Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in September 2026

 

Author Interview

The Traveler:  One Man's Quest for Humanity From the South Seas to Revolutionary Paris.  Andrea Wulf.  Knopf, 2026.  512 pages.  

I love discovering important people whose lives and accomplishments have been forgotten by history.  George Forster is one of those men.  Forster was one of the most celebrated and respected men in 18th century Europe, a naturalist who gave Europeans a spectacular new view of the world, and an active participant in a couple of the most monumental events in world history.  A brilliant child, he began accompanying his father as a botanist on expeditions at age ten, and at age 12 he became the family's chief breadwinner by translating books and pamphlets from German to English and vice versa.  At age 17, he became the junior naturalist on Captain Cook's second voyage voyage, spending the next several years on board the Resolution in search of the hypothetical continent of Antarctica, exploring the islands of the South Seas in the process. His published account of the expedition became a sensation, and his career took off.  Besides his remarkably insightful descriptions of the flora, fauna, and cultures that he encountered, the remarkable thing about Forster was his condemnation of European imperialism, colonialism, and racism.  Shockingly, he rejected the ideas of racial superiority growing into acceptance at the time and insisted that Europeans shouldn't impose their cultural standards on people of other cultures.  He truly embodied the ideals of the Enlightenment philosophers, ideals like freedom and equality and the radical belief that humanity has more in common than not.  He put these beliefs into practice, supporting the French Revolution and leading the push to introduce those ideals into Germany.  As a result, he was branded a traitor, and German authorities, his former German friends and admirers, and his own widow, who never loved him, all worked to erase him from history.  Here, Wulf has resurrected him and restored his place in history.  It's an excellent biography.

Folly and Glory.  Larry McMurtry.  Simon & Schuster, 2004.  236 pages.  Book 4 of 4 in the Berrybender Narratives.  

Larry McMurtry's Berrybender family saga comes to an end with this fourth volume, and it opens with Lord Berrybender and the remnants of his family and entourage under comfortable house arrest in Santa Fe.  It's the mid 1830s, and tensions are rising between the Texans and the Mexican government; the Berrybenders are caught in the middle.  While Tasmin Berrybender works hard to keep as much order, and as much of her personal sanity, as she can manage, her husband Jim Snow - aka the Sin Killer - is out on the plains, escorting supply wagons and hunting, anything to keep out of Tasmin's way.  He also makes his way to New Orleans with Kit Carson to pick up a surprising new Berrybender family member.  While Lord Berrybender plans to take the family to Texas, the Mexican government decides to to move the family across Mexico to Veracruz.  The journey is extremely arduous, and cholera and attacks by hostile Indians and renegade slavers devastate the procession.  The Berrybender saga is full of brutality, realism, and absurdity all coming together for a great story.  If you're a fan of westerns and Larry McMurtry, it's a must-read.  

Scandals, Vandals, and Da Vincis:  A Gallery of Remarkable Art Tales.  Harvey Rachlin.  Penguin, 2007.  344 pages.

Author Harvey Rachlin takes a deep dive into the back stories of about 30 famous works of art, including some of the most famous in history and some that readers may not know as well.  They all share one thing:  they each have a fascinating history, whether it's how the  came to be created or how they survived burglary, forgery, revolutions, ransoms, vandals, scandals, religious sects, and shipwrecks to eventually come to their current resting places,  Each story is an interesting read.  

The Florida Keys Skunk Ape Files:  Island Cryptids, Histories, and Mysteries.  Brad Bertelli.  Southernmost Skunk Ape Society, 2021.  178 pages.

Did you know that Florida allegedly has its very own species of Bigfoot ?  (Actually, there are legends of two to three variations in different parts of the state.)  The most famous is the Skunk Ape, a hairy creature that stands 7 to 8 feet in height and carries a revolting odor that can be smelled up to a mile away according to the stories.  This work of fiction, written by an experienced and respected historian and museum curator with decades of experience in the Florida Keys, purports to be a collection of historic encounters with skunk apes from the Spanish in the 16th century through the 20th century.  The files were discovered in boxes by two teen boys in the attic of a Key West home.  The pair formed the Southernmost Skunk Ape Society to investigate the sightings.  Think Scooby Doo and Mystery Inc.  The fictional encounter stories are pretty standard Bigfoot stuff, but the smart and inventive bit is that Bertelli has connected each story to a very real person, place, or event in the history of the Keys, with historical context for each.  The result is a mostly fun one-sitting read, a romp through Keys history, and a decent addition to my Florida history shelf.

