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. 

Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in August 2025

 

Author profile

Sanibel Flats.  Randy Wayne White.  Minotaur, 1990.  397 pages.  Book 1 of 28 in Doc Ford series.

I began another iconic "Florida Man" series.  These are the adventures of Marion "Doc" Ford who retires from life as a special government agent to live a quiet life in a rustic house on stilts on Florida's Sanibel Island.  Also a real marine biologist (the doctorate ), he plans to collect, process, and sell marine life specimens and drink beer.  However, we all know that no government agent can ever really retire, at least in the world of fiction,  and they often get dragged into more, and more dangerous, situations than in their careers.  Doc Ford is no different.

In this case, an old high school buddy is murdered, and his eight-year-old son is kidnapped, held prisoner by the sadistic leader of a guerilla army in the process of revolution in a fictional Central American country, a country that Ford had spent a lot of time in as an agent.  With another buddy named Tomlinson, Ford heads to Masagua to rescue the boy and get to the bottom of why his high school buddy died.  There's a nod to history as Mayan culture and artifacts figure into the plot, but almost all of that is purely fictional.  It's a good adventure story, with the expected twists and turns, and it's different from the other series that I enjoy by Tim Dorsey and Carl Hiaasen.  It's a straight adventure mystery, without the satire and humor.  I'll be reading more in the series. 

The Stingray Shuffle.  Tim Dorsey.  William Morrow, 2003.  320 pages.  Book 5 of 26 in Serge Storms series.

Serge Storms continues his history-filled Florida odyssey in this fifth book of the series.  Like other Serge books, there is a huge cast of characters, some new some recurring, including various gangs - in this case, Russian, Jamaican, Italian, and a couple of Caribbean and South American cocaine cartels, along with a book club and a group of z-list Reno nightclub entertainers.  Like Serge, they're all involved, some unwittingly, in the ongoing search for a briefcase filled with five million dollars.  However, there are some differences as well.  Serge actually leaves Florida, for New York City of all places! And Serge doesn't really play vigilante in this book.  

The historical theme of this book is railroad history in Florida and the huge role that railroads played in developing Florida.  (Ironically - if I am using that word correctly - I'm realizing that I almost never see, let alone cross a railroad track in Florida these days.)  The climax takes place aboard an Amtrak train from NYC to Miami during a special murder mystery interactive trip.  As usual, chaos and hilarity result. In this book, the reader can see that Dorsey is still developing the Serge character and story formula that we know and love.  We get more of a view into Serge's past and internal psychological battles; he struggles with himself more than in later books.  Also, his traveling buddy Lenny is almost totally irrelevant.  I forgot he existed for most of the book.  His later companion, Coleman, is much more involved and interesting, far more developed and fleshed out.  Not one of my favorites in the series.

CBS Sunday Morning

Desi Arnaz:  The Man Who Invented Television.  Todd S. Purdum.  Simon & Schuster, 2025.  368 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the free copy to read and review.

Desi Arnaz died prematurely at age 69, before earning his due.  Only in recent decades have books and documentaries cited his innate genius when it came to the entertainment business and specifically television production.  Yet, his great genius was balanced, even overwhelmed, by his many deep flaws, flaws that deeply scarred his life and reputation.  Given extraordinary access to previously unshared family documents by Lucie Arnaz, author Todd S. Purdum has succeeded in telling his full life story, the good and the bad.  After his family was forced to flee political upheaval in Cuba in the mid-1930s and relocate to Miami, the teenaged Desi embarked on a career as musician and singer, and he was generally regarded as mediocre in both talents, but his good looks and great work ethic quickly paved his way to the stage and to minor roles in Hollywood, where he met the woman that would forever change his life, Lucille Ball.  Their marriage was always volatile, to say the least, as he was never able to "forsake all others," blaming his constant patronage of prostitutes on his Latin heritage, and as he eventually fell deeper and deeper into alcoholism.  However, professionally they were America's golden couple, with tens of millions of tv viewers regularly tuning in to "I Love Lucy."   As the producer of the show, he brought innovations to television production and the business behind it that forever changed the industry and dominated the industry, revolutionary changes that are only now being matched by the still-evolving streaming models of in-home entertainment.  The book finally gives him the recognition that he deserves but doesn't gloss over the negatives.  It's a great read for any fans.   

