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.  

 

Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in June 2026

 

Gods of Jade and Shadow.  Silvia Moreno-Garcia.   Del Rey, 2019.  352 pages.

Imagine Cinderella set in Jazz Age Mexico, and you've imagined the kernel at the heart of this story, with one big difference:  the Fairy Godmother in this story is actually the Mayan God of Death, Hun-Kame.  Casiopea Tun and her mother live in her wealthy grandfather's house in the Yucatan, near the state capital of Merida.  Because her mother had married and been widowed by a Mayan commoner beneath her social status, thereby disgracing the family, they were treated like servants by her grandfather and the rest of the family, forced to serve and clean, but Casiopea has dreams of escaping the mundane drudgery.  Left alone one day while the rest of the family was on an outing, she opens a locked chest in her grandfather's room, accidentally releasing Hun-Kame from imprisonment and initiating a link between herself and the god that would transform her life.  Hun-Kame had been overthrown by his twin brother, with the help of Casiopea's grandfather, and imprisoned for eternity in the chest, minus a few particular possessions and body parts which were required for him to retake his rightful place as Lord of the Underworld.  Hum-Kame and Casiopea were now joined, and together they set out on a quest that will take them across Mexico to recover those objects and to eventually defeat the evil usurper and resume his reign.  Along the way, they meet and contend with various Mayan spirits and mythical figures seeking to thwart their quest.  They are also in a race against time since both are weakening as time passes- Hun-Kame is literally draining life from Casiopea, not only gaining the strength required to remain active in the human world, but also becoming more and more mortal in the process.  Finally, Casiopea must defeat her arrogant cousin Martin in a life and death race that will determine the true ruler of the Underworld.  This was a fun blend of mythology, magical realism, and historical fiction.

Author interview

Gates of Fire.  Steven Pressfield.  Doubleday, 1998.  400 pages.

In 480 BC, the Persian Emperor Xerxes led a huge invasion force determined to conquer the Greek city-states.  While ancient chroniclers estimated an army of up to 2 million, it was likely no more than 300,000 in reality.  Opposing them was an allied force of some 7,000 Greeks.  The two forces met at a narrow pass called Thermopylae.  After two days of pitched battle, which left 20,000 Persian troops dead with their bodies piled high and the ground soaked in blood, a Greek traitor revealed a secret route around the pass.  Spartan King Leonidas and 300 of the city's most fierce warriors volunteered to fight to the death in order to delay the Persian army and to allow the other Greeks to retreat and regroup for a future fight.  In Pressfield's novel, there is a lone Greek survivor captured by the Persians and presented to Xerxes.  He was not a warrior, not even a Spartan by birth, but he was a a helot, a slave and the squire of one of the officers.  Xerxes, desiring to learn as much as possible about his enemies, prods the Greek  to tell his version of Spartan history and culture leading up to the battle, revealing the mindset of the Spartan, shaped by a lifetime of unbelievable brutality, beginning in childhood, with the intent of building a culture of hardened warriors, and perhaps even more hardened wives and mothers, who give their lives, without thinking, for their state and for their fellow warriors.  Apparently, this novel is or has been required required reading at the US military academies because of its explorations of courage, fear, leadership, duty, and brotherhood.  It's an epic story.  

podcast appearance

The Wreck of the Mentor:  A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail.  Eric Jay Dolin.  Liveright, 2026.  272 pages.  

Outstanding maritime historian Eric Jay Dolin is back with another interesting true tale of the sea.  In 1832, the American whaling ship Mentor wrecked on a remote reef in the Palau archipelago in the western Pacific.  The eleven survivors of the wreck not only had to survive being stranded on a barren island, but they also found themselves in the middle of tribal wars.  European and American contact with the natives of the archipelago had been haphazard since the 1700s.  Some ships' crews were attacked, and some were warmly welcomed.  Some captains and crews treated islanders respectfully and honorably, and some deceived, cheated, and harmed the islanders. It was hard to know how strangers would be received. Indeed, the Mentor's survivors experienced both welcomes and were ultimately captured and enslaved by one of the tribes.  Dolin's written a great account of their ordeal and their survival efforts, and he also informs the reader about the whaling industry and how sailing ships operated in the 19th century.  It's also an interesting look at first contact and culture clashes.

Stories and music of Holocaust Resistance

Partisan Song:  A Holocaust Story of Resilience, Resistance, and Revenge.  James A. Grymes.  Citadel, 2026.  352 pages.  Thanks to Citadel and Kensington Publishing for the free review copy.

