Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in August 2026

 

The Wandering Hill.  Larry McMurtry.  Simon & Schuster, 2003.  320 pages.  Book 2 of 4 in The Berrybender Narratives.  

The wildly eccentric English noble family, the Berrybenders, continue their western odyssey in the early 1830s.  The winter has forced them to abandon their riverboat and to seek refuge in a winter outpost near the junction of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, alongside real-life mountain men who led the American exploration of the West.  Historical figures like "Pomp" Charnonneau, the son of Sacajawea and Toussaint Charbonneau, Hugh Glass (the inspiration for "The Revenant"), Kit Carson, and  Jim Bridger are also sheltering there, and they find very quickly that dealing with the Berrybenders may, in fact, be more harrowing than their routine clashes with hostile Indians and grizzly bears.  Tazmin Berrybender takes center stage in the book as she prepares to give birth, along with her father's mistress, and struggles to make her marriage to mountain man Jim Snow work.  Snow, meanwhile, fears that the headstrong and independent Tazmin may be too much for him to handle.  Amidst all of the melodrama, the outpost is threatened by a Lakota band of 200 warriors led by a war chief named Partezon, while the Berrybender group of family members, servants, and employees continues to shrink, both in number and in body parts.  

The World of Tomorrow.  Brendan Mathews.  Little, Brown, and Company, 2017.  560 pages.

This is the story of the three Irish Dempsey brothers in 1939:  Martin the struggling musician trying to support his family in New York City, Francis the glib wheeler and dealer of black market items serving prison time, and Michael the sensitive youngest who goes into a Catholic seminary following his first broken heart experience.  Francis and Michael are brought together at their father's funeral and use the opportunity to escape from their respective prisons.  During the escape, they are unwittingly entangled in the operations of the Irish Republican Army, and a series of unfortunate events unfolds.  The result is that Michael suffers serious injuries and Francis ends up in possession of a large sum of money contributed to the IRA by a powerful backer in New York.  Francis decides to take Michael to the US to reunite with Martin, escape the IRA, and seek medical help.  That puts the whole family in the crosshairs of the IRA patron who wants his money back and to punish Francis Dempsey.  The book got a lot of attention when it was published, and I liked the story well enough to finish, but I have to say I would only give it a generous 3 out of 5 stars.  It's very melodramatic. It's a perfect example of a horrific case of editing.  IT'S TOO LONG!  The author's philosophy is why use two sentences to say something when you can say it in twenty sentences?  There are whole pages, storylines, and characters that are totally superfluous and only serve to slow things down.  In the middle of an action scene - such as they are - a character will go through what seems like pages of flashbacks to childhood.  More bad editing:  the title is pretty irrelevant.  The 1939 New York World's Fair is supposedly the backdrop for the book, but it's actually pretty irrelevant, important only for about an hour of book time, at most. 

Lamb:  The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.  Christopher Moore.  William Morrow, 2002.  464 pages.

Two thousand years after his death, Levi bar Alphaeus from Nazareth, known to all as Biff, is resurrected by an angel named Raziel who sequesters him in motel and orders him to write a new, fuller testament of the life of Jesus Christ.  Why Biff?  Biff was Jesus', that is Joshua's to use his actual Hebrew name and not the Greek version, best friend from the moment they first met, when they were around 6 years old.  They were together almost continuously from that moment until the crucifixion as Joshua grows to accept his role as the Messiah, with assistance from Mary of Magdala or Maggie.  In their teens, Joshua and Biff set out to on a trek to the East to find and to learn from the Three Wise Men who had visited Joshua as a baby, hoping to get guidance from them about how to fulfill his divine role.  Over the next twenty years, they learned a great deal about the world and themselves through a series of madcap adventures.  Joshua learned how to hone and to use his powers and adopted bits and pieces of various philosophies to shape the message that he had to deliver to the world.  The more worldly and sarcastic Biff is there by his side the entire time, balancing Joshua's idealistic, even naive personality.  Lamb  is a hilarious, irreverent, and satirical masterpiece, the best biblical-era comedy since The Two Thousand Year Old Man and The Life of Brian.  I'm sure some readers would call it sacrilegious, and, yes, the humor can be earthy and crude, but, at its core, Lamb is true to the basic truths of Christ's real teaching, love and compassion. Definitely a 5-star read.  

