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Ann Skea's Bookshelf
Cast Away
Francesca de Tores
Bloomsbury
https://www.bloomsbury.com
9781526661449, A$38.69 PB, 336pp.
Bloomsbury
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/cast-away-9781526661395
'When they leave me on the island, I do not scruple to beg. I chase the last boat into the bay, wading and shouting, 'Sir, sir, mercy, have mercy, you will not leave me here to die?''
They do leave him, but he does not die.
Only when he is interrogated by the cat and the goat does he finally tell us exactly what happened, and why. Meanwhile, Alexander Selkirk begins to tell us, as the frontispiece proclaims:
The TRUE and SURPRISING ADVENTURES of ALEXANDER SELKIRK, of NETHER LARGO, SCOTLAND: Who survived many years, all Alone on an un-inhabited Island far from the Coast of SPANISH AMERICA; Having been cast on Shore by his SHIPMATES, Abandoned with only GOATS and CATS for company in a Savage Landscape. WITH An account of his TRIALS at the hands of said Island.
Written by Himself.
Interrogated by a cat and a goat? To be precise, by Sleek, the cat, and the Reverend Vicarious Cronch, the goat. How did that happen?
He wonders who 'in this remote and God-forsaken place' could have taught the goat to speak, and whether his own habit of speaking to them, and muttering to himself, could have done it. Whatever the explanation, Sleek and the Reverend Vicarious Cronch are company, even if Sleek is aloof and has a sharp tongue, and Cronch speaks plainly and concisely but is inclined to philosophical and religious utterances.
'You must understand one further thing,' says Selkirk:
If I doubt what is happening I deny myself the prospect of company... If even the meanest creature spoke to me - a clam; a slug; a rat - I would welcome his voice, rapt with attention.
The cat and the goat are a delight. They are curious and full of questions about how he came to be on the island. 'My past is not a story I wish to tell,' says Selkirk, but it is to gratify them and to have a listener 'as attentive' as the Reverend Vicarious Cronch, that he begins to tell it.
In an 'Historic Note' at the end of the book, Francesca de Tores says:
This novel sticks closely to the facts of Selkirk's life, inasmuch as these have been recorded (with varying degrees of reliability)... Selkirk's voyage with Dampier, his abandonment and survival on the island, and his rescue, are all drawn closely from contemporaneous sources.
De Tores' Selkirk, however, is a wonderfully imagined character full of self-doubt, humour, hope, despair, and invention. So, too, are the goat and the cat, and other characters who appear in his story.
He starts with his childhood, his 'plague' of older brothers, his 'doting mother' and 'censorious' father. He also talks about Effie, the young woman he had 'left behind without so much as a farewell'. Having run away to sea, he discovers that he is a good sailor and has a 'prodigious' memory; when the master of his first ship discovers his interest in navigation and teaches him, he loves it. He becomes 'a fair navigator' - so good that when the second mate on the ship dies, he, 'at barely eighteen', is appointed in his place.
By 1698, he has been at sea for three years. During this time, England has been at war with France, and there is plenty of work for the navy, and for privateers, both part of his story. But war and failed harvests have left Selkirk's fellow Scots starving. Seeing the profits being made by the English East India Company, they decide to set up the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies and mount an expedition to start a colony where a profitable enterprise may be established. The destination of the expedition, and where the colony is to be, remains unknown for fear the French or the Spanish might get there first, but the Scottish people raise funds, many currently unemployed officers and soldiers are keen to go, and five ships set off with a large number of people aboard. Selkirk sails on the Caledonia, under Captain Drummond, and he is proud to be part of this enterprise.
The destination is the isthmus of Darien, the narrow strip of land joining north and south America. This is seen to be 'the key to unlock the Atlantic' that will allow trade to avoid having to go round Cape Horn. But for many reasons - climate, sickness, poor provisioning - this enterprise fails. In a skirmish with the Spanish, who have occupied a nearby village, Selkirk kills a man. This is one of the deaths for which he feels remorse.
He is eventually left on the island with just his sea-chest, a Bible, a flint and steel, a small sack of flour, a cask of 'flip' (which is soon drunk), a musket, some powder and a few bullets. He scavenges two broken barrels and some torn sailcloth, and he eats goat-meat (the goats are easy to catch), some seal (which he dislikes), native cabbage, turnips and berries. He then traps some kid-goats and ties them up so that he can capture the mother and milk her.
Daily, he visits the lookout he has set up on the island's one hill to scan for boats. But a ship-sighting is not always good news. If he were to be captured by the French or the Spanish, he would be either killed or taken as a prisoner of war. Two of the ships he does sight are a potential danger to him.
The island is overrun with rats, feral goats and cats, and the rats eat everything and even attack him when he falls asleep. To deter them, he steals a kitten and tames it. This is not Sleek, who is a wild tabby who comes to lap up the blood when he slaughters goats. The goat, too, watches him closely and is too old to be good eating.
He survives illness, accidents, a desperate attempt to escape on a raft (in spite of knowing this was doomed in one way or another), and bouts of depression, but when Sleek and the Reverend Vicarious Cronch start to talk to him, there is companionship, as well as humour, good advice and dry comment.
'If you were better at being a man,' says the cat, 'you would not mistake yourself for a god.'...
The goat chews on a pimento leaf. 'It seems to me that most troubles come from being what you are not. Me? I excel at being a goat, and thus have few troubles - excepting worms, of course, which are the curse of every goat.'
'They are the curse of sailors, too,' I say, 'though in a different way.'
'They do not make your arsehole itch?'
'They eat boats. The Cinque Ports most especially.'
Having been brought up in a small village where the minister instilled 'godly nature' into his parishioners, Selkirk reads his Bible frequently, then he begins to pass the time by blackening lines of text with a piece of charcoal. He tells himself that having exhausted the Bible stories, he is entitled to make up some of his own. Worried that the goat might see this as sacrilege, he suggests that this is an act of devotion or prayer. When the goat suggests it is a form of divination, he tells him that 'Some people claim they can tell the future from bones, or from guts,' and he reads one of his attempts to them.
'You would do better with bones,' says Sleek.
When Sleek and the Reverend summon him for trial, he is not very surprised. And what they draw from him are things he has done that he has hidden from himself, including the things that eventually led to him being left on the island. His sense of remorse has been evident all along, and his religious upbringing has caused feelings of guilt. In the Prologue, he asks:
Can a man crack the shell of himself like a crab, and cast off his scoundrel nature, to reveal the fleshly goodness within? I fear it is not so simple, though I would wish it so. Against what do I crack myself open? Against this island, its unyielding stone. Against time, which neither budges nor softens. Against my memories, sharper than the rocks.
It is Sleek and the Reverend Vicarious Cronch who help him to resolve this dilemma. And, in doing so, his story (as told by Francesca de Tores) becomes a fascinating and absorbing account of his life on the island, as well as a revelation of his character. Perhaps Sleek and Cronch are the hallucinatory imaginings of a man suffering the mental and physical effects of long isolation on an island, but whatever they are, it is a pleasure to meet them.
Dr Ann Skea, Reviewer
https://ann.skea.com/THHome.htm
Carl Logan's Bookshelf
Too Precious to Lose: A Memoir of Family, Community, and Possibility
Jason G. Green
https://jasongerardgreen.com
One World
c/o Random House
https://randomhousebooks.com
9780593731710, $30.00, HC, 256pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Too-Precious-Lose-Jason-Green/dp/0593731719
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/too-precious-to-lose-jason-g-green/1148118061
Random House
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/746343/too-precious-to-lose-by-jason-g-green
Synopsis: Jason G. Green was raised on fellowship - literally. Fellowship Lane served as a spiritual metaphor throughout his coming of age. A precocious preacher's kid, Green felt a call to the ministry but ultimately devoted himself to public service. After working on Barack Obama's presidential campaign, the young attorney spent four and a half years serving in the White House as special assistant to President Obama.
However, Green's government career was cut short by a devastating call. It seemed his beloved ninety-five-year-old grandmother was on her deathbed. At her side, he listened in disbelief while she detailed her life story dating back to her 1918 birth in Quince Orchard, a town that once stood where they now sat, erased by the vestiges of time.
How could he have never known the legacy of this robust community that he'd descended from? How could its entire existence have vanished from history but for the memory of a few elders?
Green's historical research uncovered a surprising trove of tales about his newly freed ancestors who built an African American house of worship, and whose progeny, on the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, made the brave decision to create an integrated church.
Quince Orchard's lost story is part of what Green calls the texture in the American fabric: the moral leadership of the Black church, the longstanding resilience of the Black community, and the transformative love of the Black family.
Fueled by a new understanding of his own roots, with the publication of "Too Precious to Lose: A Memoir of Family, Community, and Possibility" Green traces his paternal family through a century of life in a single place. Seeking answers to deeply personal, contemporary questions about belonging, he finds that and more truths from the compassionate, communal-led lives of his forebears.
Critique: A unique and invaluable contribution to the growing body of African-American history, "Too Precious to Lose: A Memoir of Family, Community, and Possibility" by Jason Green is an extraordinary, informative, and fascinating blend of personal memoir and family history. It is an appreciated and unreservedly recommended pick for personal, community, and college/university library African-American Biography/Memoir collections..
"Too Precious to Lose" is a carefully crafted memoir that highlights his personal journey of leaving politics to focus on his family, learning about his family's contributions to building the community of Quince Orchard, and discovering that a sense of small community and immediate belonging is sometimes more important than American national identity more broadly.
It should be noted that this hardcover edition of "Too Precious to Lose: A Memoir of Family, Community, and Possibility" from One World is also readily available for non-specialist general readers with an interest in contemporary African-American biographies and memories. in a digital book format (Kindle, $13.99).
Editorial Note: Jason G. Green (https://jasongerardgreen.com) is a Maryland-born community organizer, attorney, storyteller and entrepreneur. Green served as special assistant to the president, and associate White House Counsel to President Obama, advising on economic and domestic policy matters. Green co-founded SkillSmart, a company that reshapes how communities measure economic impact, and is CEO of EverGreen Labs, where he supports visionary organizations working to expand economic opportunity and strengthen community. Green serves as trustee to the Pleasant View Historic Association and supports its efforts to preserve the historic site. His award-winning documentary, Finding Fellowship, explores the rich history of Quince Orchard and the fight to preserve its legacy. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and Yale Law School, Green remains rooted in the work of truth and justice, investing in stories that remind us who we are.
Handbook of Quantitative Sustainable Finance
Peter Tankov & Ruixun Zhang, editors
CRC Press
c/o Routledge
https://www.routledge.com
9781032627922, $140.00, HC, 498pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Quantitative-Sustainable-Financial-Mathematics/dp/1032627921
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/handbook-of-quantitative-sustainable-finance-peter-tankov/1147808995
Synopsis: Expertly co-edited by the team of Peter Tankov and Ruixun Zhang, "Handbook of Quantitative Sustainable Finance" is an compendium of articles concerning the integration of sustainability and climate risk considerations into mathematical and quantitative finance.
A comprehensive resource, this edition of the "Handbook of Quantitative Sustainable Finance" provides a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and students who are interested in understanding the practical role of quantitative techniques in delivering sustainable finance and investment.
The "Handbook of Quantitative Sustainable Finance" is divided into four main parts: Risks and Regulation; Asset Pricing and Portfolio Management; Data, Measurement, and AI; and Product Design and Specific Markets. Although this structure offers a coherent, unifying structure to the book, each individual chapter has been written so as to be self-contained and useful to readers interested in any specific aspect of quantitative sustainable finance. Every chapter has been written by leading experts in their field, and offers a useful, authoritative window into the state of research and practice.
"Handbook of Quantitative Sustainable Finance" features numerous contributions from leading experts in sustainable finance, cutting edge analysis of recent technological advances in areas such as artificial intelligence, as well as practical tools and ideas for working quants, as well as valuable material for academic study.
Critique: Leading off with an informative introduction (What Can Quantitative Finance Bring To Sustainable Finance?), "Handbook of Quantitative Sustainable Finance" is an ideal pick for personal, professional, and college/university library Business Development collections and a textbook for Sustainable Business Development, Financial Engineering, and Business Pricing MBA curriculums. It should be noted for students, academia, and anyone with a professional or personal interest in the subject that this hardcover edition of "Handbook of Quantitative Sustainable Finance" from Chapman and Hall/CRC is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $73.99).
Editorial Note #1: Peter Tankov is professor of quantitative finance at ENSAE, the French National School for Statistics and Economic Administration, having previously worked at Paris-Cite university and Ecole Polytechnique. He is a mathematician, specialist in applied probability and quantitative finance. He earned his PhD in applied mathematics from Ecole Polytechnique in 2004. His current research focuses on green and sustainable finance, where he aims to develop quantitative methodologies. Peter is the author of over 60 research articles on these and other topics and of the widely read book, Financial Modelling with Jump Processes. He is the recipient of the 2016 Best Young Researcher in Finance award of the Europlace Institute of Finance and the 2024 Louis Bachelier Prize of London Mathematical Society, SMAI, and Natixis Foundation. Professor Tankov is the scientific director of the Paris Agreement Research Commons foundation at Louis Bachelier Institute, where he leads data-oriented initiatives, and member of editorial boards of the main quantitative finance journals: Mathematical Finance and Finance and Stochastics.
