Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in November 2025

 

Author Talk

Ring Shout.  P. Djeli Clark.  Tor Nightfire, 2025 (paperback, originally 2020).  192 pages.

If you liked the movie "Sinners," or other horror films by directors like Ryan Coogler and Jordan Peele, then this is the book for you.  It's horror, fantasy, and history all wrapped in one virtually non-stop action package.  The setting is 1922 in Macon and Stone Mountain Georgia.  The Ku Klux Klan has been reborn following the release of the movie "The Birth of a Nation" in 1915.  As black veterans returned from World War I and started standing up for their civil rights in Jim Crow America, the Klan mobilized and ramped up violence in response.  The Red Summer of 1919, the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, and a spike in lynchings are just some of the events referenced in this book.  In Clark's re-imagining, the KKK actually consists of two factions, the Klan, comprising the average American racists, and the Ku Kluxes who are actually demonic monsters created and fed by hate and who only exist by stirring and escalating hate.  A small band of women forms for the purpose of destroying the Ku Kluxes.  There's Maryse, armed with a magical sword gifted to her by three spiritual aunties who appear to her in visions, Sadie, a sharpshooter, and Chef, who disguised herself as a man and fought as a Harlem Hellfighter in WWI.  They're aided by Maryse's spiritual advisor Nana Jean and Molly, a self-taught Choctaw scientist and engineer who devises weapons and strategies along with her female apprentices, and Emma, a German Jewish social revolutionary communist.  Following some skirmishes and a major Klux attack on a juke joint in Macon, everybody heads to Stone Mountain, the site where the Klan was reborn and the first crosses were burned, for the final apocalyptic, the-fate-of-the-world-hangs-in-the-balance battle.   Clark blends history and horror with Gullah, African, and Caribbean folklore and delivers a very creative and original read and a great ride from beginning to end.

The Invisible Spy:  The Untold True Story of an NFL Player Turned Spy and His Role in America's Covert WWII Operations.  Thomas Maier.  Hanover Square Press, 2025.  480 pages.

During WWII, American comic books, movies, radio shows, and propaganda convinced Americans that Axis spies and saboteurs were at large throughout the country and carrying out diabolical missions.   And as far as Germans were involved that premise was more correct than they knew.  What Americans didn't know, until quite recently, was that there were as many, if not more, British and Russian spies, agents of our allies, at work in the United States.  During the late 1930s and the war itself, the British acted with impunity, employing hundreds of agents, including future literary figures like Ian Fleming and Roald Dahl, who operated out of an office on the 36th floor of Rockefeller Center in New York City.  The British spy operation had the full support of President Roosevelt and reported directly to Prime Minister Churchill and his trusted subordinates.  They investigated and shared information with J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, planted disinformation and propaganda in American media, and actively carried out their own missions on American soil to further British war aims.  British expats in Hollywood like Cary Grant, Noel Coward,  and Alfred Hitchcock contributed helpful information gathered on the west coast and at New York cocktail parties.  The man who served as the bridge between British and American intelligence was Ernest Cuneo, a first generation Italian-American who had been a standout football player at Columbia University and in the earliest days of the NFL, the late 1920s - the kind of player who played for the entire sixty minutes of regulation play, both offense and defense, often for as little as $50 per game.  He was instrumental in making the connection between the established and professional British espionage organizations and the brash, upstart (sometimes reckless) American OSS founded by "Wild Bill" Donovan, the forerunner of the CIA.  He had personal and professional connections to the two biggest media figures of the time, Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson, read and listened to by tens of millions of Americans weekly, and he became a master manipulator of the press. He and Fleming became extremely close and life-long friends.  Bits of Cuneo are sprinkled throughout Fleming's James Bond novels, inspired by their collaboration at Rockefeller Center.  All the while, he remained invisible and kept his pivotal role largely unknown, not only during the war but throughout his life.  This book is really thorough and fascinating look at his incredible life and at the world of WWII espionage.

Author talk

Midnight Burning.  Paul Levine.  Blank Slate Press, 2025.  374 pages.  Book 1 of Einstein-Chaplin Thriller series.

It's 1937 Hollywood, and two of the most famous men in the world, Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein - geniuses at the top of their respective fields, are close friends living privileged lives, but the events of the world soon intrude and shake their world.  As Europe begins its descent into war, Chaplin is in the process of creating "The Great Dictator," his political magnum opus, his one-man frontal assault on Adolf Hitler and fascism, his biting satire and personal attack against the Fuhrer.  Meanwhile, the Silver Shirts, the West Coast fascist paramilitary thugs, just one of multiple pro-Hitler groups operating throughout the country, make plans to prevent its completion.   With support and encouragement from Berlin, the Silver Shirts' plan goes beyond that, however, to include murders of dozens of top Hollywood movers and shakers who are either Jewish or anti-fascists and to light the fuse for a fascist coup to overthrow the American government.  When Chaplin and Einstein accidentally uncover the plot, they realize that the movement has deep roots in California law enforcement and the FBI, so it's up to them to leap into action to thwart the evil plot.  The result is a super, action-packed, buddy action thriller, based on real historical facts and including lots of cameos from real people including Douglas Fairbanks, Bob Hope, Bugsy Siegel, William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Goebbels, and Charles Lindbergh, along with Georgia Ann Robinson, the first black female police officer in Los Angeles.  It all works to make a really great story.  This book is billed as the first of an Einstein-Chaplin thriller series, and I would definitely read more.  (And it led me to go back and watch "The Great Dictator" again, also highly recommended.)

Circle of Days.  Ken Follett.  Grand Central Publishing, 2025.  704 pages. Thanks to Grand Central Publishing for the review copy.