Author Talk

Tocqueville's Discovery of America.  Leo Damrosch.  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010.  304 pages.  

Every student of American history is familiar with Alexis de Tocqueville.  Two hundred years later, his work is still quoted, often more often than it is read, regularly invoked by historians, documentarians, authors, and political commentators from across the spectrum, and he is regarded as an oracle who defined America and American democracy during the Jacksonian era.  In 1831, Tocqueville, a lawyer and minor French government official, and a colleague hatched a plan to preserve their careers during a particularly tumultuous time in French political history, basically by escaping observation and supervision while appearing to make themselves look useful and productive.  (You know, typical government workers) They proposed a fact-finding mission to the United States, ostensibly to gather information about the Auburn and Pennsylvania penal systems. For nine months in 1831 and 1832, the pair traveled through the US.  While much of their time was spent attending balls and dinners with the upper crust, they also met and interacted with Americans of all classes and with Native Americans and enslaved people, and they made astute observations about American government and culture and why American society was different from European society.  Generally, they were impressed with America and found much to admire, but Tocqueville and Beaumont did see worrying issues, and they made cogent predictions about the future that seemed to be extremely accurate.  In this book, Damrosch uses a wide variety of documents and letters, some of which had not been translated into English before, to trace their journey.  He paints a vivid picture of Jacksonian America and provides great context for Tocqueville's work, while illuminating the life and personality of the man himself.  It is an excellent introduction or supplement to Tocqueville's original work.  However, it's a great read for America250 whether you've ever read Tocqueville or not.

The Rediscovery of America:  Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History.  Ned Blackhawk.  Yale University Press, 2023.  616 pages. 

This is a phenomenal book that very nearly achieves its author's incredibly lofty goal:  to reshape and reset American history by recognizing that Native Americans and government policy toward Native Americans have been essential to understanding the evolution of modern America.  It is destined to become a classic, and it would easily be a 5 out of 5 read for me, except there is one glaring factual error that I think is beneath a Yale University history professor and his editor(s).  (He refers to Henry Knox as "the future Secretary of State."  He was the first Secretary of War, never State.)  But otherwise, it is an incredibly informative retelling of American history from the Native American perspective, an overview painted in broad strokes and covering five centuries. Native Americans and government policy toward them have been both affected by and have affected every major period and event in American history.  It is a suitable companion to Dee Brown's iconic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I highly recommend it.

The Superman Wars:  A Battle For Truth, Justice, and an American Icon.  William Bernhardt.  Permuted Press, 2026.  416 pages.

The history behind the creation of Superman is even more gripping and interesting than any Superman story ever conceived in a comic book or movie.  During the Great Depression, two shy and socially awkward first-generation Jewish-American kids in Cleveland become best friends, bonded by their mutual love of science fiction, fantasy, and movies and by their shared dream of one day dominating the comics industry.  Jerry Siegel was the writer and visionary, and Joe Shuster was the artist who brought his creations into existence.  After repeated false starts and nonstarters, one character finally catches: an alien baby adopted by an Earth couple who grows into adulthood with superpowers and dedicates himself to truth, justice, and the American way.  As Superman became an international icon, Siegel and Shuster encountered what some cynical people might call the true American Way.  Enter two low-level mobsters and pornographers who hijack Superman and found the modern DC Comics company based on their ill-gotten proceeds.  In the process, they strip Siegel and Shuster of all creation credit, cheat them of their fair pay and share of Superman-derived profits, ruin their reputations, constrain their ability to work, and render them destitute. For the next 8 decades, Siegel and Shuster and their families battle, often seemingly in futility, battle for real life truth and justice.  It's one of the best books that I've read so far this year.

By Sorrow's River. Larry McMurtry.  Simon & Schuster, 2003.  347 pages.  Book 3 of 4 of The Berrybender Narratives.

