Citizen Reader

Nonfiction trends 2012: part 2

In which we consider some nonfiction book trends for the coming year, and how they all make me want to stop reading, and then poke my eyes out for good measure.*

In addition to political books, it seems like there are a ton of History and Historical Biography titles coming out. (And a lot of Historical Biographies are related to politics; consider titles like John F. Kennedy, by Alan Brinkley; Two Americans: Truman, Eisenhower, and a Dangerous World, by William Lee Miller; Eisenhower in War and Peace, by Jean Edward Smith; Reagan and Thatcher, by Richard Aldous, etc.) And not only are there a lot of History books, there are a lot of History books on subjects and with angles that leave me cold (for various reasons):

Ike's Spies, by Stephen Ambrose (Ambrose is a big fat plagiarizer)

Freedom's Forge: How American Business Built the Arsenal of Democracy that Won World War II, by Arthur Herman (see? America was great once! All we need is another "great" war for which we can manufacture a ton of weapons--that will keep people employed and make America great again!)

Enterprise: America's Fightingest Ship and the Men Who Helped Win World War II, by Barrett Tilman (WWII! WWII! Keep writing about WWII and Americans will never notice anything is wrong currently!)

Now, this is unfair of me. There are actually a lot of forthcoming History books that have nothing to do with World War II and look decent. But I can't say that any of the titles in the spreadsheet or on this list light me on fire. What do you think?

*Sorry to be such a melodramatic grouch about it. But really. All of these new nonfiction titles bore me to death, and that's just the titles! Imagine getting stuck reading these entire books. Ugh.

Still not over London.

I ate up Peter Ackroyd's London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets with a spoon.

Well, not literally. But it was a slim little book that I enjoyed very much, about one of my very favorite cities in the world. Ackroyd relates short histories and anecdotes about the messy and historical business under London's streets: its sewers, buried rivers, water pipes, tunnels, and the Underground (to name just a few of his topics). At around 200 pages with generously spaced text, it was the perfect little morsel to get me through a couple of days when I couldn't find much else I wanted to read.

It's not perfect; it ends rather abruptly and it moves from subject to subject without much rhyme or reason, but if you're at all interested in urban planning, history, or London itself I think you'd find this book very interesting:

"The sewers of early medieval London were the streams and rivers that ran down to the Thames. Cess-pits, lined with brick or stone, were also in common use and were cleansed weekly or fortnightly by urban workers known as 'gong-fermers.' In 1326 one of them, 'Richard the Raker,' fell into his own cess-pit and suffocated 'monstrously in his own excrement.' The first pipes to carry waste, in an underground drainage system, were introduced to London in the thirteenth century during the reign of Henry III." (p. 80.)

Okay, that's not a pleasant image. But Ackroyd most definitely has painted an image. And that's what blows my mind about London, and other really old cities. 1326! Just imagine. I want to keep imagining--and that's why I'm going to look into another of Ackroyd's history books: London: A Biography.

100 Best-ish Nonfiction Titles: History

Big category today, everyone, not least because the Time list of 100 Best Nonfiction titles included a lot of History books, as well as a "Social History" category. What? I think "Social History" is one of those lame categories where no one really knows what it means. So we're dispensing with the two categories and listing Best-ish History titles, full stop. Are you ready?

Here's Time's titles (Social History is in the second list):

The Best and the Brightest, by David Halberstam
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown
Carry Me Home, by Diane McWhorter
The Fatal Shore, by Robert Hughes
The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee
A People's History of the United States,* by Howard Zinn
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer

The American Way of Death, by Jessica Mitford
Animal Liberation, by Peter Singer
The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs
The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond
Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Other America, by Michael Harrington
Why We Can't Wait, by Martin Luther King Jr.
Working, by Studs Terkel

These lists are so lame I don't even know where to start. First of all, why are books like Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and A People's History of the United States called History and not Social History? Why is a book like Nickel and Dimed called Social History and not Investigative or Journalism or Current Affairs? I refuse to play along with these categories--I'm going to offer a separate list of Investigative titles where books like The Beauty Myth and The American Way of Death (which is old, now, but that doesn't really make it "History") can go.

I don't disagree with a few titles on this list; the Studs Terkel in particular is an important and interesting oral history, and I've heard good things about The Fatal Shore, but I'll admit I've not read the majority of them, and the ones I have read didn't do much for me (in particular I've never understood the appeal of Jared Diamond, I think his writing is SO BORING).

Anyway, fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride; for me, History is a tough category, because I don't read a ton of it, and I tend to like the under-the-radar titles rather than the big popular Stephen Ambrose types (even before the many plagiarization charges against Ambrose I was not a fan). So this may be a somewhat underdoggy type list.

