Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in May 2026

 

History Nation:  A Citizen's Guide to the History of the United States.  David Hanna.  Morris & Essex Books, 2024.  357 pages.  

David Hanna has written an excellent and concise overview/review of American history, just in time for America's semiquincentennial, and I'm extremely jealous.  Hanna is a high school history teacher and author, and he's basically written up his class curriculum.  It feels like his curriculum and mine were very similar.  Here, he's told America's story, albeit in broad strokes, the good, the bad, and the ugly, using the "city on a hill" theme as bookends, from John Winthrop's use of the phrase in 1630's "A Model of Christian Charity" to Ronald Reagan's invocation of the phrase throughout his political career.  He connects events and ideas across time and makes them incredibly accessible.  It is a progressive and inclusive historical summary, but it's much more balanced and objective than Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, a book that some reviewers have compared it to.  If you're interested in celebrating "America250" with a solid review that will encourage thinking about America's story and how it should be studied and taught, this is a great book for you.

Author Talk

Democracy:  A Case Study.  David A. Moss.  Belknap Press, 2019.  784 pages.

David A. Moss is a business administration professor at Harvard, and a proponent of the Harvard Business School Case Study Method of classroom discussion.  He designed a course in which he applied those principles to the study of history and began training secondary and college history teachers to use it in their classrooms.  The idea is to begin with an objective summary of a case and break it down in an open student-led discussion of 5 questions:  1.  Define the problem, 2. What is the context?, 3. What key facts must be considered?, 4.  What alternatives are available to decision makers?, 5.  Finally, as the decision makers at the time of the case, what action should we take?  In this book, Moss has selected 19 cases that represent challenges to democracy in American history, some you're familiar with and some you're not.  The case is left open-ended to allow contemplation or discussion, but the outcome of each event is discussed in an appendix.  The whole point of this book is to encourage discussion.  As we are becoming more and more anxious about the state of our country and the rising divisions and tensions that threaten us and our ideals and discourage constructive debate, discussion of these cases in classrooms, book clubs, friends groups, etc. is a powerful antidote.  I'm engaged with it as part of a lifelong learning class, and I thoroughly enjoy the thoughtful and respectful discussion of history and politics that I haven't been able to enjoy for twenty years or more. The structure of the book allows a facilitator to pick a few of the cases to study as a group (My group is only doing 4 cases together.   The facilitator does the classes at other times with other groups and picks other cases.), but be sure to include Moss' introduction and conclusion as well, because they contain great insights.  This is another fantastic book for America's semiquincentennial, and I highly suggest it as a group read.

A Podcast episode reviewing the case and book

Bringing Down the Colonel:  A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "Powerless" Woman Who Took on Washington.  Patricia Miller.  Sarah Crichton Books, 2018.  384 pages.  

I can summarize this book in three words:  Men are pigs.  And those three words are a major slander against pigs everywhere.  It's 1894, and Madeline Pollard does the unthinkable, she files a breach of promise lawsuit against the popular and powerful Kentucky Congressman William Breckinridge, alleging that the pair had begun a decade-long affair when she was a teen, despite the thirty year age gap and the fact that he was married.  That affair, she charged, had led to multiple pregnancies, and, when Breckinridge's wife died, he promised to marry Pollard before abruptly marrying another woman, leaving her abandoned and broken.  Shockingly, she won, and the case captured America's attention and mobilized Kentucky's women to enter the political world for the first time, ending Breckinridge's political career.  However, much of the book is a history of the cultural and legal abuse suffered by women in the 19th century.  The double standard applied to the genders was staggering.  A woman who had premarital sex was considered to be irredeemably "ruined" for the rest of her life while there were no negative consequences for men.  A woman who had the temerity to work in any mixed-gender environment or exercised any sort of social independence was widely considered to be automatically sexually available.  In the South, society conformed to the old English aristocratic patriarchal idea that every woman in a man's household was his to do with as he pleased, whether she was an indentured servant, slave, wife, or relative.  Rape was impossible to prosecute because prevailing legal opinion held that a woman could only be penetrated if she was willing.  "Doctors" wrote medical textbooks arguing that education caused women's internal organs to dry up and to fail, creating chronic invalids and early deaths.  Thousands of babies conceived out of wedlock were murdered, dumped, and abandoned.  The author creates a quite vivid, disturbing, and enraging context for the society that was shaken when Madeline Pollard defied the status quo and took her stand, becoming an unlikely women's rights crusader and icon.