Editorial Note #2: Ruixun Zhang is an associate professor with tenure at Peking University. Ruixun earned a PhD in Applied Mathematics from MIT in 2015, and bachelor's degrees in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, and Economics (double degree) from Peking University in 2011. Ruixun's research interests include green finance, machine learning, market microstructure, and evolutionary models of financial behavior. His research has appeared in leading journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Operations Research, Management Science, and Journal of the American Statistical Association. His work has been recognized by the S&P Global Academic ESG Research Award, the International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM) Research Award, the Commodity and Energy Markets Association (CEMA) Questrom-CEMA Best Paper Prize, the SIAM Activity Group on Financial Mathematics and Engineering Conference Paper Prize, and the CFRI&CIRF-China Finance Review International Research Excellence Award. He serves on the editorial board of Digital Finance and International Journal of Financial Engineering.
Carl Logan
Reviewer
Clint Travis' Bookshelf
L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future: Volume 42
L. Ron Hubbard, et al.
Galaxy Press
https://galaxypress.com
9781619869004, $22.95, PB, 480pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Ron-Hubbard-Presents-Writers-Future/dp/1619869004
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/l-ron-hubbard-presents-writers-of-the-future-volume-42-l-ron-hubbard/1150053955
Synopsis: "L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future: Volume 42" is comprised of fifteen unforgettable science fiction and fantasy short stories (plus a section of full color artwork) and featuring twelve emerging voices alongside three acclaimed masters of the science fiction and fantasy genre.
Ranging from visionary sci-fi to emotionally rich fantasy and quiet horror, this iconic collection delivers bold "what ifs" that linger long after the final page.
What if a perfect rescue went catastrophically wrong?
What if the "better you" doesn't want to share your life?
What if love could survive inside a virtual reality?
In these stories the reader will encounter a flawless time-rescue gone wrong, a beauty treatment with terrifying consequences, a detective hunted by a body-hopping killer, and a homesteader uncovering a truth that rewrites Earth itself. There are also find dragons that defy myth, fairy-tale chaos, supernatural horror, and high-concept science fiction that blends heart, humor, and imagination.
From time travel and first contact to magical realism, monsters, and folklore-inspired fantasy, every story is paired with an original illustration -- bringing these worlds vividly to life.
Featuring original stories by Orson Scott Card and Nina Kiriki Hoffman, alongside twelve rising stars shaping the future of speculative fiction, this 42nd book in the simply outstanding "Writers of the Future" series from Galaxy Press is a literary gateway to bold ideas, fresh voices, and stories readers love to discover -- and recommend to other science fiction and fantasy fans.
Critique: Deftly selected from thousands of entries worldwide, "Writers of the Future: Volume 42" brings together a new generation of talented authors and gifted illustrators -- making it a 'must' for all dedicated science fiction and fantasy fans ages 15 to 105. While an unreservedly recommended addition to personal reading lists, as well as highschool, community, and college/university library Science Fiction & Fantasy collections, it should be noted that this trade paperback (6 x 1 x 9 inches, 1.3 pounds) edition is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).
Editorial Note: L. Ron Hubbard Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 - January 24, 1986) was an American author and the founder of Scientology. He was a prolific writer of pulp science fiction and fantasy novels in his early career. There is an online listing of his books available at Book Series in Order: https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/l-ron-hubbard/
Clint Travis
Reviewer
Debra Gaynor's Bookshelf
The Mountains We Call Home: The Book Woman's Legacy (The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek #3)
Kim Michele Richardson
Sourcebooks Landmark
9781420534702, $32.99 Hardback, $13.86 Paperback, $38.00 Large Print Hardback, $12.60 Audio, $7.39 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Mountains-We-Call-Home-Womans/dp/1464239320
Sourcebooks Landmark (Paperback)
https://www.sourcebooks.com/the-mountains-we-call-home.html
Sourcebooks Landmark (Audiobook)
https://www.sourcebooks.com/9781464283710-the-mountains-we-call-home-audio-book.html
This is the third book in "The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek" series. I have not read the first two books, however The Mountains We Call Home stands well alone.
Cussy Mae Lovett was a part of the Packhorse Library Project. She traveled on the back of a mule throughout the Appalachian Mountains, bringing books to the mountain people. She is imprisoned for the crime of interracial marriage. Cussy is a blue and her husband isn't. It was considered a crime for people of color to marry white. When she first arrived at the prison, she had a broken arm. She was assigned to kitchen and laundry duty. She accidentally destroyed several uniforms in the laundry room; she had never used an electric iron. She fared better in the kitchen and soon began keeping track of the accounts.
Cussy missed working with books and approached the warden concerning the library. The warden turned her down at first but later reconsidered. She worked hard to convince the warden she was doing a good job. She took books to the geriatric ward and death row and read to the inmates. One of the books she shared with the geriatric inmates was "Charlotte's Web". Most of the prisoners were illiterate, poor mountain people.
The prisoners hesitated to come to the library because Cussy was blue; she had a condition called methemoglobinemia, a blood condition where the skin looks bluish due to the veins under the skin having dark blue blood. Many of the people at the prison were concerned she would be contagious; even the warden hesitated to touch her. Slowly she won their loyalty with her kindness. When she was placed in solitary the prisoners went on strike determined to help her; even the guards supported her.
Cussy's common law husband was taken into custody at the same time as she was. She loved him deeply and wanted to see him even if it was from afar.
Cussy was asked to help a pastor's wife run the library in Louisville where she witnessed a very different way of life. While her observations are touching it is obvious she aches for her home, her husband, her daughter, and her people. She was bringing literacy to the mountain people, allowing them the ability to read and write and the freedom to vote.
I love this book. The setting is Kentucky. I recognized several of the places mentioned such as Louisville, KY, Booneville which I assume is Indiana and Lagotee also in Indiana. The characters are well developed. I kept wondering if they were based on real people. Cussy was of course my favorite. However, each of the secondary characters are complex and add great depth to the story. But it was Cussy that carried this tale. She was intelligent, compassionate, and spirited. She faced harsh conditions and prejudice head on.
The prison system discriminated against the women. If they were pregnant the baby was aborted and the women were all forced to be sterilized. Some of the women were forced to have a lobotomy. The horrors that were imposed upon these poor souls were atrocious.
My heart went out to the inmates, especially Cussy. The prison held despair, but Cussy brought hope. This book touched me. What a privilege it is to have freedom, to attend school, to learn to read and write. What a privilege it is to be able to vote. All of these we take for granted.
Kudos to author Kim Michele Richardson. I have read many books and written many reviews and never before have I made this statement. This book deserves The Pulitzer Prize in Literature.
The Last of The Old Breed: An Oral History of the Final Marines From World War II
Scott Davis
St. Martin's Press
c/o Macmillan
https://us.macmillan.com/stmartinspress
9781250429933, $30.00 Hardback, $15.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Old-Breed-History-Marines/dp/1250429935
I chose this book to review because my father-in-law was a Marine on Iwo Jima. He didn't talk about it much and I knew my husband would like to know more concerning what his father went through. We listened to this book together. I am not capable of expressing the emotions I felt as I listened to the true tales of the Marines that lived through World War II. However, it is my hope the Marines and their surviving families will recognize the admiration I feel for each and everyone. I dedicate this review to Harold C "Pat" Gaynor, I wish I had asked questions when you were with us.
World War II was an evil world event. Few today understand or even realize what our soldiers faced. Most of the men and women that fought the Japanese soldiers face to face are no longer with us. Less than 1 percent of the soldiers are still alive. This book is told by the men and women who bravely experienced the war. Over 130 veterans shared their memories. They are now between 93 and 103 years in age. They shared their experiences without sparing details. They discussed the harshness of warfare against a fanatical nemesis and the intense toll it took on their lives after the war.
This book begins with the backgrounds of the men and women. They share what their life was like before Pearl Harbor where the war was brought to us. They had survived the Great Depression. Some of the soldiers could have stayed home but didn't want to. These were ordinary men and women called upon to serve their country. Pearl Harbor stirred the call of patriotism. Many of the soldiers discussed their experiences from the bombing of Pearl Harbor, boot camp and the major battles. They continued their narrative through island hopping in the Pacific. They discussed Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Midway, Guadalcanal, Peleliu, and Leyte. Their backgrounds were diverse. Many were left devastated and cynical. Others found power and determination.
Many were wounded and many never made it home. This book is graphic and shares the true terror of war. Some of the soldiers told how they were splattered with the blood and body parts of their companions. The soldiers not only had to survive the war; they had to survive the aftermath of the adverse environment. Many of the soldiers realized it was a kill or be killed situation, but others were haunted by their service. There wasn't one experience but many experiences for each man and each woman faced it differently and came through it differently. The one constant was the experience stayed with them for the rest of their life.
Some of the things stood out to me:
Some of the soldiers could have stayed home but didn't want to.
Most of the soldiers were around twenty.
Many of the soldiers were standing next to another soldier, one was killed one wasn't.
The soldiers had to process everything quickly; there was no time to dwell on what they had just witnessed.
The Japanese spread the word that the US Marines were cruel, vicious rapists. Many Japanese women jumped to their deaths and many families killed their daughters and young children so that the US soldiers would not rape them.
The Japanese were experienced and vicious.
The Japanese soldiers hung from trees by one leg.
One soldier tells how a Japanese officer stood over him with a sword and could have easily killed him but instead he allowed himself to be shot. The soldier believed it was so he would be honored by his people.
They dug foxholes to survive. They went without food.
As another reviewer states "it is easier to understand why the United States chose to use the atomic bomb after reading these accounts". (Jessica, Reviewer for NetGalley)
The last three chapters of this book "Home Alive by '45", "Life After War", and "In the Shadow of War" allows readers to witness the aftermath of World War II and the effect it had on both the soldier and on their family.
As I listened to this book, I felt as if I was sitting with a group of veterans around a campfire listening to their stories. Author Scot Davis spent ten years collecting, compiling and writing this book. Thank you, Mr. Davis for not letting the stories be forgotten and lost.
Debra Gaynor, Reviewer
www.hancockclarion.com
https://www.facebook.com/book.reviews.by.debra.2025
Fred Siegmund's Bookshelf
We the People: A History of the United States Constitution
Jill Lepore
Liveright Publishing
c/o W.W. Norton
https://wwnorton.com/liveright
9781631496080, $36.99, 581 pages
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/We-People-History-U-S-Constitution/dp/1631496085
W.W. Norton
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631496080
We the People begins with an introduction establishing America's 18th century colonists expected constitutions will be amendable. Toward the end of this 22 page introduction author Lepore explains the "book is a history of American constitutionalism as told through a collection of stories about constitutional change." It relies on an archive of every significant proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution, assembled as part of a personal project of the author.
The book has four parts with each part subdivided into three, or once four, chapters. Parts follow in chronological order with Part I from 1774 to 1791; Part II 1803-1896; Part III 1905-1959; Part IV 1961-2016. A brief epilogue ends the book.
Part I opens with the First Continental Congress in September 1774 when the colonies sent delegates to draft a constitutional document to replace British colonial government with a system of self-government. Lepore takes readers through state conventions drafting and attempting to ratify their constitutions and then to the drafting of the 1781 Articles of Confederation. Narrative continues with the arguments writing our U.S. Constitution at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the difficulties getting it ratified, and the ultimate drafting and adoption of the bill of rights.
Small groups drafted these many constitutions and then made them public hoping to get them ratified, but mostly they got a torrent of criticism and demands to change them. Opposition to slavery was strong and attempts to end it and define the rights of blacks brought lots of arguments, as did the constitutional status of women and Indians. When the delegates that worked through the summer of 1787 finished their work, there were renewed demands for amendments. Since their new constitution included Article V detailing an amendment process, James Madison convinced opponents they could amend after ratification. He succeeded in getting the constitution ratified as originally written by condensing the many proposals into ten amendments put at the end of the constitution as the Bill of Rights.
In 1787 it was not obvious amending the constitution would be as hard as it has turned out to be. In each of the remaining three parts Lepore has pages with lists of proposed amendments made as part of political party platforms. The lists provide topics for narrating the repeating demands for change by formal amendment, for narrating alternative constitutional interpretations and for reviewing Supreme Court rulings on constitutional disputes brought to it.
Part II has a thorough discussion of controversies over citizenship, the 1843 Seneca Falls women's rights conference, voting rights, the nullification claims of John C. Calhoun and the claims of Chief Justice John Marshall to make the Supreme Court the final arbiter of constitutional disputes. Discussion of many Supreme Court cases and their influence on law and politics begin here with Marbury v. Madison and continues through the narrative where readers meet more justices with new views and new cases, often contesting and reinterpreting disputes.
The narrative considers the legal and constitutional chaos of the Civil War and reconstruction. Members of Congress proposed many amendments as a hope to avert war. One, the Corwin Amendment, would have prohibited amendments to abolish slavery. It would come again in March 1956 as the "Lost Amendment." There is a thorough discussion of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments and the effort to define citizenship and guarantee civil rights to all. Lepore considers the controversies over rights to self government for those living in U. S. territories, especially Hawaii and Hawaiians, but also Chinese, Japanese and American Indians.
The Part III period 1905-1959 included the amendments 16 through 19 ratified from 1913 to 1920, where three of the four amendments - income tax, prohibition, and women's suffrage - came after decades of protest. An amendment to abolish child labor began appearing on party platforms in this era, mostly as a response to the Supreme Court refusal to allow it; it failed. Lepore gives a thorough review of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision, the protest that followed and demands to repeal it by defiance or amendment.