YouTube documentary

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies. Paul Fischer.  Simon & Schuster, 2022.  416 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the free book to read and review.

Like me, have you lived your life thinking that motion pictures were invented by Thomas Edison or the Lumiere brothers? Well, you're wrong, and I taught it wrong all those years.  The real inventor of motion pictures was Louis Le Prince, a Frenchman who lived and worked primarily in Leeds, UK and New York City, who made his first films in 1887 and 1888.  Why doesn't he get the credit?  Because, before he could complete the legal processes of obtaining patents and properly introduce his invention to the world, he disappeared without a trace.  In 1890, Le Prince went to Dijon, France to visit his brother and settle his recently deceased mother's estate.  After a few days there, he was to take the train to Paris and then Calais, catch the ferry to England for a little work, and then sail home to his wife and children in New York.  His brother saw him off at the station, and Poof!  Neither he nor his luggage were ever seen again. His wife didn't know for sure that he was missing until several months later, and he was finally declared legally dead 7 years later. In 1893, Thomas Edison started promoting his new motion pictures invention, and the illustrations and patent application descriptions looked and sounded very much like Le Prince's work, leading Le Prince's wife to believe that Edison had at least stolen her husband's work and at worst may even have had her husband murdered.  I must admit here that I am firmly in the anti-Edison camp, and any assertion that he was a murderer on top of being one of the most horrible Americans in history is going to pique my interest.

You know the meme "That meeting should have been an email"? This book should have been an article or a short YouTube documentary.  The overwhelming majority of the book is a tedious slog through detailed descriptions of cameras and techniques and legal actions.  Very little of the book is about Le Prince and the mystery of his disappearance, but Fischer does finally present a logical, but still shocking, theory about what happened.  If you're tech-y or legalistic, you'll enjoy.  If not, skip this book and read The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel by Douglas Brunt, a very similar story about a disappearing inventor, instead.

 

The Heat Islands.  Randy Wayne White.  Minotaur, 1992.  276 pages.  #2 of 28 in Doc Ford series.

Marion "Doc" Ford is just an average marine biologist and former National Security Agent who wants to live the bachelor life in his stilt house in Dinkins Bay of Sanibel Island and study the tarpons, sharks and other marine life, supporting himself by selling collecting, preparing, and selling lab specimens for schools and labs.  However, any reader of crime fiction/thrillers knows that no secret agent has ever actually retired to a quiet life.  Sure enough, Doc is minding his own business when a crooked Florida developer (I don't think there's any other kind.) turns up dead, and one of Doc's marina buddies, quiet and unassuming fishing guide Jeth Nicoles is arrested for his murder.  Although Jeth seems resigned to being convicted for the crime, Doc is sure that he is innocent and sets out to prove it.  It's a solid "Florida Man" crime novel with mystery, action, and quirky characters that make South Florida different.

Author talk

How To Sell A Haunted House.  Grady Hendrix.  Berkley, 2023.  432 pages.  

Looking at some time sitting in a waiting room, I wanted a physical book to read, so I grabbed this off a shelf.  Grady Hendrix is an expert in the horror genre, specializing in the cheesiest horror fiction of the 1960s and 1970s.  His nonfiction book, Paperbacks From Hell, is a hilarious and enlightening history of popular culture through the lens of horror.  In each of his own novels, Hendrix selects a sub-genre and incorporates all of the defining characteristics of that sub-genre to tell a thrilling scary story full of humor.  In this case, obviously, the sub-genre is haunted houses.  Estranged siblings Louise and Mark suddenly lose their parents in a car  accident, leaving them to dispose of the family home.  Uncomfortably brought together by the tragedy, they quickly become enmeshed in deep, dark family secrets that threaten not only their lives and sanity, but the life and sanity of Louise's 5-year old daughter.  The house and its contents fight the planned disposal.  As the tagline says, "some houses don't want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them."  It's a fun-scary read that ticks all the boxes of the haunted house sub-genre.  On another level, I can also see why this book connected with so many people.  If you've ever dealt with family issues - who hasn't? - or disposed of your parents' property - a huge chunk of your life - this book will stir thoughts and feelings.  

