The Worst Hard Time

Synopsis
Timothy Egan recounts the environmental, financial, and humanitarian catastrophe that was the Great American Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

My thoughts
I've read The Grapes of Wrath and learned about how the farming crisis contributed to the Great Depression, but I knew shamefully little about the Dust Bowl until I read this book. The best way to teach history is to make it personal, and Egan focuses on different communities throughout the Oklahoma/Texas/Colorado region to make this devastating story come to life. The storytelling drags at times, but Egan succeeds in painting a vivid picture of the people who stubbornly rode out the Dust Bowl despite unimaginable horrors—walls of dirt that hurtled across the Great Plains and destroyed settlers' lives and livelihoods. He does a great job conveying their despair as months turn to years without any end in sight.

Egan does a masterful job with the personal element of the story, but he also does a good job explaining the technical facets of the Dust Bowl, specifically its causes and its economic and environmental consequences. This book is as much a narrative of a tragedy as it is a cautionary tale. The Dust Bowl was wholly man-made. There were smart people who saw the folly of ripping up thousands of acres of land and trying to force it to produce healthy crops, yet the government persisted in its efforts to encourage people to settle and farm this last untamed portion of the country. Once the Dust Bowl began, the government's inaction was appalling and the rest of the country's response ranged from disinterest to downright hostility.

One small complaint: There are photos to supplement the author's story, but it drove me crazy that Egan repeatedly described other photos that don't appear anywhere in the book.

Bottom line
This a wrenching and insightful read about a chapter of history that far too many Americans know far too little about. I picked up a copy of Egan's next book, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, and I hope that will be similarly enlightening.

Fine print
The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan
Genre: history, non-fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

1861: The Civil War Awakening

Synopsis
Adam Goodheart, one of the columnists who contributes to The New York Times series "Disunion," analyzes contemporary accounts of the run-up to and beginning of the Civil War.

My thoughts
Goodheart creates a fascinating portrait of the country as it slides inevitably toward civil war, laying out the causes of the war and capturing the mood of the country. It's a well-written, well-researched, and well-reasoned account, and even the detours are entertaining (there's a fun one on trends in facial hair in the nineteenth century). He relies on contemporary documents and focuses on a few carefully chosen subjects. This is the best way to immerse yourself in a distant time and Goodheart's subjects are interesting both for their individual experiences and the impact they had on the war.

One of the men he follows is a college professor, lawyer, and novice politician from Ohio—seemingly indistinguishable from hundreds of other Union supporters except that his name was James Garfield and he would go on to become the 20th president of the United States. Another is the charismatic leader of the Zouaves, an acrobatic but impractical unit in the Union army. A bonus for me: a colorful cameo by one of my friends' distant ancestors, an eccentric Texas politician. When we were growing up, my friend always joked that one of her ancestors started the Civil War ... at least I thought she was joking until I read 1861 and realized he kind of did—he bizarrely inserted himself into the action during the siege of Fort Sumter. Goodheart describes him as "[p]erhaps the feistiest Southerner of all." My friend describes him as "a nutter. We're very proud."

Bottom line
A must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in the Civil War. A must-buy for anyone with more than a passing interest.

Fine print
1861: The Civil War Awakening, by Adam Goodheart
Genre: history
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million

Synopsis
Daniel Mendelsohn tries to find out what happened to his grandfather's brother and his family during the Holocaust.

My thoughts
Mendelsohn is a mesmerizing writer and he could not have found a more poignant subject than his family's personal tragedy. Mendelsohn grew up hearing stories about his grandfather's older brother Schmiel, who was a successful businessman in the Ukraine before World War II and who was killed in the Holocaust along with his wife and four daughters. Over the years, the story of how they died became garbled—did they die in a concentration camp? Or were they murdered in a massacre by members of their own town? In a quest that takes him all over the world, Mendelsohn uncovers tantalizing hints about how Schmiel and his family lived during the war—that they hid in a castle, that they joined the resistance.