2012 movie trailer

The Great Gatsby.  F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925.  208 pages.  

For years, I believed that I didn't like The Great Gatsby.  Maybe because in ninth grade I couldn't relate to the fast, alcohol and jazz drenched, social world, but then again, more than forty years later, I still can't relate. I mean, invited to parties?  What's that like?  However, in the past couple of weeks, I've come across multiple references to it and figured that the universe was telling me that it was time for a re-read.  Now I see why it's remained a touchstone in American culture for a century.  This time, I enjoyed it.  It's such a classic, quintessentially American story and so incredibly modern for a novel published over a hundred years ago.  Just to refresh your memory: The Great Gatsby follows narrator Nick Carraway as he becomes entangled with the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby, who throws lavish parties in hopes of rekindling his past romance with Daisy Buchanan. As Gatsby pursues this dream, tensions with Daisy’s husband Tom Buchanan lead to betrayal, tragedy, and ultimately Gatsby’s downfall.  My enjoyment may have been heightened by the fact that I listened to the audiobook version read superbly by actor Tim Robbins.

Author Talk

Circe.  Madeline Miller.  Little, Brown and Company, 2018.  400 pages.  

I'm a big fan of modern retellings of myths, if they are well done, Stephen Fry's latest books for example.  This book got all the buzz and lots of acclaim when it was published, and, although it took me a minute to get into it, and the language is sometimes a little overwrought, I found it to be successful and entertaining.  Circe, a daughter of the Titan and sun god Helios, feels weak and powerless by comparison and just doesn't fit in too well amongst the gods, constantly struggling to find her niche.  She discovers that niche in pharmakeia, the art of using herbs, potions, poisons, and drugs to perform transportations and other magic.  Soon, that ability and the great skill which she develops are seen as a threat to Zeus and the other Olympians, and Zeus forces Helios to banish Circe to a deserted island for the rest of eternity.  Despite being banished, Circe manages to cross paths with many of the famous characters in Greek mythology like the Minotaur, Scylla, Daedalus, Icarus, Ariadne, Hermes, Athena, Jason, Medea, and, of course, Odysseus.  The result is a great story told from a fresh, new feminist perspective.

Author Talk

Paradox.  Douglas Preston and Aletheia Preston.  Forge Books, 2026.  352 pages.  Book 2 of 2, Cash and Colcord series.

I took a little action thriller detour for the newest book by one of my favorite thriller authors, Douglas Preston.  For this one, he teamed with his daughter, "a reformed lawyer and prosecutor turned thriller author," to continue a series he began with Extinction, starring Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Frankie Cash and local Sheriff Jim Colcord.  That book set up a "Jurassic Park"-type resort in the Colorado mountains where scientists had brought extinct megafauna mammals back to life with, of course, dangerous unintended consequences.  Specifically, in this case, the scientists went the extra mile and re-created murderous Neanderthals.  Now, sometime later, with the "Neanders" still hiding in the mountains, Cash and Colcord are called in for a strange murder.  A reclusive, schizophrenic hermit is found ritualistically tortured and murdered in his cabin.  Meanwhile, a holy relic in Rome is inexplicably defaced.  As Cash and Colcord investigate,  they discover not only a connection between the two, but also have to deal with more murders, intrusive press, violent protesters for and against the "Neanders," UFO/UAP researchers, and a fanatical secret society.  It's another fast-moving and thought-provoking page-turner, consistently Preston.  

A Persistent Echo.  Brian Kaufman.  Black Rose Writing, 2023.  225 pages.