The British aristocratic Berrybender family continues their year long odyssey through the American West in 1833, albeit missing even more members of the original entourage and more fully functioning limbs and body parts than they had when they started.  The harsh natural elements and hostile Indians continue to take their toll.  Tasmin, the eldest Berrybender child, continues to be the center of things in this novel. As headstrong and independent as ever, she realizes that she has at least four males in her life that are clueless about how to handle her, and she is equally confused by her feelings about them.   There's Jim Snow, the "Sin Killer," her husband who keeps leaving her for the trails but always returns, her toddler son Monty, mountain man Kit Carson who worships the ground she walks on, and Pomp Charbonneau, the son of Sacajawea whom Tasmin desires but doesn't seem to match her desire, Meanwhile, she's pregnant with her second child. Domestic chaos aside, the Berrybenders and the mountain men in their company encounter Le Partezon, the feared rampaging Sioux war chief, a mixed renegade group of slavers led by the equally deadly Obregon, the Ear Taker, an Indian who sneaks into camps to slice ears off of sleeping victims, two European journalists crossing the plains in their hot air balloon, and a group of Pawnee youths out to become warriors. Another fun McMurtry adventure.

America250: The Epic American Historical Fiction Series

 

    Throughout American history, some authors have attempted to capture and to fictionalize huge chunks of time, relating the adventures of recurring characters or even documenting generations of families to tell their stories, and, in the process, the American story.  Here are some of the best known series.  Maybe you've read some or maybe you weren't aware that some of the books were part of a series, but maybe you will find something to pique  your interest.  

    Let's start with the classics.

The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of five novels (The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie) by James Fenimore Cooper, set in the eighteenth-century era of development in the primarily former Iroquois areas in central New York. Each novel features Natty Bumpo, a frontiersman known to European-American settlers as "Leatherstocking", "The Pathfinder", and "the trapper". Native Americans call him "Deerslayer", "La Longue Carabine" ("Long Rifle" in French),  and "Hawkeye."  The story dates are derived from dates given in the tales and span the period roughly of 1740–1806. They do not necessarily correspond with the actual dates of the historical events described in the series, which are discrepancies Cooper likely introduced for the sake of convenience. (Wikipedia)  They were published between 1823 and 1841, and they became very popular not only in America, but also in Europe.  Cooper, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne are considered to be among the first American novelists to become popular outside of the United States, contributing to the rise of a unique American cultural identity.  

From 1932 to 1943, Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane published a series of autobiographical children's novels collectively called the Little House on the Prairie  books, and they have been a staple in children's literature ever since.  They've also been made into a very popular television series in the 1980s, with a new adaptation just dropping this summer.   The stories are based on Wilder's childhood and adulthood in the American Midwest (Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Missouri) between 1872 and 1894.  I must admit that I've never read any of the books.

Are The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer contenders for the title of of "THE Great American Novel"? Definitely.  Few novels have been adapted as often or have inspired as much creativity as these in American culture.  Probably the most interesting adaptation/inspiration so far is James, which is an extremely inventive retelling of the famous stories through the eyes of their runaway slave companion, Jim.

The Kent Family Chronicles refers to a set of 8 novels by John Jakes, written especially to mark the bicentennial in 1976.  They were published between 1974 and 1979, and they were adapted into three star-studded television miniseries that aired in 1978 and 1979.  As the name suggests, the books tell the story of the Kent family from just before the start of the American Revolution to 1890 as they experience the major events of the period and encounter various historical figures.  I think I may have read one of two of them, but I'm not sure.

If you're looking for military history series, I'm sure you are familiar with Michael Shaara and his son Jeff Shaara,  Their series about the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Civil War in the West, and World War II are iconic.  I've never been a big fan of miliary history, so I've only ever read The Killer Angels.  

Now, these are books that I've read.  James Michener, 1907 -1997, published more than forty books in his lifetime.  Many of the novels were multigenerational stories unfolding over centuries in a specific geographical location, full of historical and geographical details.  While they're not related to each other, they reflect the same themes:  intertwined relationship between geography and human destiny, the persistence of the past into the present, the survival of diverse cultures, and the profound ways lands are shaped and defined by their inhabitants over centuries.  Centennial, based in the high plains of eastern Colorado, is definitely my favorite book and my favorite Michener television miniseries, of which there were several.  (The 1970s and 1980s were the age of huge television miniseries, multi-part, big budget productions shown over a couple of weeks that were major events for the tv networks.)