The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang. This one should be on Time's Best History list. Period. Rather than paying lip service to women's history with Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (which also doesn't really belong in the History category), a book of history written by a woman, telling the true horror of what happened to all of Nanking's residents during the second World War, but particularly to its women residents.

Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, Jean Hatzfeld. An oral history of the Rwandan genocide, told by the people who did the killing. It's unsettling in the extreme but you should read it nonetheless. Philip Gourevitch's We Regret To Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families is a close second in this category.

How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill. This title was quite popular when it came out, and with reason (I thought). Cahill's a good writer and even if you don't agree with his emphasis on the importance of Irish monks saving civilizations' manuscripts, it'll give you something to think about. Just very nice, not overdone, readable history.

Hiroshima, by John Hersey. Well, this one was written at the time, so it probably counts as Investigative as well, but now it's a fantastic read about the history of what atomic weapons do to people. Once you read this one I promise you you'll never forget learning about radiation burning people's kimono patterns directly onto their skin. Hersey was an interesting writer, although some of his works are dated now; another interesting war reporter to consider for historical purposes is Martha Gellhorn.

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, by Robert Sullivan. Boo on Mark Kurlansky (for me his books are too long and somewhat dry); I say this one is the best "micro-history" out there. Sullivan explores world and New York City history through the story of its lowliest and arguably most disgusting residents. (I'm still recovering from learning, in this book, that adult rats can squeeze themselves through a hole the size of a quarter.)

In Our Hearts We Were Giants: The Remarkable Story of the Lilliput Troupe--A Dwarf Family's Survival of the Holocaust, by Yehuda Koren. I no longer read books about World War II--historians and publishers seem to think it's the only era in history worth writing about, and I've just read TOO MUCH of it--but when I did this one stood out. The story of a dwarf family being experimented on by Nazi doctors is horrific, but its emphasis on the family's love and support for one another highlights the other side of human nature. Another history which is told on human scale on the topic is Death on the Black Sea: The Untold Story of the Struma and World War II's Holocaust at Sea.

Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England, Alison Weir. I'm using this one as a stand-in for all the great Historical Biography titles I should be listing, but which I can't think of right now. It's a good idea to read any Alison Weir--she's a well-known and skilled (and comprehensive--her books are the big thick impressive type) historical biographer. I really like getting my history through biography, as a matter of fact; another great choice here would be Robert Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra, from which I learned most of what little I know about Russian and revolution history.

I know I'm missing a TON. What history titles would you suggest?

*I've read maybe half of this one. I keep trying, I liked Howard Zinn, but I just can't get into it.

Twenty attempts at a review.

How to Read: A review of Sarah Bakewell's How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer.

1. How to Read: Consider format

I started this critically acclaimed biography with very little knowledge of Montaigne, but I was intrigued by all the good reviews of the book's writing. I was not disappointed; Bakewell's done a neat thing here with (to my mind) the somewhat tired biography format of birth, life, death.* Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), best known for his almost single-handed creation of the essay form, wrote about anything and everything, and most of his writings deal with the big question: "how to live?" In twenty chapters, Bakewell tells his life story by answering that question in twenty different ways. In the chapter titled "How to Live? Don't Worry about Death" she describes his attitude toward life and a near-death accident/experience he had; in one titled "How to Live? Survive love and loss" she describes his love for his friend La Boetie, who died an early death. It's still largely chronological, but the focus in different chapters on different aspects of his life makes the format of this biography a little something special.

2. How to Read: with great interest

Essays are some of my favorite things to read, and although I didn't know much about Montaigne other than his obsession with writing down the personal details of his life, I started out reading this book with a high level of interest. Plain and simple, I kind of like this guy: "Montaigne had hitherto been keeping two lives going; one urban and political, the other rural and managerial. Although he had run the country estate since the death of his father in 1568, he had continued to work in Bordeaux. In early 1570, however, he put his magistracy up for sale. There other reasons besides the accident...perhaps his own encounter with death, in combination with the loss of his brother, made him think differently about how he wanted to live his life. Montaigne had put in thirteen years of work at the Bordeaux parlement when he took this step. He was thirty-seven--middle-aged perhaps, by the standards of the time, but not old." (pp. 23-24.)

That's right, the guy retired at 37. My kind of guy.

3. How to Read: with growing distraction

Perhaps it's finally happened; my brain has re-wired itself due to all the reading and work I do online, and I'm not able to read long books anymore. But after the 200-page mark my desire to read/finish this book just kind of flagged. It was still interesting, I just kind of...trailed off. I pushed further, and skimmed another 50 pages, but that's it. I'd learned all I wanted to of Montaigne for the time being, that's all. But I'd still recommend this one; I hope to get it back some day and finish it, as well as read Montaigne's actual essays. If only I could retire at 37 that would leave me a lot more time for that sort of thing.

4. How to Read: so many other books that you don't have time to write the full review you promised in the beginning of the post. I'm not going to try to get to 20 questions and answers.