This was one of those books that I discovered through a Facebook ad, and it seemed interesting.  It's 1897, and August Simms, an old man who has lived an adventurous life of exploration, returns to Rhome, Texas to die.  Fifteen years earlier in Rhome, Simms had experienced two great personal tragedies, events that have haunted Simms ever since.  He's also drawn back to Rhome by newspaper reports of mysterious flying machine sightings in the area, and he's always up for a mystery.  As he collects eyewitness accounts of the UFOs, he discovers that tensions are still roiling just under the surface, both tensions going back to that 1882 lynching and more current tensions arising from the rapidly evolving economic, social, and technological climate of the turn of the 20th century.  The book has lots of very strong reviews, but it didn't quite live up to that mark for me.  I would give it 3 or 3.5 stars out of 5, but maybe my rating is marred by the fact that I listened to the audiobook version and found the narration to be extremely poor.  It was so poor that I thought that it was maybe the author reading, and I was shocked to find that it is done by a professional narrator and actor.   He was so numbingly monotone that it made me think that even I could have a career in narration.

Author Talk

Ten Caesars:  Roman Emperors From Augustus to Constantine.  Barry Strauss.  Simon & Schuster, 2019.  432 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.  

Barry Strauss has written a history of the Roman Empire, nearly four centuries, told through the lives of ten emperors:  Augustus, Tiberius, Nero, Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Diocletian and Constantine.  A while back, social media informed us that men think of ancient Rome constantly, and it must be true because social media said so.  I am not one of those men.  Nevertheless, this book is an easily accessible general history of the Roman Empire and an examination of its legacy still felt today. 

1945.  Robert Conroy.  Random House, 2007.  432 pages.  

Hours before Japanese Emperor Hirohito made the announcement of Japan's surrender to end World War II, a group of military officers staged a failed coup, intending to kidnap the Emperor and to prevent the surrender.  They wanted to follow the way of the bushido, fighting until either victory or death; surrender for them was never an option.  Fortunately, the coup collapsed rather quickly, but what if it had succeeded?  That's the premise of Robert Conroy's alternate history, 1945, and it allows him to explore a lot of very interesting questions.  Would the US have used more atomic bombs?  How many more American and Japanese casualties would have occurred and how long would it have taken to conquer Japan?  How would the American public respond to the continued death and devastation and what would be the effects on the home front?  What would happen to the relationship among the Big Three Allies?  What would the new post-war world look like?  Here, Conroy creates a comprehensive novel addressing all of these questions, using a number of characters, both fictional and historical. The real life characters and events are portrayed in a manner that reveal thorough research, and the speculation is sound.  It all makes a great story.  This was my first discovery of Robert Conroy's work which seems to be mostly alternate history.  It reminds me of Herman Wouk and Ken Follett, two of my all-time favorite historical fiction authors, and I will definitely explore more of his work.

2002 Movie Trailer

The Quiet American.  Graham Greene.  William Heinemann, 1955. 208 pages.

Another classic read, and there are many parallels between this book and another classic, The Great Gatsby.  Both are popular and critically acclaimed short novels that masterfully capture the zeitgeist of their decades, the 1920s and the 1950s - the decadence and the turmoil.  Both stories are told by jaded and cynical narrators and revolve around idealistic men who are secretly leading double lives, and there's a love triangle in each book.  Both books offer commentaries on the American psyche, particularly the "American Dream" and the idea of American exceptionalism.  Both books remain incredibly fresh and modern decades after their publication.  In The Quiet American, the narrator is British reporter Thomas Fowler, in Vietnam to cover the futile French effort to restore colonial control, and the idealistic young American leading the double life is Alden Pyle, a US Aid representative/CIA agent who is secretly coordinating with unsavory characters to carry out his own agenda, resulting in even more death and destruction.  Their personal conflict arises because they both love - or is it desire to own? - the same young Vietnamese woman named Phuong.  When Pyle is murdered, French colonial police lackadaisically investigate, and Fowler relates the story of their relationship against the violent backdrop of the Vietnamese war for independence, with daily explosions in Saigon and other cities and pitched battles in the countryside.  Beyond the human story, this is most definitely an anti-war and anti-imperialism novel, and its message is incredibly relevant today.  Published in 1955, it's amazing how insightful and prescient a British novelist was about America's upcoming war in Vietnam.  And yes, both books reflect the sexism and racism of their time, perhaps making them problematic for some sensitive readers.  