Without a doubt, Ken Follett is a master of historical fiction.  His Kingsbridge and Century series are unmatched.  Each tells a thrilling story with incredible characters, and each is a virtual self-contained history class, the former a course on the Middle Ages and the latter a comprehensive survey of the 20th century.  For years, I've looked forward to new Follett novels.  Circle of Days is a major disappointment, chiefly because IT'S TOO DAMNED LONG!  Don't get me wrong, the other books are physically very long, but they don't feel like it.  Circle drags.  It is incredibly slow-paced.  The plot seems to cover decades and decades in the lives of a few main characters and three different communities, farmers, herders, and hunter-gatherers who normally live separate lives but come together a few times a year at the site of Stonehenge for religious rituals. They work, they have sex (Follett is still one of the worst writers to have ever written a sex scene.), and they fight every few years.  Then, the cycle repeats.  Eventually --- in the last quarter of the book at most --- they build the stone structure that stands today.  It gets 3 out of 5 stars because it's Follett, but if you haven't read Follett before, don't start here; start with Kingsbridge or Century.

Stars of Alabama.  Sean Dietrich.  Thomas Nelson, 2019.  352 pages.  

Sean Dietrich, also known as Sean of the South, is a columnist, storyteller, novelist, and folk music historian and performer with a large following who focuses on the South.  I've seen some of his writings from time to time shared on social media, but I'd never really read any of his novels before. He will be a featured author at the Savannah Book Festival in February 2026, so we decided to read one of his earlier works and chose Stars.  Stars is a story about the importance of "found family" and enduring hope. It begins in the depths of the Great Depression and continues over the next two decades, weaving together three stories.  Coot is a former child preacher abused and exploited by an evil revival circuit preacher.  Marigold is a struggling teenaged girl who finds security keeping house in a brothel and discovers that she has a real faith healing gift.  Vern and Paul are middle-aged migrant workers who discover an infant baby girl abandoned in the woods and then a stranded mother and her children, eventually raising the children as their own.  Their lives converge at a huge revival in Mobile.  I imagine that this will be the only Sean Dietrich novel that I ever reader, just not my cup of tea at all.  Again, too damn long and slow.  Mawkish. Hallmark movie-ish.  Overly descriptive and sentimental and manipulative. I can see why he's popular.  It's like a Thomas Kincaid painting in historical fiction form.  Too much.

The 14th Colony.  Steve Berry.  Macmillan, 2016.  480 pages.  Book 11 of 20 in Cotton Malone series.

Cotton Malone, the retired Justice Department special agent who became a rare and old books dealer in Copenhagen, saves the world again in this 11th adventure.  In this case, he races the clock to thwart the plot of former KGB agent Aleksandr Zorin, an unreconstructed Soviet hardliner who has nursed an intense hatred for the United States and resentment of its role in the downfall of the Soviet Union for decades. Zorkin's plan? To use suitcase nuclear explosive devices secretly planted in the US in the mid 1980s to blow Washington DC on inauguration day, counting on the blast to devastate the federal government and to plunge the country into chaos.  It seems that the 20th and 25th amendments to the Constitution and the 1947 presidential succession act are all flawed, omitting important legal details and specificity that have the potential to reduce the country to complete and fatal weakness and collapse.  While the flaws have been noted over the years, Congress has never taken action to close the loopholes.  All of that would be triggered by eliminating both the outgoing and incoming executive branches in one fell swoop on inauguration day when all of the players are conveniently located in one place --- sitting ducks. This Malone thriller reads differently than the previous volumes.  The historical mystery at the center of the story is not really explained until about halfway into the book, very late for a Malone book.  The whole idea of the "14th colony," the hypothetical plans to invade Canada devised by the Society of the Cincinnati, seems like a superfluous red herring.  The mandatory violent shootout in a church or temple, a feature of every Malone book that usually occurs in the early chapters, doesn't occur here until the climax, and it's a bare-hands fight with no guns (when there was no good reason not to use a gun).  Another Malone book hallmark is at least one character flipping the switch and enacting a major surprise betrayal; that betrayal comes very late here, during the climax.  Overall, not the most satisfying Malone book, but still Malone, and, as usual, I learned new things, this time about the real-life origins and history of the Society of the Cincinnati and the technical flaws in the presidential succession act.  It seems like this book's purpose may have been more about developing the characters and their relationships than about the mystery itself.

North of Havana.  Randy Wayne White.  G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1997.  241 pages.  Book 5 of 28 in Doc Ford series.

Marion "Doc" Ford, the former secret agent who retired to become a full time marine biologist on Sanibel Island, Florida, is just trying to live his life when he is dragged back into international intrigue.  His buddy Tomlinson is in trouble.  He's sailed his boat/home into Cuban territorial waters, and he finds himself and his companion under arrest and threatened with the permanent seizure of his boat, and possibly worse, unless Ford goes to Havana with cash to bribe officials and gain their release.  That presents a couple of problems:  1) it's the 1990s, and American travel to Cuba, especially with American cash, is highly illegal and potentially dangerous, and 2) Ford has a history in Cuba as an agent that makes it extremely dangerous for him personally to ever return to the island.  But, his friend is in trouble, and Doc accepts the mission, accompanied, against his preferences, by his female friend/lover(?)/fitness trainer, the pro tennis player and golfer Dewey.  Once they locate Tomlinson, they find themselves enmeshed in both a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro and a search for a lost treasure, including the long-missing remains of Christopher Columbus.  The result is a solid, short Doc Ford thriller that does have historic connections.  The reader learns about Cuban revolutionary history and the situation in the 1990s, the attitudes of Cubans and Cuban refugees toward each other, and the speculation about what was going to happen once Castro lost power or died.  (Of course, as we have seen, absolutely none of that speculation came to fruition.)