There are two separate stories—Schmiel's story and Mendelsohn's journey—and both are told in the voice of a strong storyteller. Six million is an unfathomably large number, but the six members of Mendelsohn's family come alive through his research. Mendelsohn talks to people who knew Schmiel and his daughters and comes to know them as individuals with distinct personalities rather than unsmiling figures in faded family photos. As he pieces together the stories of his murdered relatives, Mendelsohn also documents his relationships with his living family members. He doesn't focus as much on these dramas, but they're familiar and help round out the story.

Bottom line
It's a long book, and it's worth every page.

Fine print
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, by Daniel Mendelsohn
Genre: history, non-fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library
I read this book in April 2011

The Intelligencer

Synopsis
In 1593, Christopher Marlowe uncovers a scandal that could be the end of Elizabeth I's ambitious counselor Robert Cecil. In the present day, Renaissance scholar/private investigator Kate Morgan is drawn into a case involving a coded manuscript that may help solve the mystery of Marlowe's murder once and for all. There's also a second case that unexpectedly involves Kate's personal life.

My thoughts
I first read this shortly after it came out in 2004 and wanted to be Kate Morgan. I've always loved mysteries and I really love historical fiction, but thrillers were totally new to me. It's an ambitious book and I remember enjoying the novelty of having a contemporary mystery intertwined with a centuries-old mystery. Both parts are entertaining, but they never quite mesh and I found the constant shifts from one to the other jarring.

On this read-through, I enjoyed the contemporary portion of the plot the most. Kate's main case involves a coded Elizabethan manuscript, a dead would-be thief, a murdered professor, and a suave businessman. It crackles with action—disguises, knifings, etc. Marlowe's interwoven story is skillfully written and also chock full of action. There's one superb twist that I didn't see coming—and it even surprised me on this second reading.

Back in the present day, Kate's second case gets relegated to the background, but it is in many ways the most interesting part of the book. It involves an intelligence officer recently sprung from an Iranian prison (and, as you might imagine, in horrifyingly bad shape). It could have been the entire plot of a book on its own and in many ways it's a shame it wasn't. It doesn't get enough attention, isn't fully developed, and isn't fully resolved by the end of the book.

There's a lot going on in this book, so there are a lot of characters to keep track of. Fortunately, they all have distinct personalities and it was easy for me to remember who was who. It's a skill I didn't fully appreciate until this weekend, which brings me to ...

I finally got around to watching Anonymous this weekend. I was really excited when I first heard about it but decided not to see it in theaters when it got panned by the critics. I have to say, the critical vitriol was totally warranted. The story spans 40 years and jumps back and forth between the two startlingly often. I struggled to keep the characters and events straight because there's just too much going on. The plot revolves around the premise that the Earl of Oxford authored all of the plays we attribute to Shakespeare and that Shakespeare himself was an illiterate actor. (I actually adored Rafe Spall's Shakespeare. He's utterly blasphemous but irresistibly, deliciously hammy.) Anonymous and The Intelligencer shared a few commonalities—Cecil makes a convenient villain and Elizabeth is anything but virginal. And Marlowe pops up long enough to threaten to expose Shakespeare as a fraud and get killed for it. But I spent a good chunk of the movie going, "wait, what?"—there's just too much crammed into it.

Bottom line
The Intelligencer: good page-turner. Anonymous: unwieldy blockbuster where things blow up simply because Roland Emmerich directed it. (Seriously, you want explosions? Adapt the mystery of Mary Queen of Scots and the murder of Lord Darnley for the big screen. Bonus points for gratuitous extraterrestrials.)

Fine print
The Intelligencer, by Leslie Silbert
Genre: mystery, historical fiction, thriller
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

Gorillas in the Mist

Synopsis
Dian Fossey's account of her attempts to study and protect the gorillas of Rwanda.

My thoughts
I was inspired by this book. It takes a woman of immense strength and determination to do what Dian Fossey did. There was no blueprint for the type of research she did, so she had to make it up as she went along. In addition, she faced opposition from corrupt local conservation authorities who ignored poachers and even worked with Western zoos to capture gorillas for their exhibits.