The Lincoln Myth.  Steve Berry.  Ballantine Books, 2014.  448 pages.  Book #9 of 20, Cotton Malone series.

Cotton Malone, the retired US Justice Department Special Agent turned rare book dealer in Copenhagen, is dragged back into action by his former boss.  All he wants to do is sell books, but old friends, his old boss, and/or the US President are constantly calling on Malone, and his dreams of a quiet retirement go up in smoke.  Every few months, some shadowy, evil organization is out to either take over the world or make lots of money or both by using some historical object or secret, and Cotton has to travel around the world to thwart the evil scheme.  In this case, a radical group of Mormons is out to lead a secessionist movement in the US, and the historical mystery revolves around a rumored secret agreement between Abraham Lincoln and Brigham Young that involves a document dating back to the Constitutional Convention.  If it exists, that document would rip the United States apart and upend American history as we think we know it. 

It's the standard Cotton Malone formula:  lots of action, shootouts in historic places, and betrayals.  As usual, somebody asks Cotton how he got his name, and Cotton doesn't answer. We also meet Agent Luke Daniels, the President's nephew and a younger version of Cotton Malone whom Berry has spun off into his own book series.  Naturally, Luke and Cotton clash from the beginning because they are so much alike.  Formulaic, but comfortable and intriguing.  I like the characters and the action, and the books are full of real history.  The history inspires Berry to create the mystery, and he always explains his inspiration and separates fact from fiction in his notes at the end of the book.  The stories are fun adventures, and they always appeal to history lovers who, like myself, are love the "What if?" questions that make history fun.

The Man Who Invented Florida.  Randy Wayne White.  St. Martin's Press, 1993.  294 pages.  Book #3 of 28 in Doc Ford series.

In this entry in the Doc Ford series, readers learn quite a bit about Marian "Doc" Ford's background.  There he is, living in his stilt house in Sanibel Florida, collecting marine specimens and running his scientific supply house, when, out of the blue, he finds himself tied up with his uncle Tucker Gatrell, the man who raised him from age 10 to 16, following the deaths of his parents.  He hasn't seen or had anything to do with his uncle in years, but his uncle needs his help.  Gatrell has lived quite a life, a life that parallels Florida's 20th century history.  He was a fishing guide for important politicians, celebrities and businessmen and a cowboy and rancher who takes credit for many events that shaped Florida, from railroad construction to amusement parks.  He's a professional schemer, whom some might even call con-man.  Now, he's discovered a "real" Fountain of Youth on his undeveloped property, but the state is threatening to quash his entrepreneurial dreams by seizing his land for a park.  Sounds simple, but White manages to throw in kidnapping, archaeology, and the origins of "The Orange Blossom Special," one of the classic songs in bluegrass history. The story climaxes in a huge chaotic mess that reminds me of the resolutions of Tim Dorsey's books.  The world of Florida Man fiction writers seems very incestuous, and they're obviously fans of each other's work, often referencing each others writing.  I could see Tim Dorsey being inspired by the ending of this book.  

"The Dig"  trailer

The Dig.  John Preston.  Other Press, 2016 (Original: Viking, 2007).  272 pages.

In 1939, as Britain braced for entry into World War II, Mrs. Edith Pretty, a widow who owned a farm at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, hired a modest, unassuming, self-taught archaeologist named Basil Brown to excavate the mounds that existed on her property.  The result was one of the most important archaeological discoveries ever made in the UK:  one of the mounds was a royal burial mound that included an approximately 90-foot long boat and numerous other Anglo-Saxon artifacts dating back to the early 7th century.  John Preston delivers the fictionalized story of the next three months as professionals from the British Museum and other institutions shove Brown aside (robbing him of the credit that he deserves for several decades) and change the lives of all involved, as well as the understanding of British history.  Today, visitors to the British Museum in London and museums at Sutton Hoo can view the artifacts and reconstructions of artifacts on display.  This book was the basis for a recent Netflix movie of the same name.  It's interesting but slow-moving, like many British period pieces.