Author talk

The Martians:  The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-of-the-Century America.  David Baron.  Liveright, 2025.  336 pages.

The 1890s were an unsettled decade.  (I feel like I write that about nearly every decade, come to think of it.)  Radical socialists and anarchists used riots, bombings, and assassinations to further their political aims across both Europe and the United States.  The United States fell into a deep economic depression in 1893 that lead to unemployment, hardships, and desperation.  The labor movement was gaining steam, and robber barons and management responded harshly, and violent clashes between strikers and strike-breakers ensued.  Women began agitating for political rights and attempting to crack through long-established barriers in occupations, science, and the arts.  Fanning the flames of unrest, the "Yellow Press" proliferated and spread the wildest, most sensationalized stories, usually by twisting facts or excluding them altogether, in order to sell newspapers.  (I know:  it was such a wild and unbelievable time.)  Naturally, all of this made for fertile ground for a crazy mass delusion to take hold in popular culture.  (Again, such an incredibly foreign time to us currently.)  In this case, two astronomers, one Italian and one French, independently theorized that Mars, seen from the Earth, displayed evidence of intelligent life, specifically "canals" (a mis-translation of the Italian word for "channels").  American amateur astronomer Percival Lowell became the leader in the movement to prove life on Mars and maybe even to establish contact with Martians.  Brilliant scientist and engineer Nikola Tesla even hopped on board.  For the next couple of decades, basically up to the outbreak of WWI, the scientific world was embroiled in debates and arguments, and the average Joes, Giuseppes, and Jacques, imagined all sorts of ramifications of the discovery of, and contact with life, on Mars.  This book is a really fun and enlightening look at the whole episode in our history, and the ramifications that are still with us today, specifically the inspiration for many 20th century scientists and for the whole genre of science fiction.

Address Unknown.  Kathrine Kressman Taylor.  Ecco, 2021.  (originally published in 1938) 96 pages.

Originally published in 1938 in Story magazine, Address Unknown  is actually a short story or novella. However, its impact and its genius, both then and now, are very much inversely proportional to its length.  It was written by Kathrine Kressman Taylor and published  under the name Kressman Taylor, chosen to come across as more masculine, because publishers thought the subject was too dark and heavy for a female author.  The subject? The rise of Nazism and its insidious infection of seemingly civilized, intelligent, cultured, and reasonable people - a warning to Americans about how such a thing could happen.  When published, the story became an immediate sensation, published and republished in other magazines and eventually published as a bestselling book.   It was translated into several languages and printed across Europe, achieving the same interest there --- that is until the war started and the Nazis occupied more and more of Europe and immediately banned the work.  It is an epistolary work, written totally in the form of letters exchanged between two long-time friends and business partners in a San Francisco art gallery who consider themselves brothers, one a German-born Jew who remains in San Francisco to run the gallery while the other, a German Gentile, returns to Munich to live with his family in 1932.  The latter, with his American wealth, quickly becomes a big man in town, and he and his family soon fall head over heels into idolization of this young upstart politician named Adolf Hitler who is restoring pride and patriotic fervor to the long-suffering German nation.  The letters document the resulting collapse of the friendship - formerly brotherhood -- in a brutally heart-wrenching manner.  Even if you strip away the prescient warning against political extremism that still resonates today, Address Unknown is one of the most powerful pieces of fiction writing - and epistolary fiction - that I've ever read.  

Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in October 2025

 

The King's Deception.  Steve Berry.  Ballantine Books, 2013.  432 pages. Book 8 of 20 in the Cotton Malone Series.

The adventures of former Justice Department agent turned Copenhagen rare book dealer Cotton Malone continue in this volume, centered in and around London.  Cotton Malone and his son Gary are flying from Atlanta to Copenhagen for a school break vacation, but they're not alone.  As a favor. Malone has agreed to transport a 15-year old London street kid from Atlanta back to London.  The kid is wanted by both the CIA and British intelligence.   What should be a simple handoff turns into an all-out life or death adventure that threatens them all, and it's rooted in not one, but two, 400-year old British mysteries:  what happened to the legendary "Tudor treasure" and did Elizabeth I harbor a huge secret that would shake the foundations of the United Kingdom?  Some people might look down on these novels, but I find them enjoyable reads.  Berry always starts with tons of research and a real historical question at the core of the book, and he then embellishes the story with a lot of action.  The mysteries are always intriguing and pique my alternate history interests. There may be plot lines that you can see coming from miles away, but there are enough plot twists to hold your attention.  The audiobook versions are great for walks, exercise, housework, sitting around the pool, etc. 

Torpedo Juice.  Tim Dorsey.  William Morrow, 2005.  336 pages.  Book 7 of 26 in the Serge Storms series.

Sadness is realizing that I only have one Serge Storms left to read after this one, since author Tim Dorsey died far too early a couple of years ago.  This is an early one, and the characters of Serge Storms and his boon companion, Coleman, are still being refined and developed. However, it's jumped to a high position on my favorite Serge adventures list.  It's hilarious from beginning to end, and there's plenty of knowledge to be gleaned about the history and culture of the Florida Keys.  Serge has two missions in life:  to bring justice to those who prey on the innocent and to absorb and then to dispense every bit of Florida history, natural and human, that exists.  He makes progress on both fronts here, but he also embarks on a third mission, getting married.  The hunt for his soulmate takes Serge on a typically twisted journey on which he crosses paths with drug dealing kingpins, evil executives, and would-be cult followers.  Along the way, the book takes kind of a meta turn as the Narrator decides to become a part of the story, a brilliant and incredibly original and fun twist.  Also, two sheriff's deputies, Gus and Walter, make a huge contribution to the fun.

