Black Widow. Randy Wayne White. Putnam Adult, 2008. 352 pages. Book 15 of 28 in Doc Ford series.
My return to "Florida Man" series reading with number 15 of 28 titles in the Doc Ford series. Marion Ford, known as "Doc" to his friends is a marine biologist living in a stilt house on Sanibel Island and collecting marine specimens and doing marine life studies for a living, but he has a past life as a highly trained secret government agent, and he can't help being dragged into dangerous situations that require him to use his particular set of skills and contacts in order to help friends out. In this case, his goddaughter Shay is all set to marry into a very wealthy and connected family, and she and a few friends have a wild bachelorette party on a small Caribbean island. Unfortunately, the shenanigans are secretly videotaped, and somebody is blackmailing Shay and her friends, threatening to derail their lives. She enlists Doc's help to make the payoff. Surprise, surprise, the trouble doesn't end there. The blackmail web grows even stickier, and Doc has to make a return visit to set things right. It's your standard Doc Ford adventure, a dependable thriller.
BBC series based on the book, Episode 1
An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence. Zeinab Badawi. Mariner Books, 2025. 544 pages.
For far too long and for far too many people, African history has basically started with the Diaspora, Middle Passage, and slavery - a story always framed and told by Europeans. Zeinab Badawi sets out to correct that oversight in this survey of African history, from our earliest human ancestors --- the origin of mankind --- to the present, and she succeeds. She traveled through more than 30 countries and interviewed dozens of the continent's leading historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists. The result is an extremely accessible, informative, and epic read. She moves beyond familiar narratives of Egypt and European colonialism to explore Kush, Aksum, North African Islamic dynasties, the West African kingdoms, Benin, Kongo, Asante, and southern African societies, emphasizing the sophistication, diversity, and interconnectedness of African civilizations before European conquest. Badawi also confronts the uncomfortable histories of African participation in slavery while addressing the vastly expanded scale and brutality of the Atlantic slave trade and later European imperialism. The final sections briefly examine the Scramble for Africa, colonial exploitation, African resistance, and the independence movements that transformed the continent.
1979 Movie Trailer "Why Should You Read Flannery O'Connor?"
Wise Blood. Flannery O'Connor. Original publisher Harcourt, Brace, & Company, 1952. 238 pages.
Wise Blood was Flannery O'Connor's first novel, and it was actually a collection and reworking of several previously published O'Connor stories. Who was Flannery O'Connor? Only the Queen of Southern Gothic, the Queen of the Grotesque. She stands alone in literature, because people don't know what to do with her: a Catholic woman who was born in Savannah, Georgia and lived much of her adult life on a small farm near Milledgeville, Georgia. Battling major health issues throughout her short life and possessing a mind that raced with deep questions about both the spiritual and the secular worlds that surrounded her, she wrote short stories primarily that dealt with race, gender, and religion in ways that no other author in mid-century America would dare. Her work is simultaneously dark, brutal, gritty, funny, challenging - even threatening - and provocative, and she is unsurpassed when it comes to characterization and establishing the setting. In every way, her writing makes Stephen King's writing look like a middle schooler's amateurish notebook scrawls by comparison.
In Wise Blood, Hazel Motes returns to Tennessee following his World War II service, with no family connections and dealing with psychological demons, stemming from his service and from his troubled childhood. He decides to move to the nearest city and resolves to spread the gospel of antireligion, aiming to found and lead the Church Without Christ. In the city, he meets a strange and twisted set of characters, and his life is one frustration after another until he meets his tragic end. The result is a strange, unsettling little book about faith, doubt, guilt, and the possibility that trying desperately to escape one’s beliefs may be another way of being trapped by them. O’Connor once described her work as “Christ-haunted,” and Wise Blood may be the quintessential example. Weird, funny, disturbing, and unmistakably Southern. O’Connor doesn’t so much tell a story as throw you into the deep end of the American religious psyche and see what happens. (Note: Be sure to seek out the 1979 movie adaptation directed by John Huston and produced by longtime friends and associates of the author, who died in 1964 at the age of 39.)
Richard Kurin and Annette Gordon-Reed in conversation
History by a Hair: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings & Solving a 200-Year-Old Mystery. Richard Kurin. Crown, 2026. 432 pages.