*Although this is also the format of, well, real life, so it makes sense as a biography template.

Science lite.

Every now and then I really like a good science read. I don't read science all that often, but if I find a title I can understand, I enjoy the subject much more than I ever did in high school.*

I was able to understand most of Edward Dolnick's history of science title The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World, so the book met my first criteria for science reading. Although the subtitle includes that bit about the Royal Society, this is much more a book about some of the luminaries who were part of that organization (Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren, and eventually Isaac Newton) and those whose discoveries they built upon (Descartes, Johannes Kepler, Galileo).

For the first hundred pages, I really enjoyed the book. I understood it; the writing was quite vivid; the chapters were short; all things I typically enjoy in my nonfiction. But as the narrative wore on I started to feel that the chapters were a little too short and the writing a bit too choppy: I finished it, but in my opinion it never really coalesced into a cohesive narrative about the Royal Society, some of its most noteworthy members, or science in the seventeenth century as a whole.

But Dolnick does have a nice touch with setting the stage (his first chapters are all about plagues and fires sweeping across Europe in the 1660s): "Making matters harder still, London was not just built of wood but built in the most dangerous way possible. Rickety, slapdash buildings leaned against one another like drunks clutching each other for support. On and on they twisted, an endless labyrinth of shops, tenements, and taverns with barely a gap to slow the flames." (p. 31.)

He brings that same descriptive power to Newton's struggles with and eventual mastery of mathematics, planetary movements, the power of gravity, etc. And it's wild to realize how much some of the thinkers of this age accomplished, and how much they accomplished separately but concurrently. Newton and one of his main rivals, Gottfried Leibniz, evidently worked out calculus within years of each other, although Newton was too paranoid to publish his work as soon as he theorized it.

Huh. Imagine just "working out calculus." So yes, there are quite a few interesting tidbits like that in this book, but still...I finished it feeling a bit disappointed that it hadn't read a little smoother.

*Being a lazy student, I signed up for "General Physics," which was my school's version of "Physics for Dummies." I didn't want to be a scientist, I figured, why kill myself with regular physics? Our textbook even considered us too dumb for regular pronunciation guidelines; it said things like "joule (rhymes with tool)" and "torque (rhymes with fork)." Ha! I was so busy laughing at that textbook I never even learned what a joule really is.

Romance at its cheesiest.

Now, I should have known when I picked up And the Rest Is History: The Famous (and Infamous) First Meetings of the World's Most Passionate Couples (by Marlene Wagman-Geller), that I probably wouldn't be getting the most rigorous of nonfiction texts.*

And I didn't. But that's okay. The book delivers what it advertises: short, four- to six-page chapters outlining how some of the most infamous love stories in history began. The coverage starts out broad, with historical stories like those of Jacob and Rachel (from the Bible) and the twelfth-century couple Heloise and Abelard, but the focus is on the twentieth century with chapters on Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek, Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, Johnny Cash and June Carter, and many others. It's a nice book to read a few chapters at a time, before bed, although some of the assertions might wake you right up:

"and while visiting Peking she [Wallis Simpson] discovered ancient Asian sex secrets, which were later to stand her in good stead." (p. 113.)

Now I don't know about you, but that's the sort of information for which I wouldn't mind a footnote. Stand her in good stead how, exactly?

And some of the writing is a bit "romance novel 101" for me (consider this, from the chapter on Paul McCartney and Linda Eastman: "In June 1968, Paul flew to Los Angeles to promote his new Apple label, and two days later he phoned Linda in New York to ask her to join him at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The sexual chemistry was such taht before Paul could ask if she had a good flight, they were discovering that their physical connection matched their emotional one"--p. 189), but what the hell. Put this one down under enjoyable romantic escapist nonfiction.

*Although it does have a really nice bibliography (even if it is decidedly Wikipedia-heavy).

Good old Bill Bryson.

At the height (or trough?) of my reading funk a couple of weeks ago, I had the luck to bring home Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life.

I really enjoy Bill Bryson. Although he's an American, he's married to a British woman and currently lives in Great Britain, and I think he's got a particularly British and whimsically dry sense of humor. (Which is, of course, my very favorite kind of humor.) He's best known as a travel writer, but he also writes history books, most of which haven't set my world on fire. I couldn't get through his earlier bestseller, A Short History of Nearly Everything.

