the Monroe Doctrine.  It's kind of like a "West Wing" 1820, mostly debates and discussions  with and amongst the President's cabinet, Speaker of the House (and presidential rival) Henry Clay, and various foreign ambassadors.  It's interesting if you're a political wonk, but political thriller it definitely is not.

 

A review

Histocrats 7 Questions with editor Robert Deis

Atomic Werewolves and Man-Eating Plants:  When Men's Adventure Magazines Got Weird  (Men's Adventure Library).  Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, editors.  New Texture, 2023.  328 pages

Men's Adventure Magazines were a popular genre of magazines from the late 1940s into the 1970s.  Each issue was an anthology of adventure stories, crime tales, and science fiction deliberately targeted at young men seeking an escape from their daily lives. While there were a few true stories, most of the stories were fiction, often very sensationalistic, sexy, thrilling, and violent, often set on battlefields, in jungles, or faraway planets.  By today's standards, the tales are in no way politically correct or "woke."  They very much reflect the time period in which they were published, and many wouldn't be published today.  Although some of the authors never really achieved much fame aside from the magazines, many famous authors contributed stories as well, and the illustrations on the covers and in the stories, created by the leading graphic artists of the day, are every bit as amazing as the stories.

Co-editors Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle began collecting these stories and publishing special editions under the name "Men's Adventure Library."  This collection has everything for lovers of fantasy adventure: werewolves, dinosaurs, mad scientists, supernatural, vampires, killer robots, cryptids, and more.  I enjoy the collections for the stories and the illustrations themselves but also for both the historical subtext and context, providing windows into another time.  

A Splendid Savage:  The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham.  Steve Kemper.  W.W. Norton & Company, 2016.  448 pages.  

Frederick Russell Burnham was one of the best known American men of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  He was a celebrity whose exploits were breathlessly reported by the press throughout North America, Africa, and Europe.  He was friends with, and admired by,  Buffalo Bill Cody, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Cecil Rhodes,  adventure author H. Rider Haggard, Robert Baden-Powell, and some of the wealthiest men in the world with names like Hammond, Whitney, and Guggenheim, just to name a few.  He was known as the greatest military scout in the world, typically known by the phrase "The American Scout," having served in the Apache Wars, the Ndebele and Shona Wars in South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the Boer War, and the Yaqui War in northern Mexico in the early 1900s.  He amassed huge fortunes for himself, and others, in gold, land, and stocks and then lost them, always in search of the next big bonanza and always having to start over.  Lord Baden-Powell was inspired to create the Boy Scouts by Burnham, even adopting Burnham's preferred hat and kerchief uniform as the official Boy Scout uniform; without Burnham, there may never have been a Boy Scouts organization.  In his amazing life, Burnham acquired stories that enthralled the world.  It was said of Burnham that he was the only man alive who could tell true adventure stories that made Theodore Roosevelt shut up and listen.

And yet, you, like me, have probably never heard of him.  I was definitely intrigued when I saw this as an earlier book written by Steve Kemper, the author of Our Man in Tokyo which I enjoyed reading, so I had to read it as well. It is definitely an incredible story about an incredible life, but why is he forgotten now?  Well, he is, as they say, problematic.  He espoused socialist ideas, but he lived his entire life constantly searching for his next big fortune.  He was definitely a white supremacist, and he flirted with the ideas of eugenics.  He was a major big game sport hunter, but he became a leading conservationist, very influential in the creation of many national and California state parks and forests.  He was never able to sit still for long, always leaving his wife and family for long stretches to go to war or on expeditions.  If given the option, he was always pro-war and pro-conquest, constantly decrying the softness and decline of America and Americans.  He was definitely an imperialist.  He believed that "real men" should always take risks and be willing to die for it.  In other words, he was a multifaceted, complicated man that defies simplistic categorization --- you know, human.

 

The Story of the Sarasota Assassination Society.  Tony Dunbar.  Blind Pass Publications LLC, 2022. 248 pages.  Book 1 of 3 in Florida Fables series.

During Reconstruction and throughout the late 1800s, the South was roiled by economic and political division and turmoil, and violence and lawlessness often occurred.  Hollywood and the American imagination have always romanticized and focused on the Old West during this time, but there's no need to travel that far to taste the wild frontier.  Florida was every bit as wild, rugged, violent, and dangerous as Tombstone and Deadwood, with alligators, hurricanes, and swamps thrown in.  There were new lands to be claimed, fortunes to be made, and lots of opportunities for people to invent new lives or simply to hide from their old ones.

Author Tony Dunbar has written a three volume series of historical fiction novels focused on the McFarland family of southwest Florida, in and around Sarasota and based on real people and events.  Today, people think of Sarasota as a sleepy beach town, populated by old people with rich and famous people living in extremely expensive beach communities, but, in the 1880s, it was a very small fishing community surrounded by dirt poor farmers and ranchers trying to scratch out a living.  Still, politics and division invaded, along with greedy developers from the north, and turned residents against each other.  The Sarasota Assassination Society was formed, with members calling it a "political association."  Members swore oaths of secrecy, loyalty, and obedience, complete with secret handshakes and identifying signs, in order to protect their vision of Florida.  The result was murder.  Young deputy Gawain McFarland is thrown into the middle of the ensuing manhunt for the killers.  It's quite an interesting read and look into historical Florida.

Author Talk

Kill 'Em and Leave:  Searching For James Brown and the American Soul.  James McBride.  Spiegel & Grau, 2016.  256 pages.

In the past few years, author James McBride has published two extremely well-received novels, Deacon King Kong and The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, but, in 2016, he published Kill 'Em and Leave, a biography, of sorts, of James Brown.  It's biography-ish, but it's also a book about McBride's process and efforts to discover the truth about The Godfather of Soul, and along the way McBride also reveals a bit, and learns a bit, about himself.  It's a difficult process because throughout his life Brown constantly told different stories to different audiences and made a concerted effort to keep almost everyone he ever knew from getting too close to the real James Brown.

In the opening pages, McBride posits that Brown was and is perhaps the most recognized, most famous, and most influential black man to ever live, and he sets out to make his case.  It's a remarkable story. Abandoned by his mother (It's still disputed whether she left or was driven away by his father.), at a very young age, Brown was mostly raised by his father's extended family, several female cousins and aunts.  He dropped out of school and did a three year stretch in a Georgia youth prison, becoming a school janitor after his release and singing in churches and juke joints in Georgia and South Carolina before becoming one of the biggest names in music.  What a life. The spending, the women, the bands, the career.  Quirks on top of quirks.  Brown never went anywhere without thousands in cash and cashiers checks on him. He, like many old-school black performers, having been cheated before, demanded cash payments before taking the stage.  In his Augusta Georgia home, he had a "money room" filled with shoeboxes of $100 bills and wheelbarrows of silver dollars.  He frequently gave cash, jewelry, and cars to friends and associates. The IRS came after him, wiping him out twice.  Each time, he back. When he died in 2006, his tax troubles were resolved, and his estate was estimated at $100 to 150 million.  

In spite of all the tragedies and hardships Brown experienced (in some cases, caused) in his life, the biggest tragedy may have been what happened after his death.  Brown's will left everything but personal belongings, about $100 million, earmarked to create an educational foundation for poor Georgia and South Carolina children. To date, none of that money has been used for that purpose.  Instead, it has gone to lawyers hired by Brown's various children and wives to fight the will, and the fortune fell to $2-4 million.  In 2021, a resolution of sorts was finally reached, maybe, but legal battles continue, and Brown's wishes haven't been met.

This was a great read.  I really enjoyed it.