Judging a Book by Its Cover: Upcoming Releases in 2022, Part 2

 Here are some soon-to-be-released books about history that will be released over the next three months. These are the ones that look interesting to me. If they catch your eye, you can look up their descriptions for more information. Their release date is given.

 Feb. 15

 Feb. 1

 March 1

 March 1

 Feb. 22

 Feb. 1

 Feb. 8

 Feb. 15

 March 8

Florida Man (and Woman) History, part 2

     Florida's rich and unique history has provided the inspiration for many authors. Here are some more works of fiction and non-fiction which have made an impression on me.

    On New Year's Day, 1923, a white woman named Fannie Taylor was beaten and bruised when her husband returned from work to their Sumner Florida home. Word spread fast that a black man had assaulted her.  The victim never named her assailant, but the sheriff immediately accused a resident of the nearby black settlement of Rosewood. An angry mob proceeded to Rosewood where they launched three days of murder and destruction which resulted in the deaths of at least eight people. Residents of Rosewood fled, the settlement disappeared, and, for nearly 60 years, Rosewood's existence and destruction were unknown to the outside world. In 1982, a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times published a story, revealing the details to the world. Michael D'Orso published Like Judgement Day in 1996, telling the complete story.

    Devil in the Grove is one of two books about racial violence in Florida written by Gilbert King and set in citrus country. In 1949, in Groveland Florida, a seventeen-year-old girl claimed she was raped. Four black boys were accused of the crime. Coming to their defense was chief NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall. Of course, we know that Marshall was the attorney who successfully argued against segregation in Brown vs. Board of Education and later became the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. However, I learned a great deal about Marshall from King's book. Before the Brown case, he traveled around the South, acting as the defense for accused black defendants, like the Groveland boys.  The book really gave me a new respect and admiration for Marshall. At least in my prior education, Marshall had been presented as a second-tier figure in the civil rights movement. I think Devil shows that he deserves a lot more praise and recognition that he gets.  (The other King book is Beneath a Ruthless Sun; I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list.)

    

    The Nickel Boys , by Colson Whitehead, is a novel about the fictional Nickel juvenile detention center, and the abuse of the boys there. It's a grim read, but, like many novels, truth is stranger, or more grim, than fiction. The story is based on a real life institution called the Arthur T. Dozier School for Boys, the first juvenile detention center built in Marianna Florida and operative from 1897 to 2011. Throughout its history, Dozier was the site of horrific abuse administered by the staff, largely in the "White House," a structure built for the purpose of punishment. At least 100 boys died and were buried on the premises, in marked and unmarked graves.  

    Peter Matthiessen was also inspired by history to write the Shadow Country Trilogy, beginning with Killing Mister Watson. Watson was a real-life character who bragged of killing 57 people, including the notorious "Queen of the Outlaws", Belle Starr. In the late 1800s, he moved to the Florida Everglades, where he grew sugar cane, raised pigs, and collected wild bird feathers (At the time, feathers were in demand for women's fashion. As a result, some Florida birds were almost hunted into extinction.), and he terrorized his neighbors. In 1910, his neighbors stood up and killed him. The trilogy tells the story of the murder and the people who lived in the Everglades. Matthiessen is a great author, and I've enjoyed several of his books, including these.

Books to Look Forward to in 2021, Part 3 of 3

  My To-Be-Read list grows and grows. I just can't keep up.  So what do I do? I look up lists of books scheduled to be released in 2021. Makes perfect sense, right? After looking at a few lists, I thought I would share ten of the titles that sound really interesting to me. ( Amazon's descriptions used, with my thoughts in italics.)

    

From Kliph Nesteroff, “the human encyclopedia of comedy” (Vice), comes the important and underappreciated story of Native Americans and comedy.

It was one of the most reliable jokes in Charlie Hill’s stand-up routine: “My people are from Wisconsin. We used to be from New York. We had a little real estate problem.” In We Had a Little Real Estate Problem, acclaimed comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff focuses on one of comedy’s most significant and little-known stories: how, despite having been denied representation in the entertainment industry, Native Americans have influenced and advanced the art form. 