But this book was in the right place at the right time. Bryson currently lives in a former rectory that was built in 1850-1851, and as he describes the building plan for his house, room by room, he also shares broader historical tidbits: in the chapter on the hall he explores how heating and stove technologies developed; in the chapter on the bathroom he talks about sewage treatment; etc. He packs a lot of history in one volume, discussing ancient Briton settlements on one page and Victorian attitudes toward relaxation, sex, and child-rearing on the next.* And he does it all in typical Bryson style:

"When [George] Washington moved to Mount Vernon in 1754 after the death of his half brother Lawrence, it was a modest farmhouse of eight rooms. He spent the next thirty years rebuilding and expanding it into a mansion of twenty rooms...He fussed over every detail. For eight years during the Revolutionary War, through all the hardships and distractions of battle, he wrote home weekly to inquire how things were going and o issue new or modified instructions for some element of design. Washington's foreman wondered, understandably, whether this was a good time to be investing money and energy in a house that the enemy might at any moment capture and destroy...Luckily the British never reached Mount Vernon. Had they got there, they almost certainly would have spirited off Mrs. Washington and put the house and estate to the torch." (p. 301.)

Bryson at his best just has such a nice light touch with nonfiction. I'm glad I found this book when I did; I needed a good, interesting, but not particularly heavy read. Mr. CR read the whole thing through as well, which is rare--he doesn't start a lot of nonfiction, and he finishes even less.

*A friend of mine opined that the book was a bit too all-over-the-place for her, which I completely understood, but I think that's the aspect of it that appealed to me. The last few weeks my mind has been all over the place, so this book nicely matched my mood and interest level.

Forget history textbooks.

I firmly believe all history textbooks in use in schools today should be tossed.

Instead, I think students should just have access to big beautiful books like Portrait of Camelot: A Thousand Days in the Kennedy White House (by Richard Reeves, with photographs by Cecil W. Stoughton).*

I'm no huge fan of JFK (or Jackie), but I found this a fascinating book to look through. I also really enjoyed the introduction, in which the family's attention to matters of detail, image, and photographs is discussed. Good at PR, they were, those Kennedys (even the coining of "Camelot" came from Jackie herself, in the aftermath of her husband's assassination).

All the photographs have captions, although I'll admit they aren't real in-depth about actual historical events; this is more of a personal history about the Kennedys and many of the ceremonial activities at the White House. But the real value of the book is that it makes me want to read more about this era, and about JFK as president. I've got another book home right now, titled Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books, and I must admit this book has made me more interested in her as well. I'll give her this--one of the most arresting photos in the collection is the one of her making her way, alone, up the portable staircase to the plane on which her husband's body was waiting to be flown back to Washington. That had to be tough--even if your husband was a womanizing jerk.**

*Yes, I know nobody learns by looking at books anymore; when they do learn, they're probably looking at computers. That isn't always the best--when online, you're always looking elsewhere, and not focusing on what's in front of you.

**This is just the phrase that comes to mind when I think about Kennedy. I can't help it.

It was the wrong time for me to read this book.

I try not to go crazy with the capital-letters-and-period style, but I can't help it here. I hated Maira Kalman's And the Pursuit of Happiness SO. MUCH.

I'll give it this: it's a very different book. It's big (470 pages) and heavy and a pseudo-graphic novel in that it contains numerous illustrations. It's Kalman's take on American history, in chapters organized by the months of the year ("January: The Inauguration. At Last." "February: In Love with A. Lincoln."), although it also includes anecdotes from more current affairs.

It didn't help that the book starts with Kalman traveling to President Obama's inauguration. She doesn't tell a straightforward story; she sprinkles some text with drawings on each page: "The angels are singing on this glorious day," followed by an illustration of an angel, followed by "And we mortals, driving down to Washington, passing white mountains and black mountains of unidentified industrial stuff, listen to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson sing words from a Bach cantata...'Now is the time of grace.' The heart is racing. And all I can say is hallelujah." (pp. 4-7.)

And all I can say is, calm down, lady, you're just going to the inauguration of another shithead politician. Who actually may be worse than other politicians because he seemed to promise something better, but has turned out to be more aggressively just like every other shithead politician than even I, in all my cynicism, thought he was going to be.

As you can see, it was just the WAY wrong time for me to be reading this book.

There's also lots of stuff in it about the Founding Fathers, particularly Jefferson, and those parts of the book are vaguely interesting and informative. But everything else about this book, including the fact that most pages have just a few words of text or one drawing (seems wasteful to me), simply annoyed the hell out of me. Friends who liked it have told me they enjoyed the whimsy of it, but I guess my current mood is just beyond whimsy. Ugh. Rarely have I appreciated more the words of Dorothy Parker, who once reviewed a book and said something to the effect that she "didn't want to put it down...I wanted to throw it across the room." I would throw this one across the room, and hard, but I don't want to put a dent in my wall. Gah.

A girl can dream, can't she?

