A Fatal Thing Happened On the Way to the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome. Emma Southon. Harry N. Abrams, 2021. 352 pages.
Although I reject the stupid social media trend a short while back claiming that men constantly think about ancient Rome, I know that it is a major topic of interest for many people who like history. Here, however, author Emma Southon illuminates an aspect of Roman history that few, if any, consider. To paraphrase Southon, ancient Rome was an exceptionally "murder-y" place. That in itself is not very different from our own society which has a morbid fascination with murder. Think of how much of our entertainment - books, television, movies - is murder based.
In this book, Southon examines a number of murders, including of course the assassination of Julius Caesar. After all, Rome was conceived in murder when mythical founder Romulus murdered his twin Remus. The Roman Republic was founded when the last king was overthrown following the suicide of a noble woman raped by the son of the king. Crowds thronged arenas to cheer as men, women, and animals slaughtered each other. Criminals were crucified. In one fifty-year period, 26 emperors were murdered. Rome was an exceptionally violent society. This book is much more than just a recitation of cases, though. It is an examination of Roman society and culture as a whole, through the prism of murder. We, as readers, discover how ancient Romans viewed life, death, and what it means to be human. It's complicated. For much of Roman history, murder was not viewed as a matter for the state to handle. It was a family issue. If a person was killed by another person, the victim's family handled it. Then you throw in murders of family members, murders of slaves by masters and masters by slaves, murders of emperors and political figures, and state-sponsored murder. This book is extremely informative and thought-provoking, and it's also quite entertaining. The author is a British podcaster with a PhD in ancient history, and the tone of the book is very "podcast-y," and she has that very British sense of humor that I love. I highly recommend this book for those who are interested in ancient Rome.
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.
The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped America. Matthew Pearl. Harper, 2021. 288 pages.
In July 1776, twelve-year old Jemima Boone, the daughter of the best known frontiersman in the American colonies, and two of her friends were kidnapped by a small group of Cherokee and Shawnee warriors. Over the next few days, Boone and a group of men from the settlement of Boonesborough took off in hot pursuit. After about fifty miles, the pursuers caught up, rescued the girls, and killed some of the warriors, including a son of an important war chief named Blackfish. This incident, fueled by British efforts to tamp down colonial resistance on the frontier before it blew up, led to a broader conflict as the Shawnee, the pro-war faction of the Cherokee, and elements of other tribes launched a major effort designed both to seek revenge and to end, once and for all, white encroachment into the region known as Kentucky. The actual kidnapping and rescue are dealt with rather quickly in the book, but the real story is the aftermath. The summer of 1776 was extremely consequential in American history. As delegates in Philadelphia argued over the Declaration of Independence and the opening months of the Revolution, white settlers were crossing the Appalachians into Native American territory, foreshadowing the conflict and extermination that was to follow. This book is an excellent account of the events.
The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne. Kate Winkler Dawson. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2025. 320 pages.
Kate Winkler Dawson has made a name for herself as a true-crime author and podcaster, and her newly published book is a great one. It's a great topic, a story-behind-the-story, a whodunnit, a true crime story, a story-that-inspired-a great-story story. On December 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead, hanging, on a small New England family farm. Sarah was a mill girl. Like many other single girls in New England, she had been drawn to the textile mills and long, hard work days, far from their families. Her life was difficult, and she struggled. She found solace in Methodist churches and meetings. The Methodists were a relatively new denomination, and the established Congregationalists looked down on them, aghast at their fervent - in their eyes, frenzied and wild - worship style and their loud, frantic, "hell-fire and damnation" style of preaching that didn't require formal education. In their eyes, Methodists were drunk, ignorant, promiscuous, and criminal, blasphemers Traditional, staid New Englanders also tended to look down on mill girls in general, often considering them wanton women, challenging societal mores. Sarah's death stirred up a lot of controversy, especially after it was discovered that she was pregnant. Questions arose. Was it murder or suicide? Who was the baby's father? As to the latter question, evidence soon pointed to a local, married Methodist minister named Ephraim Avery. Was he also a murderer? A noted author of the time, Catherine Read Williams, immediately began investigating and published her own book about the case in 1833, perhaps the first true crime book in American history. The case, and Williams' book inspired another book that you may have heard of, a little novel called The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Nearly two hundred years later, Dawson takes up the investigation, using Williams work, her own research, and modern forensics and experts to answer the questions and determine the truth, successfully weaving the stories of Sarah, Hawthorne, and Williams together.