The account begins in the late 1880s, when Native Americans were forced to tour in wild west shows as an alternative to prison. (One modern comedian said it was as “if a Guantanamo detainee suddenly had to appear on X-Factor.”) This is followed by a detailed look at the life and work of seminal figures such as Cherokee humorist Will Rogers and Hill, who in the 1970s was the first Native American comedian to appear on The Tonight Show. Also profiled are several contemporary comedians, including Jonny Roberts, a social worker from the Red Lake Nation who drives five hours to the closest comedy club to pursue his stand-up dreams; Kiowa-Apache comic Adrianne Chalepah, who formed the touring group the Native Ladies of Comedy; and the 1491s, a sketch troupe whose satire is smashing stereotypes to critical acclaim. 

As Ryan Red Corn, the Osage member of the 1491s, says: “The American narrative dictates that Indians are supposed to be sad. It’s not really true and it’s not indicative of the community experience itself... Laughter and joy is very much a part of Native culture.” Featuring dozens of original interviews and the exhaustive research that is Nesteroff’s trademark, We Had a Little Real Estate Problem is a powerful tribute to a neglected legacy. 

    I enjoyed Nesteroff's book The Comedians, and it was packed with history. Native American comedians? That's not something most people are familiar with, although most people who have heard of Will Rogers probably know that he was a Cherokee. In fact, Native Americans have long been stereotyped as being grim and humorless people. 

In the tenth book in the multimillion-selling Killing series, Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard take on their most dramatic subject yet: The Mob.

Killing the Mob is the tenth audiobook in Bill O'Reilly's number-one New York Times best-selling series of popular narrative histories, with sales of nearly 18 million copies worldwide, and over 320 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. 

O’Reilly and co-author Martin Dugard trace the brutal history of 20th-century organized crime in the United States, and expertly plumb the history of this nation’s most notorious serial robbers, con men, murderers, and especially, mob family bosses. Covering the period from the 1930s to the 1980s, O’Reilly and Dugard trace the prohibition-busting bank robbers of the Depression Era, such as John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby-Face Nelson. In addition, the authors highlight the creation of the Mafia Commission, the power struggles within the “Five Families”, the growth of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, the mob battles to control Cuba, Las Vegas, and Hollywood, as well as the personal war between the US Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and legendary Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. 

O’Reilly and Dugard turn these legendary criminals and their true-life escapades into a listen that rivals the most riveting crime novel. With Killing the Mob, their hit series is primed for its greatest success yet.

    Mobsters, gangsters? will that topic ever cease to be interesting? O'Reilly/Dugard books are usually good for a quick read. I think their books are meant for a general audience, so people who know a lot about their subjects may feel their books are a bit superficial, but I have not been disappointed by the 3-4 books I've read.

A new biography of the intellectual father of Southern secession—the man who set the scene for the Civil War, and whose political legacy still shapes America today.

John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American political history. First elected to Congress in 1810, Calhoun went on to serve as secretary of war and vice president. But he is perhaps most known for arguing in favor of slavery as a "positive good" and for his famous doctrine of "state interposition," which laid the groundwork for the South to secede from the Union—and arguably set the nation on course for civil war.

Calhoun has catapulted back into the public eye in recent years, as some observers connected the strain of radical politics he developed to the tactics and extremism of the modern Far Right, and as protests over racial injustice have focused on his legacy. In this revelatory biographical study, historian Robert Elder shows that Calhoun is even more broadly significant than these events suggest, and that his story is crucial for understanding the political climate in which we find ourselves today. By excising Calhoun from the mainstream of American history, he argues, we have been left with a distorted understanding of our past and no way to explain our present.

Few men have had a bigger role in American history than John C. Calhoun.  In fact, he is often called part of the American Triumvirate with Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.  I loved H.W. Brands' book about them called Heirs of the Founders. I've already pre-ordered my copy

The explosive true saga of the legendary figure, Daniel Boone, and the bloody struggle for America's frontier by two best-selling authors at the height of their writing power - Bob Drury and Tom Clavin.

It is the mid-18th century, and in the 13 colonies founded by Great Britain, anxious colonists desperate to conquer and settle North America’s "First Frontier" beyond the Appalachian Mountains engage in a never-ending series of bloody battles. These violent conflicts are waged against the Native American tribes whose lands they covet, the French, and finally against the mother country itself in an American Revolution destined to reverberate around the world.