Author Talk

The Inheritors:  An Intimate Portrait of South Africa's Racial Reckoning.  Eve Fairbanks.  Simon & Schuster, 2022. 416 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, South Africa underwent a revolution, scrapping more than a century of harshly enforced racial segregation and minority rule and instantly pivoting to a majority-rule democracy - an unparalleled transformation.  Americans being Americans, and American media being American media, South Africa basically ceased to exist at that point because we have almost no attention span for domestic events in foreign countries, especially African countries.  The Inheritors provides an insight into that transformation for American readers, primarily through the experiences of three South Africans: Dipuo, a young black woman and anti-apartheid organizer, Malaika, her daughter born around the time of the transition, and Christo, a white Afrikaans farm boy who was one of the last South Africans drafted to fight in Angola.  Eve Fairbanks built relationships with the three over the course of a decade, and she basically allows them to tell their stories.  Readers learn about the struggles of the country through the struggles of these individuals as they try to cope with unprecedented change.  It's an extremely moving, enlightening, and thought-provoking book.

Author Talk

She Came To Slay:  The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman.  Erica Armstrong Dunbar.  37 Ink, 2019.  176 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

If any American deserves a fresh, thoroughly researched, well-written, originally illustrated, biography that is equally accessible and enjoyable for everyone from grade school to adulthood, it is Harriet Tubman, and this is the book.  Of course, we all know the basics, that Tubman was the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad who personally escorted hundreds enslaved people to freedom after her own escape.  Some of us may know of her long career as an abolitionist before the Civil War and her service as a spy and nurse during the Civil War.  Fewer know that she became the first woman to lead an armed combat mission - a very consequential mission.  Even after the war, she never stopped, becoming an active suffragist and an advocate for veterans and for the aged.  Tubman's always been near the top of my list of greatest Americans, and this biography is great introduction to her life for yourself and for any younger readers in your life.  

No Sunscreen For the Dead.  Tim Dorsey.  William Morrow, 2019.  336 pages.  Book 22 of 26 in Serge Storms series. (AI generated photo)

Sadly, it's over.  After three or four years, I've now read all 26 books of the Serge Storms books, and there will never be another one.  It's hard to imagine that another author could ever match the perfect combination of insanity and genius that Tim Dorsey displayed in every single title.  Every book is filled with Florida, and American, history, laugh out loud hilarity, biting dead-on satire, and utter chaos.  Granted, his work is not for everyone.  It's filled with absurd, adult comic book-ish, graphic sex and violence that will turn off some readers, but others will recognize the brilliance and will be entertained like never before.  

I read the books out of order because of availability in used book stores and the public library, and that was not an issue for me, but others might need to read them in order.  This book is number 22 of 26, but, in many ways, I think it is a fitting final adventure.  The theme of the book is retirement in Florida, and Serge explores the idea somewhat wistfully, as he finds his people, people who match his love of Florida, of history, and of life itself - people, like him, who have packed a lot of living into life.  He becomes an honorary resident of a retirement mobile  home community and realized that the other residents led incredibly vital lives and made major contributions to society, but now others are taking advantage of them.  That doesn't stand in Serge-world, and his vigilantism in this book is particularly satisfying.  But wait - there's more.  Dorsey also throws in a great Cold War espionage storyline, and the climax is unbridled chaos.  There are a couple of minor glitches.  The first couple of pages lead the reader to believe that it's a book about the notorious community called The Villages, and all of the action takes place a couple of hours south, in and around Sarasota.  (If Florida is jokingly called God's waiting room," Sarasota is the exam room.) There's also an historical error:  In a flashback, one of the characters reports to a submarine base in 1970.  The problem is that it wasn't a submarine base until 1978.  Whether that was an uncharacteristic slip-up or just a little story-telling adjustment, I don't know, but it wouldn't even register with 99.9% of readers.  In any case, No Sunscreen is a more-than-fitting conclusion for me.

The Birth of the Feature Film:  Crash Course in Film History

The Mirage Factory:  Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles.  Gary Krist.  Crown, 2018.  416 pages.

Gary Krist is one of those authors at the top of the narrative nonfiction writing game, along with authors like Erik Larson and Abbott Kahler.  In this 2018 book, Krist tells the story of Los Angeles through the lives of three towering figures and their careers from 1910 to 1930:  William Mulholland, the engineering visionary who brought power and water to a formerly written-off barren wasteland in order to make the city even possible, D.W. Griffith, the "father of American film" who built a powerful culture-shaping industry out of a minor novelty, and Aimee Semple McPherson, the charismatic evangelist who built a church that drew tens of thousands of believers each week and who reached millions more each week through magazines, newspapers, tours, and broadcasts on her own radio station.  Singly, they became American icons.  Collectively, they created Los Angeles and made it a major city physically, economically, creatively, and spiritually.  Krist makes the case that all three were both masters of their crafts and masters of illusion, capable of dreaming big dreams and making those dreams come true, overcoming major obstacles in the process.  Yet, the mirages or illusions that they created all dissipated because of their own tragic flaws, "a crescendo of hubris, scandal, and catastrophic failure of design." Each of them saw his or her fortunes and legacies suffer, but the city remained and prospered.  It's a riveting history. No, wait, it's boffo, epic, spectacular, stunning, thrilling, legendary, unforgettable, electrifying, breathtaking, awe-inspiring,  .... etc.