In the Part IV years 1961-2016 readers meet Indiana Senator Birch Bayh who took over the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments in 1963. He convinced the country and the Congress to ratify amendment 24, 25 and 26 and almost succeeded abolishing the electoral college via another amendment. It was an era of well funded interest groups which brought an unprecedented number of Article V applications for constitutional conventions. Lepore explores a variety of amendment proposals for the right to life, school prayer, a balanced budget, busing, campaign finance, Indian rights and the controversies over judicial appointments. There follows another lengthy discussion of women's rights and the ERA that includes the efforts of Patsy Takemoto Mink, Phyllis Schlafly and Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, along with a review of gay rights, black rights and calls for significant changes to the constitution.
The last chapter before the epilogue features the life and career of Justice Antonin Scalia during the years he served on the Supreme Court: 1986-2016. Featuring Scalia appears to be a device to narrate the polarizing jurisprudence of a period when constitutional amendments became impossible. Since Scalia left a trail of academic writing and did not hesitate to give speeches, conduct seminars and offer his judicial views in television interviews, his claim our constitution had an original intent to guide jurisprudence free from politics and personal preference generated significant public argument in these years. Lepore narrates these arguments, emphasizing Scalia's gun rights opinion in D.C. v. Heller, which captures the hypocrisy of it all.
In her brief epilogue Lepore reminds us our founding fathers believed in reason and progress, but mentions "outdated constitutions undermine democratic governance." Then she questions if there is a point beyond which a constitution cannot be stretched but breaks. Our Constitution feels obsolete, to be charitable. In We the People Lepore makes it feel much worse than obsolete. By covering events from 1774 to the present Lepore establishes the same disputes occur and then recur as unresolved politics from one century to the next: women and minority rights to wit. Powerful interests have repeatedly exploited the undemocratic features of our constitution to block and stall and impose their will without regard to compromise or democracy or public welfare as the many events Lepore narrates here so clearly prove. Legislation is hard enough to pass in our bicameral Congress, but given the Supreme Court expects to nullify laws passed by an elected Congress, disputes that could and should be resolved with legislation become amendment proposals instead: abortion to wit. Since Article V makes amendment difficult to impossible, change comes to a halt while protest continues or returns in a new generation. The book fully captures the rambling, hurtling cycles of anger, frustration and chaos in a perpetually polarized country. In the 21st century money alone governs America, where our outdated constitution undermines democratic governance.
Fred Siegmund, Reviewer
www.Americanjobmarket.blogspot.com
Gregory Stephenson's Bookshelf
Tough Poets Review No. 2 Spring/Summer 2026
Edited by Kathleen Cullen & Richard Schober
Tough Poets Press
https://www.toughpoets.com
9798234043887, $20.00 paperback, 186 pp.
Tough Poets Press
https://www.toughpoets.com/tpr02.htm
If, as I do, you believe that quirkiness is a dwindling resource and originality an endangered species in this increasingly insipid digital era, then you will be heartened to hear of Tough Poets Review, a new, impressively diverse, bi-annual, literary print journal.
Issue no. 2, Spring/Summer 2026 - just out - contains fiction, art and photography, poetry, essays and interviews. It is a heady, eclectic mix, ably edited by Rick Schober and Kathleen Cullen. Contributors hail from various cultural traditions and geographical spaces, the latter including West Africa, the United Kingdom, China, Ireland, Canada, Iran, Brazil, the United States and cities in continental Europe. Yet in some fortuitous manner, the modes and minds of the contributors work well together, making this issue a potent compendium of creative energies.
Just to suggest some sense of the vibrant variety of contents that make up the Spring/Summer number of Tough Poets Review (without claiming any of the following as representing favorites or highlights) let me name a cross-section of the contributions. There is a parable-like, prose piece titled "The Panther" by Treat Williams; a delicately lyrical poem called "Gathered Time" by Ashley Hasburg; a poignant bilingual poem, "Frances/Francesca" by Carolyn Maria Bevington; a preternaturally distinct yet dream-like photograph titled "Joshua Tree" by Edwin Vasquez; a similarly compelling realistic-oneiric photo by Alan Murphy called "The Cloud." There is Jean Akintoye's moving, metrical, end-rhymed verse "Humoresque for a Slave;" the hallucinated, haunting poem "I am the crime" by Lydia Lunch; a typographically experimental prose piece "Mister Clean Pain" by Elberto Miller;" and reflective, incisive excerpts from a "Daybook" or journal by Sven Birkerts.
In addition, there are hybrid works blending text and illustration such as "Hide, Then Seek" by Pariya Pooladvand, and conversations with other innovative artists, "unbounded by form," such as Nihaarika Negi. Other contributions in this multifaceted magazine are engagingly aslant, acute, inventive, oblique, connecting with outer or inner worlds in new and challenging ways. Even before the beginning, so to speak, before even opening the magazine to the first page, a jolt of startlement is administered already by the image featured on the front cover of Tough Poets Review no. 2: a black and white photograph of a disconcerted kitten held up by an anonymous outstretched arm, a composition by the master of Fotografia Metafisica, Herbert List (1903-1975.)
This spirited new journal lives up to its name: solid, uncompromising and shot through with a vigorous lyricism. Tough Poets Review is an adventurous blend of diverse voices and artistic styles, a rich feast for the eye and mind. Literary journals as lively and interesting as this are rarely come by.
Gregory Stephenson
Reviewer
Jack Mason's Bookshelf
From the Center of America: Steamboats and Shipyards Along the Lower Ohio River
Robert H. Swenson
Southern Illinois University Press
www.siupress.com
9780809339839, $50.00, HC, 248pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Center-America-Steamboats-Shipyards-Shawnee/dp/0809339838
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/from-the-center-of-america-robert-h-swenson/1147315252
Synopsis: Before the railroad stitched together the American landscape, the dominant mode of transportation in the United States was by steamboat. These grand vessels, their iconic paddlewheels churning the country's rivers, have long captured the national imagination as symbols of innovation and adventure.
In the heart of America, four major rivers converge -- the Cumberland and Tennessee with the Ohio; then the Ohio with the Mississippi. These three confluences, which in "From the Center of America: Steamboats and Shipyards Along the Lower Ohio River", author Robert Swenson christens the Four Rivers Reach, played a unique role in the development of the steamboats that dominated American continental transport for almost 100 years.
Between 1825 and 1936, the river towns of Smithland, Paducah, Metropolis, Mound City, and Cairo launched 295 wood-hulled, steam-powered vessels. Drawing from a wealth of archival sources, Swenson presents detailed histories of these steamboats over a span of 110 years, accompanied by nearly one hundred illustrations and photographs.
"From the Center of America: Steamboats and Shipyards Along the Lower Ohio River" focuses upon distinct and specific events in steamboat history, tracing the impact of these shipyards on the economies and communities of the river towns where they were built.
It also reveals how the availability of steamboats along this sixty-mile Reach affected migration, politics, and the US economy of the nineteenth century. Steamboats built at the Four Rivers Reach played pivotal roles in the forced relocation of Native Americans from southern Appalachia to Oklahoma, the outcome of the Civil War, and the Montana gold rush.
"From the Center of America: Steamboats and Shipyards Along the Lower Ohio River" aptly demonstrates how steamboat building shaped the culture, people, and economy of this region -- and how, in turn, the area and its steamships influenced the growth of the young United States.
Critique: Impressively illustrated with historic B/W photos, "From the Center of America: Steamboats and Shipyards Along the Lower Ohio River" is a seminal and fascinating history of the unique and iconic role played in American history by river steamboats. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, "From the Center of America: Steamboats and Shipyards Along the Lower Ohio River" is an especially and unreservedly recommended pick for personal, professional, community, and college/university library American Transportation History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in steamboats and steamboat history that this hardcover edition of "From the Center of America: Steamboats and Shipyards Along the Lower Ohio River" from the Southern Illinois University Press is also readily available in a trade paperback edition (9780809339839, $29.95).
Editorial Note: Robert H. Swenson is a historic preservation consultant, a retired architect, and an associate professor emeritus of architecture at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His Preservation Summer course was the recipient of a Richard H. Dreihaus Preservation Award from Landmarks Illinois, and he has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Illinois State Historical Society.
The Secret, 4th Edition, Revised and Expanded: What Great Leaders Know and Do
Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller, authors
Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.
www.bkconnection.com
9798890571816, $27.95, HC, 176pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-4th-Revised-Expanded-Leaders/dp/B0FHJYP531
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-secret-4th-edition-revised-and-expanded-ken-blanchard/1148079651
Synopsis: "What do I need to do to be a great leader?" Every person in authority wonders this question sooner or later.
Co-authors of "The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do, 4th Edition", Ken Blanchard (whose books have sold over 25 million copies) and Mark Miller (who rose from line worker to Chick-fil-A vice president), have uncovered the secret great leaders already know in this newly revised and expanded fourth edition of an iconic classic.
Using a classic business fable, newly promoted executive Debbie Brewster asks her mentor the crucial question: "What is the secret of great leaders?" His reply - "Great leaders serve" - confuses her, but he then reveals five fundamental ways leaders succeed through service. Debbie discovers why great leaders focus on the future, how teams determine success or failure, what three arenas need continuous improvement, why leadership success has two essential components, and how to strengthen (or destroy) credibility.
This fourth expanded edition includes the proven SERVE model plus breakthrough content on leadership's most critical element -- a leader's heart.
The new and expanded features of "The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do, 4th edition" include:
Revised existing chapters:
A new chapter with five HEART habits that form the foundation for great leadership
A Comprehensive facilitator's guide for groups and teams
Expanded resources for teams and organizations
Translated into twenty-nine languages, "The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do, 4th edition" continues to deliver proven wisdom in an unforgettable story that anyone can understand and apply immediately.
Critique: An invaluable and essential reading for anyone in (or who aspires to be in) a position of leadership in their company or their community, "The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do, 4th Edition" continues to be a basic and fundamental instructional guide that is thoughtful, thought-provoking, and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, corporate, and college/university library Leadership & Management collections and supplemental MBA curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for MBA students, academia, business managers, entrepreneurs, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that this hardcover edition of "The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do, 4th Edition" is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.99).
Editorial Note #1: Ken Blanchard is cofounder of Blanchard, a leading international training and consulting firm. Author of over sixty-five books with combined sales exceeding 25 million copies, he was inducted into Amazon's Hall of Fame in 2005 as one of the top twenty-five bestselling authors of all time. His leadership expertise has influenced millions worldwide.
Editorial Note #2: Mark Miller is cofounder of Lead Every Day and former vice president of high performance leadership at Chick-fil-A. Author of twelve books, including two coauthored with Ken Blanchard, his works have sold millions of copies. His real-world corporate leadership experience brings practical insights to leadership development.
Jack Mason
Reviewer
John Burroughs' Bookshelf
Anchored, Aligned, Accountable
Aiko Bethea
Random House
c/o The Random House Publishing Group
www.randomhouse.com
9780593732168, $31.00, HC, 288pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Anchored-Aligned-Accountable-Transcending-Transforming/dp/0593732162
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/anchored-aligned-accountable-aiko-bethea/1145419047
Synopsis: We've all had them -- awkward interactions at work that could have gone differently, misunderstandings at home that led to avoidable blowups. But what if those uncomfortable moments could become opportunities for personal transformation?
With the publication of "Anchored, Aligned, Accountable: A Framework for Transcending Bullsh*t and Transforming Our Lives and Work", professional leadership coach Aiko Bethea gives us an innovative and road-tested framework for learning to show up in any situation authentically and not as the people-pleasing or conflict-avoidant versions of ourselves that have become second nature to so many of us.
The framework lays out how to successfully navigate moments of conflict: first we must be anchored in our values and purpose, then our actions and principles must be aligned, and finally we must be accountable for our impact. With these three steps, we can remake ourselves and our connections with others, fostering constructive dialogue and creating opportunities for growth.
Throughout "Anchored, Aligned, Accountable: A Framework for Transcending Bullsh*t and Transforming Our Lives and Work", Bethea draws on decades of real-life experience to show us the many forms that these scenarios can take, offering practical advice to help us lead from our most genuine selves and deepen relationships in every part of our lives. In doing so, she shows us how to transcend the bullshit we constantly encounter and meet each new day grounded in truth, connected to our values, and in control of not just what we do but who we become.
Critique: Life changing, life enhancing, and exceptionally well written, organized and presented, "Anchored, Aligned, Accountable: A Framework for Transcending Bullsh*t and Transforming Our Lives and Work" is of particular value to readers with an interest in personal self improvement/transformation, applied social psychology, leadership and motivation. A welcome and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library Self-Help/Self-Improvement instructional reference collections, it should be noted that this hardcover edition of "Anchored, Aligned, Accountable: A Framework for Transcending Bullsh*t and Transforming Our Lives and Work" from Random House is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.99).
Editorial Note: Aiko Bethea (https://www.aikobethea.com) has held executive roles in government, philanthropic, nonprofit, and private sectors, including the City of Atlanta and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She oversaw the development of leadership strategies for the Brene Brown Education and Research Group, which she continues to support. Bethea is the founder of RARE Coaching & Consulting, which provides leadership development to Fortune 100 leaders and global nonprofits. Recognized by Forbes and CultureAmp as a top anti-racism educator, her work has been published in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and the NYT Best Selling anthology, You Are Your Best Thing. She also holds a law degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and a bachelor's from Smith College.