Being a historian is very much like being a detective, both relying on gathering clues, following dead ends, evaluating evidence, and piecing together a whole story from incomplete bits. If you like detective stories, if you like CSI, if you like history, this is a great book for you about one of the oldest mysteries in American history. For over two hundred years, it's been alleged that Thomas Jefferson, the founder who so eloquently described freedom and equality as American ideals while enslaving over 600 people over the course of his lifetime, had a decades-long relationship with the enslaved Sally Hemings, fathering several of her children. Hemings family lore over the decades had maintained that the relationship, first discussed in print in the early 1800s by Jefferson's political opponents, was factual. Many diehard Jefferson apologists and direct descendants of Jefferson, via his wife Martha, vehemently denied the charge. In the late 1990s, DNA tests proved that a Jefferson male (perhaps Jefferson or his brother or nephews) had fathered at least one of the Hemings children, but couldn't prove any stronger connection, and deniers were still unmoved. A major breakthrough occurred in 2011 when a few strands of hair were found in the so-called "Jefferson Bible," the collection of New Testament passages from various Bibles that Jefferson personally cut and pasted together for his own use. Richard Kurin, Smithsonian historian and museum official, had a brainstorm: Could these be Jefferson's hairs and could they be used, with today's more advanced DNA techniques, to prove, once and for all, the paternity truth? For the next 15 years, Kurin and a top team of genealogists, historians, archaeologists, curators, and DNA specialists worked to find and identify samples of living and dead Jefferson and Hemings descendants in order to build and to compare genomes to settle the matter once and for all. All were determined to "follow truth wherever it may lead," as Jefferson himself wrote. Spoiler alert: the mystery is resolved, and the book is a fascinating account of all the work that went into the solution.
Trailer for Netflix adaptation - 2021
Passing. Nella Larsen. Knopf, 1929. 215 pages.
Think about how many stories you've read or movies and tv shows you've seen in which the plot hinges on someone pretending to be who or what they aren't, taking on a false identity. It's a very popular theme in storytelling. Racial "passing," the act of concealing one's own racial identity and adopting another, is a very American version of that idea, and it has been prevalent throughout our history, with mostly black Americans living as whites in order to escape racism and to build better lives for themselves and for their families. (There have been a few instances in the other direction; see the book Passing Strange about Clarence King, a white man who lived a double life as a black railroad porter.) In 1929, Nella Larsen published Passing, a novel inspired by her own mixed race background. Although little known today, Larsen and her two novels struck a popular chord and became a celebrated element of the Harlem Renaissance. It's being rediscovered today as a gripping, psychologically tense novel about race, gender, and identity in 1920s New York. It focuses on two women, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry Bellew, who were friends in childhood, drifted apart, and then unexpectedly meet up again as adults. Both women are light-skinned, but Irene identifies firmly as black and is actively involved in the middle and upper class culture of black Harlem in the 1920s, and Clare started passing as white in her teens and married a white racist, abandoning her black life and associations. Irene's world view is "shook" by the meeting, simultaneously fascinated and disturbed. Meanwhile, Clare is fascinated by Irene's life and longs to reconnect with her own blackness; she begins visiting Harlem and developing relationships with Irene's friends. The relationship, along with Irene's feelings, becomes complicated, with Irene eventually becoming increasingly jealous and suspicious of Clare's intentions toward and growing closeness with her husband. When Clare's husband discovers her secret, there's a shocking and intentionally ambiguous climax. The novel really holds up well a hundred years later and stacks up very favorably to any of the big bestselling novels of today. (There is a 2021 movie adaptation on Netflix.)
Author interview
The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I. Lindsey Fitzharris. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. 336 pages.
This is one of the best and most unique books about World War I that I have ever read, hands down. World War I was a war like no other war that had been fought before. Despite the optimistic predictions on both sides that hostilities will be over within a few weeks, or a couple of months at most, it became obvious rather quickly that industrialization and invention expanded humanity's capacity for unleashing total destruction and death, and that capacity wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. Bodies were battered, gouged, hacked, and gassed. The First World War claimed millions of lives and left millions more wounded and disfigured, and medicine struggled to keep pace. Here, medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris explores the particular story of the surgeon Harold Gillies. Gillies saw that there was a huge need for facial reconstruction, and he assembled a dedicated and extremely talented of surgeons, nurses, dentists, artists, and prosthetic makers that revolutionized the relatively new field of plastic surgery. They developed techniques that made life possible for men whose faces were destroyed. Not only did they pioneer the fields of plastic surgery and prosthetics, but their work also greatly impacted the fields of psychiatry and anesthesiology, as well as many specific treatments and procedures like blood transfusions. It's a fantastic story about human ingenuity, empathy, strength, determination, and perseverance in both the medical figures and the wounded men. It also makes the absolute horrors of the trenches vivid and unforgettable. Don't worry about getting lost in military history or deep medical jargon; it is extremely accessible and a fast read. Highly recommended for anyone interested in WWI, medical or scientific history, or just for anyone looking for a great story.
Author Interview
The Lost Cities of El Norte: Coronado's Quest, the Unconquered West, and the Birth of American Indian Resistance. Peter Stark. Mariner Books, 2026. 432 pages.