Author talk

Target Tehran:  How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination and Secret Diplomacy to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East.  Yonah Jeremy Bob and Ilan Evyatar.  Simon & Schuster, 2023.  368 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

My default position is usually "Truth is stranger (and more interesting) than fiction," and this book definitely makes that case.  I am not a spy thriller reader, but this book should appeal to that group and to those that are fans of political shows like West Wing and The Diplomat.  It is an incredibly inside look at Israel’s covert operations aimed at thwarting Iran’s movement toward becoming a nuclear power. The authors show how Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, has combined sabotage, cyberwarfare, assassinations, diplomatic efforts, and intelligence gathering over the last 20 years or so to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear arms and to reshape power dynamics in the Middle East. It concentrates on events since Israeli agents and Iranians opposed to their government stole Iran's top secret nuclear archives in 2018 in order to prove that Iran was violating previous agreements and actively deceiving the world.  Twenty-first century warfare is in full force as Mossad and the Israeli Defense Force use cyberwarfare and drones in addition to embedded agents and on-the-ground assets and targeted assassinations to destroy Iran's program.   In the process, both Israel and Iran have become Top 5 world cyber-powers. At the same time, there have been some unbelievable diplomatic gains as Israel has forged relationships with several of the Gulf states because they all see Iran as their greatest existential threat.  The book does have some shortcomings.  It is largely one-sided;  the authors had much more access to US and Israeli participants than to Iranians.  Much of the subject matter is still, of course, highly classified, so the authors had to rely on limited declassified documents and interviews with individuals involved, and intelligence agencies and those people involved all have their own agendas.  Finally, time is an issue.  The authors completed writing the book in April 2023, and lots of new developments have already occurred.  Nevertheless, it was a more satisfying read than I anticipated, and I learned a lot about the current climate in the Middle East.

 

Author talk

The Fifties:  An Underground History.  James R. Gaines.  Simon & Schuster, 2023.  288 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

Too many people think of the 1950s as a decade of conformity and complacency, picturing sock hops, soda fountains, and poodle skirts, but, as I tried to impress upon my students each year, there was always turbulence under that placid surface.  There was the rise of rock and roll and teenage rebellion which shocked older generations.  Beatniks challenged middle-class norms.  Artists shook up the art world.  The Red Scare and the Lavender Scare sent shock waves through government and society.  The civil rights and feminist movements started ramping up.  There was a lot of angst, anger, confusion, and conflict.  This book celebrates several individuals who were brave enough to stand - often alone - on their principles and lead fights that they believed needed fighting.  In particular, Gaines selects gay rights, feminism, civil rights, and environmental movements.  A couple of the people discussed are familiar names, Fannie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evers, and Rachel Carson for example, but the others aren't nearly as well known, or as celebrated as they should be.  There's Norbert Wiener, a mathematician and computer scientist who is considered the father of cybernetics, the forerunner of Artificial Intelligence.  There's Harry Hay who first envisioned a national gay rights movement in the 1940s.  There's Pauli Murray whose law school thesis provided much of the legal basis for Thurgood Marshall's arguments in Brown vs Board of Education and whose legal work made sexual discrimination unconstitutional. Gerda Lerner pioneered the concept of women's history as an academic field, despite being told by superiors and colleagues that there wasn't enough material to study.  Isaac Woodard was a black WWII veteran who was blinded by a South Carolina sheriff because he dared to look him in the eye.  These are all important stories that should be shared.  This book should be widely read.  Almost makes me wish that I was back in the classroom in order to share them. ... Almost.

Who was Xolotl?

Xolo.  Donna Barba Higuera and Mariana Ruiz Johnson.  Levine Querido, release date November 4 2025. 224 pages.  Ages 7-10.

I bought a copy of this book to read during a break at the Southern Festival of Books this past weekend, and it proved to be a great discovery.  I wish I had attended the author's session.  It's a beautifully illustrated children's story of Aztec mythology.  Aztec creator and feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl had a dog-headed twin brother, a hideous monster, named Xolotl.  Shunned and denigrated by his brother and the other gods, Xolotl struggles to find himself and his function in the realm of the gods. Of course, he becomes the hero, rescuing mankind from extinction and becoming the powerful Lord of the Underworld,  In the process, he creates dogs as humanity's most loyal and devoted companions.  If there's a child in your life that is interested in other cultures, mythology, and art, especially a child who love dogs, this book will be a huge hit.  And if there is not such a child in your life, get a copy for yourself.  You'll love it.

book trailer

The Impossible Fortune.  Richard Osman.  Pamela Dorman Books, 2025.  368 pages.  Book 5 of 5 in Thursday Murder Club mysteries.

A little break from history to read the latest Thursday Murder Club mystery.  We love the whole series, and this one does not disappoint.  (We have still not seen the movie yet because we we are afraid of being let down.)  The four main characters are residents in a retiree community in Britain who solve murders, including a former MI-6 secret agent, a former labor union organizer and agitator, a psychologist, and a nurse.  There is also a large supporting cast of characters, and each one is a well-developed delight.  The mysteries are solid, and there is a lot of humor, with many LOL moments.

Publisher blurb:

"Who's got time to think about murder when there's a wedding to plan?

It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favorite criminal. But when Elizabeth meets Nick, a wedding guest asking for her help, she finds the thrill of the chase is ignited once again. And when Nick disappears without a trace, his cagey business partner becomes the gang’s next stop. It seems the duo have something valuable—something worth killing for.
Joyce’s daughter, Joanna, jumps into the fray to help the gang as they seek answers: Has someone kidnapped Nick? And what’s this uncrackable code they keep hearing about? Plunged back into action once more, can the four friends solve the puzzle and a murder in time?"

The Patriot Threat.  Steve Berry.  Minotaur Books, 2015.  400 pages.  Book 10 of 20 in Cotton Malone series.  