Every Lie I Told
Hilary Davidson
Blackstone Publishing
https://www.blackstonepublishing.com
9798228475151, $29.99, HC, 371pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Every-Lie-Told-Hilary-Davidson/dp/B0FVBDQY7N
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/every-lie-i-told-hilary-davidson/1148489201
Synopsis: How far would you go to protect a killer?
Jackie Swift does whatever it takes to succeed. At work, she spins lies to protect questionable clients at a shady public-relations firm. At home, she helps her younger sister, Madi, evade consequences for dangerous choices she's made about friends and drugs. But Jackie's professional and personal worlds collide one night when she gets a call from Madi telling her she overdosed. Rushing to the rescue, Jackie stumbles on an awful scene at an Upper East Side mansion. Madi is nowhere to be found, but she's left behind a dead body.
Worse for Jackie, she knows the dead man all too well: He's her former boss and mentor, and she's been paid to cover up his crimes in the past.
Jackie is willing to do anything to protect her missing sister, even as the NYPD builds a case against Madi, who may be involved in the deaths of other sexually abusive men. As Jackie searches for her sister (and sets up plausible suspects to take Madi's place in the eyes of the police) she's haunted by the terrible things she's done in service of her career. And she soon discovers there are people who've been waiting in the shadows for a chance to take her down.
Critique: An impressively entertaining, deftly crafted novel of non-stop suspense, memorable characters, unforseen plot twists, and a simply riveting, compulsive page-turner of a read from start to finish, "Every Lie I Told" by Hilary Davidson is an unreservedly recommended pick for community library Contemporary Mystery/Suspense collections. It should be noted for the personal reading lists of the growing legions of Hilary Davidson fans that this hardcover edition of "Every Lie I Told" from Blackstone Publishing is also readily available in paperback (9798228824614, $19.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $5.99).
Editorial Note: Hilary Davidson (https://www.hilarydavidson.com) is the author of seven crime novels, including The Damage Done and Her Last Breath. Her fiction has won two Anthony Awards, a Derringer Award, and a host of other accolades. She is also the author of more than fifty short stories, two crime-fiction collections, and a novella. In her prior life as a travel journalist, Hilary authored eighteen nonfiction books.
John Burroughs
Reviewer
Julie Summers' Bookshelf
Twenty Something Else
Stephanie Mack
Tyndale House Publishers
www.tyndale.com
9798400514517, $18.99, PB, 352pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Something-Else-Stephanie-Mack/dp/B0FVTSDPHC
Synopsis: Sutton Layne is almost-forty and fabulous, with a happy marriage, three beautiful children, and a successful interior design business. But there's plenty of chaos behind the scenes of early midlife. Her preteen son is going off the rails, her husband is bailing on the party he was supposed to throw her, and that thriving business? If she can't land her next big client, it might all come crashing down. Then a surprise DM from someone in her past sends her spiraling into what-ifs. What if she settled down too young? Walked away from her big break? Never had her great adventure?
Despite her simmering mini-crisis, Sutton can't wait for the birthday luncheon and pickleball tournament her friends have planned in her honor. But when an accident on the court knocks her out cold, she wakes up somewhere else... and is offered the chance to do it all over again. She can revisit her twenties - out of order and on her own terms. And this time around, anything goes: cities, careers, friendships. Even love.
From star-studded Hollywood nights to the jungles of Nicaragua, from the heat of Coachella to the snowy summit of the Matterhorn, Sutton chases the life she fears she might have missed, with unexpected results.
With a wink to the classic film It's a Wonderful Life, "Twenty Something Else" by Stephanie Mack is a witty, wistful journey through the dreams we outgrow, the life choices that shape us, and the surprising detours that can lead us home.
Critique: Original, deftly crafted, imaginative, and a fun read from start to finish, "Twenty Something Else" by author/storyteller Stephanie Mack is a clean and wholesome novel that will hold an immense attraction for readers seeking novels with the themes of magical realism, second chances, identity, friendship, and Christian romance. While especially and unreservedly recommended for community library Contemporary Women's Literary Fiction collections, it should be noted that this paperback edition of "Twenty Something Else" from Tyndale Publishers is also readily available for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $18.99).
Editorial Note: Stephanie Mack (www.stephaniemack.com) is an author with a passion for storytelling -- on the page, on the mic, and beyond. Her novels blend women's fiction and romantic elements with meaningful insights for readers navigating the complexities of modern life.
A Graver Danger
Karen Horwitz, M.Ed.
https://www.whitechalkcrime.com/karen-horwitz
Jetlaunch Publishing
9798890792082, $18.99, PB, 392pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Graver-Danger-First-Ever-Explanation-Shootings/dp/B0DJBKLGPN
Synopsis: In 1995, the school administrators where Karen Horwitz taught fourth grade were breaking the law and instilling fear in teachers so no one would report them. She did what almost no teacher does. She spoke out and got fired to create a solid paper trail that would lead to an investigation. She took the say-something route, unsure if it would work.
She was convinced that we would lose our democracy with the schools we have. So she's here, thirty years later, having written "A Graver Danger: White Chalk Crime, The Stunning First-Ever Explanation for School Shootings & How We End Them", which explains what broke democracy and offers a solution for fixing it and our dreadful schools.
"A Graver Danger" is the first book on education reform to factor in teacher whistleblowers and the fact that ink K-12 schools too many emotional zombies are teaching our children. It is comprised of true life stories that will shock most of its readers.
"A Graver Danger" shows that:
Called-to-teach teachers are unique.
Administrators trashed many of these soul-of-our-nation teachers.
It's possible to fire teachers; they fire people like her, not bad teachers.
Administrators get school boards to relinquish their power.
Because we lost education, we lost our democracy.
Fascist-like administrators hijacked education decades ago.
They deliberately make school reform impossible.
Our unions have been going along to get along.
Anyone can do something about this once they know.
There's a viable education reform plan you can help make happen.
This is THE issue that will unite this nation.
"A Graver Danger takes you on a journey through democracy's foundation -- showing how our schools' gatekeepers have failed us. As a conscientious teacher, Karen Horwitz wants you as furious as she is that conniving administrations stole our called-to-teach teachers (our government's only spiritual force) and that no one in power has taken these teacher whistleblowers seriously.
Critique: A seminal, groundbreaking, deftly crafted and articulate call for long overdue educational reforms in our public school systems if we are to preserve our democracy, "A Graver Danger: White Chalk Crime, The Stunning First-Ever Explanation for School Shootings & How We End Them" is a critically important and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, school district, community, and college/university library Educational Reform/School Safety collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. Ideal for in-service teacher education programs, as well as the personal reading lists of teachers, school administrators, school board members, parents of K-12 school children, political activists, governmental education policy makers, and non-specialists general readers with an interest in the subject that this paperback edition of "A Graver Danger" from Jetlaunch Publishing is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $2.99).
Editorial Note: Teacher, author, activist and education reformer Karen Horwitz graduated with honors in 1963 from Oak Park River Forest High School in Oak Park, Illinois, and from the University of Illinois, Champaign where she earned a BA in Elementary Education in 1966. (https://www.whitechalkcrime.com/karen-horwitz)
A Force for Good: Gisela Warburg Wyzanski
Anita Wyzanski Robboy
https://giselawarburgwyzanski.com
Peter E. Randall Publisher
www.perpublisher.com
9781963714081, $34.95, HC, 384pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Force-Good-Gisela-Warburg-Wyzanski/dp/1963714083
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-force-for-good-anita-robboy/1148078696
Synopsis: "A Force for Good: Gisela Warburg Wyzanski" is the biography of the heroic life of Gisela Warburg Wyzanski, a courageous young German Jewish woman who leveraged her wealth and family connections to save countless children from annihilation at the hands of the Nazis.
"A Force for Good" is a true and compelling story told through a treasure trove of letters and documents carefully preserved by Gisela and recently discovered by her daughter, Anita Wyzanski Robboy. This astonishing biography by her daughter outlines Gisela's tireless efforts to rescue European children, place them in appropriate settings in their parentless journey to new lives in the land now known as Israel.
Readers will travel with Gisela through Germany, Palestine, England, and the United States, and will meet her mentors -- some of the most powerful and influential Jewish leaders of this historically significant pre-WWII to post-WWII era. They will also learn about both the horrors of the Holocaust and the tremendous power of one determined and courageous person to make a difference in the world.
Critique: An invaluable and extraordinary contribution to the expanding library of Holocaust histories and biographies, "A Force for Good: Gisela Warburg Wyzanski" is impressively well written and thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation. An inspiring testament to a woman's willingness to risk her life in behalf of the Jewish children she saved from being put to death in the Nazi death camps, "A Force for Good" is a compelling and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library Holocaust and 20th Century Jewish History and Biography collections. It should be noted for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that this hardcover edition of "A Force for Good" from Peter E. Randall Publisher is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).
Editorial Note: Anita Wyzanski Robboy (https://giselawarburgwyzanski.com) is a noted author, lawyer, and research scholar. The daughter of Gisela Warburg Wyzanski and Judge Charles E. Wyzanski, she is a partner in the Boston law firm, Prince Lobel & Tye, LLC, and a Visiting Scholar/Research Associate at Brandeis University. A Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University from 1998-2000, Robboy holds degrees from Boston University (J.D.), Tufts University (M. Ed.), and Swarthmore College (BA). She authored Aftermarriage, the Myth of Divorce (2001), and her writings include Lewis Hayden, From Fugitive Slave to Free Mason: Many Voices of Boston, and numerous articles in legal publications.
Julie Summers
Reviewer
Margaret Lane's Bookshelf
Shade of Wings
Pam McGaffin
https://pamjmcgaffin.com
She Writes Press
www.shewritespress.com
9798896363125, $18.99, PB, 296pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Shade-Wings-Novel-Pam-McGaffin/dp/B0FWZXZ7QW
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-lake-club-lina-patton/1148301193
Synopsis: Shade of Wings is a speculative young adult novel about a family of New York City crows struggling to survive the outbreak of West Nile virus during the sizzling summer of 1999.
Four-year-old crow Duncan needs to hurry up and find a mate - or so says his sister, Cloud. But she doesn't know about the mistake that's preventing him from leaving their family to start another.
Though he's the eldest, Duncan doesn't see himself as a leader. Yet that's what he must become when both his parents die of the mysterious illness that's killing crows across New York City. He devotes himself to caring for his siblings, including three fledglings -- but he soon discovers he can't protect them from the "blind death".
Meanwhile, a zoo pathologist's worst fears are realized. It starts with dead flamingos. Then critically ill New Yorkers start showing up in hospital emergency rooms.
Some blame the crows.
Critique: Original, deftly written, and a novel that will have enormous appeal for fans of anthropomorphic fiction in the tradition of Animal Farm or Watership Downs, "Shade of Wings" by Pam McGaffin is an extraordinary, compelling, fascinating read from start to finish. A unique and unreservedly recommended pick for highschool and community library YA Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that this paperback edition of "Shade of Wings" from She Writes Press is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $12.99).
Editorial Note: Pam McGaffin (https://pamjmcgaffin.com) is a writer whose work has been published in literary journals, newspapers, and on websites. Her first novel, The Leaving Year, (SparkPress, 2018), won three finalist teen fiction awards and took first place in the 2018 Best Book Awards for young adult fiction.
The Unraveling of Michael Galler
Steven M. Rubin
https://stevenmrubin.com
SparkPress
c/o Spark Point Studio
www.gosparkpress.com
9798896363743, $18.99, PB, 404pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Unraveling-Michael-Galler-Novel/dp/B0FWZVV6H6
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-unraveling-of-michael-galler-steven-m-rubin/1148560728
Synopsis: After observing multiple terminal effects of varying illnesses of those close to him that he perceives as cancer, Michael Galler gains a heightened cognizance of the physical threats that can grow unknowingly inside a person. As a result, he dedicates himself to healthily fortifying his body against any comparable assault.
While growing up with his loving, widowed father and the younger brother he feels compelled to protect, Michael is able to balance the pressures of his young life - academic achievement, high school athletic competition, and even training for the Boston Marathon. But as he moves toward college life, he develops a promising relationship with a girl who too easily fills the gaps of his motherless upbringing -- and his long-held fear of what he now thinks of as capital-C Cancer begins to take over. Everything he experiences, he experiences through the filter of trying to outrun a disease he thinks is pursuing him.
A dramatic coming-of-age tale with a dark psychological twist, with the publication of "The Unraveling of Michael Galler", author Steven M. Rubin explores the motives of a teenage boy so overwhelmed by an obsessive fear that he loses his grip on reality.
Critique: Original, exceptional, deftly crafted, and an inherently reader engaging read from start to finish, "The Unraveling of Michael Galler" is a fascinating, thought-provoking, and revelatory novel on the themes of death and bereavement, loss and grief, and coming of age in a state of pervasive fear of terminal illness. A story told by an author with a genuine flair for a distinctive, character and narrative driven storytelling style, "The Unraveling of Michael Galler" by Steven Rubin is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended pick for community/public library Contemporary General Fiction collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that this paperback edition of "The Unraveling of Michael Galler" from SparkPress is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $12.99).