If I had world enough and time, I would take the book London Lore: The Legends and Traditions of the World's Most Vibrant City (by Steve Roud) into a room with me, my fuzzy red throw blanket, and some coffee and bon-bons, and never come out. And I'd like to do this during a month like we're currently having: way too much snow and ridiculously cold.*

Roud shares tidbits of history and legend from every nook and cranny in London--and I do mean every one. It's a thick book, with dense printing, organized so that each chapter covers a different borough and is further subdivided according to its stories, with headings like "Cock Lane, Smithfield." I read a bit of the first chapter ("Cock Lane is an inconspicuous, narrow thoroughfare, off Giltspur Street, Smithfield, which suddenly acquired international fame in 1762 when a house in the road became the scene of one of the best-known hauntings in London's history..."), but the sad fact of the matter is that I'm not going to have time to read the whole thing, and truthfully, it just reminds me I'm not IN London and therefore makes me sad.

But I have a plan! Not to put too much pressure on CRjr or anything, but I have this dream that during college he'll study abroad for a year--at Oxford! And while he does Mr. CR and I will move to London for six months, to be able to see him once in a while and to take an extended look around ourselves!! And then I can take this book along and have time to explore with it. Right? It'll totally happen, right?**

*Cold is one thing, but next week our forecasted highs are set to be several degrees below the normal LOWS for this time of year. And we've got so much snow (yes, yes, I know, still nothing compared to what the East coast has been getting this winter) that backing blindly out of our driveway between the monster drifts/snow piles on each side has become a suicide mission.

**I know it'll never happen. For one thing CRjr probably won't be able to afford college anywhere (have you seen how fast tuition is going up these days?), much less Oxford, and for another, he may grow up to find someplace like, say, France, more interesting than Great Britain.*** But I can still dream.

***This is the sort of thing I worry about, to keep myself from worrying about his health and peer pressure and other mundane crap like that.

Award-winning history in my book.

I really, really enjoyed Alice Sparberg Alexiou's history title The Flatiron: The New York Landmark and the Incomparable City That Arose with It.

Most people are familiar with the Flatiron Building in New York City, even if they've never been there, because it is nearly as iconic as the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building. It's been widely photographed and painted, largely because of its unique triangular shape and old-world styling. In this history of the building, Alexiou* offers a broad architectural and social history tale, describing the business of Harry Black, the man who contracted to have it built (and who wanted it named the Fuller Building, after his company, but that name never stuck), the construction of the building itself, and the broader social and architectural history of New York City. Consider:

 "People gasped at the sight of the skyscrapers. They waited for them to collapse, but none did. Critics denounced what they considered the sheer ugliness of the new buildings. There was no possible way, they shouted, for skyscrapers to be made beautiful." (p. 13.)

I really enjoyed the tidbits like that; they helped me feel the context of the times. Imagine thinking, now, that skyscrapers might fall down.

There's nothing fancy here, but Alexiou does a great job of mixing up personal stories with architectural and engineering details; it is simply a very readable history on an interesting subject. Perhaps its subject isn't "big" enough, but this is the type of history book I'd like to see win a few more awards. I tend to think of this type of book as good journeyman nonfiction--a subject that hasn't been done to death, good straightforward prose, strong storytelling but not necessarily story-driven or breathlessly told, good basic research, endnotes and indexing. In short: two thumbs up, and definitely a book you'll want to read if you're interested in New York City, architecture, or early twentieth-century American business and social history.

*Alexiou is also the granddaughter of a man who once owned the Flatiron (along with several others), giving this narrative a nice personal touch as well. (And it looks like she's also written a biography of Jane Jacobs, Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary, which I will have to look into.)

Citizen Reader's Holiday Gift Guide: Wrestling with Moses

One of the best books I read last year was Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City.

I know I said enough with the heavy nonfiction reads, but I don't think this one really qualifies as "heavy." It's serious, but for one thing, it's not a really long book. And even though it is a serious historical story, it's also a very personality-driven and lively one.

In it, author Anthony Flint describes how Jane Jacobs (author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which I still desperately want to read), a New York City resident and budding urban activist, took on Robert Moses, the New York city planner/builder who dreamed of dropping huge highways right through neighborhoody parts of Manhattan, in the 1950s and 60s. It's a fabulous book, and tells the story from both the urban design and personal activism points of view. I finished this one with a true appreciation for yet another feisty lady--Jane Jacobs--and the rare feeling that individuals can (or at least they were successful once) in taking on unnecessary "progress." Even if you can't think of anyone to buy this book for, consider gifting it to yourself.

So, who might like this book?

Anyone with an interest in or love for New York City.

Anyone with an interest in urban design or architecture.

Readers who enjoy character-driven histories.

Feminist readers who will find a lot to like in feisty (and very smart) lady Jane Jacobs.

Citizen Reader's Holiday Gift Guide: In the Shadow of the Moon

I am deeply uninterested in most science topics, and particularly space exploration. When my family* debates whether or not people have actually landed on the moon, I typically zone out, as I don't particularly care one way or the other.