This is the setting of Blood and Treasure, and the guide to this epic narrative is none other than America’s first and arguably greatest pathfinder Daniel Boone - not the coonskin cap-wearing caricature of popular culture but the flesh-and-blood frontiersman and military hero whose explorations into the forested frontier beyond the great mountains would become the stuff of legend. Now, thanks to painstaking research by two award-winning authors, the story of the brutal birth of the United States is told through the eyes of both the ordinary and larger-than-life men and women, white and red, who witnessed it.

This fast-paced and fiery narrative, fueled by contemporary diaries and journals, newspaper reports, and eyewitness accounts, is a stirring chronicle of the conflict over America’s "First Frontier" that places the listener at the center of this remarkable epoch and its gripping tales of courage and sacrifice.

    Daniel Boone was one of the first giants in American popular culture and folklore, with his legend beginning even during his lifetime. In truth, he was one of the first American trailblazers, literally, and his life just may measure up to the legend. I have already pre-ordered this book as well.

Books to Look Forward To in 2021, Part 2 of 3

 My To-Be-Read list grows and grows. I just can't keep up.  So what do I do? I look up lists of books scheduled to be released in 2021. Makes perfect sense, right? After looking at a few lists, I thought I would share ten of the titles that sound really interesting to me. ( Amazon's descriptions used, with my thoughts in italics.)

A quest to explore some of the most spectacular ancient cities in human history—and figure out why people abandoned them.

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.

Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers—slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers—who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia.

Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.

    "Everything old is new again" may be a theme of this book. One of the truisms of studying history is that humans are humans. At the core of every historic event or period is the fact that humans have the same or similar emotions, desires, fears, and traits that drive them to do what they do. Just how much has humanity evolved, really? I think this book will be an interesting read.

A chorus of extraordinary voices comes together to tell one of history’s great epics: the four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present—edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire.

The story begins in 1619—a year before the Mayflower—when the White Lion disgorges “some 20-and-odd Negroes” onto the shores of Virginia, inaugurating the African presence in what would become the United States. It takes us to the present, when African Americans, descendants of those on the White Lion and a thousand other routes to this country, continue a journey defined by inhuman oppression, visionary struggles, stunning achievements, and millions of ordinary lives passing through extraordinary history. 

Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume “community” history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects. While themes of resistance and struggle, of hope and reinvention, course through the book, this collection of diverse pieces from ninety different minds, reflecting ninety different perspectives, fundamentally deconstructs the idea that Africans in America are a monolith—instead it unlocks the startling range of experiences and ideas that have always existed within the community of Blackness. 

This is a history that illuminates our past and gives us new ways of thinking about our future, written by the most vital and essential voices of our present.

    Stamped From the Beginning, by Kendi, is one of the most important books that I've ever read, and I learned a lot from it. I love the concept of this book, using different voices to frame  five-year periods of history.

A single photograph—an exceptionally rare “action shot” documenting the horrific final moment of the murder of a family—drives a riveting process of discovery for a gifted Holocaust scholar

In 2009, the acclaimed author of Hitler’s Furies was shown a photograph just brought to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The documentation of the Holocaust is vast, but there are virtually no images of a Jewish family at the actual moment of murder, in this case by German officials and Ukrainian collaborators. A Ukrainian shooter’s rifle is inches from a woman's head, obscured in a cloud of smoke. She is bending forward, holding the hand of a barefooted little boy. And—only one of the shocking revelations of Wendy Lower’s brilliant ten-year investigation of this image—the shins of another child, slipping from the woman’s lap.
 
Wendy Lower’s forensic and archival detective work—in Ukraine, Germany, Slovakia, Israel, and the United States—recovers astonishing layers of detail concerning the open-air massacres in Ukraine. The identities of mother and children, of the killers—and, remarkably, of the Slovakian photographer who openly took the image, as a secret act of resistance—are dramatically uncovered. Finally, in the hands of this brilliant exceptional scholar, a single image unlocks a new understanding of the place of the family unit in the ideology of Nazi genocide. 