Coconut Cowboy.  Tim Dorsey.  William Morrow, 2016.  336 pages.  Book 19 of 26 in Serge Storms series.

Serge Storms is back for another chaotic and crazy history-filled Florida road trip.  This time, Serge and his buddy Coleman trade in their usual muscle car ride for a chopper motorcycle with a sidecar because Serge's  obsession of the moment is the iconic '60s cult classic "Easy Rider." Serge's plan is to finish the epic journey that was cut short in the film by the murder of the lead characters and to take a nostalgic ride back to the simpler times of the late 1960s, discovering modern-day hippie music and culture gatherings and quiet small town Florida life.  Of course, it's Serge's journey, so they make side trips through the panhandle and recent Florida history and Homosassa to see sites of Tom Petty's youth and to meet the most famous resident of the Homosassa Springs State Park, Lu the hippo, a retired movie animal star who resided there from the 1960s until his death in June 2025.  And, of course, Serge is in vigilante mode and much woe befalls road ragers, rude rich jerks, corrupt small town bosses, and Miami drug dealers who cross his path or threaten his friends.  This was an especially fun Serge adventure.

December 6.  Martin Cruz Smith.  Simon & Schuster, 2002. 352 pages.

Novelist Martin Cruz Smith died in July. I had read a few of his Arkady Renko novels, and I decided to go back through his works and read something else.  I discovered December 6.  It's set in ultra-nationalist and ultra-militarist Tokyo in 1941, with flashbacks.  The main character is Harry Niles, the son of American missionaries. Never having even visited the United States and living with an uncle while his parents work in the field, Harry is as Japanese as he can be.  As a child he runs with a group of Japanese kids in the streets exploring the ins and outs of a seamier side of Tokyo, the dance halls and theaters, learning to become a scam artist and con man.  After a brief time in the US when he goes to work for a movie studio, he returns to Tokyo.  As a foreigner, a gaijin, who spent time in Japanese-occupied China and has contacts within the Japanese government, he draws the attention of the police and military.  His contacts lead him to discover the secret plans to attack Pearl Harbor.  Now, he attempts to plant disinformation  amongst the Japanese officials and to alert American officials, as he makes plans to leave Japan before the war with the US begins.  His efforts are complicated by his childhood friends, his Japanese lover, and a Japanese military officer out for revenge.  It's a really good story and a quick read.  If you like the Arkady Renko series  or the historical noir works of James Ellroy, Walter Mosley, or Walter Mosley, for example, I think you'll enjoy this one.

Book talk by author

There There.  Tommy Orange.  Knopf, 2018.  304 pages.  

This novel has gotten a huge amount of attention since its publication, and reviewers have raved about it.  I was moved to pick it up after I saw an Instagram book influencer ( @vestcody ) call it a modern day Canterbury Tales and include it in a list of modern replacements for classics commonly taught in high school.  I read it in two sittings, and I was blown away.  It definitely deserves the hype, and I look forward to reading Orange's follow-up.

There There  absolutely lives up to the Canterbury  comparison, in both structure and quality, and it will be hailed as a classic for years to come.  Chaucer's Canterbury, generally considered unfinished, introduces some thirty characters, pilgrims on their way to visit the shrine to Thomas a Becket at Canterbury Cathedral, but only 24 tales were completed. In There There, a dozen "Urban Indians" in Oakland, California all have their seemingly disparate lives converge at the Big Oakland Powwow, a huge annual event that draws indigenous dancers, vendors, and attendees from throughout the Americas.  Each character has his or her own issues, arising from drugs, alcohol, domestic abuse, and other issues centering on identity that are found throughout the Native American community.  Their lives all intersect on that fateful day at the Powwow.  As author James Baldwin wrote, "People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them."  Orange captures that sentiment perfectly.  I recommend this book to all readers.  

Constituent Service: A Third District Story.  John Scalzi.  Audible original. 2024.  2 hours 30 minutes. (AI generated image)

Bonus non-history read of the month.  Another fun sci-fi listen from John Scalzi.   I enjoy funny and clever sci-fi like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the British TV series Red Dwarf, and I'm glad to have discovered John Scalzi.  

Amazon blurb:  "The aliens are here ... and they want municipal services!