North Woods.  Daniel Mason.  Random House, 2023.  384 pages.

This book proves that reading is incredibly subjective, and readers can have wildly differing opinions of the same book, and  maybe proof that book reviewers and  influencers are just bandwagon followers.  Maybe they all get notes about which books they are supposed to rave about. A year or year and a half ago, North Woods  was everywhere, on every great books of the year list and all over social media.  It was hailed as lifechanging and phenomenal and brilliant and every other superlative imaginable.  It's historical fiction covering four hundred years of Massachusetts history told through place; that place is a secluded homestead in the Massachusetts woods, occupied over the years by a succession of eccentric characters who live, grow apples, dream of building a resort, paint, and die.  The star of the book is the place, definitely not the people who are dull, uninteresting, and useless.  Their stories are long and boring, and often pointless --- several stories just quit, they don't end.  All of the stories are dull. Mason obviously would rather write about trees and leaves and seasonal changes than about people.  He also has a penchant for the supernatural.  I did slog through, but I can't recommend it.  On a particularly generous day, I might give it three stars out of five, but closer to a 2 most days.  And it's one of the worst book covers I've ever seen - that's the major reason that I delayed reading it for so long.

Fool.  Christopher Moore.  William Morrow, 2009.  311 pages.  Book 1 of 3 in Fool series.

OK, I'm officially a big Christopher Moore fan.  If you're a fan of Mel Brooks, Monty Python, and the like, like me, and you're not easily offended, I think you'd be be a fan as well.  Fool is the first of a trilogy inspired by Shakespeare following the adventures of King Lear's jester, Pocket of Dog-Snogging.  Fool is an incredibly hilarious and incredibly raunchy retelling of King Lear, a tale of  “gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity."  Lear divides his kingdom between his elder daughters Regan and Goneril and disowns his youngest, and formerly favorite, daughter Cordelia, and chaos results, with lots of treachery and plotting.  Pocket, accompanied by his apprentice Drool, puppet named Jones, and pet monkey named Jeff, attempt to restore order in the kingdom and to rescue Cordelia.  With lots of references to other Shakespeare plays sprinkled throughout, it's a very fast-paced and thoroughly entertaining take on Lear.  It's not necessary to be familiar with Shakespeare to enjoy it, but if you are a little familiar, the Fool trilogy is for you.  It also reminds me of Gregory Maguire's re-imagination of Oz in the Wicked series.  

Shakespeare For Squirrels.  Christopher Moore.  William Morrow, 2020.  288 pages.  Book 3 of 3 in Fool series.

Book 3 of Moore's Fool  trilogy opens with the miniature jester Pocket of Dog Snogging, his giant, dim-witted sidekick Drool, and his horny pet monkey Jeff stranded at sea. After wearing out their welcome with a crew of pirates, they are cast adrift and wash up dehydrated on the shores of Athens, Greece. Pocket's immediate goal is to dazzle the local Duke and land a comfy job as the new court jester.  However, they find themselves enmeshed in a tangled murder mystery version of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Robin Goodfellow, aka Puck, is murdered, and Pocket has three days to find the murderer. He has four separate employers, Theseus, the Duke of Athens, Hippolyte, the Queen of the Amazons, Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, and Oberon, the King of the Goblins.  Aided by Bottom and a crew of fairies, Pocket has to solve the mystery or else he and Drool will be executed.  The result is a very fun mystery; think Shakespeare meets Dashiell Hammett, with lots of fairies, goblins, and other bits of magic.  It reminds me very much of the Piers Anthony Xanth series of dozens of books that I devoured in my teen years.  If you're a fan of intelligent, funny, magical, and pun-filled fantasy and haven't read Piers Anthony, you have missed out.

The Serpent of Venice.  Christopher Moore.  William Morrow, 2014.  336 pages.  Book 2 of 3 in Fool trilogy.

The Serpent of Venice is the second book in Christopher Moore's Fool trilogy. It is a rowdy, bawdy mashup that seamlessly weaves together William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Othello, while hilariously parodying Edgar Allan Poe’s short story "The Cask of Amontillado".  The plot revolves around political conspiracies, cultural prejudices, and a plot for total revenge.  The story begins in late 13th-century Venice. Three powerful and corrupt Venetians—the merchant Antonio, the senator Montressor Brabantio, and the naval officer Iago—have grown tired of the miniature English jester Pocket of Dog Snogging ruining their schemes for power and wealth. As expected, there are lots of Shakespearean references, lots of shagging, and lots of raunchiness.  I have to admit, that it's the weakest link in the trilogy for me, but still a great read.  Maybe it's because The Merchant of Venice  and Othello are not among my favorite Shakespeare plays, and I'm not as familiar with them as I am with some of the other plays. Maybe it's because of the very complicated plots, maybe the weird time jumps that confused me from time to time.  Still very fun and more interesting than either play.