Editorial Note: Steven M. Rubin (https://stevenmrubin.com) was raised in a suburb of Boston, MA, played football at the University of Pennsylvania, and spent his career developing, negotiating, and implementing employee benefit strategies for large employers. He has completed the New York Marathon, the 100th running of the famed Boston Marathon, and the Marine Corps Marathon. Although a heart attack ended his third marathon at the halfway mark, he returned five years later to successfully finish what he started. After raising three children with his wife, Kerrie, he now lives in Weston, Connecticut.
Changing Cadence: Friendship, Football and the Art of Transition
Andra Douglas
ampliFLY
9781733583527, $18.00, PB, 388pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Changing-Cadence-Friendship-Football-Transition/dp/1733583521
Synopsis: "Changing Cadence: Friendship, Football and the Art of Transition" by Andra Douglas tells the story of the challenges of morphing into the "next stages of life" that inevitably arrive for all of us, young and old.
Based on a true story, these transitions are viewed through the character of Christine, a middle-aged athlete and entertainment industry executive living in New York City. She has reluctantly aged out of being the quarterback of the New York Sharks, the most storied team in the little-known women's tackle football league, but she is still the team's owner. With big decisions staring her down after an illustrious 20-year career, she has come to terms with selling the team, but only after negotiating one more year before it is turned over to the new owners.
Meanwhile, back on the literal ranch in rural, central Florida, Christine's mother Dorothy, the matriarch of Christine's ranching family, embarks on a life-changing passage when she moves from her lifelong home on 'The Hill,' to The Commons, a nearby assisted living complex. Many in the complex have spent their entire lives in small town Zephyrhills and know each other well (the good and the bad) and are collectively experiencing their childhood all over again.
As word gets out that Christine (whom they have known since she was born) is selling her beloved women's tackle football team and they will be playing their last season, the semi-nosey, semi-bored group at The Commons decides to follow the Sharks through Facetime chats and streaming games in the complex's movie room.
If you have ever questioned your station in life, felt the onslaught of age and ageism or struggled to find peace of mind in fickle times, then join this captivating season of hilarity and poignance as Christine travels back and forth between the team in NYC and The Commons in Zephyrhills, Florida. Witnessing the unlikely bond that forms between the young, fast-talking New York City female athletes and the often crusty octogenarians in a small, deeply southern Florida town, is a head-on collision of "Old Florida" and the "Greatest City in the World."
Critique: Original, exceptional, extraordinary, laced throughout with good humor and memorably crafted characters, "Changing Cadence: Friendship, Football and the Art of Transition" by Andra Douglas is one of those novels whose story will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the book has been finished and set back upon the shelf. This paperback edition of "Changing Cadence" is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal reading lists, as well as community and college/university library Contemporary American Literary Fiction collections.
Editorial Note: Andra Douglas is a native of central Florida and a graduate of Florida State University and Pratt Institute. She has been a National Champion athlete in rugby and as a quarterback in women's tackle football, a Vice President/Creative Director at Atlantic Records/Time Warner, the founder of the Fins Up! Foundation for Female Athletes, a non-profit that benefits at-risk teens, the owner of the two-time national champion New York Sharks Women's Pro Football team for 19 years, an inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio and a known artist. She lives with her parrot, 'Joi' in New York City where she spends much of her time writing and working from her rooftop studio in Greenwich Village on her mixed-media artwork.
Margaret Lane
Reviewer
Mark Walker's Bookshelf
Sir Vidia's Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents
Paul Theroux
Mariner Books
c/o HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com
9780547526195, $22.99 pbk / $11.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Sir-Vidias-Shadow-Friendship-Continents/dp/0618001999
One of the joys of reviewing books and the opportunity to get to know fellow writers, which is why I selected this book as I admire both writers and Paul Theroux's Sir Vidia's Shadow is one of the most intimate, unsettling, and revealing portraits ever written of a literary friendship. It is a study in mentorship, ambition, ego, and the corrosive effects of genius on human relationships. The book traces Theroux's thirty-one-year relationship with V. S. Naipaul - beginning in a University in Kampala in the mid-1960s, when Theroux was a young Peace Corps teacher and Naipaul was already a rising star - and follows its evolution through admiration, dependence, rivalry, estrangement, and, finally, a surprising late-life reconciliation.
The relationship begins in Uganda, where Theroux encounters Naipaul as a kind of literary rock star - brilliant, intimidating, and already the author of A House for Mr. Biswas, one of my favorite novels which lead some critics call him "the greatest living English writer." Naipaul, nicknamed Vidia was knighted in 1990 and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. For the young Theroux, Naipaul was not simply a model but a living embodiment of what a writer could be: disciplined, uncompromising, and fiercely intelligent. Early on, Theroux becomes Naipaul's apprentice absorbing the master's lessons - about prose, about travel, about the writer's life.
The mentorship was real. Naipaul read Theroux's drafts, offered guidance, and pushed him toward a more exacting standard. In these years, the friendship feels symbiotic: Naipaul gains a devoted younger companion; Theroux gains a literary father figure.
As the decades pass, the relationship becomes more complicated. Fame alters Naipaul, and success alters Theroux. What began as apprenticeship becomes rivalry, and what began as admiration becomes a mixture of affection, resentment, and bafflement. Although Theroux claims that he didn't write out of vengeance, "I haven't turned on Naipaul." He says. "This is about the complexities of friendship."
One of the most revealing threads is the way personal relationships intersect with literary ones. Theroux's connection with Naipaul's first wife, Pat, is tender and respectful; he portrays her as the emotional ballast in Naipaul's life, a woman whose quiet suffering and loyalty stand in stark contrast to Naipaul's increasing emotional austerity. But the dynamic shifts which Naipaul later marries Nadira whose presence accelerates the distancing between the two writers.
Theroux's transparency includes revealing his subconsciousness. He recounts recurring dreams - dreams of pursuit, judgment, and reconciliation - that underscore how deeply the older writer inhabited his psyche. These dreams are not literary devices, reflect how thoroughly Naipaul became a symbolic figure in Theroux's inner life.
Theroux is equally unflinching in his criticisms. He says of Naipaul, "Years of skepticism had given Vidia a fixed mask of suspicion - a sour mouth, a raptor's beak, cheated eyes... You never wanted that face turned against yours."
After years of silence - years in which Naipaul abruptly cut him off, and years in which Theroux believed the friendship irretrievably lost - the two men meet again unexpectedly at the Hay Festival. I didn't understand the resolution of this rift until I found out about the epilogue Theroux wrote in the 2011 edition - thirteen years after the first edition.
Theroux's tone in this final section is markedly different from the rest of the book. The anger has dissipated; the hurt has softened. What remains is perspective. The epilogue reframes the entire narrative - not as an indictment but as a testament to the complexity of human bonds, especially those forged in the crucible of artistic ambition. Evidently, Theroux found a diary of those later years, which for Theroux is written to forget things, but in this case it proved to him that he didn't need it.
The book ends with a chance encounter at a large conference where Theroux spotted Naipaul and a writer friend of Theroux urged him to approach Naipaul. Theroux touched his arm and he when Naipaul turned scowling he said, "Hello Vidia" and he said "Paul Theroux." With a beaming Smilie he took Theroux's hand and said, "how good of you to greet me like this."
Theroux said, "I've missed you." "Yes, yes, yes." Theroux was moved as Naiaul squeezed his hand, smiled and was led away."
In the end, the shadow in the title is not only Naipaul's. It is the shadow cast by any formative relationship that shapes a life and a career. Theroux steps out of that shadow in the act of writing this book, and in doing so, he gives readers a compelling portraits of a literary friendship.
About the Author:
Paul Theroux was a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi from 1963-65. His many books (56) include Picture Palace, which won the 1978 Whitbread Literary Award; The Mosquito Coast, which was the 1981 Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year and joint winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was also made into a feature film. Burma Sahib was his latest novel.
Mark D. Walker, Reviewer
www.MillionMileWalker.com
Michael Carson's Bookshelf
USCG Cutter Eagle: The Legacy of the Coast Guard's Flagship
Will Sofrin, author
Capt. Simon Colley, foreword
The Lyons Press
c/o The Globe Pequot Press
www.globepequot.com
9781493092628, $24.95, PB, 232pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/USCG-Cutter-Eagle-Legacy-Flagship/dp/1493092626
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/uscg-cutter-eagle-will-sofrin/1148151386
Synopsis: The USCG Cutter Eagle has been an integral part of the United States Coast Guard since her commissioning in 1946, serving as both a training ship and a representation of the Coast Guard's commitment to excellence.
Originally built in Germany as the Horst Wessel and sailing under the Nazi flag, she was taken as a war prize after World War II and transformed into a vessel that reflects America's democratic ideals. Eagle trains USCG Academy cadets, offering instruction in navigation, ship handling, and the rigors of life at sea.
She also embodies the hard work, discipline, and sacrifice that members of the Coast Guard dedicate to protecting the nation, often in less publicized yet critical roles.
Critique: Nicely illustrated, impressively informative, exceptionally well written, organized and presented, "USCG Cutter Eagle: The Legacy of the Coast Guard's Flagship" is a unique and welcome addition to the growing library of American Military Maritime History collections. Informatively enhanced for the reader's benefit with the inclusion of two Appendices (USCGC Eagle Commanding Officers & Eagle Itinerary 1946-2025), a one page Bibliography, and a four page Index, this hardcover edition of the "USCG Cutter Eagle: The Legacy of the Coast Guard's Flagship" from Lyons Press is unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community and college/university American Naval History collections and supplemental curriculum studies list. It should be noted for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "USCG Cutter Eagle: The Legacy of the Coast Guard's Flagship" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $17.99).
Editorial Note: Will Sofrin is a master shipwright who has taught at MIT and has built boats for Billy Joel and Estee Lauder. As a former professional sailor and licensed captain, he has tracked more than 30,000 blue-water miles. Today he is a freelance writer for numerous maritime periodicals, continues to race sailboats, and explores the coast of California with his wife and daughter. He is the author of All Hands on Deck (Abrams) and an advisor on the exhibit committee for the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Editorial Note #2: From its founding in 1887 through today, the USCG Alumni Association connects Coast Guard Academy alumni across the generations to further their philanthropy and engagement with the Academy and beyond. Their proud and connected alumni, cadet, and Academy communities thrive as leaders of character in service to their peers, the Coast Guard, and humanity.
Gil Kane Rarities Vol. 1: Jungle Book, Ka-Zar, Gullivar and Other Rediscovered Work
Gil Kane
Fantagraphics
www.fantagraphics.com
9798875002045, $39.99, HC, 240pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Marvels-No-Rarities-Rediscovered/dp/B0FY4H4FW1
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lost-marvels-no-4-gil-kane/1148626218
Synopsis: With the publication of "Gil Kane Rarities Vol. 1: Jungle Book, Ka-Zar, Gullivar and Other Rediscovered Work", is a compendium of the iconic visual storytelling art and accomplishments of the legendary Gil Kane.
This fourth volume in the 'Lost Marvels' series from Fantagraphics once again delves into the misty margins of Marvel's past to shine a light on extraordinary work that has never or rarely been collected for modern readers.
"Gil Kane Rarities" is the first volume of a compendium of some of the legendary Gil Kane's finest storytelling. Freed from the conventions of super-hero battles, Kane's art is a revelation here, capturing in flamboyant, imaginative detail the classic settings and characters of Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book tales (made even more vibrant by the great P. Craig Russell's inking); the origin of Ka-Zar from Astonishing Tales; and episodes of Gullivar Jones, Warrior of Mars, an adaptation by Kane and Roy Thomas of the seminal 1905 SF/Fantasy novel.
Of special note is the inclusion of a genre-hopping gallery of 100 exciting covers by Gil Kane who almost single-handedly defined the look of 1970s-era Marvel.
Critique: This large format (11.38 x 0.79 x 8.5 inches) and profusely illustrated hardcover edition of "Lost Marvels No. 4: Gil Kane Rarities Vol. 1: Jungle Book, Ka-Zar, Gullivar and Other Rediscovered Work" from Fantagraphics is a 'must' for the legions of Gil Kane fans, as well as a welcome and enduringly popular pick for personal, professional, community, art school, college, and university library Comic & Graphic Art History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.
Editorial Note: The late Gil Kane (1926-2000) was a comic book artist whose career spanned the 1940s to the 1990s. Kane co-created the modern-day versions of the superheroes Green Lantern and the Atom for DC Comics, and created the independently published precursors to the graphic novel, His Name Is... Savage! and Blackmark. He is in both the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame and the Harvey Award Jack Kirby Hall of Fame.
Michael J. Carson
Reviewer
Robin Friedman's Bookshelf
Wittgenstein and Relativism
Martin Kusch, author
Cambridge University Press
https://www.cambridge.org
9781009554565, $25.00, paperback, $23.00, Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Wittgenstein-Relativism-Elements-Philosophy-Ludwig/dp/1009554565
Is Wittgenstein A Relativist?
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is one of the greatest and most discussed 20th Century philosophers. His difficult thought changed markedly throughout his life.
Cambridge University Press publishes a series of short monographs called "Elements" which includes 22 volumes on the thought of Wittgenstein edited by philosopher David Stern. This recent volume in the series is "Wittgenstein and Relativism" by Martin Kusch (b. 1959) a highly regarded Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. This short, difficult and thoughtful book taught me a great deal.