So how odd that I'm suggesting a book like Francis French's and Colin Burgess's In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965-1969. But suggesting it I am, particularly if you know a reader who likes a good science read with a few human interest stories thrown in. The format of the book is simple and well-organized; basically, the chapters describe each Gemini and Apollo mission leading up to the moon landing in 1969. In addition to describing the technical challenges overcome in each mission, the authors do a great job of describing the astronauts, their working relationships with one another, and their experiences in space.** These are not your typical astronaut stories--one of my favorites was learning about how Rusty Schweickart (on Apollo 9) suffered from nausea and "space sickness," and then volunteered to be tested so NASA could learn more about what caused it. This did not make him particularly popular with the rest of the astronaut crowd, who wanted to pretend that space sickness was no problem. Another astronaut, Bill Anders, had this to say about Schweickart's willingness to be studied:

"'But Rusty probably over-volunteered to research space sickness, and I don't think the general astronaut crowd appreciated that. I thought it was probably a pretty good idea. But as you know, fighter pilots never get sick, we all know that! And here was Rusty, more or less on his own, volunteering to be a space sickness guinea pig. That probably cost him any further missions.'" (p. 357.)

Typical: volunteer to be helpful, and get penalized for it. The book is full of fascinating stories like that, but it's still rigorous enough to please more hardcore science readers. And, in an added bonus, if you buy the paperback, you'll be getting an index that I created!*** That's right--that's why I read this book in the first place: not so I'd be better informed during my family's moon landing debates, but rather to do the index. What a treat--although I always enjoy indexing, not every book I index is as readable as this one was.

So who might like this book?

Science buffs, particularly those with an interest in the space program.

History buffs--I'm thinking of getting it for my brother, who is not a science reader per se, but who enjoys good history books and is also curious about technology.

*I mean my parents and siblings--Mr. CR thinks we're nuts for debating this issue. What he forgets is that my family likes to debate EVERYTHING.

**Also fascinating is learning how each astronaut felt about the "earth view" they got from space. It's one of those little human reaction stories that often gets lost in the broader science narrative.

***The hardcover edition doesn't have an index at all, which makes no sense, and which many reviewers at Amazon mentioned as a problem with the book. Kudos to the University of Nebraska Press for deciding to put an index in the paperback edition, although it should have been there all along.

A solid Mary Roach read.

Mary Roach is known for her accessible and, at times, even quite humorous science writing--she made a big splash with her first title, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, and she's been quite popular ever since.

I really enjoy accessible science writing (frankly, science has to be made accessible if I want a chance in hell of even vaguely understanding it) and I find it just plain takes a good writer to make science (and most nonfiction, really) understandable, so these types of "popular" science books are usually very good reads.* Sadly, though, I wasn't all that turned on by Roach's previous two titles, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. But I was very, very pleased with her latest, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void.

Space exploration and travel to the moon is one of those subjects I never seek out consciously, but which I often enjoy reading about serendipitously. (One of my favorite books ever to index was In the Shadow of the Moon, about the evolution of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs) I never would have picked up Roach's book based on its subject, but I blew threw it in a couple of dedicated nights of wee-small-hours reading, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I didn't bookmark anything for quoting; Roach's style is best taken as a whole. And yes, she did put in the obligatory chapter about sexual intercourse and weightlessness, but I'll tell you what the really interesting chapter was: how NASA went about trying to solve the problem of astronaut, ahem, elimination. And I don't mean being cut from the program. I mean the problem of trying to poo in (early in the program) plastic baggies or (later in the program) a toilet that could handle waste without letting fecal matter out to circulate through the cabin. Now THAT was the money chapter, in my opinion. 

*I realize, in a funky ironic twist, that this sentence itself is barely understandable. See? Good writing is hard!

Not quite sure I liked it until I finished it.

I've never been a big Truman Capote fan, Audrey Hepburn is a movie actress I can largely take or leave, and I was completely bored throughout all of the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's when I watched it a million years ago. So why exactly did I get Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Womanout of the library? I have no idea.

What's even weirder is that I read the whole book, and enjoyed it. It delivers exactly what its subtitle promises: an in-depth look at the making of the classic movie, from Capote's writing of the story on which it's based, through its screenplay development, casting, and filming. It didn't hurt that it was only about 200 pages long.

I would think any film buff would enjoy this book; likewise, anyone who's ever had any interest in Truman Capote or Audrey Hepburn might find a lot to like here. It's a nice look at film and social history, and it's very readable, broken up into workable chunks throughout each chapter. (I particularly enjoyed the bits about how Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe to be cast in the lead, and how the screenwriter had to fight the studio/film censors on every teensy little risque item. It must have been a different world. 

Good fluffy history.

It was kind of a muggy, dreary, cloudy, on-again off-again rainy weekend in Wisconsin, which made it a perfect weekend for enjoying a light little history read like Leslie Carroll's Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey through Nine Centuries of Dynasty, Destiny, and Desire.