In 1941, Moshe Gildenman was an engineer and owner of a concrete company in Korets Ukraine.  In his free time, he was a musician, composer, and the conductor of various school and community orchestras and choruses.  Korets was occupied by German troops on July 8, and they established a Jewish ghetto.  That ghetto was liquidated in May, 1942, and an estimated 2,300 Jews were killed, including Gildenman's wife and daughter.  Gildenman, his son, his nephew and a handful of others escaped into the forest, armed with a couple of pistols and a few bullets, determined to fight back.  Eventually, Gildenman, nicknamed "Uncle Misha," formed a small but highly effective partisan brigade that carried out more than 150 missions including blowing up bridges and other strategic targets.  Although the brigade linked up with other Ukrainian and then Soviet  partisan groups, they still acted independently, under "Uncle Misha's" leadership throughout the war.  On May 2, 1945, he was among the first Soviet troops to walk the streets of Berlin.  Not only is this book a much welcome addition to the library of books about partisan resistance to the Nazis, and a little remembered part at that, but there's also a really interesting hook into the story.  Grymes, the author, is himself a musicologist, a music historian, who discovered the story through his study of Jewish music, and music becomes an important part of the story.  

Editor interview

The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Women:  Stories of Landscape and Community in the Mountain South.  Edited by Kami Ahrens.  The University of North Carolina Press, 2023.  288 pages.  

In 1966, an English teacher in a small rural school in the extreme northeast corner of Georgia published a magazine and created a program that still thrives today, a program designed to collect, to preserve, and to celebrate Appalachian stories, memories, and cultural ways.  The journal, numerous books published over the years, and audio and video interviews and demonstrations have created an invaluable treasury of Appalachian history.  This volume is a collection of 21 oral histories from a variety of women, white, black, and Cherokee who share their lives, memories, and experiences.  The reader feels like he or she is sitting on the porch with the women, maybe shelling peas, shucking corn, or quilting while they tell their stories.  Each story is unique in its own way, but they all reinforce the importance of the land and how it shaped the Appalachian culture.  Their stories are all very familiar to me in various ways, and as I read them, I realize that even though both sides of my family have deep south Georgia roots, they were very Appalachian.  Things like planting "by signs," hog killings, picking cotton and tobacco, quilting, not doing laundry on New Year's Day,  oranges and nuts in Christmas stockings --- these are all stories passed down in my family.  This - and the other Foxfire books - are must reads for anyone interested in southern history and oral history.

Documentary 

The Everlasting Life of Charlie Wall.  Paul Wilborn.  St. Petersburg Press, 2026. 304 pages.

People outside of Tampa Florida have probably never heard of Charlie Wall.  I hadn't until moving to the area six years ago.  From the 1920s into the 1940s however, Charlie Wall owned Tampa Bay and was a big player in state politics and crime.  He controlled organized crime and shaped election results, gaining a large fortune through bootlegging, strip clubs, and especially bolita.  Bolita was a hugely popular game of chance imported into Tampa Bay from Cuba.  Basically,  people bet spare coins daily on which numbered ball would be drawn from a sack.  Everybody played, often daily, sometimes for pennies a draw, sometimes more.  While bolita draws could be easily fixed and usually were, Wall always steadfastly claimed that he ran honest games.  Wall's empires started to crumble when Sicilians, with ties to larger crime families up north, moved and took over Tampa.  Wall eventually retired, after testifying in federal hearings  on organized crime.  In 1955, he was murdered in his home; it's still unsolved today.  In this book, Paul Wilborn creates a historical fiction fantasy based on the premise that Wall actually survived the fatal attack and, now in 1985, is an old man sharing his life story, and life lessons, with Trip, a young aspiring writer, who takes a job as Wall's driver and bodyguard as a step on his path toward sobriety, leaving his drug-selling past, and gathering fodder for a book.  The fantasy part comes in because not only does Wall survive his murder, but also Wilborn adjusts the real timeline a bit, making his Charlie Wall born 20 years later than the actual Wall.  Wall is the only real-life character in the book, but I think Wilborn captures the real essence of the man and his world and tells a really satisfying story in the end.  

Author talk

American Nations:  A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.  Colin Woodard.  Viking, 2011.  384 pages.  (10 year anniversary updated edition 2021)

This is one of those books that make you think about American history in a different way than what you're used to.  It's not a new idea, but relatively new to me.  Colin Woodard's approach is to tell the story of America as a loose federation of eleven separate and distinct nations, each with its own very distinct roots, attitudes, and beliefs.  Those distinctions continue to shape us, our society, and all political discourse and outcomes today.  Basically,  according to this view, America has only been a unified country during World War II, and even then each nation came to its support of the war effort with different motivations.  The rest of the time, the nations have been making and breaking alliances with each other and in conflict with each other.  In fact, our country's founding and the principles on which it was founded were not universally supported. The six nations were at odds with each other throughout.  It all makes for an extremely interesting theory that makes sense in a lot of ways, and, in fact, some of the author's impressions in the original 2011 publication have proven to be somewhat prescient.  It's not necessarily an optimistic picture, but it makes you think.  