If you follow any book influencers on social media, you are well aware that the whole world discovered Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove at precisely the same time a few months ago, and they wouldn't shut up about it.  (From Lonesome Dove, they all moved on to Stoner for a moment, and now it seems that East of Eden is the greatest novel ever written.) Always ahead of the curve, I, of course, discovered it decades ago.  It was another great miniseries - decades ago, and it introduced me to McMurtry.  I read all of the sequels and other works.  However, somehow I missed his Berrybinder Narratives, starting with Sin Killer, and I will begin correcting that soon. 

The West has always been fertile ground for historians, novelists, and filmmakers, and there are some other excellent book series.  Jim Fergus wrote a trilogy beginning with One Thousand White Women, based on an interesting premise.  In Fergus' story, it's 1875, and the Cheyenne have decided that assimilation is their best chance for cultural survival, and they enter into an agreement with President Grant to speed assimilation by encouraging white and black women to volunteer to marry into the Cheyenne tribe.  The women are recruited from prisons, asylums, and other restrictive situations, and they begin new lives and adventures as Cheyenne brides.

The late 1960s and early 1970s brought a major shift in how the American West was depicted in popular culture and among historians.  Realism replaced the romanticism that had been the norm when depicting the West.  Native American voices and perspectives were introduced, and a more accurate picture of the West developed, peeling back glossy, whitewashed layers of history to reveal the warts and other ugliness. An effort was made to  tell Native American history, just as there were movements to promote black history, Asian-American history, and Hispanic history.  Authors often used satire and parody as well.  A perfect example is the set of two books written by Thomas Berger:  Little Big Man and The Return of Little Big Man. Little Big Man  ranks as one of my favorite novels and the 1970 film adaptation starring Dustin Hoffman is one of my favorite films.  I also enjoyed The Return.  

Moving into the 20th century with two recommendations:

Tony Hillerman created a series of crime mysteries set on the Navajo reservation, featuring Navajo Tribal Police detectives Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito.  The novels are routinely praised as both good, solid mysteries and accurate depictions of Navajo culture.  Since Hillerman's death, his daughter Anne has continued writing novels in the series.

Author Tommy Orange has garnered lots of praise and attention in the past couple of years for his novels which portray Native American life in the 21st century as it has been shaped by the past.  I loved both his first novel There, There and its sequel Wandering Stars, and I highly recommend both to fiction readers in general.  

Speaking of miniseries, the grandaddy of ALL tv miniseries was of course Alex Haley's Roots.  The book was a huge bestseller, and it seemed as if every single television set in the country was tuned in to the tv event.  People were discussing history - and being confronted with history - like they hadn't before, and genealogy became a thing.  Shortly after Haley's death, a sequel, Queen, was published (and made into a miniseries).

Two of my favorite writers of historical fiction have contributed great historical fiction series which cover the 20th century:  Ken Follett and Herman Wouk.  Both use fictional characters interacting with nonfictional historical figures and historical events.  Follet's Century Trilogy is totally epic, spanning nearly the entire century, from pre- World War One through Obama's election.  Herman Wouk's Henry Family series consists of two books published in the 1970s:  Winds of War and War and Remembrance.  They depict World War II through the lives of the extended Henry family and their acquaintances, also interacting with real historical figures.  I discovered the books and their excellent tv miniseries  while I was in high school and absolutely loved them.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store and Deacon King Kong by James McBride technically don't comprise a series, but they feel like they are in the same world, and I think you should read both.  They are the stories of neighborhoods full of interesting characters and long hidden mysteries to be unraveled.

If you like things gritty, dark, grimy, and dirty, James Ellroy is your man.  His novels almost make you feel the need to shower after reading, but they are so good.  The L.A. Quartet is a series of four books focused on the dark and seedy side of Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s.  Underworld U.S.A. is a trilogy set from the 1950s into the 1970s detaining the complicated network of activities involving organized crime, radical political factions, and federal intelligence organizations.  If you like crime noir, go at once and seek out James Ellroy books if you are not familiar already.