Cotton Malone is back.  The busiest retired secret agent ever in the history of the world.  Working much harder and more often than when he was actually employed.  In this case, his former boss, Stephanie Nelle, tasks him with tracking a rogue North Korean who was once the dictator's anointed heir but who was disinherited and forced into exile.  The problem?  The North Korean is trying to lay hands on top secret historic documents that could cause the collapse of the United States and the destabilization of the world.  You know, the same thing Cotton faces once or twice a year.  The issue is whether or not the 16th amendment establishing the federal income tax was legitimately ratified.  If it was not, the federal government would lose 90% of its revenue and be liable for trillions and trillions of dollars in damages to everyone who ever paid income tax over the last century and who was prosecuted for tax evasion.  In 24 hours time, Cotton, along with agent Luke Daniels and US Treasury Agent Isabella Schaefer, engage in the usual fast-spaced thrilling action in Vienna and across Croatia, racing against North Korean and Chinese intelligence to keep the documents out of the wrong hands.  Typical Cotton formula, but as  satisfying as usual for what it is.  Also, as usual, I learned something from reading this book. In this case, I learned the stories of Haym Salomon, the Jewish businessman who basically financed the American Revolution and was never repaid what he was owned,  and Andrew Mellon, the former Treasury Secretary who built the National Gallery of Art.  I also learned about the real conspiracy theory that the 16th amendment, and the federal income tax, is illegal. 

Author Talk

 Matisse At War:  Art and Resistance in Nazi Occupied France.  Christopher C. Gorham.  Citadel, 2025.  320 pages. Thanks to Kensington Publishing and Citadel for the review copy.

Christopher C. Gorham is an excellent researcher and biographer.  In his newest book, his subject is the great 20th century French artist Henri Matisse, specifically his life in Nice France during Nazi occupation.  Unlike other European creatives who fled Europe during the late 1930s and the early days of World War II, Matisse decided to remain in his home and to continue working, a decision not solely based on patriotism.  As the war progressed, Matisse's health declined, to the point of near death at least once.  It was during this period that he began to move away from painting and adopted the medium of paper cutouts and collage, creating most of my personal favorites of his works.  Gorham discusses his work as skillfully as any art historian, but his real focus is to try to determine what, if anything, Matisse did to aid the Allied war effort, a question that has not been satisfactorily answered in other biographies.   What does he find after a thorough search through letters, journals, and other primary sources?  Spoiler alert:  not much.  No, Matisse didn't join the military Resistance or send coded messages revealing German troop movements or hide Jews downed Allied pilots and help them escape. Instead, Matisse worked, often incorporating French and American patriotic symbolism in his art.  In fact, his mere presence, as others fled, became sort of a minor rallying point for people who knew of it.  Question answered, but honestly, it's not the most exciting answer.  The real excitement and action lay in the lives of Matisse's ex-wife and their children, all of whom risked their lives, and nearly lost them, and joined active resistance cells.  Even Matisse's son Jean, who had already moved to New York before the war and become an important art dealer, worked hard to help Jewish (and other) artists escape to New York and to help them make a living.  It's a good book about Occupied France and an artistic genius.  

Short Lydia Knag interview

Pseudoscience:  An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them.  Lydia Kang, MD, and Nate Pedersen.  Workman Publishing Company, 2025.  320 pages.  

Dr. Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen's previous book Quackery was a fun and informative look at various medical frauds, missteps,  and deceptions over the years.  In this book they broaden their investigation to look at many pseudosciences and conspiracy theories, investigate their origins, debunk them, and offer explanations for why anyone believed them.  A partial list of the topics covered:  rumpology (reading one's character and future by examining his/her butt), cryptids, UFOs, crop circles, spontaneous human combustion, the Bermuda Triangle, polygraphs, personality tests, faked moon landing conspiracy, world ice theory, flat Earth theory, and ghost hunting. I recommend this book and Quackery for those interested in science history and in human nature in general.  

Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in September 2025

 

Impossible Monsters:  Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion.  Michael Taylor.  Liveright, 2024.  496 pages.

On one hand, the Victorian Age in the UK was an age of certainty.  "Science" was settled.  The Earth was created by God at 6 pm on October 22, 4004 BC.  The natural world was ordered.  Extinction was impossible.  Why would God allow it?  Why would God create an imperfect species, one doomed to die out?  The Bible was the final authority on all things.  Within 75 years, the new sciences of paleontology and geology developed, Charles Darwin and authors conceived and argued radical new theories of evolutionary history, and authors began to challenge biblical inconsistencies.  The Victorian Age was engulfed by a crisis of faith, an upheaval that swept through society.  Impossible Monsters starts with the early 19th century discoveries of fossils and the realization that they represented previously unknown species in a never-before imagined world.  Michael Taylor, the author, details these discoveries and debates, but most of the book is about the influence of these discoveries on changing perceptions of science, religion, and man's place in the universe.  The book is an excellent read for people interested in the history of science and in the Victorian Age.  It's a great companion read to Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party by Edward Dolnick.

Author Talk

Dinner With King Tut:  How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-Creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations.  Sam Kean.  Little, Brown and Company, 2025.  464 pages.

I'm a fan of Sam Kean's podcast, "The Disappearing Spoon," and all of his books. He tells great, little-known stories that blend history and science.  His most recent book is one of his best and one of my favorite reads so far this year.  In it, he explores the field of experimental archaeology. Experimental archaeologists are not content to study documents and artifacts.  They seek to experience life as the people of the past did, and they carry out controlled, scientific experiments designed to replicate ancient human behavior and lifestyles, all in hopes of answering the questions that simply analyzing artifacts can't answer.  Some traditional archaeologists look down on the field and consider it frivolous or sensationalistic.  