Reading The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man in the 21st Century

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.  James Weldon Johnson.  Sherman, French, & Co., 1912.  236 pages. Reprinted in 1927 by Alfred A. Knopf.

My latest classic read or re-read, one of the first books ever published in the US that presented a frank and honest portrayal of black life in the country, without offensive over-the-top stereotypes and broad comic characterizations.  It is a fictional memoir that Johnson first published anonymously, but many readers  assumed it was more factual than fiction.  It's a frame story, with the unnamed narrator revealing his life story and the secret that overshadowed his life. Born in Georgia just after the Civil War, he is the child of a formerly enslaved woman and a wealthy white man.  Knowing that they couldn't be together in Georgia, the father sent mother and child to Connecticut so that the boy could get an education and have a better life.  Because he had a very light complexion, race and color, and all that those constructs entailed, were of no concern to the boy for his first few years in school, but then realizations hit him head-on, and he begins his life-long struggle with racial identity.  He develops an extraordinary musical talent which opens up many opportunities for him, and he also realizes that he can operate within both worlds, black and white.  He decides to dedicate his life to spotlighting black music and to introduce it to the world, elevating it to the attention it deserves - "glorifying" his race and their achievement.  In the process, he has many experiences that remind him constantly of the overemphasis on race in America.  Finally, on a return visit to Georgia, he witnesses a lynching, and that leads him to make a final decision.  He gives up his race, his talent, and his "birthright" in exchange for security and safety, choosing to "pass" as white for the rest of his life, thereby becoming an "ex-colored man." The book is a brilliant depiction of race relations in America, colorism within a race, and the idea of "passing," forsaking one's true identity for expediency.   

Author Talk

The Beast in the Clouds:  The Roosevelt Brothers Deadly Quest Find the Mythical Giant Panda.  Nathalia Holt.  Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2025.  288 pages.

I have never understand the fascination with/admiration for the Kennedy family that many Americans have.  I've never found much to admire in any of them. Maybe it's all the tragedy that seems to surround the family over generations?  I've always thought that Theodore Roosevelt and his family were much more interesting and admirable, and perhaps even more tragic.  I mean, Roosevelt's first wife and mother both died on the same day, Valentine's Day, in the same house, just a few hours apart.  He had a bit of an estranged relationship with his first child, Alice, one of the most interesting of all the presidential children in history. His youngest son Quentin became a WWI pilot and was killed in action over France.  Ted, or Theodore Jr., had a long and distinguished political career and was the oldest soldier, and only general, to land on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.  Kermit accompanied his father on numerous expeditions, including an Amazon trek that nearly killed them both, and he led a troubled personal life that ended in suicide.  This book documents the 1928-1929 expedition led by Kermit and Ted Roosevelt in the Himalayan region of Tibet and China.  The expedition was sponsored by Chicago's famous Field Museum of Natural History, and its objective was to collect specimens of the region's wildlife, specifically the almost mythical giant panda, thought to be - if it existed - a ferocious bear.  As incredible as it seems now, the animal most connected with China was almost totally unknown outside of legend well into the 20th century.  The first evidence of their existence didn't reach the West until the 19th century.  Even few Chinese claimed to have ever seen one, representations are almost nonexistent in Chinese art over the centuries although artists portrayed many other animals, and, in a country in which one can find furs, skins, and body parts of almost every animal that ever existed in the country, its furs were never offered for sale in markets.  It was the Roosevelts' job to prove its existence, to kill specimens, and to bring the hides and skeletons back for mounting and scientific study.  Here's another hard-to-reconcile bit for many of us:  I've never understood or appreciated the concept of trophy hunting and find it repugnant.  However, well into the 20th century, it was standard scientific practice to hunt down and kill thousands of animals, make orphans of baby animals, and kidnap said babies, dooming them to miserable lives in captivity, or more likely, miserable deaths.  It was even considered acceptable to go after and kill the last known specimens of a species.  The expedition was a harrowing one, and both brothers nearly died.  The expedition also changed them and their attitudes forever.  It's a great read, and a great companion read to Candice Millard's River of Doubt, about the aforementioned Amazon expedition.  

 

Author interview

The Land and Its People.  David Sedaris.  Little, Brown and Company, 2026.  272 pages.