I don't have a strong background in science, so I was relieved that Fossey wrote for a lay audience and didn't spend much time on gorilla anatomy or physical anthropology. Instead, she focused on her personal connection to the gorillas and her understanding of their social dynamics. Each group is led by a mature silverback with one or more immature males acting as backup to protect the females and young. The younger males were often the most colorfully drawn, and it was truly fun to follow them as they grew up, developed distinct personalities, and learned from their group's silverback. Their stories became most compelling when they either inherited the leadership of their group (sometimes before they were ready) or had to branch out on their own.

Fossey's commitment to the gorillas was admirable, but it was awkward to read about an American woman trying to impose her morals and standards on a culture she didn't understand. Her attitude smacked of the superiority and imperialism that was (and in many ways still is) characteristic of the way the West views Africa. But to some extent, it was necessary and she was successful in her efforts to protect the gorillas and raise awareness about them around the world.

Gorillas in the Mist was published two years before Fossey's still-unsolved murder, and her research and conservation efforts continue today. As soon as I finished the book, I went online to make a donation to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and was delighted to realize that some of the gorillas she'd written about almost 30 years ago not only survived but thrived.

Bottom line
A must-read if you're at all interested in wildlife and conservation.

Fine print
Gorillas in the Mist, by Dian Fossey
Genre: animal science, memoir
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book

Mort

Synopsis
Death needs an apprentice so that he can commence with his midlife crisis without worrying that his responsibilities will be neglected. Enter Mort, a young boy who is hopeless at everything and has never been entrusted with much responsibility at all.

My thoughts
I needed something quick and fun to read after the Choirboys disappointment. This was perfect. Technically, it's the fourth book in Terry Pratchett's acclaimed Discworld series, but it's the first one I've read and I don't get the sense that it's the kind of series you need to read in any kind of order. (It's not a traditional series where you follow the same protagonists as they age/progress through life. You meet some of the same characters in every book—Death, for instance, shows up a lot, although Mort apparently does not—but they don't always stick around or play a central role in each book.)

Mort is arguably the star of the book, but Death often steals the show. Death sincerely tries to gain a better understanding of humans and why they enjoy the things they do, but he's just not capable of it. His fishing trip and his stint as a short-order cook are two of the funniest parts of the book, even though they don't contribute to the main storyline.

Terry Pratchett is a comic genius and I laughed out loud throughout the book. His sense of humor is very British—very dry with a dash of absurdity. (Think Douglas Adams but with fantasy instead of science fiction.)

Bottom line
It's a great read for anyone. I'll definitely read more.

Fine print
Mort, by Terry Pratchett 
Genre: fantasy
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

LIbrary Loot—May 30–June 5

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

It's been an embarrassingly long time since I've participated in one of these ... in fact, I think this is my first one this year. But I had a fantastic time at the library this week!

First up: The Intelligencer. This is a reread for me. I read it when it first came out in 2005 and I remember loving it. It's a mystery/historical fiction mash-up that switches back and forth between 16th-century England and the present day. The book subscribes to the conspiracy theory that playwright Christopher Marlowe was also a spy and that he was killed in the service of the Queen instead of in an ordinary tavern brawl. ("Marlowe attacked and got his own knife in the eye. Quarrel about the bill." "The bill! Oh, vanity, vanity!" "Not the billing, the bill!") In the present day, we follow a feisty private investigator named Kate Morgan whose expertise in Elizabethan ciphers draws her into a dangerous international mystery. The two stories are intertwined, and the secrets of the past are revealed along with some surprises in the present.

I also got Anne Rice's The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned. I haven't read anything by Anne Rice and I'm still skeptical about the vampire craze, but I can get behind a story about an undead pharaoh.

And I walked out with Consumer Reports Best Buys 2012 and four issues of Consumer Reports, so that should keep me busy for the near future.

Photos from Goodreads