The Kaiser's Web.  Steve Berry.  Minotaur Books, 2021.  432 pages.  Book 16 of 20 in Cotton Malone series.

This is another entry in the Cotton Malone history thriller series by Steve Berry.  Retired Justice Department Special Agent Malone and his lover Cassiopeia Vitt are back in action, solving a historical mystery and preventing a world shattering tragedy, this time at the behest of former US President Danny Daniels who enlists them to assist his friend, the German Chancellor, as she attempts to thwart a takeover by a right-wing extremist.  The twist: is the said extremist possibly the son of escaped Nazi war criminal Martin Bormann or even the son of Hitler himself?  Everything is typical Berry, lots of action, twists, turns, and betrayals.  With only one or two exceptions, each Malone adventure is pretty consistently entertaining.  

Podcast interview

American Rambler:  Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed.  Isaac Fitzgerald.  Knopf, 2026.  352 pages.  

I'm only just realizing that "white trash memoir" is a literary subgenre.  I'm aware of many of the titles and authors associated with it, but I haven't really read any of the big ones.  When I chose this book, I wasn't really aware that it is an example.  I was intrigued by the subject matter, the search for the man behind the Johnny Appleseed myth, and the "tracing his footsteps across contemporary America" format.  I might not have picked it up had I known more about Fitzgerald.  He had a rough childhood, including long homeless stretches and emotional, if not physical, violence.  His parents had psychological issues.  He is/was a heavy drinker and drug user.  At almost 40 years old, he had never owned a car or signed a lease, spending his life sleeping out in the open or on somebody's couch or floor.  He freely admits that he has no compunction whatsoever about accepting handouts.  And he's not the brightest bulb.  For example, he actually planned to float down the Allegheny River on a cheap inflatable raft from Walmart, and, in one episode, he spent half of a baseball game rooting for the wrong team.  I wouldn't necessarily want to hang out with him, but that's just me.  I'm not typically drawn to Jack Kerouac types. All that being said, I actually enjoyed the book.  The meat of the story, of course the myth of Johnny Appleseed, real name John Chapman.  In the minds of many, Appleseed is an American legend like Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill, the subject of many fantastic tall tales, but he was very much a real man with an incredible real life.  Unfortunately, the myth has become greater than the man, clouding his place in American history.  Fitzgerald dispels those myths and does a good job of developing a picture of the real man.  Along the way he has great interactions with average Americans and offers great insights into the American psyche. Of the three genres attempted here - history, memoir, and travelogue - history is maybe the least successful, but I did learn a bit more about Appleseed and discovered a few people connected to his story that I want to learn more about, and Fitzgerald's thoughts and ruminations on the subject of history and legend and the often very fine differences between the two are interesting. 

Author interview

The Hooligans of Kandahar:  Not All War Stories Are Heroic.  Joseph Kassabian.  TCK Publishing, 2022.  257 pages.

There's a long list of books that document the insanity of war, too long to list here.  And yet humans have always done it and, it seems, will always continue to do it.  We've all heard the famous quote "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results."  (Incorrectly attributed to Albert Einstein, the quote is actually much more recent.)  This book documents an Afghanistan deployment of a squad of soldiers who took their nickname "The Hooligans" to heart and forged the bonds that only soldiers experiencing combat together can forge, forever sharing the life and death moments of their deployment and the lifelong damages that they will carry after deployment.  Joseph Kassabian was a 21 year old team leader in that squad; he had joined the army at 17.  He and his squad are deployed to Kandahar, the birthplace and stronghold of the Taliban, tasked with training and supporting the corrupt and often Taliban-sympathetic Afghan police who are just as likely to torture and execute their neighbors as Taliban fighters are.  Think "Animal House" meets "MASH," but hard "R' or even "NC-17" rated, the book is funny, sad, and infuriating all at once, an honest and unflinching look at the horrors of war that is a great addition to the shelves of war stories.  It made for a very fitting Memorial Day weekend read.  

Author Interview

The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel:  Romanovs, Revolutionaries, and the Forgotten Titan Who Fueled the World.  Douglas Brunt.  Atria Books, 2026.  368 pages.