In 1540, Spanish conquistador Francisco Coronado led the largest overland expeditionary force to ever march in the Americas, consisting of about 375 Europeans, up to 1,300 Indian allies, several hundred servants, and 1,500 horses. They set out from Mexico City, formerly the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, and moved north into "El Norte Misterioso," The Mysterious North, determined to find the fabled golden cities of Cibola to enrich and to glorify both their King and themselves. Coronado and his people traversed 2,500 miles of unmapped terrain, ranging across the present-day U.S. states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and finally Kansas. They were the first Europeans to gaze upon the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains; made first contact with the Puebloan peoples; crossed the Sonoran Desert and the Great Plains, where they encountered endless herds of bison and the nomadic tribes who followed them. Unfortunately, they discovered no cities of gold, meeting only with hardships and resistance. Two years later, Coronado led a bedraggled and beaten group of 100 hangers-on, some clad only in animal skins and many with permanently damaged bodies, as they hobbled back into Mexico City. Coronado himself was reduced to being carried in a litter, having suffered serious injuries, perhaps some brain damage. On his return, he was promptly arrested and charged with abusing the Indians that he encountered - breaking the relatively new orders from the King demanding more humane treatment, failures in leadership, and ultimately the failure to push on to complete his mission to find wealth. Peter Stark has written a riveting account of the expedition and its impact on the American West.
We Chase Shadows. Richard Osman. Pamela Dorman Books, 2026. 352 pages. Book 2 of 2 in We Solve Murders.
Richard Osman's second "We Solve Murders" novel takes the reader into the deeply shady world of fraudulent medical treatments and supplements as the crew takes on their first real case. High in the Italian hills, the bodyguard of a British expat is found murdered, and the owner of the villa calls our heroes to figure things out quietly. He's one of six bosses in the illegal medical world who had previously come together to peacefully divide up their territories, but now they're being murdered, one by one. Is one of the six eliminating his competition? Amy, the experienced and highly competent professional bodyguard, Steve, her father-in-law the ex-cop, pub quiz enthusiast, and rock afficionado, and Rosie, the jet-setting, fast-living, crime thriller author jump at the chance to solve their first real case as We Solve Murders, Inc. Soon, more bodies, and more mysteries, pile up. The characters are great, and the book is full of humor and pop culture references.
Night Vision. Randy Wayne White. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2011. 368 pages. Book 18 of 28 in Doc Ford series.
Marion Ford, "Doc" to his friends, the marine biologist and former highly trained secret government agent from Sanibel Island, Florida is once again dragged in to an explosive mess by his friends. This time, the action is all pretty much local, with no trips to troubled Caribbean countries, no huge criminal organizations, and no need to bring in associates with "particular sets of skills" to assist. In this case, Ford and his best buddy Tomlinson are out to save an endangered 13-year old Guatemalan girl who came to Florida looking for her family and found herself mired in the incredibly perilous world of migrant workers and human trafficking. This Doc Ford just didn't make much of a mark with me. Maybe I've just about run the Doc Ford course. It may be the weakest that I've read.
Author Talk
The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World. Nathaniel Philbrick. Viking, 2026. 464 pages.
In The Rush, Nathaniel Philbrick tells the story of the California Gold Rush, when the discovery of gold in 1848 sent thousands of people chasing the promise of instant riches. It’s a story of wild ambition, bad decisions, hard luck, and the occasional spectacular success, but Philbrick doesn’t get caught up in the romance of the forty-niners. He also looks at the violence, exploitation, and upheaval that accompanied the rush, particularly for California’s Indigenous and Mexican communities already living there, as well as the racism that awaited black and Chinese migrants. As Philbrick makes clear, the Gold Rush was about much more than gold. It helped transform the American West, it positioned California to become a major theater of the tumult and turmoil that gripped the US in the 1850s as the nation rushed headlong toward the Civil War, and its legacy was considerably darker than the familiar stories of adventure and fortune would suggest. Nathaniel Philbrick is one of my favorite authors. He has the gift of being able to bring history to life by telling the stories of people and events that don't necessarily make the history books and weaving them together to make a great story. This book is a must-read for anyone who loves American history.
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Author Interview
The Museum of Lost Things: True Tales of Fabled Treasures, Legendary Cities, and Mythical Creatures That Vanished From History. Sam Kean. National Geographic, 2026. 400 pages.
History is full of things we’ve lost, things we’ve destroyed, and things we’re still looking for. Some disappeared by accident, others through war, greed, or sheer human stupidity. In The Museum of Lost Things, Sam Kean explores this historical junk drawer, taking readers from vanished treasures and forgotten knowledge to the mysteries that continue to frustrate historians and archaeologists. Along the way, we meet the people who have searched for what’s missing, sometimes uncovering something remarkable and sometimes adding a little more confusion to the story. Kean has a knack for finding the odd, entertaining detail that makes history worth reading in the first place. Topics range from the city of Troy, the tomb of Genghis Khan, the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan writing, the extinction of the dodo, and more. The result is a reminder that the past isn't a neat collection of facts waiting to be cataloged. It's full of holes, unanswered questions, and tantalizing clues to things we may never recover. If you're a fan of Sam Kean's previous books and his Disappearing Spoon podcast, as I am, a few of the stories may be familiar, but it's still a fun read.
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