Kean seeks out the experts and learns the skills that they study.  He learns and practices mummification, hide tanning, trepanation (skull surgery), flint knapping, beer brewing, open ocean navigation, Roman roadbuilding, and ancient tattooing among other skills.  He learns to cook and eat ancient foods including ostrich eggs, guinea pigs, walrus, acorn bread, and various insects.  He plays the ancient Aztec ball game and learns how to build and fire a giant trebuchet (a medieval siege sling weapon).  He relates these experiences with great deference and respect for his teachers, who are - not surprisingly - extremely interesting and unique people, and he incorporates lots of humor, often at his own expense.  (I really wish he had made a video series of each chapter.  I think it would be a huge streaming hit.) But wait - there's more! Each chapter also includes a gripping short story that immerses the reader in each culture that he addresses.  This is a must-read book for people who love history!

Author talk

Wandering Stars.  Tommy Orange.  Vintage, 2024.  337 pages.

Wandering Stars is Orange's second novel, his follow-up to the destined-to-be-a-classic There There.  It does not disappoint, and it confirms that Orange is a truly gifted writer.  It is both a prequel and a sequel to There There, focusing on the family of Opal Bear Shield and Jacquie Red Feather and their three grandsons/grand-nephews as they deal with the aftereffects of the climax event that occurred a few months earlier at the Big Oakland Powwow,  They are also dealing with the effects of generational trauma, trauma which has been passed down through four generations of their family.  Their ancestors' lives have echoed throughout their own lives, even when they didn't know it. That trauma starts with Jude Star, a boy survivor of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado.  At Sand Creek, a Colorado militia unit attacked and slaughtered approximately 230 peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho, mostly women and children.  The militiamen then took "trophies" of their "victory" - scalps, ears, noses, digits, breasts, and genitals - back to Denver where they were put on display for crowds of paying gawkers.  His son Charles endured abuse at the Carlisle Indian School, where the idea was to "save the man by killing the Indian inside." Following his escape from Carlisle, Charles had a relationship with Opal Viola Bear Shield, the namesake of the present-day Opal.  The whole line grapples with addiction and questions of identity, identity in various senses: personal identity, family relationships, and ethnic identity -what does it mean to be a 21st century Indian?

Wandering Stars is challenging.  It can be depressing.  There's not a lot of real "action."  The book jumps between times, narrators, and voices.  Often, the narrating character interprets things said to him/her in a dozen different ways in his/her head; it sometimes made me wonder if I hear and take things said to me far too literally.  Maybe I don't have enough internal dialogues during conversations.  For its faults - if they are faults - it is still a moving and impactful read.  

Electric Barracuda.  Tim Dorsey.  William Morrow, 2011.  368 pages.  Book 13 of 26 in Serge Storms series.

Time for another mindless and fun palate cleanser read, and, while the hilarious adventures of a Florida history-spewing psychotic serial killer might seem like an odd choice, it works for me, and Electric Barracuda has become one of my favorite Serge Storms series entries.  Serge and his buddy Coleman are at it again.  This time, the conceit is great chase movies.  Serge and Coleman race around Florida from one historic dive and hideout to the next, pretending to be on the run, in order to test Serge's new money-making venture idea:  a travel/tour company for people who want the excitement of a fugitive-on-the-run experience.  A lot of the locations in this book are remote fishing villages that have escaped rampant development, like Cedar Key and Pine Island, and wilderness preserves, with a lot of the action taking place in the Myakka State Park and the Everglades.  They think they're doing a dry run, but they are actually being pursued with a motley crew hot on their trail.  There are long-time nemesis Agent Mahoney, new-to-the-case Agents White and Lowe, a flashy tv bounty hunter named Doberman, a sexy redhead with a life-changing surprise for Serge, and a mysterious stranger who ultimately reveals a huge surprise twist that I definitely never saw coming.  A couple of other Florida authors, Brad Meltzer and Randy Wayne White, make cameo appearances, and there's a side quest involving Al Capone's lost treasure buried in the swamp, with flashbacks to the 1920s for the Capone story and the 1960s for stories involving Serge's grandfather and his gang. Lots of fun.

Trailer for Showtime series

Masters of Sex:  The Life and Times of of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How To Love.  Basic Books, 2009.  432 pages.

Thomas Maier's newest book is the biography of a secret British agent who worked his way up high into the FDR administration and helped to inspire Ian Fleming's creation of James Bond.  When I picked up that book, I looked at his past works and decided to read his biography of pioneering sexologists Masters and Johnson.  It was the basis for a Showtime drama that I watched from 2013 to 2016.  For more than four decades, William Masters and Virginia Johnson were the leading American experts on human sexuality, following the groundbreaking work of Alfred Kinsey.  They changed Kinsey's paradigm, however.  Whereas Kinsey relied on interviews with thousands of subjects to learn about sex in America, Masters and Johnson actually watched and recorded thousands of people having sex in their laboratory, and they used scientific instruments to take thousands of measurements during the process.  They published their findings and offered physical and mental therapy to thousands  of couples and individuals who traveled to their St. Louis offices for solutions to sexual dysfunctions of all varieties.  They went from working in secret isolation -fearful of condemnation from the scientific and medical communities, the legal establishment, and the general public-  to becoming media darlings and pop culture icons.  During their journey, America's experts on love and sex had their own relationship issues with other people and then entered into their own relationship with each other, a relationship fraught with each individual's personal foibles, egos, insecurities, and character flaws.  Maier uses interviews with both principals and many others in their circles as well as Masters' own unpublished memoir to tell their story.  It is a thoroughly engrossing story.  One thing that I took from it was the truth behind the aphorism "There's a fine line between insanity and genius."  It's interesting that so many people hailed as scientific geniuses throughout history tend to be mentally unbalanced in some way and often not very nice people.  The word "hubris" definitely comes to mind while reading this book as well.  Note:  As a person with common sense might suspect, this book is full of extremely graphic language and descriptions. 