Ashley Perrin is fresh out of college and starting a job as a community liaison for the Third District–the city’s only sector with more alien residents than humans. Ashley’s barely found where the paper clips are kept when she’s beset with constituent complaints–from too much noise at the Annual Lupidian Celebration Parade to a trip-and-fall chicken to a very particular type of alien hornet that threatens the very city itself.

And if that’s not terrifying enough, Ashley is next up at the office karaoke night.

It's Parks and Recreation meets the Federation of Planets...."

Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in July 2025

 

The Last Island:  Discovery, Defiance, and the Most Elusive Tribe on Earth.  Adam Goodheart.  David R. Godine, Publisher, 2023.  272 pages.

In November 2018, most of the world heard about North Sentinel Island, one of the Andaman Islands off the coast of India,  for the first time when a young American missionary broke Indian law by landing on the island, intending to share his Christianity with the Sentinelese tribe that lived there and had violently repelled almost all previous attempts to contact them.  His death was the result, and it became a big international story for a minute as people debated his mission:  arrogant, racist, colonialist, superiority complex or misguided, brash young man attempting to do God's work?  Eventually, the world moved on, but the story continued to resonate with Adam Goodheart, a journalist and historian who had visited the Andaman islands in the late 1990s and even briefly (and illegally) visited the coast of North Sentinel Island. Twenty years later, he answered the urge to return and to learn more.  He recounts his research and his journeys in this book, along with the history of the Andaman tribes and their interactions with explorers, travelers, and the British, then Indian governments.  During these interactions, the Andamanese natives were abused, killed, enslaved, and infected with devastating diseases.  However, the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island had successfully, and forcefully, resisted all contact with the outside world, and they continue to do so today, living much as they have for tens of thousands of years, but modernity's threat is intense.  Like Goodheart, I have always been fascinated by stories of first contact between cultures, and this was a great read. 

The Jefferson Key.  Steve Berry.  Ballantine Books, 2011.  480 pages.  Book 7 of 20, Cotton Malone series.

When you publish a book a year in a fictional adventure series, you have to have a formula, and Steve Berry definitely does have a cotton formula.  The plot is going to revolve around an interesting, and legitimate, historical mystery.  Somebody close to Cotton Malone is going to need assistance. There are going to be crazy shootouts in very historic locations.  There are going to be betrayals.  The bad guys are part of a shadowy and powerful secret organization of power- and money-hungry oligarchs who crawl out of the woodwork to take over the world.  Somebody is going to ask Cotton how he got his name, and Cotton is not going to answer.  And there's lots and lots of action.  They're not great works of literature that will change your life.  They are fun reads, or in my case listens, while walking or driving or doing something else, and I usually learn something or get interested in learning about something or reading something else discussed in the author's notes.

In this case, all four assassinations of American presidents are linked to the modern day descendants of four  privateers, officially and constitutionally-sanctioned pirates.  They take action when they feel Presidents turn against them, and it's up to Cotton to end their threat once and for all.  What's the Jefferson Key?  The key to the mystery is dependent on a secret cipher developed by Thomas Jefferson.

From "60 Minutes"

1000 Years of Joy and Sorrow: A Memoir.  Ai Weiwei.  Crown, 2021.  400 pages.

Before our recent trip to Seattle, I was vaguely aware of the Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei.  As it happens, the Seattle Art Museum is hosting the largest Ai Weiwei exhibition ever staged in the US, over 100 pieces on view through September 7, 2025.  I must admit the very first pieces in the exhibit did not impress me.  "Great," I thought to myself, "he thinks flipping the bird is art."  There are a lot of birds flipped.  As I got deeper into the exhibit, however, I was duly impressed and saw more, a much more varied and interesting body of work.  Ai is very prolific, and his work challenges the viewer and makes him/her think.  Isn't that what art is supposed to do?