Most people know of the Nobel prizes  awarded each autumn in various fields of human achievement.  Some know a little about Alfred Nobel, the inventor and industrialist who funded the awards in his will at least partly to assuage his guilt over profiting from manufacturing explosives.  However, very few people are aware that the Nobels were a dominant, perhaps the most dominant, industrialist family in Europe, on par with, and often going head to head against the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds.  The real driving force behind the Nobel wealth and power was actually Alfred's nephew Emanuel.  He also is most responsible for the ensuring that the Nobel prizes exist.  As the executor of his uncle's will, he was pressured by Alfred's heirs, and even the King of Sweden, to disregard the prizes, but Emanuel stood firm and created and served as the chief steward of the Nobel Prize and his uncle's legacy for the rest of his life.  Emanuel was a visionary who built the largest oil industry in Russia and in Europe and amassed a huge fortune, while making powerful connections within the Russian bureaucracy and royal family, but he was not a "robber baron" in the American mold.  Workers in Nobel industries were among the happiest, most loyal,  and best taken care of in the world. Of course, all of that changed with World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the ensuing civil war.  When it was all over, Emanuel was no longer an industrial titan, and he was relegated to being even less than a footnote in history.  This excellent biography is extremely interesting and informative, and it offers at least some of the illumination that Nobel deserves.  

America250: Histories, Memoirs, and Travelogues - The Classics

     

    One of the most often cited defining traits of Americans is restlessness.  From nomadic Native Americans to the European colonizers and immigrants crossing oceans to start new lives to space exploration, Americans have seemed to share the desire to move, to explore, to test frontiers, and to push boundaries.  That trait has inspired many contributions to a huge literary nonfiction genre, travelogues.  It's one of my favorite genres, especially the travelogues that blend history, memoir, encounters and conversations with a wide range of Americans, and keen observations about American history, culture, and attitudes.  This is the first of a series of posts about some of the books that fit this genre.  In some, authors re-trace paths of historic explorers, while some authors set out with a particular theme or mission in mind.  Some  are histories of famous treks in American history and the explorers who did the trekking.  A few are journals and primary accounts written by the actual participants, and there are a few works of fiction as well.

    I'll start with some of the works and authors recognized as history travelogue classics.  It's nowhere close to an exhaustive list, just books that I've read and encountered.  

Travels With Charley In Search of America is probably the most often cited example of the genre, the work that set the standard and inspired the authors of many, if not most, of the works that have been published since.  In 1960, one of my favorite novelists, John Steinbeck, decided that he had lost touch with the "real America," and he outfitted a pickup truck named Rocinante and began a 20,000 mile journey on backroads across the country from the East Coast to the West, accompanied by his French poodle Charley.  The result became Steinbeck's last major published work in 1962, and it captures America at an extremely pivotal point of transition, as the seemingly bland and homogenous (at least on the surface) 1950s were giving way to conflict and turmoil in the 1960s with terrible acts of racist violence, the civil rights movement, assassinations, hippies and the counterculture, the sexual revolution, drugs, and the Vietnam War on the horizon.  The result is every bit as classic and essential as any of Steinbeck's novels.

Sarah Vowell is an author, journalist, and social commentator who is best known for her contributions to National Public Radio shows and essays written for various publications.  Or you might know her for a little voice work in animated movies, most notably as Violet in "The Incredibles."  I love her nonfiction historical books that blend meticulous research with personal anecdotes and her particular brand of pointed, perhaps acerbic, humor.   Lafayette is about the Marquis de Lafayette and his role in the American Revolution and his triumphant heroic tour of the US decades later.  Shipmates is about the Puritans who founded Massachusetts.  Assassination  is a look at the presidential assassinations in our history, Cannoli is a little broader in theme but largely deals with Indian removal and the Cherokee Trail of Tears, and Fishes is a history of Hawaii, from kingdom to statehood.  It's been far too long since Vowell's latest book was published, and it's high time for another one soon.  

Paul Theroux is an iconic travel writer and novelist with a huge body of work, and he's both the father and brother of several other acclaimed and well-known novelists and documentarians,  For fifty years, he wrote about travels in exotic locales around the world before turning his attention to writing about the Deep South in 2015.  It's a great exploration of the region's geography and people.