Noir.  Christopher Moore.  William Morrow, 2018.  352 pages.  

What happens when you take a hapless bartender nicknamed Two-Toes, his Chinese-American sidekick, a mysterious sexy woman nicknamed The Cheese, a tight-lipped Air Force general, a wisecracking kid, Petey the black mamba who narrates part of the story, a taxi driver who never drives his taxi, an elderly Chinese opium den owner, a black longshoreman whose dream is to join FDR's Secret Service detail one day even though FDR died two years ago, an assortment of drag kings, and the secret society of powerful men called the Bohemian Society and set it in 1947 San Francisco, specifically the Tenderloin district?  You get yet another hilarious novel from Christopher Moore.  Noir is a raunchy parody of noir detective fiction.  Think Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler meets Monty Python and Mel Brooks.  The absurdities, laughs, 1940s slang and tropes are fast and furious, like a Roscoe spitting slugs.

Razzmatazz.  Christopher Moore.  William Morrow, 2022.  400 pages.  

Sammy Two-Toes, The Cheese, Moo Shoes, Uncle Ho, Scooter, and their Tenderloin district friends are all back for more action in and around 1947 San Francisco.  This time, Sammy leans into his new role as the neighborhood problem solver, and he's asked to solve the murders of a couple of drag kings because the police don't care and,  at the same time, he helps his friend Moo Shoes track down a stolen magical Rain Dragon statue to save his uncle's opium den from a dangerous gangster. Meanwhile, Sammy's girlfriend Stilton and her former  "Wendy the Welder" friends work on a secret project that catches the eye of government agents. Sammy has to rely on his quirky friends and street smarts to solve these chaotic mysteries before disaster strikes. Will San Francisco be plunged into a Chinese Tong war?  Will the city itself be destroyed by another catastrophe? Once again, the result is an action-packed, hilarious, 1940s slang-drenched parody of noir fiction. 

Author Talk

The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker:  A True Tale of Love, Murder, Treason, and Ordinary Folks Who Saved America.  Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz.  Simon & Schuster, 2026.  448 pages.

In the early morning hours of September 11, 1851, seven armed white men, including a federal marshal and a Maryland enslaver determined to retrieve his runaway "property,"  four young enslaved men who had crossed the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania, surrounded the home of William and Eliza Parker near Christiana, Pennsylvania, about 47 miles west of Philadelphia.  William Parker was not the man to try.  He had emancipated himself twelve years earlier as an 18-year old, and he had made a home in Christiana, along with many other free and formerly enslaved blacks, welcomed and respected by the their mostly Quaker neighbors.  They weren't safe, however, as slave catchers routinely ventured into Pennsylvania intent on collecting bounties for runaways and not really caring whether the people they harassed and kidnapped had ever, in fact, been enslaved, and the newly passed Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 only emboldened them.  Parker, however, was equally bold, if not more bold.  He organized his neighbors into an abolitionist vigilante organization, riding the countryside in their own patrols,  actively mounting missions to recover kidnapped people, and maintaining networks for spreading warnings and information.  He confronted enslavers and slave catchers head on.  Now, with his wife, children, and friends to protect, he refused to back down. The Maryland enslaver, Edward Gorsuch,  also refused to back down.  Alerted, dozens of Parker's armed neighbors arrived on the scene, and the confrontation turned violent.  Gorsuch was killed, and the other men in his party were wounded and forced to flee for their lives.   The incident became known as the Christiana Riot, or the Christiana Resistance, and it and the resulting arrest and trial of dozens of men for treason became a watershed event in the abolitionist movement and in American history.  This is definitely a 5-star read about the incident, and Parker.  It's also a fantastic account of Philadelphia's role in the Underground Railroad and abolitionism, but, don't be misled, there were just as many Philadelphians who opposed abolition, including blacks who willingly provided information and assistance to slave catchers and even participated more actively in the practice, and anti-abolitionist mobs rampaged from time to time in the city.  The stories of the black abolitionists like the Purvis and Forten families and John Pierre Burr, the illegitimate son of Aaron Burr, alone make this book a great read. 

 

  

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Hannibal Lecter:  A Life.  Brian Raftery.  Simon & Schuster, 2026.  336 pages.