A difficulty at the outset is understanding the nature of "relativism", a term Wittgenstein never uses. Still, a great deal of scholarly work has been done on the question whether Wittgenstein is or is not a relativist. Kusch gives a historical account placing Wittgenstein's thought in the context of the thought of his time which was then considered to be relativist. He explores how Wittgenstein responded to these then current views of relativism. Thus, Kusch tries to relate Wittgenstein's thought to the intellectual trends of his day and see how his thought ties in with concepts of relativism. Kusch says his goal is more historical, understanding what Wittgenstein says, than assessing the extent to which his position was right. Nevertheless, there is provocative philosophical analysis in this book.
Kusch concludes that Wittgenstein's thought was relativistic and explores what this meant and what were the many nuances Wittgenstein brought to his thinking. His study explores an outstanding range of intellectual activity in its three chapters.
In the first chapter, "Cultural Relativism, Historicism, and the Ethnological Approach" Kusch sees, in Wittgenstein's work after the "Tractatus", a strongly enthnological influence, emphasizing how different cultures create different ways of thinking. Much of this discussion reminded me of the American pragmatist and naturalist, John Dewey. Kusch discusses figures including Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, Alexander Goldenweiser, Ostwald Spengler, and others to support an ethnographically based understanding of knowledge as opposed to the evolutionary base urged by James Fraser in "The Golden Bough". Kusch argues that Wittgenstein uses the "ethnological perspective" as a philosophical basis to reject absolutistic ways of thinking and to stress the importance of culture. This "ethnological perspective" carries through the remainder of Kusch's study.
In the second chapter, "Psychologism, Sociologism, Ethnology" considers psychologistic forms of relativism and sociolgistic forms, evidenced in the work of Karl Mannheim. He also introduces another difficult philosophical term, "naturalism" and finds it has two forms, a scientifically-based naturalism, and a naturalism which is much looser and harder to pin down.
He considers thinkers including Frege, Husserl, and Schlick and explores Wittgenstein's thinking on measurement, logic, and mathematics. Kusch finds Wittgenstein rejects both psychologism and the Platonizing of Frege or Husserl in favor of a scientifically based naturalism which relies heavily on enthnology. Here again philosophy functions at a greater level of generality and detachment than do the findings of the sciences. Ethnology remains crucial to Wittgenstein's thinking about mathematics and logic.
In the third chapter, "Relativism, Pseudorationalism, and the Ethnological Approach to Certainty" Kusch examines Wittgenstein's late work "On Certainty". He admits his understanding of this book is not shared by all readers. He compares and contrasts Wittgenstein's position with the positions of Schlick and Neurath on the nature of truth and on whether truth involves a strong correspondence with reality or a looser coherence-based position. Yet again, Kusch finds Wittgenstein's thought ethnological. While Wittgenstein's thought is relativistic, Kusch denies that this means that one form of thinking is always as good as any other. He develops a careful pattern, in a short work, of the differening ways people respond to experience and to those who think differently from themselves. Wittgenstein's thought is relativistic in its heavy ethnological emphasis and in its rejection of absolutism. Here is Kusch's conclusion.
"The three main sections of this Element are connected by the thought that the "ethnological perspective" is central to Wittgenstein's later philosophy as a whole and that this perspective brings with it a methodological relativism. Still, Wittgenstein's relativism is not just methodological, it is also substantive: Wittgenstein's rejects absolutes in the assessment of magic, religious, or science; he undermines Platonism and other forms of absolutism in the philosophy of logic and mathematics; and he challenges absolutism in his account of certainties."
This book may be an "Element" but it is not for beginners. It is a wonderfully challenging book on Wittgenstein, on his intellectual milieu, and on his relationship to the relativisms of his day.
The Anthropologists
Aysegul Savas, author
Bloomsbury Publishing
https://www.bloomsbury.com
9781639736683, $17.99 paperback / $13.48 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Anthropologists-Ayseg%C3%BCl-Savas/dp/1639736689
A Documentary of City Life
Asegul Savas' short novel, "The Anthropologists" (2024) documents a moment of the life of a young married couple, Asya and Manu, looking for a direction for their future in a large, nameless city. The couple met at university where they were scholarship students. They each came from a different country with a different birth languange. They fell in love at the outset, married, and after living in a few small towns, settled in a large city where they have lived in a small rental apartment for some years. They are looking for stability and direction in their lives and are house-hunting, a frequent activity for young couples.
Asya, the young woman, narrates the story and gives it her perspective. She is a documentary film maker, and her most recent project is making a documentary of city life at a local park. Her husband, Manu, has a steadier but low-paying job working for a non-profit. The book shows Asya and Manu's life together as they look for an apartment to buy, work, spend time together, socialize with friends old and new, keep in touch with their families, and do considerable drinking. They don't have a strong social network or religious practice and seek to move on in life. Possibly children are in the future.
The book moves in a series of short, almost self-contained vignettes narrated by Asya. There is no plot, but the book moves forward against the backdrop of house-hunting as the couple explore different possibilities of apartments to buy in different parts of the city. Life goes on as they deal with friends, jobs, relatives. Asya and Manu are in search of themselves as much as of an apartment to buy. They offer many comments on their search through the novel as they are highly self-conscious while they have a low regard for therapy. Many of the titles of the vignettes repeat themselves during the course of the novel, each time with shifts in meaning and context, The repeating titles include "Future Selves", "Principles of Kinship", "Ways to Live", among others.
The most fascinating part of this novel involves Asya's work as a documentary filmaker, a path she has pursued at least since college. Her project involves the everyday and making a documentary set in a large city park, with its environs, including a carrousel and a fountain. Asya films the park and the people who come to visit to learn what attracts them to the park and why they enjoy it. Asya's inteviews with different visitors to the park often are presented under the heading "In the Park".
Asya also reflects on the attraction this documentary of the park has for her, as she says it is her ambition to capture "the slow and leisurely rot of a day." Later, Asya reflects on the fascination she feels for the different routines of strangers and of the uniqueness displayed by each person in spending an hour or so at the park. "Different people are different" as Manu says. Still later in the book, Asya suggests that there may be a commonality or universality among park visitors and among people underlying the apparent differences. She says: "All the months that I had been filming, I'd thought that there were so many ways of living, of inhabiting the park..... I'd begun to understand that there was, also, only one way to live beneath the multitude of forms, one way forward through the fleeting hours of a day." (155-156).
The novel's author, Savas, has written a documentary in the same sense that her character, Asya, creates a documentary film. The novel has short scenes of people doing a specific task and of places in the city but also elsewhere. The scenes are presented in their immediacy, sometimes with comments from the characters but not from the author, and loosely tied together. The reader is encouraged to reflect on the whole, and also to reflect on Asya and Manu,on where they are and on what may be the course of their lives in the future.
I was reminded in this documentary story of the work of the late documentary filmaker, Frederick Wiseman (January 1, 1930 -- February 16, 2026,) Wiseman explored American life and American institutions in a series of films which allowed individuals to speak for themselves. Wiseman endeavored to capture everyday American life while also allowing the viewer to think about economic and social realities in the United States. For example, in "Monrovia, Indiana"(2018), Wiseman captures life in a small "Red" American town during the first Trump administration, offering insight into daily life and into how people in Monrovia saw themselves. Something of this course is involved in Asya's work as a documentary filmmaker (and in the work of an older documentary filmmaker in the story known as the Great Dame) and in Savas' writing as the storyteller.
This little novel offers a view of the potential of city life and of people, and presents much material for reflection.
Democracy And Poetry
Robert Penn Warren, author
Harvard University Press
https://www.hup.harvard.edu
9780674196254, $32,00, paperback
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Poetry-Harvard-Paperbacks-Robert/dp/0674196260
An Adventure In The Celebration Of Life
In 1972, the National Endowment for the Arts established the Jefferson Lecture which the NEA aptly describes as "the highest honor the federal government bestows for achievement in the humanities." The recipient of the honor delivers a lecture in Washington, D.C. in conjunction with the spring meeting of the National Council on the Humanities. The series has become distinguished, and several participants have subsequently published their lectures.
In 1974, Robert Penn Warren was invited to deliver what was the third Jefferson lecture. Warren (1905 -- 1989) was a novelist and poet who had received the Pulitzer prize for both fiction and poetry, a rare accomplishment, together with the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize, and the National Medal for Literature, among other honors. Warren chose as his subject "Poetry and Democracy". Warren subsequently expanded his Jefferson Lecture into two essays and published them in a short book with the title "Democracy and Poetry" (1976).
Although titled "Democracy and Poetry", the book explores the relationship of at least three broad concepts: democracy, poetry (defined broadly to include all "making" or artistic creation), and, most elusive of all, selfhood. Warren explores these three concepts as they appear primarily in American literature, but he considers broader sources as well. Warren views American poetry as "a corrosive criticism -- of our actual achievements over the years in democracy". The theme is broad and the discussion free-wheeling for the small compass of the essays. Warren properly views the result as more of a personal meditation which may provoke thought in readers than a historical study. The goal of the essays is to explain the importance of poetry in the recreating and revitalization of democracy.
In the first and shorter essay, "America and the Diminished Self", Warren offers a whirlwind tour of American writers beginning with namesake of the lecture series, Thomas Jefferson, and passing through Cooper, Emerson, Whitman, Melville, Howells, Twain, Dreiser, Eliot, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and others. Warren tries to use these varied Americans to show that the "decay of the concept of self has been, consciously or unconsciously, a developing and fundamental theme for our writers." With the expansion of technology and materialism and the Civil War, the initial optimism for a free society of independent individuals faded among American writers. Gradually, a sense of alienation or cynicism took its place. With the skepticism engendered about democracy came a disintegration of the idea of independent selfhood, for Warren. He finds, however, that those Americans who care about the arts still find in these sources the means of understanding and celebrating the United States and its potential for both democracy and independent selfhood.
The second and longer essay, "Poetry and Selfhood" is even broader in scope than the first. In it Warren tries to "document the decay of the concept of self in relation to our present society and its ideals." The focus of the essay shifts from "diagnosing" the situation to helping to cure it. Writing in 1974, Warren expresses alarm with what he terms the "Technetronic Age"; and his concern would doubtless have intensified during the current age of the Internet. Besides American writers, Warren draws heavily or the thought of Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Augustine, and Martin Buber. The analysis is difficult. Broadly, Warren argues that technological, rationalistic advances have alienated people from themselves. He finds strong evidences of self-alienation in American consumerism and materialism. He finds people are the benefit of leisure time which they do not use in fulfilling ways but instead turn to passively buying whatever is thrown at them in the way of goods or ideas or events -- such as the mindless cult of a "fan" for his favorite sports team.
The arts, for Warren, are a way of human re-creation in what he sees, correctly or not, as a world of increased leisure. The arts have a role in diagnosing the human condition and in offering redress in the celebration of life. Poetry,Warren writes, serves as an
"antidote, a sovereign antidote for passivity. For the basic fact about poetry is that it demands participation, from the secret physical echo in muscle and nerve that identifies us with the medium, to the imaginative enactment that stirs the deepest recesses where life-will and values reside. Beyond that, it nourishes our life-will in the process of testing our values. And this is not to be taken as implying a utilitarian aesthetic. It is, rather, one way of describing our pleasure in poetry as an adventure in the celebration of life."
Warren sees people as having a "divided nature" between the self of material needs and the everyday and the self that seeks for meaning, unity, and purpose. He sees the arts as a means of bringing this divided nature into one.
Warren's little book provocatively explores the question of what it means to live a fulfilled human life. Although I find Warren draws too sharp a line between an art which criticizes on the one hand and an art which properly may celebrate and explain what may be valuable and worth praising in a culture on the other hand, his book explores how individuals may live with a purpose, at whatever stage of life they may be.
Norwegian Wood
Haruki Murakami, author
Jay Rubin, translator
Vintage
https://www.knopfdoubleday.com
9780375704024, $17.00, paperback / $8.99 Kindle
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Norwegian-Wood-Haruki-Murakami/dp/0375704027
A Novel For The Heart
When this book, "Norwegian Wood", first appeared in Japan in 1987, the author, Haruki Murakami, became such a celebrity that he fled his native land and lived abroad for several years. Since that time, the book has retained its popularity in Japan and become almost as popular elsewhere. With its intimacy, gentle sadness, and wisdom, the book deserves the love in which it is held.
"Norwegian Wood" describes the search for love in the face of the loneliness which separates people. The story is recounted by the 37-year old narrator, Toru Watanabe, in recollecting his university life in Tokyo eighteen years earlier. Watanabe is moved to reflect on his younger life by hearing a pale orchestral version of the Beatle's song "Norwegian Wood" while flying on a plane to Hamburg. Thus Murakami suggests at the outset how memory pales in comparison to actual events. The narrator, Watanabe, writes down his memories as an act of catharsis.
Although set in Japan, the characters in this book are largely westernized in their interests and behavior. The book is set against the backdrop of the student protests which were a prominent feature of university life in Japan, as in the United States, in the late 1960s. But the element of protest is muted and downplayed. It is largely a foil to the novel's themes of the search for love, intimacy, and sexuality. It is the latter types of things that matter, for the book, rather than the evanescent forms of public protest.
"Norwegian Wood" is a coming-of-age story in the manner of many American novels. The young Watanabe falls in love with two young women, Naoko and Midori. Naoko had been the childhood sweetheart of Watanabe's friend Kizuki, who mysteriously commits suicide at the age of 17. She and Watanabe renew their acquaintance by chance in Tokyo and gradually become intimate. They sleep together only on Naoko's 20th birthday, but this event becomes pivotal to their relationship. Watanabe also befriends and gradually becomes involved with an extroverted, independent young woman named Midori who helps her aging father operate a small bookstore. Watanabe befriends her father when he is dying in the hospital. When Naoko leaves the university to live in a rest home or sanitarium (in the manner of Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain") Watanabe struggles with his feelings for her and for Midori. Even in his maturity, when the reader meets Watanabe age 37, it is unclear whether he has fully resolved his feelings in a way that brings him peace.
