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.
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