Bill Bryson is another iconic living travel writer, but he's also written very popular books on a variety of other topics.  Although born in the US, he holds dual American-British citizenship and has lived in the UK for much of his life.  While many of his books focus on the UK, two of his books are American travelogue classics.  For Lost Continent, he drove 14,000 miles through 38 states.  He did this in 1987 and 1988, in an effort to rediscover his home country and the "American Dream" after living abroad for a number of years.  Walk is all about the history and ecology of the Appalachian Trail.

Blue Highways: A Journey into America is a classic 1982 travelogue by William Least Heat-Moon, chronicling a 13,000-mile, three-month road trip across the U.S. on secondary "blue highways" (blue being the color used to denote them by Rand McNally) after a personal crisis. The book details his journey through small towns and backroads, exploring local American culture and the people he meets, avoiding interstates and cities. It's celebrated as a masterpiece of American travel writing, focusing on the overlooked corners of the country.  It's the first book of a travel trilogy.

One of my favorite authors of this genre is the late Tony Horwitz.  Voyage recounts his quest to separate fact from fiction about European "discovery" and exploration of America, specifically concentrating on the period between the Vikings and the founding of Jamestown.  Spying is about Frederick Law Olmstead, America's most famous landscape architect, but it's focused on Olmstead's 1850s trips across the American South which he wrote about extensively, offering a unique perspective during the tumultuous decade leading up to the Civil War.  Speaking of the Civil War, Confederates is all about the legacy of the Civil War and how Americans deal with that legacy today.  Midnight is the story of abolitionist John Brown and the Harpers Ferry raid.  

May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Month

 

May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month in the U.S., celebrating the achievements, culture, and history of AANHPI communities. It honors the first Japanese immigration (May 7, 1843) and the transcontinental railroad completion (May 10, 1869). Celebrations include community festivals, educational events, and supporting AAPI businesses. 

Key Details about AAPI Heritage Month:

• Purpose: The month recognizes the profound impact and contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to American history, society, and culture.
• Scope: The designation encompasses individuals with origins from across the Asian continent and the Pacific islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.
• Official Recognition: What began as a week-long celebration in 1979 was expanded to a full month in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush.
• 2026 Theme: According to the Federal Asian Pacific American Council (FAPAC), the 2026 theme is "Power in Unity: Strengthening Communities Together".
• Activities: Celebrations often feature cultural performances, food festivals, workshops, and educational programs held by museums, libraries, and community organizations. 

For more information, visit official sites like  AsianPacificHeritage.gov, which is presented by the Library of Congress, Smithsonian, and other national institutions.

Here are the Asian-themed books that I've read since last May.

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.

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.

Zodiac.  Ai Weiwei, Elettra Stamboulis, and Gianluca Costantini.  Ten Speed Graphic, 2024.  176 pages.

Ai Weiwei is one of the world's best known living artists.  His father, Ai Qing, was a well known poet and devoted Communist Party member in his native China who was denounced during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were forced to spend 18 years in labor camps and in exile.  Young Weiwei emerged from that experience as an artist and a political and social activist.  In his mind, the two, artist and activist,  can not be separated; an artist must be an activist.  His pro-democracy activism in China led to his work being censored, his workshops being destroyed, and himself being imprisoned without trial or even charges.  Finally allowed to leave China in 2015, he has become a citizen of the world and continued his artistic work in multiple media and his activism.

Here, Weiwei takes the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac and interweaves their ancient Chinese folklore and the ascribed human characteristics with stories from his life.  It's more than his life story, however.  It's also an insight into his philosophy  on the meaning and importance of art and freedom of expression.

Stranger in the Shogun's City.  Amy Stanley.  Scribner, 2020.  352 pages.