Murakami's novel focuses on sex and on its relationship to love. Much of the book describes the frustration of wanting a person that is distant or that one otherwise cannot have. Watanabe, and the young women in this book, all struggle with their feelings. While pursuing his serious relationships, Watanabe, in the company of his friend Nagasawa, frequently and successfully pursue young women in bars for one-night stands, an activity which Watanabe claims brings him little pleasure. In contrast to these incidents, Watanabe has only the single act of consummation with Naoko and apparently none during the course of the book with Midori. In a time of relatively easy sexuality, which is nostalgically and non-critically portrayed, Watanabe tries to know his emotions. Sexuality is portrayed positively, on the whole, and as integral to full human intimacy.
This is a sad tale which ends unhappily for many of its characters. Yet Watanabe and the other figures in the book struggle on to adulthood. Music plays a large role in the book. Much of the story reenacts the enigmatic lyrics to the Beatle song of the title, which was the favorite song of Naoko. Midori is a singer and Watanabe plays the guitar, both poorly. Naoko's friend at the sanitarium, an older woman named Reiko, is a trained classical pianist who continues to play on the guitar, "Norwegian Wood", other Beatles songs, Bach fugues and much else. Reiko also teaches Watanabe a great deal about knowing his own heart. Music, love, and sex are tied intimately here, as they are in life.
Some time ago, I read Murakami's novel "Sputnik Sweetheart" which explores similar themes of love, sexuality, music, and frustration. Although I enjoyed that novel a great deal, it lacks the poignancy of this earlier and on the surface simple love story. This book speaks of the centrality and difficulty in life of the search for love. It also shows the difficulty of knowing oneself.
Old World, New World: Great Britain and America from the Beginning
Kathleen Burk, author
Grove/Atlantic
https://www.groveatlantic.com
9780802144294, $19.95, paperback
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Old-World-New-Britain-Beginning/dp/0871139715
Great Britain And The United States Intertwined
At the outset of her study of the historical relationship between Great Britain and the United States, Kathleen Burk quotes the American novelist and expatriate to Britain Henry James: "I have not the least hesitation in saying that I aspire to write in such a way that it wd. be impossible to an outsider to say whether I am, at a given moment, an American writing about England or an Englishman writing about America ... & so far from being ashamed of such an ambiguity I should be exceedingly proud of it, for it would be highly civilized."
As did Henry James, Professor Burk has strong ties to both the United States and England. She is a fourth generation Californian with degrees from UCLA. Following her studies in the United States, Burk took a degree from Oxford. On a personal level, Burk tells the reader, she is married to an Englishman. Burk currently teaches at Oxford, but she has also taught extensively in her native land. Her book, "Old World, New World" shows that Professor Burk has succeeded in the difficult task of seeing the relationship between the United States and Great Britain with sympathy and understanding from both sides. Her ability to become part of each culture is the chief strength of this excellent history.
In her book, Burk tries to show that there is a "special relationship" between the United States and Britain which is largely different from the relationship between any other two nations. She traces the course of this relationship over four centuries, beginning with the first attempts at British colonization of America in the early 17th Century to the present day. With the lengthy time frame of her study, Burk shows how the relationship has evolved. Thus, the story begins with Britain beginning her rise to Empire and then losing what were the 13 colonies in the Revolutionary War. Britain continued her rise to world dominance in the Nineteenth Century over a rambunctious United States. With the 20th Century, the costs of two World Wars, the end of Britain's empire, and the conclusion of the Cold War,the positions of the United States and Britain were reversed. The United States became the world's dominant economic and military power, while a restive Britain reluctantly settled into the role of regional power. Burk shows how the United States and Britain shared many of the same traits during their times of world dominance. These traits include a genuine desire to do good and to act democratically. Both countries also shared a certain arrogance and blindness in concluding that they possessed some special insight into what was good and in too readily conflating "the good" with their own political and economic ambitions.
Burk also describes the "love-hate" character of the relationship between Great Britain and the United States. At the outset of the relationship, the colonists were proud to consider themselves British subjects. With the Revolution and American independence, the two countries were enemies for many years. Even though this was the case, many people on both sides of the Atlantic realized that the two peoples had much in common. There was a degree of forbearance in the relationship, particularly by Britain, during the Nineteenth Century. Burk finds a watershed in the relationship occured in 1871, when difficulties arising from the American Civil War between the countries and various longstanding boundary issues were settled. During the late 19th and early 20th Century, Britain showed deference to the growing United States on a number of issues which, in the absence of restraint, could have led to war. In the Twentieth Century, the United States and Britain combined as allies and friends in two world wars.
Professor Burk's study consists of eight chapters, five of which discuss the ongoing political relationships between Britain and the United States. In separate chapters, she explores the colonial period and the Revolutionary War. In a lengthy third chapter, she covers the relationship between Britain and the United States from 1783-1872, a period which includes the War of 1812, American expansion, and the Civil War. She discusses the change of relationship and of the status of the two countries in a chapter covering 1872 to 1945. And she concludes with a discussion of the twisting course of the alliance since 1945.
In three chapters that function as lengthy interludes to the political history, Burk offers insight into how people on both sides of the Atlantic viewed the relationship through examining the many travel books that were written during the 19th Century. In an excellent chapter, "Some aspects of Everyday Life in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century" Burk shows how literary and social ideas crossed the Atlantic in both directions bringing the United States and Britain closer together. Finally, in a chapter titled "Anglo- American Marital Relations: 1870-1945 she shows how the relationship between the two countries was influenced by intermarriages. She tells the story of Jenny Churchill, the American mother of the Prime Minister, and of the many marriages between Americans and British subjects that resulted from WW II.
Burk's book offers a comprehensive overview of British American relationships, told in the voice of an insider to both cultures. I learned a great deal from the breadth and depth of her study.
Robin Friedman
Reviewer
Suanne Schafer's Bookshelf
In the Great Quiet
Laura Vogt
https://www.lauravogt.com
Lake Union Publishing
https://amazonpublishing.amazon.com/lake-union-publishing.html
9781662535314, $3.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FGY8NDHL
In the Great Quiet opens with the Oklahoma land rush of 1893. An independent young woman, Minnie Hoopes, plans to stake a claim, hoping for land to call her own. When her claim is challenged by two outlaws, Minnie soon has their blood on her hands. She choses to isolate herself, even from her brothers who staked claims nearby. Eventually, she finds that she does need others and begins an uneasy friendship with another outlaw known as the Lawman - with unexpected results.
The prose is gorgeous. I particularly liked Vogt's use of color to richly describe the flora and fauna of the Great Plains with which she seems well-acquainted. The sexual tension between the Lawman and Minnie is prime reading for romance lovers in this slow-burn novel. What was less successful was Vogt's attempts to tie Minnie to the past and future of Oklahoma through her "visions" of characters in the past. These paranormal touches seem out of place in a character who is solidly down-to-earth. My own grandparents settled in West Texas in the 1870s, and many of their stories about those days are echoed in Vogt's book, so the pioneer details felt appropriate.
The Last Road Trip
Jennifer Klepper
https://www.jenniferklepper.com
Red Adept Publishing, LLC
https://redadeptpublishing.com
9781958231630, $9.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Road-Trip-Jennifer-Klepper/dp/1958231630
In The Last Road Trip, Mary Blake Bulloch convinces four of her sorority sisters to redo their college trip which was cut short by a disaster twenty years earlier. Each woman is dealing with her own crisis of some sort - divorce, terminal illness, death of a beloved brother, etc - as well as dark secrets from the past. Each hopes the trip will provide some respite as well as a chance to renew friendships. During the new trip, old grievances resurface, and former alliances shift like tectonic plates. Things better off left unsaid are said while things that should be said are reburied.
This is a dual point-of-view story with a timeline split 1999 and 2019. While it's a good read, with five main characters who have similar voices, it's easy to get them confused. I would have preferred stronger character development in fewer characters. I enjoyed seeing the fractures within each individual friendship and within the group itself as well as the ultimately healing.
The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan
Jenny Nordberg
Crown
https://crownpublishing.com/archives/imprint/crown-publishers
9780307952516, $13.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Underground-Girls-Kabul-Resistance-Afghanistan-ebook/dp/B00GEYL2SA
This book is one of the most intriguing I have ever read. Having spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I am always interested in learning more of the cultures there, and The Underground Girls delves into a phenomenon I never knew existed. Sons are prized in Afghanistan, and much of a man's self-worth is derived from having sons. Girls are significantly less valued. For men with only daughters, a local religious leader (or the family themselves) can declare a daughter to be a "son." These girls, called bacha posh, are raised as boys until puberty, giving the family a bump in prestige. For the girls, it is a chance to experience life without the restrictions of female life (being confined to the home, unable to move outside the house without the presence of a male family member, subservience, etc.) There seems to be little damage to these girls' psyches - unless they are not converted back to females before puberty. Then, they seem to fully feel themselves to be male.
Nordberg interviews families who have a bacha posh and women who have been bacha posh. Then Nordberg looks into the human past and brings up multiple examples of women who have taken on the roles of men (like Joan of Arc). She brings a peculiarly Afghani experience into a world view of gender roles.
This book seems well-researched, albeit through a non-Afghani lens, and I found it fascinating.
Always and Forever
Lorraine Zago Rosenthal
https://www.lorrainezagorosenthal.com
Tribeca Press
9798990833159, $9.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Always-Forever-Lorraine-Zago-Rosenthal-ebook/dp/B0FJ7JNSQ9
In Always and Forever, the female protagonist, Suzanne, is a woman pushing thirty who has always loved Jay, but due to pressure from her mother, has never been able to express those feelings and has contented herself with being best buds with him. They both have a lot of baggage. Suzanne is a former child movie star whose career was ruined before she achieved real success. She has a ne'er-do-well absent father. Jay's policeman father was killed in the line of duty, and Jay now babysits his alcoholic mother. Both sets of parents were friends at one time, and a tragedy ruins their relationship and affects the next generation. As Suzanne and Jay decide to move forward with their relationship, these old family secrets return to haunt them.
This emotional book deals with love and loss with eventual forgiveness but felt a bit flat to me. At times I wanted to slap Suzanne for allowing herself to wallow in the past and not move on.
Blood Hollow (#4 of 22 in the Cork O'Connor series)
William Kent Krueger
Atria
c/o Simon & Schuster
https://www.simonandschuster.com
9780743488679, $13.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Hollow-Novel-OConnor-Mystery-ebook/dp/B000FC103Y
Blood Hollow is the fourth in the now twenty-two volume set of Cork O'Connor private eye mystery series. Here, Krueger handles multiple intersecting plot lines and potential villains with aplomb.
The beautiful, but drunk, daughter of a wealthy townsperson drives away from a New Year's Eve party on a snowmobile and disappears just before a blizzard storms into Aurora, Minnesota. When the spring melts the snow, her corpse is found. With little investigation, the murderer is pronounced to be her bad-boy Native American ex-boyfriend, Solemn Winter Moon. This murder exposes small-town bigotry toward Native Americans as well as bureaucracy enforced by an inexperienced sheriff. Private investigator Cork O'Connor faces plenty of adversity as he investigates the crime, trying to prove the innocence of Winter Moon, including nearly freezing to death in the aforementioned blizzard.
As always, I enjoyed Krueger's descriptions of small-town Aurora, the Minnesota landscape and weather, and the encounters between Whites and Native Americans. Especially interesting here is Cork's realization of his own pre-conceived notions of guilt and innocence.
Black Butterfly
Claudia Jones
https://www.claudia-jones.com
Black Butterfly Productions LLC
9798993966915, $4.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Butterfly-CLAUDIA-JONES-ebook/dp/B0GR6RVG2Y
Black Butterfly is a psychological thriller with paranormal overtones. In it, a young artist, Emily, is avoiding dealing with psychological issues in her past, not even fully opening up to her therapist. She has to prepare for an upcoming exhibition, so when her art dealer friend offers to fund a month's retreat at Lake Lure, Emily accepts. When she arrives at her rented cabin, she meets the next door neighbors and fellow vacationers and, when she asks them about the history of her cabin, give her conflicting or non-answers to her questions, leaving her wondering if it is indeed haunted. She does find that she's able to paint but feels like her hand and brush are driven by unseen forces. She thinks she sees images of her acquaintances, Mei and Michael, and of her daughter, Sienna, who Emily abandoned due to postpartum depression. And the basement is a dirty somewhat terrorizing place in which she has to do laundry.
Overall, as a thriller, it didn't have a lot of action, but if you like lots of psychological content, you may enjoy this book. Black Butterfly is heavy on self-reflection as Emily attempts to come to terms with her emotional problems. . There wasn't a lot of external threat, but Emily's delving into her psyche is interesting as she has something of a psychotic break in the basement. Also, I pictured one of the characters as an adult and much later learn that they are a child. I found this confusing rather than suspenseful as I was never fully able to re-envision the character as a youngster.