Cher: Part One: The Memoir. Cher. Dey Street Books, 2024. 432 pages.
Cher is the Icon of all Icons. Before Chappell Roan, there was Gaga. Before Gaga, there was Madonna. Before Madonna, there was Cher. And she's bigger than all of them. Her remarkable career is unique and unparalleled. The only artist to top Billboard charts in seven consecutive decades, she is the winner of an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who has been lauded by the Kennedy Center. It's hard to name another entertainer whose life has been filled with re-inventions and rebirths. Now, she's telling her story.
And what a story it is. Her family's history and her childhood were chaotic, to put it mildly. The Grapes of Wrath and Tobacco Road look like happy fairy tales by comparison. It becomes even more surreal (Speaking of surrealism, the later story about Sonny and Cher meeting Salvador Dali is one of my favorite anecdotes in the book.) when she adds stories about playing with Dean Martin's children and Liza Minnelli. Part one covers her childhood through the 1970s, focusing, of course, on her marriage and partnership with Sonny Bono and their rise to stardom, and their divorce. It ends with her divorce from Greg Allman and with Cher on the verge of launching her acting career. Cher's always been known for her honesty, openness, and humor. She pulls no punches here, and I'm looking forward to part two.
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.
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.
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.
Harlem Rhapsody. Victoria Christopher Murray. Berkley, 2025. 400 pages.
Jessie Redmon Fauset was one of the most prolific writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Poet Langston Hughes called her "the Midwife" of the literary explosion that was a huge part of the Renaissance. At a time when publishing companies refused to publish black authors or employ black proofreaders or editors and even white women couldn't find employment higher than stenographer or secretary, Fauset became the literary editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, founded by W.E.B. DuBois. In that role, she was responsible for the discovery and mentorship of almost all of the leading literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance, including Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer, to name just a few, and she made The Crisis a thriving and vibrant publication. She published lots of her own poems and essays and four novels, the first novels to ever portray authentic middle class, college-educated, professional black characters living everyday lives and facing everyday challenges. Yet, few people know about her or her contributions. Author Victoria Christopher Murray endeavors to correct that in this historical fiction work. She delivers a suiting tribute to Fauset and a rich depiction of 1920s Harlem and the culture of the Renaissance. Fauset's life, however, is more than just literary achievement. For over a decade, Faucet carried on an extramarital affair with The Crisis founder, and her own boss, W.E.B. DuBois. Murray imagines the ups and downs of that relationship and its effects on the individuals involved and affected, and on the movement itself, revealing the faults, foibles, and flaws of both Fauset and DuBois. The novel is a really good read and a history lesson at the same time.
Georgia's Historical Recipes: Seeking Our State's Oldest Written Foodways and the Stories Behind Them. Valerie J. Frey. University of Georgia Press, 2025. 400 pages.
As I always say, there's not much better than combining history and food. There are few elements of culture that reveal as much about peoples, places, and times as a culture's foodways do. Valerie J. Frey is a writer, researcher, and an archivist who specializes in finding and preserving history through food. It's also obvious that she's an avid baker and collector. Her discoveries of old cookbooks led her to do a deep dive into the history of cookbook publishing in Georgia, and she presents her findings here. She finds examples from the antebellum period through World War II and organizes them into fifty sections presented chronologically. Each section contains a biography of the cookbook writer, the historical and cultural context of the time in which it was written, and sample recipes. Frey also usually includes her own personal memories, connections, or attempts to re-create recipes, making the history all the more relatable and approachable. The recipes and cookbooks provide windows onto Georgia history: what was available, who could afford it, how was it presented, who cooked, who consumed, what did the home look and feel like, what did the larger society look like, and how did all of this evolve over time. Beyond being a fun and educational read, this book is truly a great addition to the genres of food history and Georgia history.
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