His memoir explores his philosophy of art and particularly his unshakable belief that artists must also be activists.  It's also a history of communist China.  Ai's father, Ai Qing, was once an associate of Mao Zedong and the other leaders of the Communist Revolution.  He was hailed as the poet of the Revolution, widely known and appreciated throughout China and in international literary circles.  Then, he fell from grace during the Cultural Revolution, arbitrarily labeled a "Rightist" and an "Enemy of the Revolution."  As a result, he and his family were banished to the hinterlands for much of Weiwei's childhood, and Qing was subjected to public shaming and sentenced to hard labor, including cleaning public toilets.  Ai Weiwei recounts his family's struggles and the oppression that the Communist Party has constantly subjected the people to, most of which westerners are unaware.  The stories make it easier to believe the rumored genocides being conducted currently against ethnic Tibetans and Uyghars, among others, Westerners are also largely unaware of the long history of dissidence that has occurred in China.  Ai Weiwei was hugely influenced by his personal and family experiences and the acts of dissidence that he witnessed.  His art caused him to be persecuted and imprisoned as a dissident himself until he was allowed to leave the country.  Today, Ai Weiwei is more or less a citizen of the world, and one of the leading proponents of freedom of expression.

While I must admit that I slogged through this book, even skimming a few sections, it is not a bad book.  In fact, it's pretty good, and it's an informative, thought-provoking, and important book.  I can't explain why it took me so long to read.  

The Kaiju Preservation Society  John Scalzi. Tor Books, 2022.  272 pages.

Another historical break - however, I did learn that there was a collective word for the giant monsters that have been a part of Japanese popular culture for decades:  Kaiju.  In my teens and twenties, I read lots and lots of sci-fi and fantasy, but I've been away from it for a long time.  John Scalzi has brought me back for a couple of hugely fun reads, and I look forward to a couple of more.  He's creative and hilarious.  Like Starter Villain, my favorite read so far this year, I listened to the audiobook version, and Will Wheaton does a fantastic narration.

The story:  Jamie Gray is climbing the ladder at a food-delivery app corporation when he is arbitrarily fired by the clueless CEO.  Stuck in New York City at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, he is forced to support himself by becoming a "deliverator" for the same company.  One delivery serendipitously reunites him with a former acquaintance named Tom who sends him to a job interview that changes his life.  The job turns out to be with an interdimensional "animal rights organization" with the job of studying and protecting a world populated with humongous nuclear-powered creatures and the parasites and mutualistic creatures that depend on them.  These giants are called Kaiju, and it turns out Godzilla was one of them who accidentally crossed into our Earth. Of course, Jamie's first mission into Kaiju-world leads to a crisis that threatens the existence of both worlds, and he and his new friends have to save them.  It's all so much fun!

Odyssey:  The Greek Myths Reimagined.  Stephen Fry.  Chronicle Books, 2025.  288 pages.  

I've loved mythology since I was a child, and Stephen Fry is one of my favorite human beings, so I'm naturally going to read his re-imaginings of Greek mythology.  This is his 4th, and most recent, volume, a re-telling of the epic-est of epics, Homer's Odyssey.  After ten years away from his throne and family in Ithaca, Odysseus and his men make their way home following the Trojan War.  Unfortunately, the easily offended Olympian gods are repeatedly offended and intervene in the journey, ultimately killing all of the hero's crew and delaying his return for another decade.  Odysseus has to survive the islands of Circe and Calypso, the Cyclops, the monster Scylla, and the murderous whirlpool Charybdis, and more, only to find his family and palace besieged by 108 evil suitors determined to force his wife Penelope to marry one of them.  At approximately 2,700 years old, Homer's Odyssey is still one of the greatest stories ever told, and it has been re-told in too many forms to count. Stephen Fry's re-telling is a masterpiece.  If you have any interest in Greek mythology, you must read Fry's books, and I highly recommend that you listen to him performing the audiobooks. 

From CBS Sunday Morning

Worst. President. Ever.:  James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents.  Robert Strauss.  Lyons Press, 2016.  304 pages.  