When asked why they don't appreciate history, many people might say that history is just the stories of kings and queens and the upper class, and, honestly, a lot of history is exactly that.  The lives of kings and queens are the most likely to be documented and written about, creating lots of material for historians to comb through.  "Regular" people don't often leave paper trails.  That's what makes a book like Stranger in the Shogun's City really stand out.  Stranger is the story of Japan just before the 1853 arrival of the American fleet which resulted in Japan's emergence onto the world stage, told through the life of Tsuneno, the daughter of a Buddhist priest.  Tsuneno grew up in a small village, and her parents ran the local temple.  The family enjoyed a relatively comfortable lifestyle, and the children were all educated.  Tsuneno's eldest brother was set to inherit his father's position, and Tsuneno and her sisters were expected to follow the normal path for priest's daughters, probably an arranged marriage with a priest in another village and a life managing the day-to-day operations of the local temple.  However, that life didn't appeal to Tsuneno; she had dreams of life in the big city, Edo (now Tokyo), the seat of power of the Shogun, the de facto ruler of Japan.  She finally makes it to Edo in her mid thirties, having been divorced three times.  Alone and penniless, owning little beyond the clothes on her back, she has to make her own way, and it's a struggle.  Her struggles are documented in numerous letters between her and her family, and they also present a detailed look at life in Edo.   The book is a great window into the culture of 19th century Japan, and specifically into the life of a Japanese woman at the time. 

Anna May Wong:  From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend.  Graham Russell Gao Hodges.  Chicago Review Press, 2023.  304 pages.  Updated 2nd edition, first published in 2004.

Between 1919 and 1960, Anna May Wong appeared in over 50 movies, and she was one of the biggest celebrities in the world.  American, European, and Asian movie magazines constantly published photos of her, stories about her, and stories written by her.   She socialized with other A-list celebrities and with European royalty.  She was recognized as an excellent actress, but she was also a stage and nightclub star, as an actress, singer, and monologist, often performing in multiple languages.  She was incredibly talented at presenting herself, thoughtfully using her own hairstyles and wardrobe to develop fuller characters and to advance the film plots.  During the Sino-Japanese War and World War II, she contributed most of her income and much of her time to raising funds for aid to Chinese civilians and refugees.  She invested wisely and made a comfortable living, enough for herself and to educate her siblings.  She was one of Hollywood's brightest stars --- quite an accomplishment for the daughter of a laundryman born in Los Angeles in 1905 who made her on-screen debut at 14.

Yet, few people know her name today, and far fewer have ever seen one of her films.  Her career and legacy were handicapped from the beginning by outside forces over which she had no control.  Strict movie codes of the day forbade any hint of romance between characters or actors of different races, so she was not considered for leading roles.  Her roles were often stereotypical, reflecting American racism. She played the devious Chinese female, almost always a villain or a servant, and almost always forced to kill herself in the end. Hollywood refused to hire Asian actors, casting white actors in "yellow-face," instead.  While she had many adoring fans in China, the Nationalist government condemned her because she embraced being a flapper, bared her legs and arms in films and photos, and she often played prostitutes or slave girls.  She was accused of shaming the Chinese people and their culture.  Wong was a very complicated and interesting character, and there has been a bit of resurgence in curiosity about her in recent years, with new biographies, documentaries, and even a Wong Barbie and U.S. quarters.  This bio was ahead of the curve, however, and this new, updated edition is a thorough look at her life and career, although it's a bit dry.

The Kite Runner.  Khaled Hosseini.  Riverhead Books, 2003.  371 pages.

Another classic down.  Few books appear on as many contemporary "Best Books" as this one does.  On one level, it's the story of two Afghan boys, Amir and Hassan.  Amir is the son of a wealthy and powerful local merchant, a highly respected pillar of the community, and Hassan is the son of the family's faithful servant and a member of a persecuted minority in Afghanistan.  A horrible crime committed against Hassan drives the two boys apart, and the families separate.  It's also a story about fathers and sons.  Finally, it's the story of Afghanistan.  Over the next decades, the upheaval of the Soviet invasion and occupation, civil war, and Taliban theocracy further disrupts their lives and destroys the country.  Amir and his father migrate to the US where they struggle to survive, and Amir struggles with guilt over the end of his relationship with Hassan.  Years later, he's drawn to return to Pakistan and Afghanistan by a dying family friend who reveals family secrets that push Amir to risk his life to find Hassan's son and to bring him back to the US.  It's an extremely moving and heart-rending novel, well worth a  read, even though elements of the plot are pretty  predictable.