I also enjoyed Carroll's earlier volume, Royal Affairs, although I'm still bothered that these books don't provide indexes. Then again, she doesn't really provide source notes, either, so if you simply approach this type of history as a novel, it can be very enjoyable. I also skipped around and only read the chapters I was interested in, which is always nice too--you can read a couple chapters and then put the book down and go get on with things you should be doing, like laundry. I can never get myself to feel guilty about reading when it's done "just a few chapters" at a time.

Books like this also might be good if you've got a high-schooler (particularly girls, I would think, for this type of volume) who doesn't much care for history OR reading. Carroll's chapters aren't particularly long, but they each provide a rollicking (and yes, "juicy") little narratives of some of the worst marriages of all time--royal marriages. It's easy reading* and you can pick up tidbits like Eleanor of Aquitaine had ten kids and lived to be 82--in the 1100s, mind you--which I still can't get over. (She must have been the healthiest woman ever.) I also enjoyed this paragraph, about when the infamous Henry VIII was searching for someone to marry after #3, Jane Seymour, died:

"Gorgeous sixteen-year-old Christina, the Danish-descended Duchess of Milan, wittily insisted that if God had given her two heads she would willingly risk one to marry the King of England, but as she only had one..." (p. 160.)

Nor is the book only about British monarchs. There's good stuff here about Ferdinand and Isabella, Nicholas and Alexandra of Russia, and even Prince Rainier and Princess Grace. I enjoyed it--and would suggest if you need a "juicy" nonfiction read, this might be a good choice.

*Carroll is also a romance and novel writer, so she knows how to tell a story.

Don't want to think about Memorial Day.

I am in the middle of Sebastian Junger's new book War, which I am not particularly enjoying, but which I thought it was important to read all of so I had a leg to stand on if I reviewed it. I also promised my favorite library worker I would try and get through it fast and return it, as he is a ways down the waiting list for it. But, as of page 114, I don't know if I can continue.

It's a fast read, and Junger is a skilled writer. But I have read so many of these books from the "soldiers' point of view" lately that I literally cannot read any more. So, in honor of Memorial Day, a short list of books about soldiers, and what they go through and inflict on others, and why war is stupid and pointless.*

Finkel, David. The Good Soldiers. Embedded reporter Finkel relates the experiences of Battalion 2-16 (nicknamed the Rangers), serving in Iraq during the height of the Iraq War.

Frederick, Jim. Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent Into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death. Frederick tells an ugly story of atrocities against civilians, perpetrated by soldiers, but he tells it with nuance and empathy.

Key, Joshua. The Deserter's Tale.** Enticed into the Army primarily because of his poverty and because they were offering dental care and sub sandwiches, Key found himself serving in Iraq but eventually went AWOL to Canada because he felt he could not, in good conscience, return to Iraq.

Mason, Robert. Chickenhawk. A classic from the Vietnam War, told by a helicopter pilot.

Pyle, Ernie. Here Is Your War. Pyle was the original embedded reporter (during World War II), and the soldiers loved him for his dedication to telling their stories and for living along with them and enduring the same danger and hardships they did. He actually died in a battle on the Pacific island of Ie Shima.

*Sorry for the grouchy tone. Unlike Labor Day, which is my favorite holiday ever, Memorial Day makes me grouchy. I am not interested in the glorification of war, and I am only interested in supporting soldiers by never sending them to die in any war.

**If you only read one book on this list, make it this one.

Oooh, this is just too delicious.

Note: No new post today (Friday) as I am in the middle of a couple of books, but I just wanted to add to the below that if you have any interest whatsoever in how historians sometimes fudge their research, a great book on the subject is Peter Hoffer's Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud--American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin. It's way more scintillating than the title makes it sound.

I have never been a Stephen Ambrose fan.

Or, to put it another way, I have always felt that Stephen Ambrose is one of the most overrated authors (and a plagiarizer to boot) of the twentieth century. This has puzzled at least one of my reading friends, who sighed when she first heard my anti-Ambrose rants and said, "Oh, honestly, how can you like nonfiction and not like Stephen Ambrose?" It's very simple, really. Ambrose writes about subjects that are not at the top of my interests list, and he writes about them with a tone I don't care for : male adventure (yay!), World War II (double yay!), camaraderie under pressure* (the biggest yay of all!). And what was his defense of his plagiarism, particularly in the book The Wild Blue? Well, he just forgot to put quotes around passages that he lifted wholesale from other books.**

I also have memories of what seemed like a double standard for male and female historians from when I worked at a public library; I could never get older male readers to try Doris Kearns Goodwin ("She's a plagiarizer!") they all said, but they would happily read each new Ambrose title as it came along. (How they heard the news story about Goodwin plagiarizing, but not Ambrose, I'll never know.) Recently I was also annoyed to stumble across yet another history of World War II, titled The Pacific, and written by--you guessed it--none other than Ambrose's son Hugh Ambrose. Oh brother. Lots of authors have now profited off the perennial popularity of the "Good War," but the Ambrose family appears to be turning the profiteering into a family dynasty.