    The author's book, Hitler's Furies was an interesting look at women in the Nazi movement and the Holocaust. This is an interesting premise, but I love the story of the inspiration.  A lot of great historic discoveries and books begin with the smallest fragment of information, maybe a letter, an artifact, or, as in this case, a single photograph. From that single thing, historians become detectives, digging deeer and deeper to unlock the truth. This process is history in a nutshell

Civil War in the First Person

By Jeff Burns

The Civil War was a major departure from previous wars in a number of ways, new technologies, strategies, and tactics made it a truly modern war.  It was also unique in that so many participants wrote about their experiences, both on the battlefield and on the homefront.  There are so many first person primary sources that one could spend years reading them.

Among the most famous examples is the diary of Mary Chesnut. “One of the most compelling personal narratives of the Civil War, Mary Chesnut's Diary was written between 1861 and 1865. As the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner and the wife of an aide to the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, Chesnut was well acquainted with the Confederacy's prominent players and-from the very first shots in Charleston, South Carolina-diligently recorded her impressions of the conflict's most significant moments. One of the most frequently cited memoirs of the war, Mary Chesnut's Diary captures the urgency and nuance of the period in an epic rich with commentary on race, status, and power within a nation divided.” (Amazon.com description)

Another phenomenal diary has just been published. LeRoy Gresham was a young teen boy in Macon Georgia, the son of a wealthy planter.  Because of an injury and chronic illness, he was mostly incapacitated during the war, but he kept very insightful journals that have just been edited.  LeRoy displays a poise and intelligence well beyond his years as he recounts the parallel deteriorations of his own body and of the Confederacy; he is able to see things about both subjects that the adults around him can’t, or refuse, to see.  Many reviewers compare this diary to Anne Frank’s, and I don’t think that’s necessarily hyperbole.

Also recently published is Barracoon, by novelist, anthropologist, and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston. It is basically the annotated transcript of months of interviews Hurston had with Cudjo Lewis in 1927 and 1928. Why Lewis? He was the last surviving person brought to the United States as a slave, after the importation of slaves was outlawed in 1808. Cudjo Lewis was one about 130 Africans sold to American slavers and brought to America on board the Clothilde, the last ship known to bring enslaved Africans to the U.S. Lewis’ story is thoroughly engrossing. He has rich recollections of his life and culture in Africa and of his life as a slave.  It is an incredible story.

Civil War soldiers were, on the whole, very literate compared to soldiers of past conflicts. Many letters, written by and to soldiers, have survived. Ken Burns practically launched his filmmaking career based on that fact.  From Fields of Fire and Glory is an interesting collection, done in the “museum in a book” style.  The letters are reprinted and annotated, but they also appear as facsimiles of the originals that the reader can pull out, unfold, and handle, becoming an archivist as well as a reader.

Brothers

By Jeff Burns

The brotherly bond can be a strong one, and it is a common theme in many books.  Here are four books about brothers that focus on that relationship and on history.

Taylor Brown’s The River of Kings is a novel set on the past and present coast of Georgia. I grew up near the Altamaha and spent many weekends fishing on the river as a child, so this book really hit home.  I can’t say anything else about it better than the Amazon.com description: “The Altamaha River, Georgia’s “Little Amazon,” is one of the last truly wild places in America. Crossed by roads only five times in its 137 miles, the black-water river is home to thousand-year-old virgin cypress, direct descendants of eighteenth-century Highland warriors, and a staggering array of rare and endangered species. The Altamaha is even rumored to harbor its own river monster, as well as traces of the oldest European fort in North America.

Brothers Hunter and Lawton Loggins set off to kayak the river, bearing their father’s ashes toward the sea. Hunter is a college student, Lawton a Navy SEAL on leave; they were raised by an angry, enigmatic shrimper who loved the river, and whose death remains a mystery that his sons are determined to solve. As the brothers proceed downriver, their story alternates with that of Jacques le Moyne, the first European artist in North America, who accompanied a 1564 French expedition that began as a search for riches and ended in a bloody confrontation with Spanish conquistadors and native tribes. “ It’s well worth the read, and I’m encouraged to read more of Brown’s work.