When Elves Attack. Tim Dorsey.  William Morrow, 2011.  208 pages.  Book 14 of 26 in Serge Storms series. (Photo AI generated)

This short book was a special Tim Dorsey Christmas gift to his fans.  There's not much Florida history covered here, except a nod to the little stop-in-the-road town of Christmas Florida, and most of the action takes place on Triggerfish Lane in Tampa.  For the holidays, Serge decides to rent the house across the street from his buddy and personal hero Jim Davenport in order to observe everything Jim does and to learn how to be a family man.  Of course, it's not that simple, and some bad guys come after the Davenport family, and Serge is forced to swing into action to defend his old friends, and even to do a little family healing along the way.  Naturally, Coleman is at his side, and old friends City and Country and the G-Unit ladies are along for the ride.

The Lacuna.  Barbara Kingsolver.  Harper, 2009.  507 pages.

I give up.  I got this book on sale at Barnes and Noble because it looked interesting:  a sweeping historical fiction saga focused on Mexico and Mexico-US relations from the 1920s into the 1950s seen through the eyes of a young man with an American father and a Mexican mother, featuring his interactions with people like intriguing people like Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Leon Trotsky, J. Edgar Hoover, FDR, and even Charlie Chaplin (I think; I didn't get to him.).  Kingsolver is considered by many to be one of America's greatest living novelists.  I started reading, and I almost immediately realized why I had only ever finished one Kingsolver novel in my lifetime, Demon Copperhead, and I had to force myself to finish that.  Kingsolver may be a great author, but she is in dire need of a great editor.  In my opinion, her books would be so much better if they were half - half of everything.  This book is sooooo slow, plodding, boring, totally lacking any action.  It took 75 pages to introduce Kahlo and Rivera.  Nothing and nobody remotely interesting happened in those 75 pages.  Almost nothing happened for the next 100 pages, so I finally gave up.  It doesn't help that the story is told through journal entries.  I'm hugely disappointed that the terrific premise had such a clumsy execution.

Pineapple Grenade. Tim Dorsey.  William Morrow, 2012.  352 pages.  Book 15 of 26, Serge Storms series.  (Photo AI generated)

This has definitely been a three-Serge Storms (or more, we'll see) kind of month.  In his fifteenth adventure, Serge decides he wants to be a spy, so the action is pretty much confined to Miami.  Why Miami? Because Miami essentially became a major American city as a result of the Cold War.  It was the staging area for US covert operations against Cuba and against Caribbean and Latin American regimes and factions deemed unfriendly to the US.  There were spies and spy money everywhere.  The city enjoyed a huge financial boom thanks to government spending and became known as the Mob's tropical playground, catapulting it into national and international prominence.  Some consider Miami to be the unofficial cultural and economic capital of Latin America. Serge dispenses lots of knowledge about Miami's history and culture and about Cold War history, along with a little vigilante justice.  Along the way, he finds himself at the center of a territorial/power dispute between rival CIA squads and a military strongman's plot to assassinate a foreign president attending the Summit of Americas conference. The usual Serge chaotic fun climaxes with various assassins, Guardian Clowns, Guardian Mimes, and even recurring character Johnny Vegas all in the mix.  

Author talk

House of Smoke:  A Southerner Goes Searching For Home.  John T. Edge.  Crown, 2025.  272 pages.  

I'm a sucker for a great southern memoir, and I'm a longtime fan of John T. Edge's writing, so this book is a must-read for me.  Edge and I have a lot in common.  We're both from small towns in central Georgia, separated by a couple of years in age and about an hour to an hour and half in distance.. His favorite novel is one of my favorite 2 or 3, and we both love food and history and recognize the deep connections between them.  Like him, I'm a huge fan of barbecue joints, and I've frequented two favorites of his youth, Old Clinton BBQ and Fresh Air BBQ.  His career seemingly is my dream career. Yet, our childhoods and college experiences couldn't be more different.  As the founding director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, a contributor to newspapers, magazines, tv shows, and documentaries,  and an author, Edge has showcased the South through its food and shown how food has been inextricably linked with who we are as a people and our history, especially the history of the underclass, the minorities - the people that history books often exclude. "Home" is an overarching theme of his writing, specifically the kitchen and the kitchen table.  Gathering at the table and breaking bread represent the ultimate form of inclusion and a path to understanding and acceptance.  Edge's memoir is about his personal search for the "Home" that he spent much of  his life trying to escape.  It's all about reckoning:  a southerner's reckoning with southern history, a son's reckoning with his chaotic childhood and family life, and a celebrated writer's reckoning with his own hubris and his legacy.  It's his story, told masterfully, and it really resonates with me as a white, Gen X southerner, but I think it's more universal than that.  

"I Wanna Be Sedated"

Gabba Gabba We Accept You:  The Wondrous Tale of Joey Ramone.  Jay Ruttenberg and Lucinda Schreiber (illustrator).  Drag City, 2025.  51 pages.

I'm not the biggest punk music fan, but I am a huge 80s music fan, and punk had a huge influence on 80s music.  Many of my favorite 80s bands and performers got their starts in the punk world or were punk-adjacent.  The Ramones are considered punk royalty, and I'm familiar with several of their songs, but I don't know a whole lot about them and their work.  This book is a children's version of a biography of the band's frontman, Joey Ramone, framed as an anti-bullying message, dedicated to the many kids who, like Joey, feel just a little bit "weird." The illustrations by Lucinda Schreiber are bold, colorful, and unique, and the text is a nice introduction to Joey's life.  It's a nice thing to share with any children in your life.