So, yes, I'll admit it: I was rather titillated to visit EarlyWord.com yesterday and find this little news snippet: "In this week’s New Yorker, writer Richard Rayner reports that the late historian Stephen Ambrose fabricated interviews with former President Eisenhower for the books that brought Ambrose to fame. The information is based on discoveries by Tim Rives, the deputy director of the Eisenhower Presidential Library."

But enough of my invective. Go read Rayner's article--it's short and very, very interesting. And it gives one even more food for thought on the nature of "truth" and nonfiction.

*I fully admit that I have never been impressed by the war platitude that every guy is just doing it for the guy next to them. That's the way everybody in war feels, so who's to tell who's right? Also, camaraderie under pressure is easy to have; solidarity is easy when everyone's in the shit. Camaraderie when there's no pressure would be a lot more impressive.

**Um, Stephen? That is the definition of plagiarism.

Taking a shot at understanding.

I really, really enjoy nonfiction graphic novels that are not memoirs. Specific enough for you?

As previously noted, a lot of graphic novel memoirs seriously bum me out; tops on this list were David Small's Stitches and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. There's something about seeing challenging if not downright horrific childhoods and young adulthoods portrayed in pictures that I very nearly can't handle.

But history and biography graphic novels? Love 'em. Another good case in point of this phenomenon is Apostolos Doxiadis's and Christos Papdimitriou's graphic novel Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth.* Although the authors admit the book is more "based on reality" than it is pure nonfiction (they provide a very nice note in the back, explaining how and when they deviated from pure fact), I decided it didn't really bother me. The book is a rather selective biography of the life of philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell, and covers the overlap between the philosophy of logic and the science of mathematics.

Now, I'm not saying I got a lot of it. I certainly don't get the math stuff and most of the logic stuff just seems like semantic wrangling to me, but I must say that the graphic novel format, for whatever reason, makes me feel like I've got a shot at understanding some of the basics of what the authors are trying to say.** Although I most likely won't have time to follow the interest, it also somewhat motivated me to maybe someday read more about Bertrand Russell--his is one of those names I hear a lot but can never really place. (Just so you know: he was born in 1872 in Great Britain, the grandson of former Prime Minister Lord John Russell, became a mathematical logician and well-known author, later became a vocal anti-nuclear activist, and died in 1970.) So thumbs up on this one; it ranks right up there with Jim Ottaviani's historical/scientific graphic novels Fallout and Suspended in Language: Niels Bohrs's Life, Discoveries, and the Century He Shaped.

*Can't remember where I heard about this one. Lesbrarian, did you suggest I read it? If so, thanks!

**I did learn this: I don't think you want to be married to a logician.

Friday short takes.

Ah, the weekend, she's almost here. And I for one am glad.

Nothing particularly pithy today (or any day, yes, thank you, hecklers), just a few short takes on this Friday morning.

I went to look at Joseph Stiglitz's new book Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy yesterday, and it looked quite interesting. But I have to face reality in that 1. I don't have the heart to read it right now, and 2. it's well-written, but it's still pretty dense stuff and I'm not going to have the time to read it right now. So then I flipped to the back to take a wander through the index (I do this a lot; I find that doing indexing has helped me develop the skill of looking at an index and gleaning a lot of information about a book that way) when I was shocked to find that THERE WAS NO INDEX. What the hell? In a complex book about finance and economics? W. W. Norton and Co, and Mr. Stiglitz, you should be ASHAMED of yourselves. I'm no economist but I could tell you how to make one person's economy better: hire a freelance indexer, you cheap bastards.

I only got about two chapters into Ian Mortimer's book The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century, and it's a bit too dense to recommend for pleasure reading, but it's a lot of fun nonetheless. I wish there were books like this for every century (and location)--Mortimer talks about every aspect of the 14th century, from costume to traveling to health to eating and drinking to the law (among many other topics), and it's all written in the form of a friendly guidebook introducing you to the culture. Super cool stuff.

Anna Dean's Bellfield Hall: Or, the Observations of Miss Dido Kent. If you're a Jane Austen or Regency fan run, don't walk, to get this title. It has nothing to do with Austen, but is set in her time period and features witty writing somewhat similar to hers. And its heroine is named "Dido Kent." You've got to love that. At least I did.

And that's it! Enjoy the weekend, folks, life's too short not to. Or, alternatively, sometimes it feels too damn long. Either way grab a good book and tell the rest of the world to buzz off for a couple of days.