I heard Deanne Stillman speak about her book  Blood Brothers: The Story of the Strange Friendship Between Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill at the Savannah Book Festival in February.  While not brothers by blood in the literal sense, Buffalo Bill Cody and Sitting Bull lived lives that had remarkable parallels and led them to a strong brotherly bond in their later years.  It makes for a very interesting story.

The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel is about an entirely different brotherly relationship.  Yes, it’s those Kellogg brothers.  One was an internationally renowned physician who promoted an entirely new vision of health and wellness at the turn of the 20th century. The other was his long-suffering (at the hands of his brother) right hand, who was the brains behind the creation of a brand new industry: prepackaged breakfast grain foods.  Their relationship was unique to say the least, and this book provides an interesting look at how it all started.

Finally, a book I’ve discussed in an earlier blog: The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck. This is a true story of two brothers who outfit a covered wagon and follow the Oregon Tail west – 2000 miles – in the 21st century.  It’s a great adventure book, but it’s also a great book about the relationship between the Buck brothers.

Tales of Hollywoodland

By Jeff Burns

            My wife and I have been enjoying the series Feud: Bette and Joan, about Hollywood legends Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and their epic clashes in and around the filming of the movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?  I always enjoy stories of the glamour and the grime of the early days of Hollywood. Actors seemed to be just so much more interesting then. Dig a little below the glitz and glam, and you’ll find stories of murder and deception that the greatest Hollywood screenwriters couldn’t imagine. Here are some books about Hollywood history.

The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine by E.J. Fleming tells the story of Eddie Mannix, the general manager of MGM from the 1930s to the 1960s.  His job was to “fix” scandals that tarnish the reputations and careers of MGM stars before they went public.  The recent movie “Hail, Caesar!” is loosely based on his life. The book details scandals from unwanted pregnancies to murders that involved such stars as Jean Harlow, Lana Turner, Spencer Tracy, and Marlene Dietrich, and many others. 

            William Mann’s book, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood, demonstrates that scandal rocked the movie industry from its very infancy.  Set in the very early 1920s, it revolves around the murder of a leading director, William Desmond Taylor. Taylor’s murder has long been one of Hollywood’s greatest unsolved mysteries, with one dark secret after another coming to light.  Mann investigates thoroughly and also details the infighting among the rising Hollywood moguls, battling for movie supremacy, and the mounting public crusade against the indecency of the industry.  If you like Erik Larson books, especially Devil in the White City, you will like this book.   

  

WARNING: ADULT THEMES. If you’re looking for real dirt, and you can handle graphic language and situations, you might consider Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars by Scotty Bowers. Bowers writes about his life in Hollywood, beginning as in 1946.  Fresh out of the Marines, he finds himself with a unique talent. He basically becomes Hollywood’s pimp, providing male and female sex partners for the biggest stars of the day.  He holds nothing back.  

Book Recommendations from NCHE 2017

By Jeff Burns

I recently had the opportunity to attend the National Council for History Education’s annual conference held in Atlanta. Whenever a group of historians and/or history teachers meet, books, old and new, are bound to be discussed.  Here’s a list of books that were featured in sessions or by exhibitors, in no particular order.

The Snipesville Chronicles is a series of time travel books aimed at young readers (but also enjoyed by adults) written by Annette Laing, a purveyor of non-boring history. http://www.annettelaing.com/

Drum Taps, a collection of poem about the Civil War by Walt Whitman

Edward Larson was one of the keynote speakers.  He’s written several books about science and technology in history and American history including the Pulitzer-winning Summer for the Gods, about the Scopes Monkey Trial.  Other books include An Empire of Ice, A Magnificent Catastrophe, Evolution’s Workshop, and his latest, The Return of George Washington.

March is the autobiography of civil rights movement figure John Lewis, in a graphic novel trilogy.

All Quiet on the Western Front is the classic World War I novel by Erich Maria Remarque.

Another keynoter was Bruce Lesh, the author of “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?”: Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12.

Fire in a Canebrake: the Last Mass Lynching in America by Laura Wexler tells the story of the murders of two black couples in 1946. Considered the last lynching in Georgia, no one has ever been prosecuted for the crime.

The final keynoter was Micki McElya, the author of The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery and Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth Century America.

Screening a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and Television by Matthew Bernstein