Finally, another author and series that I first encountered in high school.  (My classmates and I had no idea at the time, but we were absolutely incredibly and uniquely fortunate in our small south Georgia high school because we had the best high school English teachers, and they regularly introduced us to authors, works, and ideas that I feel few others, then and now, were exposed to.)  John Updike's Rabbit  series captures the zeitgeist of the 1960s and 1970s, especially in urban America - the world of the tv show "Mad Men." Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom was a star high school athlete whose life loses its luster as he becomes mired in the adult world of work and marriage drudgery.  (Later generations read Harry Potter; I was reading Rabbit.  What does that say?)  The series takes the reader through Rabbit's life.  

BONUS:  Let's say that you like historical fiction and that you like mysteries.  Here are two fun series for you.  

First, Jonathan Putnam has published four novels starring Abraham Lincoln and his real-life best friend Joshua Speed, inspired by Lincoln's early days as a lawyer in and around Springfield, Illinois.  In fact, Lincoln really was involved in a true crime story involving three brothers falsely accused of murdering Archibald Fisher.  After winning acquittal for the brothers by proving Fisher was never murdered, he wrote up the case for publication in a popular true crime journal published at the time.

More recently, I've enjoyed Paul Levine's Charlie Chaplin-Albert Einstein buddy series, set in the tumultuous years just prior to Pearl Harbor, when America was full of Axis spies and saboteurs and home-grown fascist and racist groups like the German-American Bund, the Silver Shirts, and the KKK.  The pair really were best friends, and the novels are a lot of fun, action-filled, and packed with cameos by real historical figures.  

 

America250: History Through Food, Part 2 of 2

 

Food is an important part of studying history because what people eat, how they obtain it, and who controls it reveals how societies function. Food is not just a matter of taste—it connects to nearly every major historical theme.

1. Food reveals geography and the environment

People eat what their environment makes possible. Climate, soil, rainfall, animals, and available plants shape diets and settlement patterns. The cultivation of maize in the Americas, rice in Asia, or wheat in the Middle East helped create entirely different civilizations.

2. Food drives exploration, trade, and empire

The search for food and valuable food products has shaped world history. Spices helped motivate European exploration, while sugar, tobacco, coffee, tea, and later bananas became central to global trade and imperialism. The Columbian Exchange transformed diets—and populations—across the planet.

3. Food reflects social class and inequality

Throughout history, what people eat has often depended on who they are. The diets of kings, enslaved people, peasants, factory workers, and soldiers could be dramatically different. Food can reveal wealth, poverty, slavery, social status, and access to power.

4. Food is connected to migration and cultural exchange

When people move, they take food traditions with them. The history of America, for example, can be traced through the blending of Indigenous, African, European, Asian, Caribbean, and Latin American foodways. Foods such as barbecue, gumbo, pizza, tacos, and sushi tell stories of migration and cultural adaptation.

5. Food can cause conflict and political change

Shortages, famine, rising food prices, and unequal access to food have helped spark revolutions and political unrest. The price of bread was an important factor in the French Revolution, while famine and food shortages contributed to crises in places ranging from Ireland to Russia and China.

6. Food reveals technology and economic change

The history of food is also the history of technology: irrigation, agriculture, refrigeration, canning, railroads, industrial farming, fast food, and genetic modification have all changed how people live.

7. Food reveals identity and culture

Food is often one of the strongest expressions of religion, ethnicity, nationality, family, and community. What people consider “traditional” food can reveal centuries of interaction between different cultures.

8. Food gives us an intimate history of ordinary people

Kings and presidents leave written records, but food can tell us about the lives of people who left few records. Cookbooks, menus, grocery lists, archaeological remains, restaurant advertisements, and even garbage dumps can reveal what ordinary people actually did in their daily lives.

In short, food is a way of studying history from the bottom up. A single meal can tell us about geography, economics, technology, slavery, migration, empire, class, religion, and cultural exchange. As the saying goes, you are what you eat—and societies, in many ways, are as well.

I've read and collected many books about food and foodways.  Some are more historically oriented, some are are memoirs, some are cookbooks, and some are all of the above.  There are books by favorite chefs (some celebrity chefs and "Top Chef" veterans) and by writers who write about food.  I've read some, cooked recipes from some, and just perused pages of some.  Here are the second half, in no particular order.  (You may detect a southern bent...)