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"
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.
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