Sardonic. Outrageous. Acerbic. Curmudgeonly. Quick-witted. Arrogant. Egocentric. Obsessive. Neurotic. Iconoclastic. Irreverent.  Finicky.  Judgemental. Fussy. Curious. Weird.  Critical.  Candid. Blunt. Attention-seeking. Funny.  Hilarious.  Honest.  Cantankerous. Contrary. Ornery. Not afraid to say what everybody is thinking.  All words used to describe David Sedaris.  Absolutely one of my favorite celebrities ever and my favorite essayist/social commentator, but you have to wonder sometimes how he has any friends or a 35-year relationship.  Nevertheless, I will read anything that he writes (OK, to be honest, I didn't love his unedited diaries and his book of animal fables, but I do love everything else.)  This is one of his best collections of essays.  

Street scenes Vienna, 1911

Anima Rising.  Christopher Moore.  William Morrow, 2025.  400 pages.

More Christopher Moore! Why haven't I read him before?  I love this book.  It's a historical fiction fantasy comedy set in 1911 Vienna.  Artist Gustav Klimt spots the body of a beautiful, young, nude woman in the canal.  Thinking she's dead, something compels him to draw the scene.  While  he's sketching, the woman sputters. She's alive.  Instead of alerting police, he takes her to the house he uses as a studio. At first, she appears mentally ill, even feral, but eventually her fantastic, incredible, totally unbelievable story emerges, with assistance from Klimt, his model Wally Neuzill, artist Egon Schiele, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung.  Since she initially remembers nothing about her past life, Klimt names her Judith, and she assumes a place in his world while her new friends and acquaintances help her rebuild her memory.  And what a memory! Turns out, Judith is literally the Bride of Frankenstein's Monster, resurrected by Dr. Frankenstein to be his creation's companion.  Following a harrowing existence as the monster's- Adam's - wife/prisoner/hostage in the Arctic, she makes multiple journeys into the Underworld,  alternately interacting with gods and spirits and reappearing on the Earth, both among the Inuit and in Europe.  Once her story is revealed, it becomes obvious that she is being hunted by various unknown people, putting herself and the people around her in danger.  Besides being a fantastically fun and fast-moving story, this book is full of great historical bits.  Most of the characters are real people, and many of the events are real.  I love books that lead me down multiple rabbit holes of research as I read.  There's art, philosophy, psychology and more, overlaid with very creative fantasy and totally irreverent humor.  Note:  there are elements that are not for the prudish or those easily triggered by open and frank sexuality. And I highly recommend the audio version; narrator Mary Jane Wells is a genius at voices and characters, adding tremendously to the enjoyment. Picture a cross between Mel Brooks and Lenny Bruce, maybe even raunchier.  I will definitely be reading more Moore, especially the historically themed titles.  

Movie Trailer 2018

Ready Player One.  Ernest Cline.  Ballantine Books, 2011.  384 pages.

I consciously avoided Ready Player One when it was the biggest novel on the planet and later when the movie was released, for two reasons:  1) my natural aversion to anything that is universally popular and 2) I am not and have never been a gamer - Tetris is as game-y as I get.  I know next to nothing about video games, and I'm totally happy with that.  It's been 15 years now (impossible!) since the book came out, so I decided to try, and I'm glad I did.  You probably already know, but this is the plot summary:  "In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself."  The result is a hugely fun adventure filled with 80s nostalgia perfect for a Gen X 80s teen like myself.  The fact that I'm not a gamer did not affect my enjoyment at all.  It was a lot of fun.  (And the audiobook narrator is Wil Wheaton who has become one of my favorite narrators.)

1996 Movie Trailer

Mother Night.  Kurt Vonnegut.  Fawcett Publications, 1962.  192 pages.  

Latest classic read/re-read.  First published in 1962 and inspired by the war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann and Lord Haw-Haw, a British traitor who did pro-Nazi radio propaganda broadcasts, it's in the form of the fictional memoir of Howard W. Campbell Jr, and American citizen who moved to Germany in 1923, remained as the Nazi regime took over, and became a well known, author, playwright, and propagandist.  However, he was also secretly an American spy,  transmitting coded information - so coded that he had no idea what he was passing on -  in his broadcasts.  The trouble is that only three people beside himself knew that he was an American spy.  At the war's end, Campbell became a war criminal.  Initially captured by soldier Bernard O'Hare (Campbell and O-Hare both appear in Vonnegut's later Slaughterhouse Five.), Campbell's handler strikes a deal for his release, and Campbell lives the next 15 years in relative obscurity and anonymity in New York City.  That life comes crashing down when his identity is revealed and publicized, and Israel, the USSR, and West Germany all start demanding his extradition for trial.  Campbell writes this memoir while awaiting trial in an Israeli prison.  The resulting novel is a dark-humored parody of white supremacy and extreme fanaticism, but the larger theme is really that the world is almost never black and white; everything is gray.  It's a powerful short read that affirms Vonnegut's stature as one of the greatest American novelists.