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.