This was a bit of a departure from my regular reading fare.  I'm not a huge slasher/gore/horror fan.  I think  I've read two Hannibal books, Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs,  I've seen four Hannibal movies, all more than 24 years ago, and I thought they were OK, just books and movies.  I knew that Hannibal Lecter became one of the most famous movie villains of all time, but apparently Hannibal Lecter is a much bigger part of American popular culture than a part of my life, so much so that in 2024 a particular presidential candidate constantly made bizarre references to the character.  I was so turned off to election coverage at the time that I never heard or read a single instance of that.  Entertainment and popular culture journalist Brian Raftery has written a complete history of Lecter, using extensive interviews with many people involved directly with the creation of the books, movies, and television shows --- all but the creator Thomas Harris, whose aversion to any publicity or interviews rivals that of the famously reclusive J.D. Salinger.  The book is also a thorough examination of the character's role in pop culture and how American pop culture shifts are reflected in, maybe influenced by, the publishing and movie industries.  Lecter's rise reflected America's growing obsession with real-life serial killers.  Harris, who honed his writing craft as a crime reporter with an eye for grisly detail, forged connections with the FBI as the FBI was developing the whole art(?)/science(?) of criminal profiling.  While the original inspiration for Lecter was a real life person that Harris met, Harris was further inspired by all that he learned from picking the brains (Hannibal Lecter pun?) of FBI profilers, and he built relationships with some of the first female FBI agents that greatly informed his creation of Agent Clarise Starling, also considered one of the most iconic characters in American cinema.  Raftery's book is extremely entertaining, even for very casual Lecter fans like myself;  for real fans of the books or movies, it's definitely a must-read.  

Author Talk

The American Revolution and the Fate of the World.  Richard Bell.  Riverhead Books, 2025.  416 pages.  

Did the British musicians play “The World Turned Upside Down” when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown?  Probably not—or at least, we have no reliable evidence that they did.
The story first appears in 1828, 47 years after the surrender. The actual surrender terms called for the British to march out to a British or German march, but no contemporary source identifies the music. Whether or not it happened,  the American Revolution did, in fact, turn the world upside down, and historian Richard Bell documents it as a transformative international event. Millions of people on every continent saw their lives affected, trade was disrupted, independence movements and progressive social reforms were inspired, and global refugee crisis was created.  Battles were fought in North America, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean.  For two years following Yorktown and the fighting largely ceased in America, the British continued to fight the French and Spanish around the world.  When the Treaty of Paris formally ended hostilities and recognized American independence, American allies France and Spain were arguably worse off than before the war, and the British Empire, despite having lost vast territory, may have emerged stronger than ever.  In this book, Richard Bell tells the full story as it has never been told before.  In a very original twist, Bell grounds his narrative in the stories of roughly a dozen individuals including Prussian drillmaster Baron von Steuben, Mohawk Molly Brant, escaped slaves John Moseley and Harry Washington who became early colonists of Australia and Sierra Leone respectively, the ruler of the Indian state of Mysore, indigenous Peruvian revolutionary Tupac Amaru, and Peggy Shippen Arnold, the wife of Benedict.  The result is a new and fresh take on the American Revolution that leaves readers informed, entertained, and contemplative --- a great read for America250.  

2025 Movie trailer

Train Dreams.  Denis Johnson.  Farar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011.  116 pages.  

The book tokers and influencers all got the memo:  it's time to move on from Larry McMurtry to Denis Johnson.  I'm seeing a lot of references to this novella, but I had previously never heard of Johnson, so I gave it a try.  Train Dreams  follows the tragic and isolated life of Robert Grainier, a railroad laborer, logger, and freight hauler in the Pacific Northwest, who was born in the 1880s and died in the 1960s.  Orphaned at an early age, he begins a grueling itinerant life in the logging and railroad industries that transformed the region in the early 20th century. Following the tragic loss of his wife and child, he retreats deep into the woods, leading an isolated life tormented by grief and regret.  In the meantime, he survives in the difficult and mysterious landscape, and he has few encounters with other people, living a slow, unaffected life while the world rapidly changes around him.  It is a slow-burn read, especially at first, and it seems like there's not much happening, but I was soon drawn into a beautiful, simple, often melancholy life - just a guy putting one foot in front of the other and surviving while time passes him by.  The conversation between Grainier and Peterson, the man shot by his own dog, alone makes it worth your time to read the book.  In the end, I thought it was really great fiction, and I plan to read more Johnson and maybe watch the 2025 movie adaptation of Train Dreams.

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.

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.