Suanne Schafer, Reviewer
www.SuanneSchaferAuthor.com
Susan Bethany's Bookshelf
Winning Without Persuading
Esther Choy
HarperCollins Leadership
c/o HarperCollins Publishers
www.harpercollins.com
9781400252770, $29.99, HC, 272pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Without-Persuading-Framework-Curiosity/dp/1400252776
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/winning-without-persuading-esther-choy/1148350003
Synopsis: Leaders are trained to have answers, drive alignment, and persuade others to move forward. But in today's environment, those scripts are persistently working against them. The more leaders push their message, the less progress they actually make. The result: missed signals, shallow alignment, and decisions made without the full picture.
The leaders who outperform are not the most persuasive. Instead, they are the ones who know how to discover what others don't yet know how to say.
With the publication of "Winning Without Persuading: A New Framework for Leading with Curiosity and Story Discovery", Esther Choy (founder of the Leadership Story Lab) offers a radically different approach to leadership: one built on curiosity, story discovery, and the ability to uncover the hidden information that drives better decisions, stronger trust, and lasting change.
The real leadership power lies in learning how to find the stories that change everything.
Through her T^2 principle (Transaction X Transformation) Choy shows how every interaction can achieve immediate outcomes while also reshaping how people think, contribute, and lead.
"Winning Without Persuasion" show how to:
Make better decisions by uncovering what your team isn't saying - before it's too late
Use curiosity to access insights, risks, and opportunities that persuasion alone will not reveal
Create interpersonal connections that enable people to feel seen, speak up, and stay - strengthening engagement, retention, and team performance
Ask the questions that surface original, high-value thinking - not rehashed answers
Lead with clarity, human insight, and authentic voice in an age where AI can generate answers - but not understanding
In a world where everyone is talking, the leaders who stand out are the ones who know how to see, hear, and uncover what others miss.
Critique: Original, exceptional, and fascinating, "Winning Without Persuading: A New Framework for Leading with Curiosity and Story Discovery" is enhanced for the reader's benefit with the inclusion of a Foreword by Gregory Warners, a six page Appendix, a six page listing of Acknowledgments, ten pages of Notes, and a ten page Index. Impressively innovative, thought-provoking, and 'reader friendly' in style, organization and presentation, "Wining Without Persuading" is especially recommended reading for anyone with a position of leadership and its responsibilities. While a valued and unreservedly commended addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library Communication Skills collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists, it should be noted that this hardcover edition of "Winning Without Persuading" from HarperCollins Leadership is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.99).
Editorial Note: Esther K. Choy is the CEO and Chief Story Facilitator at Leadership Story Lab, where she helps leaders across industries harness the power of story to build trust, ignite change, and inspire action. The author of Let the Story Do the Work and a top contributor to Forbes' Leadership Strategy channel, her work has also been featured in Harvard Business Review, the New York Times, and Entrepreneur magazine. Currently completing her MFA in Creative Writing at DePaul University, Esther blends business rigor with narrative craft to redefine leadership as an act of connection and transformation.
Tiodora's Letters: An Enslaved Woman's Fight for Family and Freedom
Marcelo D'Salete, author/illustrator
Andrea Rosenberg, translator
Fantagraphics
www.fantagraphics.com
9798875001710, $24.99, HC, 204pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Tiodoras-Letters-Enslaved-Womans-Freedom/dp/B0FDFBQQYW
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tiodoras-letters-marcelo-dsalete/1147649076
Synopsis: In the mid-19th century, millions of Africans were enslaved and brought to Brazil. Among them was the real-life Teodora who, separated from her husband and her son, worked in the home of a priest in Sao Paulo. Wishing to reconstruct the family ties lost during the journey from Africa to Brazil and to achieve emancipation for herself and her family, she gave Claro, a Black man who could read and write, money to help her write letters: some addressed to her husband and her son, whereabouts unknown, in the hopes that the letters would find them and that they could achieve this quest together; and some addressed to enslavers, intended to either help locate her family or to persuade them to let her buy her freedom.
Inspired by this correspondence, "Tiodora's Letters: An Enslaved Woman's Fight for Family and Freedom" is a rigorously researched historical work by author/illustrator Marcelo D'Salete who has created a compelling narrative based on her letters and masterfully drawn B/W illustrations, has graphically recreates her struggle.
"Tiodora's Letters" is presented by Fantagraphics in an exceptional graphic novel format and set in the 1860s. It the story of Bene, a fictional Black young man who likes Tiodora because she was kind to him, takes it upon himself to seek Tio's family and deliver the letters. He embarks on a dangerous and world-building journey into the interior of Brazil and to the coffee plantations where they might be. There are many wordless passages of heartbreaking horror, character beats, breathtaking drawings of nature, and much more.
In "Tiodora's Letters" (deftly translated into English by Andrea Rosenberg), Marcelo D'Salete has reconstructed a forgotten part of Brazil's dark history of slavery and pays tribute to the strength of a woman who fought for her rights single-handedly. Of special note is the includion of educational and contextual material.
Critique: Original, unique, compelling, emotionally engaging, "Tiodora's Letters: An Enslaved Woman's Fight for Family and Freedom" from Fantagraphics is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended pick for personal, community, and college/university library history/biography themed graphic novel collections.
Editorial Note #1: Brazilian cartoonist Marcelo D'Salete is a graduate of the University of Sao Paulo with a degree in fine arts. He is an acclaimed illustrator, teacher, and historical author who lives in Italy. There is an online listing of books by Marcelo D'Salete available at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/3204202.Marcelo_d_Salete
Editorial Note #2: Andrea Rosenberg (https://reedsy.com/andrea-rosenberg) is a translator who has worked on a variety of novels and graphic narratives in Spanish and Portuguese. Her translations of the graphic novels Run For It by Marcelo D'Salete and The House by Paco Roca won Eisner Awards in 2018 and 2020, respectively.
The Black Girl's Guide to Building a Boutique Farm
Clarenda 'Farmer Cee' Stanley
Chelsea Green Publishing Company
www.chelseagreen.com
9781645023548, $29.95, PB, 272pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Girls-Guide-Building-Boutique/dp/1645023540
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-black-girls-guide-to-building-a-boutique-farm-cee-stanley/1148489854
Synopsis: Merging agricultural know-how with entrepreneurial expertise, cultural wisdom, and a unique focus on brand identity, "The Black Girl's Guide to Building a Boutique Farm: Practical Advice to Keep Your Business Cute, Profitable, and Sustainable" by Clarenda 'Farmer Cee' Stanley offers a clear roadmap for establishing and scaling boutique farming enterprises that are economically viable and culturally impactful.
"The Black Girl's Guide to Building a Boutique Farm" delves into the essentials of brand building for boutique farms, including market positioning, storytelling, and cultivating a strong community presence. Cee's unique approach emphasizes mindset shifts crucial for success and outlines how artisanal farming can extend beyond profit to benefit the broader community and ecosystem. She accomplishes this through "Groundwork" exercises in each chapter of the book.
"The Black Girl's Guide to Building a Boutique Farm" is a practical and inspirational guide and workbook not only for Black women, but for a wide range of aspiring young or non-traditional beginning farmers who aspire to run a thriving boutique farm business, helping to transform their communities and set new standards in sustainable agriculture.
Drawing from her journey as the founder of Green Heffa Farms, Farmer Cee shares her deep knowledge of brand development, sustainable business strategy, and organic, regenerative farming practices. Her background as a seasoned marketing and fundraising expert turned award-winning herb farmer provides readers with practical guidance on launching and growing a boutique farm brand rooted in authenticity and community.
Critique: This large format (7 x 0.54 x 9.97 inches, 13 ounces) trade paperback edition of "The Black Girl's Guide to Building a Boutique Farm: Practical Advice to Keep Your Business Cute, Profitable, and Sustainable" is an ideal 'how-to' introduction to creating, operating, and maintaining a small working farm. It is informatively enhanced for the aspiring farmer's benefit with the inclusion of a Foreword by Bonita D. Clemons, an Introduction (Why This Book? Why Now?), a two page 'Last Word: The Harvest Is Yours', a three page listing of Resources, a one page Bibliography, and a thirteen page Index. Exceptional 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation, this DIY instruction manual and guide is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended pick for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Small Scale Agricultural Business/Farming collection and supplemental curriculum studies lists.
Editorial Note: Clarenda Stanley (www.farmercee.com) is a visionary entrepreneur, farmer, herbalist, and advocate for ethical business and sustainable living. Known affectionately as "Farmer Cee," she founded Green Heffa Farms in Liberty, NC, in 2018. Raised on her maternal grandparents' farm, with an awarded professional background in marketing and environmental fundraising and a deep and profound respect for the Earth, Farmer Cee dedicates her life to promoting holistic health and wellness practices that honor the interconnectedness of all living things. Green Heffa Farms is also the first Black-owned farm to achieve Certified B Corp status. Beyond her work as an executive, farmer, and herbalist, Farmer Cee is also a passionate educator and community leader. Through workshops, classes, and speaking engagements, she empowers others to support their health by incorporating herbs into their wellbeing program. Farmer Cee's approach is rooted in her belief that everyone has the ability to cultivate wellness from the ground up, starting with the soil beneath their feet. Her mission is to inspire others to reconnect with the earth, embrace their innate healing abilities, and live in harmony with the natural world.
Susan Bethany
Reviewer
Willis Buhle's Bookshelf
Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America's Future
Fergus M. Bordewich
Alfred A. Knopf
c/o The Random House Publishing Group
www.randomhouse.com
9780593803363, $35.00, HC, 272pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Centennial-Great-Invention-Americas-Future/dp/0593803361
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/centennial-fergus-m-bordewich/1148264005
Synopsis: Held at Fairmount Park, in Philadelphia, the Centennial celebration extravaganza attracted 10 million Americans (nearly 20 percent of the population, among them P. T. Barnum, Frederick Douglass, and Mark Twain) and visitors from around the world, including the emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro (who couldn't get enough of the exhibition).
On display were inventions that signaled the changing landscape of American life, from the typewriter to the telephone to Heinz Tomato Ketchup.
This celebration of America's first century came at a moment when its future seemed more precarious than ever -- as big money threatened to overwhelm the government, underpaid workers waged the first national labor strike, feminists demanded rights for women, Native tribes went to war to repel the advancing settlement in the West, and Black Americans struggled to exercise their hard-won freedom. Additionally, looming over the fair was the presidential race of 1876 -- a highly contested election that would determine the fate of Reconstruction and permanently shape the Republican party as we know it today.
With the publication of "Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America's Future", Fergus Bordewich animates these converging crises through the lives of four protagonists (Rutherford B. Hayes, Alexander Graham Bell, railroad magnate Tom Scott, and sculptor Edmonia Lewis) revealing a country striving to live up to the promise of its founders while bracing for the social, political, economic, and technological tidal wave that would be the twentieth century.
Critique: An erudite, informative, seminal and groundbreaking study, "Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America's Future" is the extraordinary history of an extraordinary event. Informatively enhanced for the benefit of the reader with the inclusion of an eight page Bibliography and twenty page of Notes, "Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America's Future" is exceptionally well written and thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation. An extraordinary and highly recommended addition to personal, community, and college/university library 19th Century American History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists, it should be noted for students, academia and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that this hardcover edition of "Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America's Future" from Knopf is also readily available for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.99).
Editorial Note: Fergus M. Bordwich is the author of nine previous nonfiction books, including Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction; The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government (winner of the 2019 D. B. Hardeman Prize in American History); America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union (named best history book of 2012 by the Los Angeles Times); and Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America.
The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State
Emmaia Gelman
University of California Press
www.ucpress.edu
9780520410442, $29.95, HC, 342pp
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Defamation-League-Racial-State/dp/0520410440
Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-anti-defamation-league-and-the-racial-state-emmaia-gelman/1149525337
Synopsis: The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is a major US political organization, yet its politics have gone largely unexamined. While the ADL is often portrayed as a defender against antisemitism and racism, its history shows that it is better understood as a proponent of the racial state and US empire.
From "correcting" the embarrassing racial difference of immigrant Jews to policing the leftist politics of Black, Arab, and Jewish groups, the ADL pursued a conservative version of civil rights paired with aggressive anti-communism. Even as it became an authority on white nationalism in the 1970s, the ADL joined with the emerging anti-left, anti-Arab, and pro-Western neoconservative movement.
"The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State" by Emmaia Gelman is a detailed and informative history that presaged the ADL's work, from the 1980s to the present, in developing the hate crimes framework as a pro-state policing project, which soon merged with the "War on Terror," the "antisemitism scare," and anti-Palestinian racism.
"The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State" presents the ADL's history through its conflicts with social justice movements, illuminating the ADL's outsize role in shaping the ideas about race and rights that have underwritten US empire.
Critique: An original, seminal and groundbreaking study, "The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State" by Emmaia Gelman is an informed and informative history of the Anti-Defamation League. Informatively enhanced for the reader's benefit with the inclusion of an eighteen page Introduction, a ten page Epilogue, a two page listing of Acknowledgments, a twenty-eight page Bibliography, and a twenty-seven page Index, "The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State" is exceptionally well written and thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation. While unreservedly recommended as a unique addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university American Jewish History, Civil Rights, and Contemporary Political Science collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.
Editorial Note: Emmaia Gelman (https://emmaiagelman.com) is the founding Director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. She has taught social and cultural analysis at NYU and social sciences at Sarah Lawrence College. Her writing appears in Jewish Currents, Boston Review, The Forward, and elsewhere.
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer
James A. Cox
Editor-in-Chief
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