I went looking for a biography of James Buchanan and found that there were few.  Fitting for the man that probably appears most often on lists of worst presidents ever, the president as the country literally disintegrated, the Confederacy was formed, and preparations for the Civil War were underway, all while he believed that he was constitutionally powerless to do anything about it.  During the Civil War, even his Pennsylvania neighbors blamed him for it.  One might argue that he was a 19th century of the "Peter Principle," the idea that a person rises in a business hierarchy up to a level at which they are notably incompetent, in action - except that James Buchanan was never truly competent at much of anything.  At anything political anyway.  He did amass a fairly large fortune through business investments that allowed him to indulge in the luxurious lifestyle that he enjoyed.  Otherwise, as a student, a Congressman, a Senator, an ambassador, and an ambassador, he was totally unremarkable and unaccomplished.  He seemed to have no personal political convictions. He almost never committed publicly to one view or another, and, on those rare occasions when he did state an opinion, he usually contradicted it later, sometimes in the same statement.  Yet, he set his designs on being President, and worked hard for 20 years to finally achieve it.  Unfortunately for him, he succeeded at precisely one of the worst moments in American history.  The author's examination of Buchanan and "the POTUS rating game" led me to realize that the vast majority of US Presidents have been incredibly mediocre men.  It is absolutely incredible to think that the United States is about to celebrate 250 years of existence.

And, yes, Strauss does address the only issue that has kept Buchanan, besides his incompetence, in the public consciousness for 150 years:  the speculation about Buchanan's sexual orientation.  While there are tantalizing bits of circumstantial evidence, the fact is, we'll never know.   

John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton do a reading 

Redshirts:  A Novel in Three Codas.  John Scalzi.  Tor Books, 2012.  320 pages.

Here's another fun break from history, another fun sci-fi read written by John Scalzi and audiobook-narrated by Wil Wheaton.  Again, it does nod to history, specifically the history of science fiction television, especially "Star Trek," and this book will definitely appeal to fans of humorous and irreverent sci-fi and especially to fans of "Star Trek."  The title refers to one of the most common tropes in the Star Trek universe, going back to the original series:  if red-shirted security extras accompanied were art of an away team beamed to another planet, the chances are very high that at least one of them would die.

Ensign Andrew Dahl has been assigned to the Intrepid, the flagship of the Universal Union, a prestige posting.  He soon realizes that something is amiss:  Every away mission is a harrowing and dangerous encounter that results in either serious injury or death to at least one low-ranked crew member while the five highest ranking officers always either escape unscathed or recover very quickly, if not miraculously, from some life-threatening condition.  Along with his small group of friends and a mysterious crewmen who hides in abandoned holds and tunnels of the ship, Dahl comes to a shocking conclusion and effects a plan to set things right.  Okay, yes, I'm seeing patterns as I read more Scalzi works:  the hero is a young intelligent smart-alec who is kind of floundering because of circumstances beyond his control, and he finds a small, equally intelligent, witty, and misfit-y friends, and together they meet and conquer the obstacle.  Characterization and character development are not Scalzi's strengths; wit and creativity are. While there is a lot of familiarity, the story is original and different, and I love the humor, and Wil Wheaton's narration makes it even better.  

Author talk

Waco:  David Koresh,  the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage.  Jeff Guinn.  Simon & Schuster, 2023.  400 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the free review copy.

For 51 days in 1993, hundreds of ATF and FBI agents lay siege to a haphazard compound outside of Waco Texas.  Inside were under 100 men, women, and children who were all devoted followers of Vernon Howell, who took the name David Koresh.  They believed that Koresh was a prophet, anointed by God to be "the Lamb" spoken of in the Book of Revelation.  As the last prophet, Koresh was destined to break the seven seals that would set the events of Revelation's End Time into motion.  He would lead them in battle against the evil forces of "Babylon," otherwise known as state and federal government, but they all knew that they would be killed in the process, only to be resurrected at the right hand of God, as His chosen people.  

As "the Lamb," Koresh controlled every aspect of his followers lives, even decreeing that all marriages were dissolved and that all women members were his.  A select number of women, and girls as young as 10 or 12,  were chosen to be his sexual partners and to bear his children.  The sect's activities were partially funded by the illegal activity of converting semiautomatic guns to fully automatic guns and manufacturing hand grenades.  While the local sheriff basically ignored the Davidians because they weren't really bothering anybody else, accusations of child abuse drew the attention of local authorities, and the gun business drew the attention of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.  Warrants were issued for the arrests of Koresh and a few others, and search warrants were issued for their compound.  The raid occurred on February 28, and it was an unmitigated disaster, leading to the deaths of 4 agents and 6 cult members.  The siege began and ended with a tear gas raid and the burning of the compound; nearly 80 Davidians, including Koresh and a couple of dozen children, died.   The whole operation is still clouded by differing accounts, uncertainties, lies, cover-ups, incompetence, stupidity, arrogance, inter- and intra- agency rivalries, and it had, and continues to have, a huge impact on Americans' view of, and relationship with, the federal government, from distrust to outright antipathy, as exemplified by Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City two years later and the formation of armed militant organizations around the country.  

Guinn's book is an enlightening and through account of the subject, well worth a read.

 

Band of Brothers Documentary

Band of Brothers:  E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest.  Stephen Ambrose.  Simon & Schuster, special 25th anniversary edition, 2017.  336 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the free review copy.  

If you know anything about great books about World War II or about the greatest WWII television series ever filmed, you probably have read Band of Brothers, as I did in the 1990s.  It is an absolute classic and a must read for anybody interested in the war.  I was sent a special review copy of the 25th anniversary edition, and it's definitely re-read worthy.  It's easily one of the best military history books that I've ever read.  

Just in case you don't know the story, this book is the story of the men of Easy Company in the 101st, told in their own words drawn from many hours of interviews.  These men, drawn form a wide variety of backgrounds were put together at a camp in North Georgia in 1942 and trained to be paratroopers,  As a unit, they led combat forces across Europe from D-Day to VE Day, from Normandy to Bavarian concentration camps to Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden, suffering starvation, freezing cold, and an extremely high casualty rate along the way.  The book was made into the HBO series of the same name that first aired in 2001 and is still widely considered to be the best HBO series ever produced.

author talk

The Vice President's Black Wife:  The Untold Life of Julia Chinn.  Amrita Chakrabati Myers.  The University of North Carolina Press, 2023.  296 pages.

Even the buffest of history buffs outside of Kentucky have probably never heard of Richard Mentor Johnson, the ninth Vice President of the United States and presidential contender who was a US Representative and Senator for years and whose political career was enhanced by stories that he was the man who killed Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames. His family was among the first white settlers of Kentucky and was a prominent family in the area of Georgetown for decades.  However, Johnson's story goes much deeper, and it is an incredibly important and quintessential part of southern history and the legacy of slavery.   

For six months each year, Johnson lived in a boarding house in Washington while doing the young nation's business by day and attending the young society's most exclusive society affairs by night.  As far as Washingtonians knew, he was a lifelong bachelor.  His Kentucky neighbors knew different, and, later, political opponents used that knowledge to tarnish his career and to thwart his presidential aspirations.  The secret?   He was married.  To an enslaved woman that he "owned," a woman named Julia Chinn.  He and Julia had two daughters who were legally his property as well.  He never officially freed wither Julia or his daughters.  Julia died enslaved, and her daughters weren't freed until the ratification of the 13th amendment.  That doesn't make Johnson that unique.  The history of American slavery is the history of interracial sex, consensual and not consensual.  Slaveowners viewed enslaved women as their sexual property, and that view was universally accepted even if it was not stated aloud.  Slaveowners raped, cajoled, bribed.  Some treated their concubines as wives.  Some freed their lovers and children. Some sold them when there was too much gossip and people started noticing resemblances.  A few left their property to their enslaved or freed wives or children.  

Johnson stands out because he called Julia his wife.  The preacher of the church that Johnson's family co-founded married them.  He gave Julia complete and total authority to run his plantation and the Choctaw Academy (a federally funded school for young Choctaw men that provided a major income for Johnson) that was located on his property.  His daughters married local white men, and they and their descendants have "passed" ever since, with the vast majority of their descendants never knowing their family history until the last few years.  In this book, Myers digs deep to tell Julia's story for the first time.  Because there isn't much of a paper trail,  (Johnson's papers are sparse for such a political man.  It is thought that his brothers destroyed most of his letters and documents upon his death due to shame.), there is a lot of "could have," "probably," "possibly," and the like, and a lot of references to similar stories, but she does an excellent job of telling the important story and bringing it to light.  Important and extraordinarily complicated.  Spoiler alert: don't go thinking Johnson was heroic.